Archive - Res Obscura

Why were Belle Époque cities beautiful?

It's not because they were "traditional" or "classical" — in fact it's just the opposite

May 21 •

AI makes the humanities more important, but also a lot weirder

Historians are finally having their AI debate

May 7 •

April 2025

Child artists in history

Apr 16 •

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.

Apr 2 •

March 2025

AI legibility, physical archives, and the future of research

A followup to "The leading AI models are now good historians"

Mar 5 •

February 2025

Happy Lupercalia

A special discount on subscriptions in honor of the Roman wolf holiday

Feb 13 •

The familiar loneliness of the Kinetoscope

One other way that the 2020s resemble the 1890s

Feb 5 •

January 2025

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

Jan 29 •

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

Jan 22 •

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

Jan 15 •

December 2024

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

Dec 4, 2024 •

October 2024

A very deep history of Halloween

Or, how far back can historical analysis take us?

Oct 29, 2024 •

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