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 ( 7808 )
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Cat [Japanese]
視線#今日もネコ様の圧が強い #キジネコ様... Read more
Posted on 27 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude Parodies “Kubla Khan” Using Elon Musk, FDR, and Walt Disney
As you may know, there’s been a fair amount of interest in the ability of LLMs to create poetry. I’ve done a bit of that myself with ChatGPT. The results were... Read more
Posted on 27 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Who We Spend Time with Over the Course of Our Lives
https://t.co/tn796UuuKS— Bryan Caplan (@bryan_caplan) November 26, 2024H/t Tyler Cowen. Read more
Posted on 27 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Weight Loss, Bariatric Surgery, and the New Drugs
Time stamps: 00:00 Intro 01:06 Set Point Theory 11:24 Calories In / Calories Out 18:47 Biggest Hurdles To Weight Loss 23:05 What Is Bariatric Surgery? Read more
Posted on 26 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Will Medicare Cover the New GLP-1 Weight-loss Drugs?
Margot Sanger-Katz, Obesity Drugs Would Be Covered by Medicare and Medicaid Under Biden Proposal, NYTimes, Nov. 26, 2024. The Biden administration, in one of it... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Freddie Hubbard, First Light
Perhaps more than any other, Freddie Hubbard set the style for mainstream 1960s-1970s jazz trumpet. Sure, there’s Miles Davis, but he’s his own universe and... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
AI Granny Vs. the Phone Scammers
Ali Watkins, An A.I. Granny Is Phone Scammers’ Worst Nightmare, NYTimes, Nov. 25, 2024: Daisy Harris likes birds — there’s one outside her window. Her cat is... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Cost of Education in the Roman Empire
Cost of education in the Roman Empire, from Diocletian price edict.Based on the prices in the edict we can see that instruction in rhetoric and literature was... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
My Streaming Diet [Media Notes 145]
I’ve written previously about my posting habits over the long-term, posting charts showing wide variation over time, with periods lasting two to four months... Read more
Posted on 25 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Last Universal Common Ancestor and Its Impact on the Early Earth System
Moody, E.R.R., Álvarez-Carretero, S., Mahendrarajah, T.A. et al. The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth... Read more
Posted on 25 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Depression is on the Rise
I’m preparing an article on depression and want to say a few words so I decided to ask Claude about it. Note its remarks about long-term historical trends,... Read more
Posted on 24 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Using a 300-ton Hydraulic Press to Crush a Block of 10,000 Lego Bricks
The really fun stuff starts at about 8 minutes in, but, really, if you're going to watch that, why not watch the whole thing? AND: What kind of person... Read more
Posted on 24 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Trump 47 and the Battle for the Soul of America
I was happy when Biden dropped out of the race. But why’d it take him so long? And I was pleased to see Harris rake in all the $$$ and do well in the polls,... Read more
Posted on 24 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Governors Island as a World Resource Center
I spent a good deal of time early in the millennium working with Zeal Greenberg, of the World Development Endowment Foundation, on a plan to develop Governors... Read more
Posted on 23 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gary Marcus Vindicated on the Limits of Scaling?
He seems to think so, and I agree. Though I also believe that LLMs probably have won a permanent place in the repertoire of techniques for AI devices. We just... Read more
Posted on 23 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Making a (large) Epoxy Table
While I've been watching Cam's videos for a few years. While I have no particular interest in these tables, I enjoy these videos. So I've watched a bunch of... Read more
Posted on 22 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Time for Another Ramble: Melancholy, Claude, Bloom, Claude, Ring Composition, an...
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these; May 29th was the last one. If you look over there to right at the Blog Archive you’ll see I’ve been on a... Read more
Posted on 22 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It Will Be Interesting to See How AI Affects Medical Practice
Not too many years ago Geoffrey Hinton confidently predicted that radiologists would soon be replaced by AI. That didn't happen. But now... Read more
Posted on 22 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
3QD Catch-Up: Affective Technology, Georgia on My Mind
Whenever I publish a new article at 3 Quarks Daily I also publish a somewhat shorter post here at New Savanna. That post links to the 3QD post and comments on... Read more
Posted on 21 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Coca-Cola and AI: It's the Real Thing! [Still] [Media Notes 144]
Alex Vadukul, Coca-Cola’s Holiday Ads Trade the ‘Real Thing’ for Generative A.I., NYTimes, Nov. 20, 2024. The opening two paragraphs: With temperatures dropping... Read more
Posted on 21 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
