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 ( 7869 )
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Into the Digital Wilderness and Beyond LLMs
Alexander Doria has a recent post, The Model is the Product, that’s gotten me to think about future developments in a different way: There were a lot of... Read more
Posted on 18 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Has Trump Misjudged the Voters?
Kristen Soltis Anderson, Trump’s Poll Numbers Are Sagging. Here’s the Key Reason. NYTimes, Mar. 17, 2025. I don't think anyone, apart from Trump insiders,... Read more
Posted on 17 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
While LLMs Produce Funnier Memes Than the Average Human, the Best Human Memers...
Paper: https://t.co/L2pcZyw2uSGemini with image creation, turn this paper into a meme: pic.twitter.com/igbATVaHfV— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) March 17, 2025H/t... Read more
Posted on 17 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Selection of Recent Photos [Hoboken]
Posted on 17 March 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Magic Mike XXL [Media Notes 159]
As I watched Magic Mike XXL on Netflix the other night I realized that I’d seen it when it first came out in theaters, 2015. I don’t know what I thought about i... Read more
Posted on 17 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Connections Between Sexual Activity, Depression, and Mortality
This video is based on information from the two studies below. Chao Cao, Lin Yang, Tianlin Xu, Patricia A. Cavazos-Rehg, Qinran Liu, Daragh McDermott, Nicola... Read more
Posted on 17 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Centrality of AI Metacognition [in Search of “wisdom”]
Samuel G. B. Johnson, Amir-Hossein Karimi, Yoshua Bengio, et al., Imagining and building wise machines: The centrality of AI metacognition, arXiv:2411.02478v1... Read more
Posted on 16 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Late Pleistocene Arctic Origins of East Asian Psychology
Sun, D. (2025). Arctic instincts? The Late Pleistocene Arctic origins of East Asian psychology. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences. Advance online publication.... Read more
Posted on 16 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Meta Seeks to Block Further Sales of Ex-Employee’s Scathing Memoir
Mike Isaac, Meta Seeks to Block Further Sales of Ex-Employee’s Scathing Memoir, NYTimes, Mar. 12, 2025. Meta won a legal victory on Wednesday against a former... Read more
Posted on 15 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Photo Color Sandwich
Posted on 15 March 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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OLMo-2 from Allen AI is the First Fully Open GPT4-class Model.
From a Facebook post by Ted Underwood: OLMo-2 from Allen AI is the first fully open GPT4-class model. Open code, open data, everything. Read more
Posted on 15 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
2025 New York Times Photo Review
I recently entered the 2025 New York Times Portfolio Review, which was free. It’s simple: You submit 10 photos, if you make the cut those photos will be... Read more
Posted on 15 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is the Transformer Architecture One from a Set of Equivalent Architectures?
This strengthens my hypothesis that there is a large set of equivalent neural architectures of which the original transformer is just one sample. https://t. Read more
Posted on 15 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Nite Shots with a Twist in the Middle [hallucinated City]
Posted on 14 March 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Why MAGA and AI Go Together Like a Horse and Carriage, Or a Bat and Ball
Dan Brooks, How Generative A.I. Complements the MAGA Style, NYTimes, March 13, 2025. The article opens by discussing that batshit crazy "Trump Gaza" A.I. video. Read more
Posted on 14 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Giant Steps: Carnegie Hall Jazz Band
“Giant Steps” is one of John Coltrane's best known tunes. He recorded it in 1960 on an album of the same name, which has become a jazz classic. When played... Read more
Posted on 13 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Coming and Going in Hoboken
Posted on 13 March 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Love-bombing the President: Elon and Donald, Sitting in a Tree, X X X X I N G (n...
Amanda Marcotte, “I am the alpha in this relationship”: What Musk’s romantic history reveals about his hold on Trump, Salon, March 12, 2025. Read more
Posted on 13 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sociogenomnics, is It Just Another Spin of the Nature/nurture Wheel, Or Will It...
Dalton Conley, A New Scientific Field Is Recasting Who We Are and How We Got That Way, NYTimes, 13 March 2025. Since Sir Francis Galton coined the phrase “natur... Read more
Posted on 13 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why Are We as a Culture Addicted to Work? [Because We Have Forgotten How to...
I'm bumping this to the top of the queue, both on general principle, and because it's relevant to a book I'm trying to get off the ground. Read more
Posted on 12 March 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
