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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Masha Gessen: Are We on the Edge of an Autocratic Breakthrough?
Masha Gessen, Biden and Trump Have Succeeded in Breaking Reality, NYTimes, July 20, 2024. The last three paragraphs: As for Trump, despite the gestures he made... Read more
Posted on 20 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Nahre Sol Talks with Tigan Hamasyan
From the Wikipedia entry for Hamasyan: Tigran Hamasyan (Armenian: Տիգրան... Read more
Posted on 20 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Ever More Flowers
Posted on 19 July 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Refactoring Training Data to Make Smaller LLMs
Tentatively, most interesting thing I've seen coming out of the AI world in a year or so. A tweet by Andrej Karpathy: LLM model size competition is intensifying... Read more
Posted on 19 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What’s It Mean to Understand How LLMs Work?
I don’t think we know. What bothers me is that people in machine learning seem to think of word means as Platonic ideals. No, that’s not what they’d say, but... Read more
Posted on 17 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mood-congruent Memory Revisited
Faul, L., LaBar, K. S. (2023). Mood-congruent memory revisited. Psychological Review, 130(6), 1421–1456. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000394 (ungated version:... Read more
Posted on 14 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Economic Growth in Roman Britain Over Four Centuries
Scott G. Ortman, José Lobo, Lisa Lodwick, Rob Wiseman, Olivia Bulik, Victoria Harbison , and Luís M. A. Bettencourt, Identification and measurement of... Read more
Posted on 14 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rebuilding a 70-year Old Engine [a Bit of the Physical World]
I bought an UNUSED 70-year old ROLLS-ROYCE crate engine! How bad could it be? Pacific Northwest Hillbilly 0:00 unload and unbox 11:08 getting engine unstuck... Read more
Posted on 14 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Birth of "Jaws"
Brian Raftery, 50 Years Ago, ‘Jaws’ Hit Bookstores, Capturing the Angst of a Generation, NYTimes, July 12, 2024. The article opens: In 1973, the first chapter o... Read more
Posted on 12 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: The Water Around Hoboken
Posted on 12 July 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Late Admissions: Lessons from Glenn Loury’s Memoir
From the webpage: In his stunning new memoir, "Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative," economist Glenn Loury surveys the stratospheric highs and... Read more
Posted on 12 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Burnout Coaches
Martha C. White, Seeing Workplace Misery, Burnout Coaches Offer Company, New York Times, July 9, 2024. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted how and... Read more
Posted on 10 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Remnants
Posted on 09 July 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The Aristocrats [Media Notes 138]
The Aristocrats is a 2005 documentary about a joke of the same name which Wikipedia characterizes as a taboo-defying, off-color joke that has been told by... Read more
Posted on 09 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
America's Sources of Energe of 1776 to 2020
Fascinating look at where America sourced energy since 1776:via @adam_tooze pic.twitter.com/i7hXpD87Cw— Bryan Alexander (@BryanAlexander) July 8, Read more
Posted on 08 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Cognitive Benefits of Music
Rafael Román-Caballero, Miguel A. Vadillo, Laurel J. Trainor, Juan Lupiáñez, Please don't stop the music: A meta-analysis of the cognitive and... Read more
Posted on 08 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
I Am: Celine Dion [Media Notes 137]
I’ve been aware of Celine Dion at least since she sang the theme song (“My Heart Will Go On”) for Titanic in 1997, but I’d probably heard something from her... Read more
Posted on 08 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Genes and Politics
A new study of the relationship between intelligence and politics just came out.The relationship everyone knows holds up: more intelligent people tended to... Read more
Posted on 07 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Blossoms and the 14th St. Viaduct
Posted on 06 July 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Your Grandma's Robot Companion
Erin Nolan, For Older People Who Are Lonely, Is the Solution a Robot Friend? NYTimes, July 6, 2024. ElliQ, a voice-activated robotic companion powered by... Read more
Posted on 06 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
