27 APR 2026

Day 117

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein · Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

A bronze Chinese vessel of gui form, shown as a museum object, with the interior floor where its inscription is recorded to run.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

Kang Hou Gui

Western Zhou China · Bronze · Gui

A bronze vessel said to come from Huixian in Henan, known for the inscription on the bottom of its interior, and in the British Museum since 1977.

Enter lesson 5 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Sparse Autoencoders for Feature Discovery

interpretability · sparse autoencoders · arXiv:2309.08600

Language models pack many concepts into each neuron. Sparse autoencoders unpack those activations into features that often correspond to single, nameable ideas — without any labelled examples.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

In a wooded clearing a nude woman sits on the grass beside two fully dressed men; a fourth woman bathes in the distance. A basket of fruit and discarded clothes lie in the foreground.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

Luncheon on the Grass

Édouard Manet · 1863 · Oil on canvas

A nude woman sits with two clothed men in a wooded clearing. The fruit is still life; the landscape is ordinary. The scandal was that none of it pretended to be a myth.

Enter lesson 6 MIN