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The Daily Triptych014 / 365

14 JAN 2026

Day 14

All that is solid melts into air.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels · The Communist Manifesto
Fragment of a dark grey mudstone palette carved in low relief with human figures, animals, and vertical standards topped with emblems.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Battlefield Palette

Predynastic Egypt · c. 3100 BC · Mudstone

Before Egypt had hieroglyphs it had palettes: stone slabs for grinding cosmetics, carved with bound prisoners and marching standards. This one shows the argument for kingship taking shape.

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II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Why Scale Worked

Foundations · Kaplan et al. 2020, Hoffmann et al. 2022 · Empirical scaling laws

For a few years, making a model better was almost mechanical: add more parameters, more data, more compute, and watch the loss fall along a smooth curve.

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

A terracotta head with triangular eyes, drilled pupils, and an elaborate hairstyle carved in relief. The nostrils and ears are perforated.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

Nok Terracotta Sculpture

Nok · c. 1500 BC–1 AD · Fired terracotta

Figures with triangular eyes and drilled pupils, fired in open pits and buried with the dead. Most were found by tin miners, who destroyed the sites before anyone recorded what was in them.

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