The "mechanical miracle" that ruined Mark Twain's life
Learning from the automation dreams of the first Machine Age
Res Obscura
Notes on the history of technology, medicine, science, art, drugs, and empire. Also: AI in research and teaching.
Live Last read · last published · next check
Latest posts
Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop
...so I vibe-coded a tool for finding more of them
What is happening to publishing?
Literature's new AI scandal and why good non-fiction books will always matter
Why they stopped building wooden stupas
On survivorship bias in history
Are "Vintage LLMs" the start of a new humanistic field?
Thoughts on Historical Language Models and Talkie-1930
The handmade beauty of Machine Age data visualizations
How William James, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Francis Galton thought with diagrams
Photos from my time in Iran, 2017
Travels through Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Persepolis, and Yazd
The Secret History of Knocking on Wood
Most of human nature is never written down — and machines can't learn it from text
What is happening to writing?
"Cognitive debt," Claude Code, and the negative space around AI
Why I have been writing a niche history blog for 15 years
A special appeal to support Res Obscura on its Crystal Anniversary