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The Daily Triptych154 / 365

3 JUN 2026

Day 154

To collect photographs is to collect the world.

Susan Sontag · On Photography
A brass and steel model galleon about a metre tall, with masts and a detailed hull, made as a Renaissance table automaton.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

Mechanical Galleon

Renaissance Germany · 1585 · Brass and steel

A brass and steel ship built in 1585 by Hans Schlottheim is both a table ornament and an automaton. It once belonged to an Elector of Saxony and now sits in the British Museum.

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II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning with Centralized Critics

Multi-agent reinforcement learning · MADDPG, arXiv:1706.02275 · Actor-critic, arXiv:1602.01783

When several learners share an environment, each one sees a moving target. A critic that watches every agent during training can steady credit assignment without forcing them to share senses at test time.

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A wide, low painting of eleven men in harness hauling along a riverbank under a heavy sky; the central younger figure pulls upright against his straps while the others lean forward in exhaustion.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

Barge Haulers on the Volga

Ilya Repin · 1870–1873 · Oil on canvas

Eleven barge haulers strain along the Volga in a long horizontal canvas. One young figure still resists his leather straps; the others have nearly given in to heat and fatigue.

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