I just discovered from So You Think You Know Git - FOSDEM 2024 that you can use Git to generate columns:

seq 1 24 | git column --mode=column --padding=5

Will render:

1      3      5      7      9      11     13     15     17     19     21     23
2      4      6      8      10     12     14     16     18     20     22     24

It can be useful to list files / permissions in a directory in multiples columns

ls -lah | git column --mode=column --padding=5

(Ok, it’s useless)