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The Daily Triptych033 / 365

2 FEB 2026

Day 33

The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point.

Claude Shannon · A Mathematical Theory of Communication
A limestone relief showing a kneeling woman in an elaborate headdress pulling a thorned rope through her tongue, while a standing man in a feathered headdress holds a torch above her. Hieroglyphic text surrounds the figures.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

Yaxchilán Lintel 24

Maya · 723–726 AD · Limestone

Lady K'abal Xook kneels before her husband, pulling a cord studded with obsidian thorns through her tongue. The date is carved beside her: 28 October 709 AD.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Models Without Positional Encoding

Transformers · Decoder-only · Kazemnejad et al., Haviv et al.

A decoder-only transformer trained without any positional encoding still learns which token came first. The causal mask leaks enough information that explicit position becomes optional, not mandatory.

Enter lesson 6 MIN
Two women lean over a man on a bed, one sawing through his neck with a sword, the other pressing him down. Blood sprays from the wound across white sheets.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith Slaying Holofernes

Judith beheading Holofernes · Biblical narrative, Book of Judith

Artemisia Gentileschi painted the same biblical murder Caravaggio had painted a decade earlier. She added a second pair of hands, changed the angle of the blade, and made the blood obey gravity.

Enter lesson 6 MIN