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 ( 7613 )
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A Girardian Note About Spartacus [Media Notes 140]
I saw Spartacus when it came out in 1960. The movie led me to the book, which I read quickly. I believe I stayed up reading it most of a night, but I don’t... Read more
Posted on 01 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A.I. in Hollywood, Wait and See
Devin Gordon, What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood? NYTimes Magazine, Nov. 1, 2024. From the middle of the article: Over several months of talking to... Read more
Posted on 01 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
China Viewed from China | Robert Wright & Peter Hessler [US More Militaristic...
Timestamps: 0:00 Peter’s new book, Other Rivers: A Chinese Education 3:00 Have Chinese people become less hostile to America? 12:48 What Americans get wrong... Read more
Posted on 29 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Watching Film Increases Empathic Understanding of Formerly Incarcerated People
Rebecca Keegan, Can Watching Movies Rewire Your Brain? Hollywood Reporter, October 23, 2024. Five years later, people are climbing into an MRI machine in the... Read more
Posted on 28 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Prospects for Using LLMs in Content Moderation for Social Media
From the YouTube page: Wherein I am joined by the estimable Dave Willner, who helped build the content moderation system at Meta, who talks me through how and... Read more
Posted on 28 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hossenfelder: Wolfram's Research Program Seems Healthy (after All). Perhaps It...
From the webpage: Mathematician and Computer Scientist Stephen Wolfram wants to do no less than revolutionizing physics. He wants to do it with computer code... Read more
Posted on 26 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Douthat: Real AI is Not Like the AI of the Movies [bewitched by Language]
Ross Douthat, Our Robot Stories Haven’t Prepared Us for A.I., NYTimes, Oct. 26, 2024. Data the android experiences existential angst because he is obviously a... Read more
Posted on 26 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Saudi Arabia's Plans 15 Soccer Stadiums for the 2034 World Cup
11 stadiums are slated to be built from scratch while 4 existing stadiums will be renovated. 0:00 Kick-off 1:05 King Salman International Stadium 1:48 King... Read more
Posted on 24 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Assembly Theory and the Nature and Origins of Life [Star Talk]
From the webpage: What is life? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Chuck Nice tackle assembly theory, artificial life, and the origin of lifeforms in the universe... Read more
Posted on 23 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Stray Thoughts About Girard: Mimesis, Being, Parsons, Scapegoating +
Being Girard’s interest in mimesis goes beyond the obvious fact of imitation. It’s not simply that we imitate others, but that mimesis is about Being, a desire... Read more
Posted on 21 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Shakespeare on the Wane? What Does That Portend?
Drew Lichtenberg, Who’s Afraid of William Shakespeare? NYTimes, Oct. 21, 2024. How real is this Shakespeare shrinkage? American Theatre magazine, which... Read more
Posted on 21 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Hath Woke Wrought?
Tyler Cowen interviews Musa al-Gharbi, author of We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite. AL-GHARBI: I have published an essay... Read more
Posted on 20 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Domesticated Stars, with Flag
Posted on 18 October 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Have Political Parties Become Quasi-religious Organizations?
While I don't read Brooks regularly, I do read him. Here's a passage from a recent op-ed, Why the Heck Isn’t She Running Away With This? NYTimes (Oct. 17. Read more
Posted on 18 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Many Important Tasks Solved by Transformers Can't Be Done in Subquadratic Time
New paper proving that many important tasks solved by transformers can't be done in subquadratic time. Sorry Linear Transformers, Mamba and all the others.... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mechazilla Chopstick Catch (SpaceX)
Watch it again.On the 5th integrated flight test of Starship the Super Heavy tower catch (better know as Mechazilla chopstick catch) SUCCEEDED AT THE FIRST... Read more
Posted on 13 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Once Again, LLMs Are Shown to Have Difficulty with Formal Reasoning
1/ Can Large Language Models (LLMs) truly reason? Or are they just sophisticated pattern matchers? In our latest preprint, we explore this key question through ... Read more
Posted on 11 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Here Come the Sun
Posted on 10 October 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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How to Say “No” to Our A.I. Overlords
The NYTimes has a useful article about how to avoid the AI that Google, Microsoft and Meta are foisting on us: Big tech brands like Google, Apple, Microsoft... Read more
Posted on 10 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Nobel House [Media Notes 139]
I’m talking about the miniseries from 1988, not the James Clavell novel on which it is based. Yikes! Not sure why I sat through all four episodes, but it did. Read more
Posted on 09 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
