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The Daily Triptych072 / 365

13 MAR 2026

Day 72

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana · The Life of Reason
A tall carved wooden pole of western redcedar, with stacked figures including stylised animals and faces, each defined by bold cuts and curves that follow the wood's vertical grain.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Kayung Totem Pole

Haida · Western redcedar · House pole

This western redcedar pole stood in front of a Haida house, announcing who lived there through carved figures. Each creature was a claim, not decoration.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Looking Inside the Model

Reasoning and architecture · Mechanistic interpretability · Active research, partial results

A frontier model contains billions of parameters arranged in layers. Researchers have now begun to identify which neurons light up for which concepts, and to edit them while the model runs.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

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

An animal shown in profile with its internal skeleton, organs and fat deposits visible inside the body outline, painted in ochre on a curved sheet of bark with fine cross-hatched patterns filling the torso.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

Arnhem Land Bark Painting

Ochre on stringybark · Aboriginal Australian · X-ray

The animal's outline is filled not with solid colour but with its skeleton, stomach and the layer of fat a hunter needs to know about. Not decoration — a diagram of what matters.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

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