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The Daily Triptych093 / 365

3 APR 2026

Day 93

Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.

Henri Poincaré · Science and Method
A miniature gold chariot with four horses pulling a two-wheeled cart, carrying two standing figures. The horses are harnessed in a row, and the wheels and reins are articulated in fine detail.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Oxus Treasure

Achaemenid Persian · 550–330 BC · Gold and silver

About 180 pieces of Persian goldwork survived the journey from riverbank to museum. How many were melted down, and where exactly they were found, nobody recorded.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Multimodal Models

Systems and judgement · Vision encoder plus projection layer · 16×16 pixels per token

Language models never see pixels. To process images, systems first use a separate encoder that converts image patches into vectors, then projects them into the language model's token space.

Enter lesson 7 MIN
A thin copper plate embossed with a symmetrical figure: a human form with outstretched wings, clawed feet, and eyes that fork into curved lines at the outer corners.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

Mississippian Repoussé Copper

Mississippian · 800–1600 CE · Native copper, cold-worked

Between 800 and 1600 CE, people hammered native copper into thin plates showing winged figures with forked eyes. The sheets travelled hundreds of miles from workshop to burial mound without ever being melted.

Enter lesson 6 MIN