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The Daily Triptych074 / 365

15 MAR 2026

Day 74

Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.

Thomas Kuhn · The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Carved walrus ivory chess pieces showing seated kings and queens, standing bishops with croziers, mounted knights, and warders holding shields, with detailed facial expressions ranging from solemn to weary.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Lewis Chessmen

Norse · 13th century · Walrus ivory

Ninety-four carved pieces dug from a sandbank on Lewis in 1833: chess kings, queens, bishops, knights, warders and pawns, plus backgammon counters and a belt buckle, now split between two museums.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Why GPUs

Hardware and local inference · Parallel processors for data-parallel workloads · Thousands of cores per chip

A CPU executes instructions faster than a GPU, but a transformer spends most of its time multiplying enormous matrices — work that splits into millions of independent pieces.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

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

A wooden figure bristling with hundreds of iron nails and blades driven into its surface at all angles. A mass of dark resin is packed into the abdomen. The eyes are inlaid with reflective material.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

A Kongo Nkisi Nkondi

Kongo peoples, Congo Basin · 19th century · Wood, iron, resin, mixed media

Each nail driven into this wooden figure sealed a vow, a debt, or a legal case. The object was not made complete — it accumulated its authority one iron blade at a time.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

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