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 ( 7460 )
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Coming out of Melancholy, Again
I've written about my propensity to lapse into a melancholy state periodically, seemingly during the winter months, something I've reported on at length in an... Read more
Posted on 06 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Remember the Snow
Posted on 05 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Time for Another Run at “Kubla Khan”
I became “hooked” on “Kubla Khan” early in my career, somewhere around 1970 or so. I decided it was my intellectual touchstone: “a standard or criterion by whic... Read more
Posted on 05 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sympawny No.4 (Chubby Cat)
Musician Norm Oxman composed a song for his late cat, "Sympawny no.4 (Chubby Cat)." It reflects the image of the cat.A composer's musical portrait honoring... Read more
Posted on 04 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fourteenth Street Viaduct in Hoboken
Posted on 04 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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An Agentic Framework That Generates Publication-ready Academic Illustrations
paper: https://t.co/2wGHSX6Dit— Akshay đ (@akshay_pachaar) February 3, 2026That is to say, they're linking six agents together in a... Read more
Posted on 04 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hip-hop & Violence, Misogeny, Etc.– From Shared Knowledge to Common Knowledge
I'm copying this from Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen), which quotes a Roland Fryer piece in the Wall Street Journal: In a TED Talk released on Monday, I... Read more
Posted on 04 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Agentic Coding is Neurosymbolic AI
Why do coding agents work so well and what would it take to replicate their success in other domains? One important and under-appreciated reason is that... Read more
Posted on 03 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mmmm.....Good! Fries, a Quarter-pounder, and Orange Fanta
Posted on 03 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Adam Neely: On Suno, AI Music, and the Bad Future
0:00 Intro 4:06 Challenge accepted 6:55 Three Questions 24:14 Why no influences? (deskilling/narcissism) 35:50 Profiles of the Future 47:54 Good uses of Suno... Read more
Posted on 03 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Employers Are Now Using AI as Cover for Laying Employees off – "A.I. Washing"
Lora Kelley, Did A.I. Take Your Job? Or Was Your Employer ‘A.I.-Washing’? NYTimes, Feb. 1, 2025. A company might lay people off for any number of reasons: It... Read more
Posted on 02 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Approaching Mickey D's, and a Peak Inside
Posted on 02 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Zohran Mamdani Visits Louis Armstrong
From a post by Ethan Iversion: Yesterday the new mayor of New York City dropped by the Louis Armstrong House Museum. This is essentially politics as usual—AOC... Read more
Posted on 02 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
He Who Controls the Foundation Models Controls (our Access To) Reality
đŻ Information monopolies are always a concern, but LLMs ratchet it up way beyond search engines. You are not just being referred to a... Read more
Posted on 02 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Moving Northward Along the Water [Hoboken]
Posted on 01 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Séb Krier on Moltbook, Agents Chatting with Agents
The Moltbook stuff is still mostly a nothingburger if you've been following things like the infinite backrooms, the extended Janus universe, Stanford's... Read more
Posted on 01 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Breakfast, Omelette Based
Posted on 31 January 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Game Theory, MAGA, and Abortion: The Trumperor’s Varied Partisans
Let us assume that the story of the emperor who has no clothes, that that story is about the conversion of shared knowledge into common knowledge. Read more
Posted on 31 January 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Moltbook – A Community for AIs
What's currently going on at @moltbook is genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently. People's Clawdbots (moltbots, now... Read more
Posted on 31 January 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Teaching AIs How to Draw Semantic Network Diagrams, and Other Things
In June of last year I decided to ask ChatGPT to draw a semantic network diagram for Shakespeare's Sonnet 129. Why did I choose that task? Read more
Posted on 30 January 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
