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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Cultivate Joy. It's Good for Your Health.
Catherine Pearson, 3 Ways to Cultivate Joy, NYTimes, May 9, 2025. Person opens by talking about co-hosting the “first-ever Well Festival in Brooklyn, which... Read more
Posted on 12 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Music and Tears: Phenomenology, Science, Philosophy
New working paper. Title above, links, abstract, contents, and introduction below. I end with a clip from the Johnny Carson show which is the basis for one of... Read more
Posted on 11 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Peeka-boo and Tulips
Posted on 11 May 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Toward a Tantric Reading of Shakespeare’s “Th' Expense of Spirit in a Waste of...
I was playing around with ChatGPT, as I often do. In particular, I was playing with its ability to create mandalas, highly stylized devotional images in the... Read more
Posted on 11 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Zuck Amuck: TechBros Take It to the Mat [Fight Club in the Valley]
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mark Zuckerberg (@zuck) David Yaffe-Bellany, The Tech Guys Are Fighting. Literally. NYTimes, May 11, 2025. Read more
Posted on 11 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
ChatGPT Improves Student Learning
Jin Wang Wenxiang Fan, The effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking: insights from a... Read more
Posted on 10 May 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
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
