1 JAN 2026

Day 1

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates · Plato, Apology

A smooth, rounded stone sculpture of two abstracted human figures embracing, their bodies so closely intertwined that they form a single compact mass with minimal detail.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Ain Sakhri Lovers

Natufian · c. 9000 BC · Calcite

Carved when people had just begun to stay put, this pebble shows two bodies locked together so tightly that the sculpture reads as one form from every angle.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

What Machine Learning Is, and Is Not

Foundations · Computer science · Mid-twentieth century

Machine learning builds a function from data you supply. It does not reason, understand context, or learn the way a child does — and the difference matters.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

Interior view looking up at a large brick dome with a ring of closely spaced windows at its base, supported by four curved pendentives above a square floor plan, with walls of marble and gold mosaic.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

Hagia Sophia

537 · brick · Byzantine architecture

The builders placed forty windows around the base of a brick dome so that, from below, the solid structure seems suspended in mid-air. It collapsed once. They rebuilt it steeper.

Enter lesson 7 MIN