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Why they stopped building wooden stupas
On survivorship bias in history
May 14
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Benjamin Breen
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Are "Vintage LLMs" the start of a new humanistic field?
Thoughts on Historical Language Models and Talkie-1930
Apr 29
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Benjamin Breen
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The handmade beauty of Machine Age data visualizations
How William James, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Francis Galton thought with diagrams
Apr 22
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Benjamin Breen
56
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Photos from my time in Iran, 2017
Travels through Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Persepolis, and Yazd
Mar 31
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Benjamin Breen
42
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The Secret History of Knocking on Wood
Most of human nature is never written down — and machines can't learn it from text
Feb 24
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Benjamin Breen
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The leading AI models are now good historians
Jan 22, 2025
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Benjamin Breen
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Why Early Modern Books Are So Beautiful
Aug 3, 2023
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Benjamin Breen
180
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What is happening to writing?
Feb 18
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Benjamin Breen
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On 17th century "cocaine"
Oct 9, 2024
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Benjamin Breen
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What is happening to writing?
"Cognitive debt," Claude Code, and the negative space around AI
Feb 18
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Benjamin Breen
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Why I have been writing a niche history blog for 15 years
A special appeal to support Res Obscura on its Crystal Anniversary
Dec 4, 2025
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Benjamin Breen
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How well can Gemini 3 make a Henry James simulator?
Finally, a benchmark for LLMs with real-world value
Nov 19, 2025
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Benjamin Breen
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Can automation help make the humanities more human?
Finding the negative space around machine capabilities is not a new challenge — but it is more important today than ever before in history
Nov 6, 2025
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Benjamin Breen
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The Age of Books and the Age of Brainrot
A semi-optimistic take on the future of reading and thinking
Oct 2, 2025
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Benjamin Breen
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All Souls exam questions and the limits of machine reasoning
The world's most eccentric exam is newly relevant in the age of AI
Aug 13, 2025
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Benjamin Breen
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OpenAI's "Study Mode" and the risks of flattery
Serious learning requires friction, frustration... and other humans
Jul 31, 2025
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Benjamin Breen
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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
May 21, 2025
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Benjamin Breen
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AI makes the humanities more important, but also a lot weirder
Historians are finally having their AI debate
May 7, 2025
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Benjamin Breen
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Res Obscura
Notes on the history of technology, medicine, science, art, drugs, and empire. Also: AI in research and teaching.
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Recommendations
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SubMakk
Rebecca Makkai
The Intrinsic Perspective
Erik Hoel
Burning Shore
Erik Davis
weird medieval guys
weird medieval guys
Experimental History
Adam Mastroianni
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.
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