14 FEB 2026

Day 45

The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Thucydides · History of the Peloponnesian War

Glazed earthenware figures of a camel, horses, and grooms with Central Asian features, covered in streaked amber, green, and cream glazes.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

Tang Dynasty Tomb Figures

Tang dynasty China · c. 700–900 · Lead-glazed earthenware

Camels, grooms and horses glazed in amber, green and cream, buried to serve the dead. The faces of the attendants record who was travelling the Silk Road in the eighth century.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The Context Window

Inference · 4,000 to 128,000 tokens, depending on architecture · Fixed at training time

A model does not remember your earlier conversation unless something outside the model saved it and fed it back. The context window is everything, and it is emptied after every reply.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

A night scene lit by a single lantern on the ground. A man in a white shirt and yellow trousers stands with arms outstretched, facing a line of soldiers with rifles. Bodies lie in the foreground; other prisoners wait behind him.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

Goya's The Third of May 1808

Francisco Goya · 1814 · Oil on canvas

Goya gave the man in the white shirt a wound in his palm before the bullets arrived. The lantern that lights him sits on the ground between him and the rifles.

Enter lesson 7 MIN