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 ( 7631 )
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Friday Fotos: Irises! Why Not?
Posted on 22 July 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Nano Tech on the Move: World's First Motor Made of DNA
Very happy to share our first molecular motor made of DNA, open access to everyone to read @Nature https://t.co/kzVGbknHv4 . It is a ratchet! And it can wind a... Read more
Posted on 21 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Effects of Scaling Model Parameters, but Not Number of Tokens
Rohin Shah, [AN #173] Recent language model results from DeepMind, LessWrong, July 20, 2022. Scaling Language Models: Methods, Analysis Insights from... Read more
Posted on 21 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Racism and Social Welfare in the Good Old USofA
Bryce Covert, There’s a Reason We Can’t Have Nice Things, NYTimes, July 21, 2022. The United States is one of six countries in the world without a national... Read more
Posted on 21 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Solarpunk Future
Waffle To The Left 37,574 views Oct 19, 2021 The solarpunk-inspired 'Dear Alice' commercial produced by the animation company The Line for Chobani is one of... Read more
Posted on 21 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Protest [Liberty State Park 12.2.17]
The Future The Mayor The Governor Read more
Posted on 21 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Protest Isn't Enough [social Media Facilitates Protest Without Grass-roots...
Zeynep Tufekci, I Was Wrong About Why Protests Work, NYTimes, July 21, 2022. Post 2000 or so, large protests seem to emerge from nowhere and grow quickly,... Read more
Posted on 21 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
This Bird Ain't Singing [I've Got My Eye on You]
Posted on 20 July 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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On the Subject of Birdsong, Music Or Not? [common Glad Impulse]
Ian Rose, Every Good Bird Does Fine, Jstor Daily, July 20, 2022. Is birdsong music? The question has been around since Aristotle. One hundred years ago, in 1922... Read more
Posted on 20 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Entheogenic Walls in Process
Posted on 19 July 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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How to Change Your Mind [Media Notes 75d] – What's Next?
I’ve watched the last two episodes of How to Change Your Mind, devoted to MDMA, known colloquially as ecstasy, and Mescaline respectfully. Read more
Posted on 19 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
In Flow with DALL-E
Bakz T. Future, Confession: DALL-E 2's New Quotas Make it Hard to Get Into a Creative Flow State, Multimodal, 19 July 2022. The opening: When I first got... Read more
Posted on 19 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Samo Šalamon & Ethan Iverson Interview
Jul 15, 2022 New interview from the Dr. Jazz Talks interview series, this time Ethan Iverson – fantastic pianist and composer, with a great last trio album Ever... Read more
Posted on 18 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Urban Pastoral @3QD [more Examples]
My latest at 3 Quarks Daily: Some Aspects of the Urban Pastoral. * * * * Read more
Posted on 18 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Economic Growth is a False Idol; We Need a Steady-state Economy
David Marchese, This Pioneering Economist Says Our Obsession With Growth Must End, NYTimes Magazine, July 17,2022. But what about the counterintuitive... Read more
Posted on 18 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Large Language Models as a Cultural Technology
https://simons.berkeley.edu/talks/large-language-models-cultural-technology AI and Humanity Recent work on large language models has focused on whether or not... Read more
Posted on 17 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
An Elevator Between Hoboken and Jersey City
Posted on 17 July 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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GPT-3, the Phrasal Lexicon, Parry/Lord, and the Homeric Epics
GPT-3 and Homer? You’ve got to be kidding. No, I’m not. What’s the connection? First, I look at large language models, mostly through tweets by David Chapman,... Read more
Posted on 16 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Houses in the Jersey City Heights, Plus Roses
Posted on 16 July 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Two Parameters: Mechread and Parset [plus a Note on E-flat]
For the last two years I've been corresponding with a friend of mine from the old days at RPI, Bob Krull. Bob was in communications and did a lot of empirical... Read more
Posted on 16 July 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
