Res Obscura
Benjamin BreenNotes on the history of technology, medicine, science, art, drugs, and empire. Also: AI in research and teaching.
| Platform |  | Pricing | Only free issues | Publishes | Weekly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Issues | 58 | Founded | 3 years ago | Last Issue | 7 days ago |
| Active | |||||
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resobscura.substack.comLatest Issues
The "mechanical miracle" that ruined Mark Twain's life
“All the other wonderful inventions of the human brain sink pretty nearly into commonplaces contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle.”
Such was Mark Twain’s verdict on the Paige Compositor, a typesetting device which was among the mos...
Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop
My first year of college, I had a work-study job which ended up being one of the most sneakily important intellectual experiences of my life. I was a lowly library shelver, assigned to the shelves labelled A through F section in the Library...
What is happening to publishing?
The big news in the world of writing today is the controversy over the award of a Commonwealth Foundation Short Story Prize to a story called “The Serpent in the Grove.” The piece was almost certainly co-authored by AI.
As of this morning...
Why they stopped building wooden stupas
In the fifth century, a Chinese Buddhist monk named Faxian walked from central China to India. It took him six years. When he reached the city then called Purushapura (modern Peshawar, in what is now Pakistan) he saw a building that he desc...
Are "Vintage LLMs" the start of a new humanistic field?
Imagine talking to the collective consciousness of an era. Not the consciousness of any single person, but instead, a simulated collectivity based on billions of words produced within a historical time and place. What would you ask it?
Th...
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Authors
The writers behind this newsletter.
Historian of science, medicine, technology, drugs, and culture at UCSC.
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