Yesterday we published a report on the new transportation package. As we write in the report, by funding much-needed projects and maintenance, the package will improve commutes and help get goods to market, thereby benefiting the economy.

The publication provides an excuse to link to this photo essay at Politico: The art of the interchange. Our highway systems sometimes seem brutalist (in a bad way) — especially for those with soul-crushing commutes — but they can also be beautiful. As an accompanying essay notes,

Viewed from the air . . . these convoluted crossroads — a staggering taxonomy of spread diamonds, SPUIs, and trumpets (to name a few) — take on a formal, magisterial beauty. From the Archimedean heights, the drudgery of daily commuting seems serenely hypnotic.

Meanwhile, here’s a good story about logistics: The invisible network that keeps the world running.

The global supply chain that brings us those tablets and phones, and pretty much everything else from our clothes and food to our toys and souvenirs, is nothing short of a moon shot itself — a vast, unprecedented engineering solution to a truly astronomical logistics problem. The fact that it’s hidden from most people’s sight, and that it has become so utterly reliable and efficient to the point of transparency, doesn’t make it any less of an achievement of human technical endeavor.

The movement of people and goods — and commerce itself — can seem mundane. But if you take a different perspective, it seems almost magical.