11 FEB 2026

Day 42

Nothing can be created out of nothing.

Lucretius · On the Nature of Things

A sinuous wooden serpent covered in turquoise mosaic, curving in an S-shape with identical heads at each end, jaws open and fangs visible, eyes and details picked out in white and red-orange shell.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Double-Headed Serpent

Mexica (Aztec) · 15th–early 16th century · Spanish cedar, turquoise, shell, pine resin

Two serpent heads meet on a wooden core, their scales cut from turquoise and shell. It was made in central Mexico and crossed the Atlantic within decades of contact.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Logits and the Softmax

Inference · Attention Is All You Need, 2017 · Vocabulary-sized vector of real numbers

The model produces a raw score for every entry in its vocabulary — fifty thousand numbers, many of them negative. Softmax converts that list into a probability distribution you can sample from.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

Tall curved walls of fitted granite blocks rising against sky, with a decorative chevron pattern visible near the top of the outer wall.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Great Enclosure at Great Zimbabwe

Shona ancestors, Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe · 13th–14th centuries · Dry-stone granite

Eleven metres of coursed granite laid without mortar by Shona ancestors in the thirteenth century, then systematically looted and attributed to anyone except the people who built it.

Enter lesson 7 MIN