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One of the stranger episodes from the 1950s golden age of psychedelic therapy, and what it tells us about the history of technology
2 months ago

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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.

2 days ago 5 votes
AI legibility, physical archives, and the future of research

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

4 weeks ago 19 votes
Happy Lupercalia

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

a month ago 21 votes
The familiar loneliness of the Kinetoscope

One other way that the 2020s resemble the 1890s

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More in history

Excavations at Pompeii Reveal Rare Life-Sized Statues

An ongoing excavation at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii yielded an unusual pair of marble funerary statues. The figures depict a man in a toga and a bejeweled woman, who experts believe may have been a Pompeiian priestess.   Statues Found at Pompeii’s Porta Sarno Necropolis   Archaeologists unearthed the pair of relief […]

9 hours ago 2 votes
The Steps a President Would Take to Destroy His Nation, According to Grok

Just out of curiosity, and apropos of nothing, we asked Grok (the AI chatbot created by Elon Musk) the following question: If a president of a superpower wanted to destroy his own country, what steps would he take? Here’s what Grok had to say: If a president of a superpower aimed to deliberately undermine their […]

14 hours ago 1 votes
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Wrong Side of History Newsletter #61

an hour ago 1 votes
What Is an Ideal Government? A Philosophical Approach

What makes a perfect government? Is it one governed by the wisest people or one that ensures the greatest possible happiness for the largest number of citizens? These questions have fascinated thinkers since ancient times—from Plato and other classical philosophers to John Locke and more recent political theorists. In this article, we will take […]

16 hours ago 1 votes
Why the Romans Stopped Reading Books

Nobody reads books anymore. Whether or not that notion strikes you as true, you’ve probably heard it expressed fairly often in recent decades — just as you might have had you lived in the Roman Empire of late antiquity. During that time, as ancient-history YouTuber Garrett Ryan explains in the new Told in Stone video […]

yesterday 2 votes