Plutonic Rainbows

I've built a neuro-inspired language acquisition system that mimics how children learn language, implementing a tiny transformer architecture (4-layer, 256-dim) trained on child-directed speech from the CHILDES corpus. The system features a complete web application with Safari auto-launch functionality, offering real-time training monitoring, interactive model evaluation through cognitive tests like the Wug Test and word segmentation, and an API-driven interface for experimenting with biologically-plausible language learning. The web app automatically opens to comprehensive API documentation, enabling researchers to immediately start downloading corpora, training models, and evaluating performance using metrics that align more closely with actual child language development than traditional NLP benchmarks.

The next engineering steps include implementing the biological enhancement phase, which involves adding sparsity constraints through L1 regularization on activations, integrating spiking neural dynamics using frameworks such as NORSE or Lava, and developing hierarchical attention using dilated attention mechanisms. I also plan to expand the evaluation framework with more sophisticated cognitive metrics, introduce curiosity-driven learning with intrinsic rewards for perplexity reduction, and establish a production deployment pipeline featuring model versioning and A/B testing.

Looking further ahead, I intend to add multi-modal inputs (audio/visual) to better emulate the rich sensory environment children experience during language acquisition, and develop a real-time dialogue interface that demonstrates the system's interactive language learning capabilities.

Dawn by Frédéric Malle, composed by master perfumer Carlos Benaïm, is a powerful meditation on oud, illuminated by the sacred stillness of early morning. Part of the brand's Desert Gems collection, Dawn evokes the quiet majesty of a new day breaking over the Middle East, where the air is laced with incense, heat, and centuries of tradition. The opening is a radiant burst of pink pepper and Turkish rose, immediately introducing a sense of regal intensity. But it’s the heart — an impossibly rich, resinous oud — that defines the fragrance’s character: smoky, deep, and reverent, like ancient wood left smouldering on a temple altar.

What distinguishes Dawn is its emotional weight and balance. Benaïm tempers the wildness of oud with a warm, golden amber and the sticky, animalic depth of labdanum. The result is less confrontational than The Night (Dominique Ropion’s sibling scent in the same series), yet no less commanding. It wears like a ceremonial garment — formal, imposing, yet unexpectedly comforting in its drydown. Sillage is elegant but assured, and longevity is exceptional. Dawn is not an everyday fragrance; it’s a moment of stillness rendered in scent — timeless, spiritual, and resolutely grand.

I finished refining my general use prompt, optimised specifically for Claude when run with claude --dangerously-skip-permissions as the terminal command. It has taken me about three months to get this just right. I am confident that it will not need any more work now — at least for Opus and Sonnet 4.

Of course, when the next major model arrives, I will need to look at it again.

I ordered two Maison Francis Kurkdjian samples — Reflets d’Ambre and Absolue Pour le Soir. These are essentially re-releases from last year, with Reflets d’Ambre replacing the long-discontinued Ciel de Gum, while Absolue Pour le Soir retains its original name.

Ciel de Gum is the name of a high-end department store in Moscow. Maybe the original name, with its Russian associations was deemed not suitable in the current climate.

Reflets d’Ambre arrived a few days ago, and it does smell quite similar to Ciel de Gum. I’ll need to compare them more closely before deciding whether it’s worth purchasing as a replacement. I haven’t used Ciel de Gum since it was discontinued—thankfully, my bottle is still nearly full.