22 APR 2026

Day 112

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Søren Kierkegaard · Journals

A small pale limestone trough with low relief carving of sheep walking in a line along the side, compact enough that its height is only about fifteen centimetres.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

Uruk Trough

Sumerian, Uruk period · 3300–3000 BC · Limestone

From the city of Uruk comes a limestone trough cut with a procession of sheep — among the earliest narrative reliefs from the Middle East, and still hard to read.

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II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Layer-wise Adaptive Rate Scaling (LARS)

training · layer-wise adaptive rates · You et al., 2017 (LARS)

Large batches speed training but often break convergence. LARS rescales each layer’s step by the ratio of its weight norm to its gradient norm, restoring stability without one global rate.

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A vast crowded wall of figures around a central Christ: bodies rising on one side and falling on the other, saints packed above, flesh tones and sky dominating the field.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Last Judgment

Michelangelo · 1536–1541 · Fresco

More than three hundred figures crowd the Sistine Chapel altar wall, rising and falling around Christ, while later draperies still half-cover the original nudes.

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