9 FEB 2026

Day 40

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

Marcus Aurelius · Meditations

A small cylindrical gold reliquary embossed with standing figures beneath arched architectural frames, the surface divided into panels by columns.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Bimaran Casket

Gandharan · 1st or 2nd century CE · Gold

For centuries Buddhism showed the Buddha only through symbols — a throne, footprints, a wheel. This small gold box from Afghanistan carries figures that changed that practice, carved in a style borrowed from Greek sculpture.

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II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Multi-Query and Grouped-Query Attention

Transformers · Shazeer 2019 (multi-query), Ainslie et al. 2023 (grouped-query) · Reduce KV cache memory during generation

Every generated token leaves behind keys and values that must stay in memory. Multi-query attention lets dozens of heads share the same pair, trading a small accuracy cost for a cache one-tenth the size.

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Female figures painted on ochre plaster, shown from the waist up, emerging from white and grey painted cloud. They wear elaborate jewellery and hold flowers.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Sigiriya Frescoes

Sigiriya, Sri Lanka · Late 5th century CE · Pigment on lime plaster

Women emerge from painted mist on a sheer cliff in fifth-century Sri Lanka. Whether they are celestial beings, queens, or attendants has never been settled, and the ambiguity may be deliberate.

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