15 FEB 2026

Day 46

In the succession of generations the conditions and institutions of the world change.

Ibn Khaldun · The Muqaddimah

A horizontal papyrus painting showing the weighing of a heart scene: Anubis steadies a balance scale with a heart on one side and a feather on the other, while Thoth records the result and a composite creature crouches below. Rows of seated gods appear above, and Osiris sits enthroned at the right.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Book of the Dead of Hunefer

New Kingdom Egypt · c. 1300 BC, 19th Dynasty · Hunefer, Scribe of Divine Offerings

Hunefer's heart is weighed against a feather while forty-two assessor gods watch. The painting unfolds left to right as a trial, and the hybrid creature waiting beneath the scales is there to be feared.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Long Context Is Not Uniform Attention

Inference · Position-dependent recall degradation · 2023 (Liu et al.)

Give a model a hundred-thousand-token context and it will still miss a detail planted halfway through. The window is open, but attention does not fall uniformly across it.

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A long horizontal scroll showing a continuous river landscape in ink: low hills, sparse trees, stretches of blank paper representing water and mist, rendered in dry, abbreviated brushwork.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

Huang Gongwang's Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains

Huang Gongwang · 1348–1350 · ink on paper handscroll

Huang Gongwang was in his eighties when he began this scroll of the Fuchun River. Three centuries later someone tried to burn it with him in his coffin.

Enter lesson 7 MIN