The "mechanical miracle" that ruined Mark Twain's life

Learning from the automation dreams of the first Machine Age

Aug 5 • Benjamin Breen

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July 2026

Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

...so I vibe-coded a tool for finding more of them

Jul 22 • Benjamin Breen

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May 2026

What is happening to publishing?

Literature's new AI scandal and why good non-fiction books will always matter

May 19 • Benjamin Breen

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Why they stopped building wooden stupas

On survivorship bias in history

May 14 • Benjamin Breen

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April 2026

Are "Vintage LLMs" the start of a new humanistic field?

Thoughts on Historical Language Models and Talkie-1930

Apr 29 • 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 • Benjamin Breen

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March 2026

Photos from my time in Iran, 2017

Travels through Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Persepolis, and Yazd

Mar 31 • Benjamin Breen

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February 2026

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 • Benjamin Breen

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What is happening to writing?

"Cognitive debt," Claude Code, and the negative space around AI

Feb 18 • Benjamin Breen

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December 2025

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 • Benjamin Breen

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November 2025

How well can Gemini 3 make a Henry James simulator?

Finally, a benchmark for LLMs with real-world value

Nov 19, 2025 • 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 • Benjamin Breen

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