#AcademicRunPlaylist - 3/23/25

Author

Ben Waber
March 23, 2025

A pond to the left of a field with a few bare trees growing near the bank, with forest beyond, on a cloudy day. There's a beaver lodge in the pond about 50 meters away.

I had lots of errands/child activity transport today, but at least I was able to concurrently listen to a book for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

Today I listened to "Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that Made China Modern" by Jing Tsu. This is a fascinating look into how China adapted to global changes in the 19th and 20th century to imperialism and technological developments that made the widespread and rapid dissemination of language more important than ever. The chapters on the typewriter and telegraph in particular were especially insightful, with direct parallels around the higher prices paid per Chinese telegram due to ill-suited encoding to disparate large model tokenization charges today. There's more biographical color here than I like, but most others will probably find those parts entertaining. Highly recommend https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/550748/kingdom-of-characters-pulitzer-prize-finalist-by-jing-tsu/