8 AUG 2026

Day 220

You shall know a word by the company it keeps.

J. R. Firth · Papers in Linguistics

A circular mosaic panel of small stone cubes in cream, dull red and yellow, showing a human head and shoulders facing forward within decorated borders. Old breaks and patches cross the surface.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

Hinton St Mary Mosaic

Roman Britain · 4th century AD, on stylistic grounds · Hinton St Mary, Dorset, 1963

Found in Dorset in 1963: a Roman floor in red, yellow and cream, and at its centre a bust that some specialists read as Christ, which would make it the earliest such image known.

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II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The Information Bottleneck

Tishby and Zaslavsky, 2015 · Shwartz-Ziv and Tishby, 2017 · theory of deep learning

Two papers proposed that a network's layers can be scored with just two numbers: how much they still remember of the input, and how much they retain about the answer.

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An elderly man in a blue jacket and trousers sits hunched on a wooden chair, elbows on knees, both clenched fists pressed against his eyes so the face is hidden. The room around him is plain and nearly empty.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

At Eternity's Gate

Vincent van Gogh · May 1890 · Oil paint on canvas

An old man sits with his fists pressed to his eyes. Van Gogh painted him in May 1890, working not from a live model but from a print he had made years before.

Enter lesson 5 MIN