6 APR 2026

Day 96

Once I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither.

Zhuangzi · Zhuangzi, Inner Chapters

A bronze head with a smooth, youthful face, short hair combed forward, and inlaid eyes that stare directly outward. The break at the neck is clean and horizontal. The surface is dark with a greenish patina.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Meroë Head of Augustus

Roman / Kingdom of Kush · 27 BC · Bronze, glass, calcite

A Roman emperor's head, looted from Egypt and buried under the steps of a Kushite temple so that worshippers walked over Rome every time they entered.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Hallucination

Systems and judgement · Part of the architecture series · Fluency versus accuracy

The training objective never asked the model to be truthful. It asked the model to predict the next token—and humans write false things all the time.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

Excavated stone pillars standing in a circular arrangement on a hillside. The pillars are T-shaped, carved from pale limestone, with animal figures visible in relief on some surfaces.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Carved Pillars of Göbekli Tepe

10th millennium BCE · Neolithic settlement · Carved limestone

T-shaped stones weighing tonnes, carved with scorpions and vultures and set in circles on a hilltop. The people who made them had not yet planted grain.

Enter lesson 7 MIN