20 MAR 2026

Day 79

The medium is the message.

Marshall McLuhan · Understanding Media

A ceremonial costume assembled from pearl shell breastplate, dark feathers, pale barkcloth panels and coconut fibre, structured to envelop and obscure the wearer's body.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Tahitian Mourner's Costume

Tahitian · Collected 1775, Cook's second voyage · Pearl shell, feathers, barkcloth, coconut fibre

The wearer moved through Tahiti wrapped in shells and feathers, ritually dangerous to approach. Cook brought ten of these mourning costumes back to Europe; fewer than that number survive today.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

GPTQ, AWQ and K-Quants

Hardware and local inference · GPTQ (2022), AWQ (2023), K-quants (llama.cpp) · 4-bit weights, 8-bit activations

A 70-billion-parameter model can fit in 40 gigabytes of consumer RAM if you quantise the weights to four bits, but the method you choose determines which parts of the model degrade and which stay sharp.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

A long rectangular carpet with a dark blue field densely patterned with floral scrollwork. A large sixteen-lobed medallion occupies the centre, with two smaller medallions above and below it, and two hanging mosque lamps at either end.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Ardabil Carpet

Safavid Iran · 1540 · Wool pile on silk foundation

The central medallion was designed to sit directly beneath a ceiling lamp in a shrine. Twenty-six million knots later, the design still describes the room it has not occupied for more than a century.

Enter lesson 6 MIN