12 FEB 2026

Day 43

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

Cicero · De Oratore

Small carved ivory plaques, some fragmentary, decorated with figures, animals, and floral motifs in low relief, displayed against a neutral background.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Nimrud Ivories

Phoenician / Assyrian · 9th–7th century BC · Ivory

Delicate carvings from the Levant, stripped of their gold and dumped in wells or stored unused — fifteen hundred kilometres from where they were made.

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II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Temperature

Inference · After logits, before sampling · Typically 0.0 to 2.0

Before the model picks a token, it divides every logit by one number. That number — temperature — controls whether the output clusters around the most likely choice or spreads across hundreds of alternatives.

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Three young men in short tunics reach toward swords held by an older robed man, their arms extended in identical gestures. To the right, women and children collapse in grief, their bodies curved and shadowed. Three Roman arches frame the groups.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

David's Oath of the Horatii

Jacques-Louis David · 1784–1785 · Oil on canvas

Three brothers reach for three swords held by their father beneath three arches, while the women fold in grief. David composed a scene no Roman writer had described, and it became a revolution's favourite picture.

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