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The Daily Triptych012 / 365

12 JAN 2026

Day 12

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Søren Kierkegaard · Journals
A heavy gold torc with a rope-twist body made of multiple strands wound together, ending in ornate cast terminals with ring-and-clasp fittings.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Great Torc from Snettisham

Iceni · 1948–1992 · Snettisham, Norfolk

Over a kilogram of gold, worked into braided rope and cast in place, then buried deliberately in a field. The Iceni did this repeatedly.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Overfitting and Generalisation

Foundations · Learning the pattern, not the examples · Capacity versus generalisation

A neural network with enough parameters can memorise every training example perfectly and still fail on new data. The entire discipline exists to prevent exactly that.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

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

A small bronze figure standing with weight on one leg, one hand on hip, the left arm covered in stacked bangles.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro

Indus Valley Civilisation · Around 2500 BC · Bronze

Ten centimetres tall, cast in metal four and a half thousand years ago, and named for a pose that may not be what we think it is.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

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