Res Obscura

Res Obscura

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Why were Belle Époque cities beautiful?
It's not because they were "traditional" or "classical" — in fact it's just the opposite
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Benjamin Breen
8
AI makes the humanities more important, but also a lot weirder
Historians are finally having their AI debate
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Benjamin Breen
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Onfim's world
Child artists in history
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Benjamin Breen
1
When Jorge Luis Borges met one of the founders of AI
One reason I became a historian is the joy of encountering moments in the past that are foreign, yet also oddly familiar.
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Benjamin Breen
AI legibility, physical archives, and the future of research
A followup to "The leading AI models are now good historians"
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Benjamin Breen
12
Happy Lupercalia
A special discount on subscriptions in honor of the Roman wolf holiday
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Benjamin Breen
5
The familiar loneliness of the Kinetoscope
One other way that the 2020s resemble the 1890s
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Benjamin Breen
1
When the Sackler Brothers studied LSD
One of the stranger episodes from the 1950s golden age of psychedelic therapy, and what it tells us about the history of technology
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Benjamin Breen
The leading AI models are now good historians
... in specific domains. Three case studies with GPT-4o, o1, and Claude Sonnet 3.5, and what they mean
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Benjamin Breen
33
2,000-year-old wine and the uncanny immediacy of the past
Why artifacts like the Carmona Wine Urn, the Pazyryk Rug, and the Sword of Goujian are so important
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Benjamin Breen
Why did clothing become boring?
An investigation into when, how, and why everyone started dressing the same — and what it was like when they didn't
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Benjamin Breen
A very deep history of Halloween
Or, how far back can historical analysis take us?
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Benjamin Breen
4
Post-postal
What did we lose when we stopped writing letters?
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Benjamin Breen
3
On 17th century "cocaine"
A new analysis of mummified brains pushes back the timeline for the globalization of coca
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Benjamin Breen
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Res Obscura
Res Obscura
Notes on the history of technology, medicine, science, art, drugs, and empire. Also: AI in research and teaching.
Recommendations
View all 27
Looking Through the Past
Looking Through the Past
George Dillard
The Hinternet
The Hinternet
Justin Smith-Ruiu
The Intrinsic Perspective
The Intrinsic Perspective
Erik Hoel
SubMakk
SubMakk
Rebecca Makkai
The Gradient
The Gradient
The Gradient
Articles
Open-access PDFs of my academic publications
Books
Order "The Age of Intoxication"
My first book, on the early modern global drug trade (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
Order "Tripping on Utopia"
My second book, on Margaret Mead and the history of psychedelic science in the 20th century.
© 2025 Benjamin Breen
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