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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Will AIs Be Able to Create New Knowledge?
This is a quick and dirty reflection on the question posed in the following tweet: This is always a question I have asked myself: Given the knowledge that... Read more
Posted on 06 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Life in the Billionaire Bunkers After the Apocalypse
Billionaires Are Prepping for Doomsday | Glenn Loury, Nikita Petrov Mark Sussman | The Glenn Show Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:28 Biden’s abysmal debate... Read more
Posted on 05 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Chinese Challenge to Amazon
Spencer Soper, Bloomberg Tech Daily Newsletter, July 5, 2024. Temu has taught Amazon.com Inc. an important lesson: US shoppers can be patient if it saves... Read more
Posted on 05 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Along the Hudson River
Posted on 05 July 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Bloom the Aesthete: Does Bloom Abandon the Humanistic Tradition in His Take on...
Dr. Scott Masson: Harold Bloom's strange defence of the Western Canon This lecture briefly discusses the idea of a literary canon, as opposed to the Biblical... Read more
Posted on 05 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Not Fireworks
Posted on 04 July 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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On the Significance of Human Language to the Problem of Intelligence (&...
Back in May I did a post entitled, How smart could an A.I. be? Intelligence in a network of human and machine agents. Toward the end I said this: The question o... Read more
Posted on 04 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F {schlock to Schlock} [Media Notes 136]
I loved the original Beverly Hills Cop and was OK with the two sequels, the third less than the second. So I had to watch Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. Eh. But... Read more
Posted on 03 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Artificial Stars?
Posted on 02 July 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Community in House, M.D. [Media Notes 135 B]
When I wrote yesterday’s post about House, M.D. I figured I might have more to say about it, but I didn’t have any explicit plans to do so. When I woke up this... Read more
Posted on 02 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Diagramming Sentences in the 19th Century
I loved diagramming sentences in grade school. I'm sure I did it in 6th grade, but possibly 5th grade as well. Over a Language Log Victor Mair has a post on... Read more
Posted on 02 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Presidential Debate as Entertainment
I've been watching Zeth's videos for over a year, maybe even two. When I first started watching them it was just Zeth and his daughter, Saylor. Then his with an... Read more
Posted on 02 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Flowers
Posted on 01 July 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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What’s up with House, M.D.? [Media Notes 135]
House, M.D. has been on my to-do list for a couple of years. As you may know, it’s a medical drama than ran on Fox for eight seasons between 2004 and 2012. I... Read more
Posted on 01 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Bang That Drum! [What Fun]
Partial update (two entries, the last two) 12.11.23 Updated 6.21.21. Updated 12.9.19. Updated 6.23.17. In the course of thinking about... In the early 1970s I... Read more
Posted on 01 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Scalable LLMs Without Matrix Multiplication
Rui-Jie Zhu, Yu Zhang, Ethan Sifferman, et al., Scalable MatMul-free Language Modeling, arXiv:2406.02528v5 [cs.CL] Abstract: Matrix multiplication (MatMul)... Read more
Posted on 01 July 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Scott Aaronson Reports on Two Weeks Spent in Israel
“Never A Better Time to Visit”: Our Post-October-7 Trip to Israel, Shtetl-Optimized, June 27, 2024. Dana, the kids, and I got back to the US last week after a... Read more
Posted on 30 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
DamiLee on Neo-Tokyo [anime || Japan || Megacities]
From the YouTube page: In this video, we explore the origins of Akira's iconic Neo-Tokyo, delving into its roots in post-war Tokyo and the visionary ideas that... Read more
Posted on 29 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Eddie Murphy Interview: "The Comic Used to Be [...] the Opening Act, and I...
David Marchese interviews Eddie Murphy in The New York Times, June 29, 2024. From the end: I heard Kevin Hart tell a story on Howard Stern’s show. He talked... Read more
Posted on 29 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hans Zimmer: Hollywood Rebel [Media Notes 134]
Hans Zimmer: Hollywood Rebel is a 2022 documentary about the life and accomplishments of the famed film composer, who’s known for his ability to combine... Read more
Posted on 29 June 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
