27 MAY 2026

Day 147

The eye altering alters all.

William Blake · The Mental Traveller

A small carved spear-thrower resolved as a mammoth, the animal’s body forming the shaft of the atlatl rather than a separate figurine.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

Mammoth spear thrower

106th century BC · Atlatl · Bruniquel rock shelters

Carved as a mammoth and used to hurl a spear, this small Ice Age tool was found in the rock shelters of Bruniquel and is now held by the British Museum.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Data Selection via Perplexity for Language Model Training

data · Dedup 2021; DoReMi 2023 · proxy scoring and mixtures

Most of the web is noise for a language model. A smaller model can rank what is worth keeping — and change how fast the larger one learns.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

A young woman seated in a narrow vertical panel holds a naked child; between their hands a small spray of pale flowers becomes the focus of the scene.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

Benois Madonna

Leonardo da Vinci · 15th century · Oil on panel, transferred to canvas

A narrow panel in oil, later lifted from its wood onto canvas, shows a mother, a child and a spray of flowers held in the space between their hands.

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