30 MAR 2026

Day 89

The map is not the territory.

Alfred Korzybski · Science and Sanity

A greenstone pendant carved in the form of a stylised human figure with a large tilted head, bent limbs, and hands resting on thighs, suspended from a woven cord.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

Māori Hei-Tiki

Māori · Early Modern · Pounamu (greenstone)

Carved from greenstone and worn against the skin, the hei-tiki gathers mana—spiritual power—with each generation. Museums preserve them. They were made to circulate.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Chunking and Reranking

Systems and judgement · 2020 (RAG paper), 2019 (cross-encoder reranking) · 5–15 point improvement in answer accuracy

A retrieval system can fetch a thousand documents in milliseconds, but if the wrong five paragraphs reach the model, the answer will be confident and wrong.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

Three nude male figures in marble, entwined with two large serpents. The central adult figure twists backward, mouth open, right arm bent. A smaller figure on the right slumps, head tilted. A second smaller figure on the left recoils.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

Laocoön and His Sons

Hellenistic sculpture · 1st century BC (disputed) · Marble

Dug from a Roman vineyard in 1506, it changed how Michelangelo thought about the body. Four centuries later, the original arm turned up and proved the Baroque restorers wrong.

Enter lesson 7 MIN