AI Figures Out the Rules of a Mysterious 2,000-Year-Old Board Game from Ancient Rome

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Image by Wal­ter Crist

As far as enthu­si­asm for board games goes, no con­ti­nent has yet out­done Europe. Its advan­tage could lie in the high­ly devel­oped cul­ture of low-cost leisure evi­dent in quite a few of its soci­eties; it could also owe to the fact that board games seem to have been played…

Inside the Automats Where Coin-Operated Machines Created a Modern, Democratic Dining Experience

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“Good evening,” said Alfred Hitch­cock to the tele­vi­sion view­ers of Amer­i­ca on March 25, 1959. “Tonight I’m din­ing at my favorite club. There are many advan­tages here. As you can see, infor­mal­i­ty is the rule. There is also the stim­u­la­tion of intel­lec­tu­al com­pan­ion­ship with­out the deaf­en­ing qui­et that per­vades most clubs. Best of all, I like its pri­va­cy: only four per­sons are allowed at a table, and, of course, no one pays any atten­tion to you.” This was an exam­ple of the dead­pan irony with which the film­mak­er intro­duced each broad­cast of Alfred Hitch­cock Presents, for the “club” of which he spoke was clear­ly an automat. Today, many read­ers under about 50 will nev­er have heard the word, but at the time, it referred to a seem­ing­ly per­ma­nent insti­tu­tion in Amer­i­can life.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKeXw2K9haE

Or rather, an insti­tu­tion of urban Amer­i­can life, and above all in two cities, Philadel­phia and New York. There, no one could think of automats with­out think­ing of Horn & Hardart, in its hey­day the largest restau­rant chain in the world. The con­cept, which co-founder Joseph Horn import­ed over from […]

Roman Statues Weren’t White; They Were Once Painted in Vivid, Bright Colors

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The idea of the clas­si­cal period—the time of ancient Greece and Rome—as an ele­gant­ly uni­fied col­lec­tion of supe­ri­or aes­thet­ic and philo­soph­i­cal cul­tur­al traits has its own his­to­ry, one that comes in large part from the era of the Neo­clas­si­cal. The redis­cov­ery of antiq­ui­ty took some time to reach the pitch it would dur­ing the 18th…

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: From the Walls of Babylon to the Sewers of Rome

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You may not be able to name all, or even most, of the sev­en won­ders of the ancient world. But you almost cer­tain­ly know that there were sev­en of them. In a way, that aligns well enough with the world­view of the Greeks who first made ref­er­ence to such a list, giv­en their near-rev­er­ence for…

Bertrand Russell’s Advice For How (Not) to Grow Old: “Make Your Interests Gradually Wider and More Impersonal”

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Image by Nation­al Por­trait Gallery, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Advice on how to grow old fre­quent­ly comes from such banal or blood­less sources that we can be for­giv­en for ignor­ing it. Pub­lic health offi­cials who dis­pense wis­dom may have good inten­tions; phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies who do the same may not. In either case, the…