Bbenzon

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 ( 7163 )
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On the Explicit Construction of Cognitive Ontology: From “salt” to “sodium...
I have long used the conceptual difference between “salt” and “sodium chloride” to illustrate the idea of conceptual ontology. Except for impurities in... Read more
Posted on 20 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
My Mother and Her Sewing
This tweet by Miriam Posner reminded me of my mother’s sewing skills, which were considerable: One thing my mom used to do every year is sew me an outfit for th... Read more
Posted on 20 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Seeds of a New World?
Posted on 19 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
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Matt Yglesias: "America’s Constitutional Democracy is Going to Collapse." (2015)
That's the opening sentence of an article Yglesias published in Vox in 2015, American democracy is doomed. The article continues: Some day — not tomorrow, not... Read more
Posted on 19 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Revision in the Wild: SOL Gets Over
Posted on 19 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
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America the Cruel: First the Immigrants, Then Their Neighbors, Then Your...
This video of deportation is from the OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE account on X: ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight đŸ”Š pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 19 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Peer Review Penalizes Scientific Risk Taking.
Pierre Azoulay Wesley H. Greenblatt, Does Peer Review Penalize Scientific Risk Taking? Evidence from NIH Grant Renewals, NBER Working Papers, February 2025. Read more
Posted on 18 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Next Major AI Breakthrough, Part 1: Understanding How LLMs Work Internally
It’s not clear to me when we date the current breakthrough in AI. Is it Alexnet in 2012, the origin of the transformer in 2017 (? Read more
Posted on 18 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why Don’t People Dress Up to Go Out Anymore?
by Vanessa Friedman, New York Times, 2.17.25. This lack of formality, or interest in occasion wear, has prompted some complaining, especially among those in... Read more
Posted on 17 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cybertrucks for the State Department? Hell No! Can You Say "corruption"? Heck...
I remember when I first saw pictures of Musk's cybertruck: Yuck!! That is one ug ug ug ugly piece of pseudo-futuristic machinery. But who knows? Maybe it's... Read more
Posted on 17 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Under Construction
Posted on 17 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
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Neil De Grasse Tyson Tears Elon & His Techbro Minions & Cronies a New One
Neil deGrasse Tyson REVEALS The TRUTH About Feud With Elon Musk From the YouTube page: On his show Star Talk, Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson set the record... Read more
Posted on 17 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cobra Kai, Saturday Night Fever, & American Politics [Media Notes [157]
I’ve now watched the final episodes of Cobra Kai and I’ve found them satisfying. Not only have the various personal and interpersonal issues been wrapped up in... Read more
Posted on 16 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cleopatra's Electric Green Platform Shoe
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety: other women cloy The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry Where most she satisfies; for viles... Read more
Posted on 16 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Republican Party’s NPC Problem — and Ours | The Ezra Klein Show
From the accompanying opinion piece in the NYTimes: A few years back, the online right became enamored of a new epithet for liberals: “NPC,” short for “nonplaye... Read more
Posted on 16 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude 3.5 Describes a Sophisticated New York City Apartment from a Bygone Era.
What do you see? This appears to be a view of New York City, specifically looking at the Hudson River waterfront with a cruise ship terminal. The image shows... Read more
Posted on 15 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Artificial Therapy
This new paper shows people could not tell the difference between the written responses of ChatGPT-4o expert therapists, and that they preferred ChatGPT's... Read more
Posted on 15 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It's Looking More and More Like Trump's an Equal Opportunity Affirmative Action...
Michelle Goldberg, Trump Wants to Destroy All Academia, Not Just the Woke Parts, NYTimes, Feb. 14, 2025. I’ve written about Donald Trump’s plan to crush the... Read more
Posted on 14 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
AI and Intellectual Creativity
Just around the corner Tyler Cowen has an interesting post, How to teach people how to work with AI, which he asserts “is also a proposal for how to reform... Read more
Posted on 14 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: The Spirits of AI [from Madam Wayquay's Collection of Resonant...
Posted on 14 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY