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The Daily Triptych041 / 365

10 FEB 2026

Day 41

Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.

Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
A rectangular brass plaque with a relief scene showing figures in ceremonial dress, the metal surface dark with age and detail rendered in raised lines.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Benin Bronzes

Edo / Kingdom of Benin · Fourteenth to eighteenth century · Copper-based alloy

Thousands of brass plaques decorated a palace in what is now Nigeria. British forces took them in 1897, and the question of where they belong has never been settled.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Alternatives to Attention

Transformers · State-space models · 2023 (Mamba)

Transformers pay a quadratic price to look at every earlier token. State-space models like Mamba compress history into a fixed-size state and update it in linear time, but the trade-offs are still being measured.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

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

A young woman in a billowing pink dress swings high in a shadowed garden, her slipper flying off toward pale sky. A young man reclines in the lower left, looking upward. An older figure in shadow at right pulls the swing's ropes.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

Fragonard's The Swing

Jean-Honoré Fragonard · 1767 · Oil on canvas

A patron told Fragonard where to place the viewer, what the young man should see, and where the woman's shoe should fly. The result is Rococo doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

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