Bbenzon
Description
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. Intellectually, I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
MY BLOGS
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New Savanna
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 7597 )
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Over and Under the Table
Posted on 18 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The Future of Computer Programming is Here, and It’s Fun.
Paul Ford, The A.I. Disruption Is Actually Here, and It’s Not Terrible, NYTimes, Feb. 18, 2026. Vibe coding: To vibe code is to make software with prompts sent... Read more
Posted on 18 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Dinner at the Elysian Cafe in Hoboken
Posted on 18 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Prompt Repetition Improves Non-reasoning LLMs
LLMs process text from left to right — each token can only look back at what came before it, never forward. This means that when you write a long prompt with... Read more
Posted on 18 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Chatbots Have Increased My Sense of Intellectual Agency Such That Being an...
That title links two different assertions: Using chatbots increases my sense of intellectual agency. Because I am an intellectual outsider, being fluent in usin... Read more
Posted on 17 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Across the Hudson from Hoboken
Posted on 17 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Three Mathematicians Are Not Impressed with the Ability of AI to Do...
Siobhan Roberts, These Mathematicians Are Putting A.I. to the Test, NYTimes, Feb. 7, 2026. Dr. Martin Hairer (Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne),... Read more
Posted on 16 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Chinese Dancing Robots
đ¤ŻAbsolutely insane. Unitree's humanoid robot team's performance at the 2026 Spring Festival GalaThe significance of the humanoid robot's... Read more
Posted on 16 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
3 Hoboken Scenes and 1 Hudson River/Manhattan
Posted on 16 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Wild Child, Dogs, and Menstruation in Wuthering Heights
Prompt to Claude 4.5: I found the following in my notes. What about the questions I ask at the end? “Take Wuthering Heights, 1847, and the character of... Read more
Posted on 15 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Slow Boat to the End of the World
Posted on 15 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Using AI Allowed a Professor to Turn Grading from Torture into Teaching
MIT professor accidentally leaked his NotebookLM grading system during a Zoom call.Dude forgot to turn off screen share and we watched him grade 47 essays in... Read more
Posted on 14 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Interesting How Automation Also Creates All Sorts of New Tasks and Bottlenecks.
Fascinating insights from senior engineers on how AI is changing their jobs. Interesting how automation also creates all sorts of new tasks and bottlenecks.... Read more
Posted on 14 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ezra Klein Interviews Anand Giridharadas About Epstein’s Social Infrastructure
Ezra Klein, The Infrastructure of Jeffrey Epstein’s Power, NYTimes, Feb. 13, 2026. About Girardharadas: Anand Giridharadas is a journalist who has written for... Read more
Posted on 14 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Some Trees in Winter
Posted on 13 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Claude's Constitution and Other Matters AI
Ross Douthat, Is Claude Coding Us Into Irrelevance? NYTimes, 2.12.26. Are the lords of artificial intelligence on the side of the human race? That’s the core... Read more
Posted on 12 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two by Stan Getz: Focus and Voices
Note: Each video links to the first selection in a play-list that links to the whole album, one cut after the other. Focus Wikipedia: Focus is a jazz album... Read more
Posted on 12 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Where's the Beef?
Posted on 12 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Séb Krier Needs to Rethink. Next-token Prediction Is, at Best, a Misleading...
I like Séb Krier. Never met him, but, courtesy of Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution, I’ve read a number of his long comments on the site formerly known... Read more
Posted on 11 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Train Shed a Liberty State Park as You've Never Seen It
Pssst. Look behind the ballerinas. Read more
Posted on 11 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
