Posts from July 27, 2026

Historians mistook the diaries of the rich for the lives of everyone. We are making the same mistake with modern data - we have just swapped one filter for a shinier one.

On 27 July 1794, the National Convention that Maximilien Robespierre had dominated for a year finally turned on him and had him arrested within the hour. He was dead less than two days later, undone partly by a state religion he had invented two months before, with himself as its prophet.