29 APR 2026

Day 119

The meaning of a word is its use in the language.

Ludwig Wittgenstein · Philosophical Investigations

Museum collection image of a sandalwood sculpture associated with A'a; the supplied information does not describe its pose, dimensions, carved details, colour, or display setting.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

statue of A'a from Rurutu

British Museum · 18th century · Sandalwood

A sandalwood sculpture associated with A'a survives in two museum locations, while the supplied record leaves its maker, original use and route of collection largely unstated.

Enter lesson 4 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Web-Scale Text Corpora Curation

data · Deduplication and filtering · arXiv:2107.06499

Training sets scraped from the open web hide vast runs of repeated text. Removing them is not housekeeping — it changes what a model learns, and what it later regurgitates.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

A domestic kitchen maid in work dress stands at a table in a plain interior, her attention fixed on a vessel as she handles milk, filling most of a small vertical canvas.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Milkmaid

Johannes Vermeer · c. 1660 · Oil on canvas

A domestic kitchen maid stands at her task in a canvas barely larger than a folio. Vermeer gives ordinary labour the quiet attention once reserved for grander subjects.

Enter lesson 6 MIN