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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The Vibe at Pier 13
Posted on 11 June 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Is AI About to Enter a Period of Stagnation Driven by Mistaken Business...
First some remarks by François Chollet in a recent podcast where he suggests that OpenAI has set back AI progress by 5 to 10 years by switching into... Read more
Posted on 11 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Adventures in Photographing Food
Looking through the photos on my computer I see that I first started photographing my meals at Hoboken’s Malibu Diner on January 20, 2018, a single photo of a... Read more
Posted on 11 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Julia Louis-Dryfus Talks with Carol Burnett
From the YouTube page: On the season finale of Wiser Than Me, Julia sits down in person with 90-year-old groundbreaking actress, comedian, and writer Carol... Read more
Posted on 11 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
AI and Collaboration [superintelligence]
Over at Marginal Revolution Tyler Cowen has posted a paragraph from an interview with the mathematician, Terence Tao: With formalization projects, what we’ve... Read more
Posted on 11 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The High Value of Improved Hurricane Forecasts
Renato Molina Ivan Rudik, The Social Value of Hurricane Forecasts, NBER Working Papers #32548, June 2024, OI 10.3386/w32548. Abstract: What is the impact and... Read more
Posted on 10 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
World-Spanning Thoughts
That’s a blog-tag I added recently. I’ve currently got two posts with that tag. This will be the third. I’ve got a vague impression that I’ve got other posts... Read more
Posted on 10 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two Friends: "Let's Talk."
Posted on 10 June 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Godzilla Minus One [Media Notes 127 B] [has a Heart ❤️]
I need to say a bit more about Godzilla Minus One than I did in my earlier post, which is mostly about the film’s look and feel, its overall vibe. Read more
Posted on 10 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cross-cultural Regularities in Music and Speech
Yuto Ozaki et al., Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech: A Registered Report. Science Advance... Read more
Posted on 10 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Flowers on the Streets in Hoboken
Posted on 09 June 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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How About We Grow More Flowers?
Posted on 08 June 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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What About Degrowth? Color Me Both Sympathetic and Skeptical. I'm Thinking.
Jennifer Szalai, Shrink the Economy, Save the World? NYTimes, June 8, 2024. The article opens: A rising tide and a bigger pie: Economic growth has long been... Read more
Posted on 08 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is the High Tech Thrill All Gone?
Peter C. Baker, That Much-Despised Apple Ad Could Be More Disturbing Than It Looks, NYTimes, June 6, 2024. The article opens: If you haven’t yet seen the new an... Read more
Posted on 08 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Big Mac at Mickey D's
Posted on 08 June 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Relationships Among Words, Metalingual Definition, and Interpretability
First, I talk about now natural language is its own metalanguage and that allows them to define new works in terms of existing ones. Read more
Posted on 07 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Some City-scapes for a Change, and the River [Manhattan & Hoboken]
Posted on 07 June 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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What's It Like to Go to Battle Wearing 51 Pounds of Bronz Armor?
Have Wine for Breakfast, Put On a 51-Pound Suit and Get to the Battlefield https://t.co/xwkPY9I79i— Bill Benzon, BAM! Bootstrapping Artificial Minds (@bbenzon)... Read more
Posted on 07 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
That Shakespeare Thing
I'm bumping this to the top of the queue for several reasons, general principle among them. The opinion I offer in the last half or so requires a proper argumen... Read more
Posted on 07 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous [Media Notes 128]
Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous is the prequel series to Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, which I’ve already blogged about. It consists of 49 episodes over five... Read more
Posted on 06 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
