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The Daily Triptych074 / 365

15 MAR 2026

Day 74

Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.

Thomas Kuhn · The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Carved ivory chess pieces: a seated queen with her hand to her cheek, a standing warrior biting the rim of his shield, a mounted knight on a small horse with its head turned sharply to the side.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Lewis Chessmen

Norse · 13th century · Walrus ivory

Ninety-three carved pieces dug from a sandbank in the Hebrides: queens gripping their faces, warders biting shields, and knights on anxious ponies. Norse work, found far from home.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Why GPUs

Hardware and local inference · Parallel processors for data-parallel workloads · Thousands of cores per chip

A CPU executes instructions faster than a GPU, but a transformer spends most of its time multiplying enormous matrices — work that splits into millions of independent pieces.

Enter lesson 7 MIN
A wooden figure bristling with hundreds of iron nails and blades driven into its surface at all angles. A mass of dark resin is packed into the abdomen. The eyes are inlaid with reflective material.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

A Kongo Nkisi Nkondi

Kongo peoples, Congo Basin · 19th century · Wood, iron, resin, mixed media

Each nail driven into this wooden figure sealed a vow, a debt, or a legal case. The object was not made complete — it accumulated its authority one iron blade at a time.

Enter lesson 6 MIN