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The Daily Triptych104 / 365

14 APR 2026

Day 104

I think, therefore I am.

René Descartes · Discourse on the Method
A historic marine chronometer associated with HMS Beagle, made by Thomas Earnshaw and now in the British Museum, shown as a precision timekeeping instrument from early nineteenth-century naval survey work.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

Ship's chronometer from HMS Beagle

Thomas Earnshaw · Marine chronometer · British Museum

A precision timekeeper by Thomas Earnshaw sailed with Darwin on HMS Beagle. Of the dozens that ship carried, only two from that voyage are known to survive.

Enter lesson 5 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Transformer Neural Machine Translation

Attention Is All You Need · 1706.03762 · June 2017

In June 2017 a short paper argued that sequence models need neither recurrence nor convolution. Attention alone, stacked and multi-headed, was enough to set new translation records.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

Written before source checking was enforced · facts in this lesson are unverified

A wide fresco: a nude man reclines on bare ground at left, arm extended; at right a bearded figure leans from a cloaked group, finger stretched toward the first. Their fingertips do not meet.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Creation of Adam

Michelangelo · 1511 · Fresco

On the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michelangelo set God and the first man a finger’s breadth apart — a gap that still carries the whole force of the scene.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

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