8 FEB 2026
We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM
Half the surviving sculpture from Athens' great temple, carved under Phidias in the fifth century BC, removed to Britain in the early nineteenth — and claimed by two governments ever since.
II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Standard attention computes the correct answer but moves data between GPU memory tiers so often that most cycles are spent waiting. FlashAttention reorders the same operations and runs several times faster.
Written before source checking was enforced · facts in this lesson are unverified
III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY
Vermeer painted a girl turning toward you in exotic dress, her mouth half open. The pearl that named the picture is probably not a pearl at all.
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