10 JAN 2026

Day 10

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

Baruch Spinoza · Tractatus Politicus

A naturally mummified human body lying on its left side in a flexed position, with knees drawn toward the chest, preserved skin darkened to brown, and ginger-coloured hair visible on the skull.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

Gebelein Man

Predynastic Egypt · c. 3400 BC · Human remains

Sand and heat preserved him for five thousand years. In 2012, a CT scan found a blade wound under his left shoulder — older than any Egyptian pyramid, and still visible.

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II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Training Versus Inference

Foundations · Training versus inference · Brown et al. 2020; Kaplan et al. 2020

Training builds the weights through weeks of parallel computation on thousands of chips. Inference reads those frozen weights to answer you in seconds on one machine.

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A colossal seated Buddha carved into a limestone cliff, flanked by smaller attendant figures. The central figure has a rounded face with a slight smile, simplified drapery, and sits cross-legged in a shallow niche.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Vairocana Buddha at Longmen

Tang dynasty China · Completed 676 · Carved limestone

The largest figure at Longmen was funded partly by Empress Wu Zetian in 672. Tang viewers may have recognised her features in the stone face looking back at them.

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