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The Daily Triptych003 / 365

3 JAN 2026

Day 3

Man is the measure of all things.

Protagoras · Plato, Theaetetus
A human skull covered in pale plaster, modelled to suggest facial features, with two cowrie shells set into the eye sockets. The lower jaw is absent.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Jericho Skull

Pre-Pottery Neolithic B · c. 7100 BC · Jericho, Levant

Someone removed the jaw, packed wet plaster over the bone, shaped features back onto the face, and pressed cowrie shells into the eye sockets. Then they kept it.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Features and Representations

Foundations · Hand-designed to learned features · Representation learning

For decades engineers wrote careful rules to extract edges, phonemes and word stems. Then a different approach let the model decide what mattered, and performance leapt forward.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

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

A line of robed figures in a mosaic, frontal, against a gold background. A central figure in purple holds a wide dish and wears a jewelled crown and halo. A green band runs beneath their feet.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Justinian Mosaic at San Vitale

6th century · San Vitale, Ravenna · Glass and gold tesserae

Justinian faces forward in a mosaic at Ravenna, holding a paten, feet resting on a green band. The band is a ground line. The feet have no weight.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

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