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 ( 7606 )
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Coming Soon, DeepSeek On-board! [my Current Scenario for the Future of AI]
Scaling up is NOT sufficient to get us all the way to the top of Mount AGI (whatever the hell that is). We need other techniques, other architectures. Read more
Posted on 21 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude 3.5 Sonata Describes Two Different Photos and Approaches the Concept of...
I’ve been asking Claude 3.5 to describe photos since December 6, 2024. It’s an exercise. I’m not looking for anything in particular. I just what to see how... Read more
Posted on 20 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Yikes! 31 Thousand Photos Over 20 Years, How Do You Make Sense of It All?
With this photo I defined my style. What's in the center of the image, the focal point? Nothing really. Just space. My style's about space, and light. That’s... Read more
Posted on 20 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Empire State Building as Seen from an Embankment in Jersey City, August 27,...
Posted on 20 January 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Hot off the Presses! Claude 3.5 Sonata Explains How Shakespeare is Like...
In what way is Shakespeare like all-purpose flour? What an intriguing and creative comparison! Let me think about this... Both Shakespeare and all-purpose... Read more
Posted on 20 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Music and Revelation: Is It Gone Forever?
About two weeks ago I decided to buy a subscription to YouTube Prime, including YouTube music. Since then I’ve been having a ball listening to music (I’ve had t... Read more
Posted on 19 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Delicate Matters
Posted on 19 January 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Strange Bedfellows Indeed, Trumpsters and TeamTechAlpha, a Marriage of...
The line is from Shakespeare, The Tempest: “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” That’s spoken by Prospero when he finds himself shipwrecked on a... Read more
Posted on 19 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude 3.5 Sonata Describes Salsa Dancers
What’s going on in this photo? This appears to be a street dance scene, likely salsa or another Latin dance style. In the foreground, a woman in a blue patterne... Read more
Posted on 18 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Meeting of Minds: Archimedes, Goethe, Musk
This is and edited version of an interaction I had with Claude 3.5 Sonata in which I asked it to present a conversation between Archimedes, Goethe, and Musk. Read more
Posted on 18 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Complexity Unveiled, a Jivometric Mind Jolt
Posted on 18 January 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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New Study Shows Usefulness of GPT-4 as a Tutor in Nigeria
No working paper yet, but the results and experiment are written up here. They used Microsoft Copilot and teachers provided guidance and initial prompts:... Read more
Posted on 17 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude 3.5 Sonata Describes a Sunrise Photo of Some Weeds, and Then We Talk....
I wasn’t expecting this. Not at all. It started out as an ordinary session in my “describe,” series, where I present Claude to describe a photo and I then... Read more
Posted on 17 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Remote AI Sex? A Romantic Affair? Come On! [Strange New Worlds]
Kashmir Hill, She Is in Love With ChatGPT, NYTimes, Jan. 15, 2025. First line: "Ayrin’s love affair with her A.I. boyfriend started last summer." This and that... Read more
Posted on 17 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Shaky-cam on a Midnight Run
Posted on 17 January 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The Skinny on Techbros Zuckerberg and Musk [#DogShirtTV]
Pissing Off the World's Richest Men: Wherein Ben [Wittes] welcomes Yael Eisenstat, former CIA analyst and current democracy activist, to tell us about her caree... Read more
Posted on 17 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Oldest Matrilocal Tribe in European Prehistory Dates to Late Iron Age Celts
Cassidy, L.M., Russell, M., Smith, M. et al. Continental influx and pervasive matrilocality in Iron Age Britain. Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10. Read more
Posted on 16 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude 3.5 Sonata Describes a Photo of a Swatch Watch
What’s this? This appears to be a Swatch watch with a distinctive skeleton dial design, which allows visibility of the internal mechanical movement through the... Read more
Posted on 16 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The ITER Fusion Reactor: The World's Most Complex Construction Project
Wikipedia: ITER (initially the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, iter meaning "the way" or "the path" in Latin) is an international nuclear... Read more
Posted on 16 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Party Like You Own the World: Tech Billionaires for 47
Theodore Schleifer and Kenneth P. Vogel, A Euphoric Tech Industry Is Ready to Celebrate Trump and Itself, NYTimes, Jan. 16, 2025. A party at the Beaux-Arts... Read more
Posted on 16 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
