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The Daily Triptych096 / 365

6 APR 2026

Day 96

Once I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither.

Zhuangzi · Zhuangzi, Inner Chapters
A bronze head of a young man with short hair combed forward, idealised features, and inlaid eyes of white calcite and glass. The neck is broken off roughly below the jawline.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Meroë Head of Augustus

Kingdom of Kush / Roman · 26 BC · Bronze, glass, calcite

A portrait of Rome's first emperor, looted from Egypt and buried under the steps of a temple in Kush so that worshippers would tread on his face with every visit.

Enter lesson 6 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Hallucination

Systems and judgement · Part of the architecture series · Fluency versus accuracy

The training objective never asked the model to be truthful. It asked the model to predict the next token—and humans write false things all the time.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

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

Excavated stone pillars standing in a circular arrangement on a hillside. The pillars are T-shaped, carved from pale limestone, with animal figures visible in relief on some surfaces.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Carved Pillars of Göbekli Tepe

10th millennium BCE · Neolithic settlement · Carved limestone

T-shaped stones weighing tonnes, carved with scorpions and vultures and set in circles on a hilltop. The people who made them had not yet planted grain.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

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