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 ( 7609 )
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Claude 3.5 Sonnet Describes a Jersey City Storefront and Runs the Voodoo Down
What’s in this photo? This image shows the storefront of a retail establishment called "House of Spiritual Candles" located at address number 332. Read more
Posted on 01 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How to Jam with an LLM @3QD: Claude on Reason, Art, and the Future
My new piece at 3 Quarks Daily is up: Three Dialogs with a Friendly Alien: Claude 3.5 Sonata. My two “laws” are relevant here: Benzon’s 1st Law: A state of the... Read more
Posted on 01 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
December 2, 2007, Jersey City (Winter)
Notice the Chrysler Building in the background, just to the left of the white storage building. Note: You can click on the image to enlarge it. Read more
Posted on 31 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
GPT in the Classroom, Part 2: Escape to America
Time to return to the classroom. I want to return to the question of authorship. First, I present the interaction that resulted in a poem, “Escape to America.”... Read more
Posted on 31 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude 3.5 Sonnet Describes a Garden State of Mind
Describe this scene. This appears to be a community garden or outdoor gathering space with an urban art aesthetic. The focal point is a large graffiti mural on ... Read more
Posted on 31 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude on Claude: Ten Independent Trials
New Working Paper, title above, abstract, TOC, and introduction below: Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/126681237/Claude_on_Claude_Ten_independent_trials... Read more
Posted on 30 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Midway (1976) and Midway (2019) [Media Notes 150]
When I was a kid I was glued to the TV set every Saturday at 12:30 watching Victory at Sea, with its grand opening theme composed by Richard Rodgers (of Rogers... Read more
Posted on 30 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude 3.5 Describes a Big Mac (and Then Gets Lost in the Weeds, Does It Ever!...
Who would have thought LLMs could be this much fun! It took awhile for Claude to figure out it was staring down a Big Mac. And then all of a sudden we're going... Read more
Posted on 30 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Dance to the Music
Here’s the prompt I have to FredTheHeretic, which is the opening of this article: I want you to make a poem out of the following vignette: Here’s the scene: A... Read more
Posted on 29 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Found at Madam Wayquay's Juntique and Occasional Museum
Notice that painting blurry in the background. I did that when I was 11 or 12. Wayquay crocheted whatever it is that hangs from Hermes's broken left arm. Read more
Posted on 29 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The “Battle” of Wounded Knee
Heather Cox Richardson, December 28, 2024, Letters from an American. On the clear, cold morning of December 29, 1890, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South... Read more
Posted on 29 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Oh, Crap! Cricket? Do They Have a 7th Inning Stretch? Can You Do the Wave?
Aw, Crap: DOGE Announces It’s Replacing Baseball With Cricket https://t.co/4Z8LYpUSpu pic.twitter.com/97UaWR1Pq0— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 28, Read more
Posted on 29 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
LLM as Collaborator, Part 3: Claude Has Some Ideas About How We Could Revise...
Not long after Harold Bloom’s death in October of 2019, Ted Underwood posted a tweet in which he asserted that Bloom was a “gasbag” who made “dogmatic... Read more
Posted on 28 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Zoom Christmas at Newport
Posted on 28 December 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The Children's New Year's Concert
The Russian (from the YouTube page): По традиции мы... Read more
Posted on 28 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cage Match of the Century: MAGA Vs. MAGA, "Two Enter, One Leaves"
Heather Cox Richardson, December 27, 2024, Letters from an American. Civil war has broken out within the MAGA Republicans. On the one side are the traditional... Read more
Posted on 28 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Humans (seem To) Process Information at 10 Bits Per Second
Zheng, Jieyu and Meister, Markus, The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? Neuron, Dec. 17, 2024, doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2024.11. Read more
Posted on 28 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Star is Born: Yunchan Lim
Over at 3 Quarks Daily my colleague, Brooks Riley, has a nice article about the young Korean pianist, Yunchan Lim, “winner of the 2022 Van Cliburn competition a... Read more
Posted on 27 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Grassiness
Posted on 27 December 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
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Christmas on Cherry Lane [Media Notes 149]
See that house in the middle? That’s 315 Cherry Lane in Johnstown, PA. That’s where I grew up. The family moved there when I was about four and we moved away –... Read more
Posted on 27 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
