24 JUL 2026

Day 205

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

John Locke · An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Small pale clay blocks and fragments with circular recesses, the negative impressions of coin faces, shown as a scattered group of modest archaeological moulds.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

Lingwell Gate coin moulds

Clay · Wakefield, from 1697 · Coin moulds

A scatter of clay moulds dug up near Wakefield over nearly two centuries, used not for minting official coin but for copying it — and still held across four British collections.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Sparse Autoencoders for Dictionary Learning

interpretability · Sparse autoencoders · Dictionary learning on activations

Neural networks pack many concepts into each neuron. Sparse autoencoders attempt to unpack those activations into a larger set of features that fire more cleanly and can be read more directly.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

A riverside baptism: a standing man receives water from another while angels kneel at the left; pale rocky landscape and open sky stretch behind the group on a tall panel.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Baptism of Christ

Verrocchio and Leonardo · c. 1470–1472 · Oil on panel

A workshop Baptism in oil on panel, made under Verrocchio, with an angel and landscape passages now widely given to the young Leonardo.

Enter lesson 6 MIN