If recent, and coming, editions of the letter seem a bit more disjointed than usual don't worry. It's just a reflection of my current state of mind; I'm juggling a couple or three projects (along with The Day Job^TM) so I'm a bit more scattered than usual.

With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:

Fixing the roads — An argument that tolls helped solve the problem of poorly-maintained roads throughout England and Wales in the early days of the industrial revolution, despite the tides of people who protested against those tolls.

From the article:

While there were some riots against turnpike tolls, the researchers note that they were relatively rare and localised. They believe there was a high level of acceptance at least partly because people could see they were getting something for their money: better journeys.

Lords of the Ring — A fascinating dive into the world of sumo, not just its history but also the cultural and political ramifications of the sport. Even though I'm a long-time fan, I learned a couple of things from this piece.

From the article:

The first six Mongolian wrestlers made their debut in 1992, prompting a racial panic that led to a de facto ban on all foreign recruitment. The ban was lifted in 1998, but with an effective limit of two foreign-born recruits per stable—the groups of up to several dozen wrestlers who live and train together. Four years later, the limit was reduced to just one foreign recruit. The tendency to look to Mongolia to fill this quota owed as much to that country’s own folk-wrestling traditions as to an abundance of eager young candidates willing to endure years of grueling apprenticeship and language study.

AI=B+ — Ben Parker argues that AI really isn't as great at academic work, especially in the arts, as its creators and boosters claim. In fact, the work it produces is quite average and derivative.

From the article:

The essays it produced in mere seconds are quite plausible as the last-minute work of a rushed undergraduate. Its prose is at once eerie and banal, its analysis unswervingly trite, but full of flat-footed assertions and irrelevancies. ChatGPT didn’t answer the question I fed it, but it did furnish a jumble of incomprehension and nonevidence. It is not at all close to a correct reading.

Seeing like a spreadsheet — David Oks looks at applications like Microsoft Excel, which are widely used, much maligned, but also key to so much that happens in the world (whether we know it or not).

From the article:

Before the spreadsheet, analyzing a single company would take weeks; but once VisiCalc was released, you could build an LBO model on your desktop, change the cost of debt from twelve percent to fourteen percent, and watch the entire structure of the deal recalculate itself before your eyes. What had once taken weeks or days now took hours or minutes.