14 JAN 2026

Day 14

All that is solid melts into air.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels · The Communist Manifesto

Fragment of a dark grey mudstone palette carved in low relief with human figures, animals, and vertical standards topped with emblems.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Battlefield Palette

Predynastic Egypt · c. 3100 BC · Mudstone

Before Egypt had hieroglyphs it had palettes: stone slabs for grinding cosmetics, carved with bound prisoners and marching standards. This one shows the argument for kingship taking shape.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Why Scale Worked

Foundations · Kaplan et al. 2020, Hoffmann et al. 2022 · Empirical scaling laws

For a few years, making a model better was almost mechanical: add more parameters, more data, more compute, and watch the loss fall along a smooth curve.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

A hollow terracotta head with triangular eyes, pierced pupils, an elaborate braided hairstyle, and perforated nostrils and ears.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

Nok Terracotta Sculpture

Nok · c. 1500 BC–1 AD · Fired terracotta

Tin miners in central Nigeria found hollow clay heads with drilled eyes staring from the earth. The digging that brought them to light destroyed the archaeology that could have explained them.

Enter lesson 7 MIN