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 ( 7188 )
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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
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Jesus in the Valley
I don't recall just when I first learned about Peter Thiel, or how. Perhaps it was over at Marginal Revolution, a blog that Tyler Cowen runs along with his... Read more
Posted on 13 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Distant Icons [urban Pastoral]
Posted on 13 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
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Deep Seeking Xanadu: A Sonnet Cycle on East, West, and Kisangani
I decided to have FTH (FredTheHeretic) write a cycle of three sonnets on the theme of East and West, you know, “East is East, and West is West, and never the... Read more
Posted on 13 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ralph Macchio Interview • Kobra Kai [Media Notes 156]
Sarah Bahr, Ralph Macchio on Getting In His Final Kicks in ‘Cobra Kai’, NYTimes, Feb. 7, 2025. When Ralph Macchio was first approached about doing a “Karate Kid... Read more
Posted on 12 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tilt! Musk's Gamification of American Politics. [A Warm-up for Sucking Us into...
Tressie McMillan Cottom, Look Past Elon Musk’s Chaos. There’s Something More Sinister at Work. NYTimes, Feb. 12, 2025. Musk’s escapades are political posturing... Read more
Posted on 12 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Billionaire Climate Champions Buckle Under to Trump's Climate Denial
David Gelles, Under Trump, Billionaire Climate Champions Have Gone Quiet, NYTimes, Feb. 11, 2025. Over the last decade or so, a group of America’s wealthiest... Read more
Posted on 12 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Our Fearless Leaders, Musk and Trump
Tyler Cowen has a post at Marginal Revolution entitled, “The Effect of European Monarchs on State Performance.” That’s the title of an abstract that makes up th... Read more
Posted on 11 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Women of the Year: Middle-Aged and Getting More Action Than Ever Before
Mireille Silicoff, Why Gen X Women Are Having the Best Sex, NYTimes, 2025. A whole new cultural type seems to have landed. It feels worlds away from the... Read more
Posted on 11 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Line in the Sand: Ontologically Restricted Vs. Ontologically Open AIs
I propose that we classify AIs into two general categories: ontologically restricted and ontologically open. Ontologically open AIs stay within the ontologies... Read more
Posted on 10 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What is It About Depicting Sex in Writing? From Shared Knowledge to Common...
Just around the corner at 3 Quarks Daily, Gary Borjesson had an interesting post about love: Can Love Last? A (mostly) encouraging story about the fate of... Read more
Posted on 10 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Clue About the Mind: “Is-A” Sentences
I'm bumping this post from 2011 to the top of the queue. Why? Because it is about the relationship between word order in sentences and order in the process of... Read more
Posted on 09 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gavriil Investigates a Basic Building Block of Music
From YouTube: Gavriil wearing father's t-shirt, comprehends the logic of the circle of fifth. At the end of the video Ivan is explaining for us (I actually... Read more
Posted on 09 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Balancing Things: I'm Cutting Back on Sunday Blogging
I'm working on a book and I've decided to devote Sunday to that. That means I'm not going to do any long-form blogging on Sundays. Read more
Posted on 09 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Over and Under
Posted on 08 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
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Why Didn’t Rome Have an Industrial Revolution? No, No, No, Not the Printing...
Back in August (2024) Tyler Cowen had a link to a paper, Romae Industriae, in which the author, Maxwell Tabarrock, posed the question in the title of this post. Read more
Posted on 08 February 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY