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 ( 7846 )
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Moving Northward Along the Water [Hoboken]
Posted on 01 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Séb Krier on Moltbook, Agents Chatting with Agents
The Moltbook stuff is still mostly a nothingburger if you've been following things like the infinite backrooms, the extended Janus universe, Stanford's... Read more
Posted on 01 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Breakfast, Omelette Based
Posted on 31 January 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Game Theory, MAGA, and Abortion: The Trumperor’s Varied Partisans
Let us assume that the story of the emperor who has no clothes, that that story is about the conversion of shared knowledge into common knowledge. Read more
Posted on 31 January 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Moltbook – A Community for AIs
What's currently going on at @moltbook is genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently. People's Clawdbots (moltbots, now... Read more
Posted on 31 January 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Teaching AIs How to Draw Semantic Network Diagrams, and Other Things
In June of last year I decided to ask ChatGPT to draw a semantic network diagram for Shakespeare's Sonnet 129. Why did I choose that task? Read more
Posted on 30 January 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: North West Resilence Park in Winter [Hoboken]
Posted on 30 January 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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How Do We Credit Hybrid Images?
Around the corner from here, over at 3 Quarks Daily, I’ve published an article I wrote in conjunction with both ChatGPT and Claude. How should that article be... Read more
Posted on 29 January 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Bari Weiss: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
5,684,675 views Oct 13, 2025 #lastweektonight John Oliver discusses the Paramount Skydance merger, how they’ve named Bari Weiss the new Editor-in-Chief of CBS... Read more
Posted on 29 January 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rough Notes on Virtual Reading, On Literary Study in the Fourth Arena
Title above, links, Abstract, Introduction, and Summary Below. Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/150286029/Rough_Notes_on_Virtual_Reading SSRN:... Read more
Posted on 28 January 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Performer and Audience, Heartbeat in Synch: Yuja Wang Performs Rachmaninoff
Janet Horvath, Musicians in Sync – What Yuja Wang’s Heartbeats Tell Us, Interlude, December 7, 2023. During the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninoff’s birth,... Read more
Posted on 28 October 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Turning Point in the Early Morning
Posted on 24 October 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Rebuilding Corporate Research for a Stronger American Future
Tsao, Jeffrey, Beyond the Endless Frontier: Rebuilding Corporate Research for a Stronger American Future (October 13, 2025). Available at SSRN:... Read more
Posted on 24 October 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Demand, Supply, and Market Design with AI Agents
Peyman Shahidi, Gili Rusak, Benjamin S. Manning, Andrey Fradkin John J. Horton, The Coasean Singularity? Demand, Supply, and Market Design with AI Agents,... Read more
Posted on 24 October 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Text, Coding, and Knowledge Agents
One critical point made by Karpathy on the Dwarkesh podcast was about the difference between AI coding agents and the rest of knowledge work. It’s clear that... Read more
Posted on 20 October 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Growth in the American Economy is Now Tied to AI
So is it a bubble? If I had a way to reliably forecast financial bubbles I’d be a trading billionaire not writing political columns. https://t. Read more
Posted on 16 October 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Flashback: Fireworks
Posted on 13 October 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Chrysanthemums Bloom
It's the time of year that the chrysanthemum (kiku) comes into bloom: a flower in Japan that's perhaps only 2nd to the cherry blossom, and one with a wide... Read more
Posted on 13 October 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Genius Logic of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet (Alfa, Bravo, Charlie...)
YouTube: The NATO phonetic alphabet is not a phonetic alphabet and wasn't invented by NATO. However, it has a fascinating story to tell. Read more
Posted on 13 October 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Telegraph, Radio, AI, and Magic
Cody Delistraty, A.I. Isn’t Magic. Lots of People Are Acting Like It Is. NYTimes, Sept. 25, 2025. There’s a word that Sam Altman likes to use when talking... Read more
Posted on 12 October 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
