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 ( 7600 )
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Irises, Two of Them
Posted on 10 May 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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On the Need for a Society That Honors Homo Ludens
From a recent conversation I had with either ChatGPT or Claude 3.7, I forget which. As always, my remarks in bold face while the chatbot's are in plain face. Read more
Posted on 10 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ellen Alaverdyan Rocks “Birdland”
From YouTube: Original Music by Joe Zawinul Special Thanks to Burbank Music Center for the location. https://burbankmusiccenter. Read more
Posted on 10 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reasoning in Long-Form Story Generation
Alexander Gurung, Mirella Lapata, Learning to Reason for Long-Form Story Generation, arXiv:2503.22828 [cs.CL] Generating high-quality stories spanning... Read more
Posted on 09 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Five Flower Mandalas
I created these by giving ChatGPT a photograph of a flower and asking it to create a mandala based on that photo. Here are the source photographs, in Read more
Posted on 09 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
In What Way, If at All, is Elon Musk Responsible for "killing Children"?
Neil Vigdor, Bill Gates Accuses Elon Musk of ‘Killing Children’ by Cutting Foreign Aid, NYTimes, May 8, 2025. In his sharpest rebuke of the world’s richest... Read more
Posted on 08 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Making a Mandala Sand Painting
From the YouTube page: Tibetan monks from Drepung Loseling Monastery constructed a sand mandala in the galleries of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. Read more
Posted on 08 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Does ChatGPT Think of Me?
Sometime quite recently, I don't know just when, OpenAI added a feature to ChatGPT that allowed it to rove over its history of interactions with you. I activate... Read more
Posted on 08 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Sights of Hoboken [no AI Here]
Posted on 08 May 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Tyler Cowen Discusses the Impact of AI with Jack Clark
From the introduction: Few understand both the promise and limitations of artificial general intelligence better than Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic. Read more
Posted on 08 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Verdant Sovereign Awakes: 51 Pacific Rises from the Ashes
That's 51 Pacific Avenue, Jersey City, where the Green Villain – ronin curator, roving party animal, and agent provocateur, held court. Read more
Posted on 07 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Grrl Power on the Web
Jessica Testa, Is This the ‘Manosphere’ for Women? NYTimes, May 7, 2025. Men dominate the top of the podcasting charts. As listeners, they slightly outnumber... Read more
Posted on 07 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin Cover by Missioned Souls
From YouTube (they're all young, especially the drummer): Get ready to rock out with the Missioned Souls, a talented family band from Cebu [Phillipines], as the... Read more
Posted on 06 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
College Isn’t for Everyone, It Really Isn’t
Randi Weingarten, Not All Students Go to College. We Need to Make That OK. NYTimes, may 6, 2025. For years, America’s approach to education has been guided by a... Read more
Posted on 06 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Little House Among the Bean Plants [ChatGPT]
We start with this photo I took of some bean plants in a community garden in Jersey City. We ask ChatGPT to some cabins under the plants. Turn on the lights. Di... Read more
Posted on 06 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pop Culture's War Against Women
In How Pop Culture Betrayed Millennial Women, Maya Salam reviews Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie... Read more
Posted on 06 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Middle Kingdom Rising
Eric Schmidt and Selina Xu, DeepSeek. Temu. TikTok. China Tech Is Starting to Pull Ahead. NYTimes. May 5, 2025. China’s top leaders did not appear to fully gras... Read more
Posted on 05 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Deep Seeking Xanadu, with Illumination by ChatGPT
Back in February I posted three sonnets written by FTH (FredTheHeretic): Deep Seeking Xanadu: A Sonnet Cycle on East, West, and Kisangani. Read more
Posted on 05 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Plethora of Pansies
Posted on 05 May 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Traffic’s Up: New Savanna Stats, May 1, 2025
Traffic is definitely up at New Savanna. Notice that spike at the right. It’s above 250K. Compare that with what we had a month before, on March 31, 2025: The... Read more
Posted on 05 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
