Six Ideas That Made Us Think

1. Report Card: F in Demography

A new study finds that Americans are predictably clueless about the size of minority groups. Survey respondents overstate the size – and influence? – of every type of group, from Armenian to Zimbabwean:

Americans tend to vastly overestimate the size of minority groups. This holds for sexual minorities, including the proportion of gays and lesbians (estimate: 30%, true: 3%), bisexuals (estimate: 29%, true: 4%), and people who are transgender (estimate: 21%, true: 0.6%). It also applies to religious minorities, such as Muslim Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%) and Jewish Americans (estimate: 30%, true: 2%). And we find the same sorts of overestimates for racial and ethnic minorities, such as Native Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%), Asian Americans (estimate: 29%, true: 6%), and Black Americans (estimate: 41%, true: 12%).

2. The Pandemic Will End When We Decide It’s Over

We know when the pandemic started. But when will it end? Scientific American turned not to public health officials, but historians, to get the answer:

“Pandemics end partially because humans declare them at an end,” says Marion Dorsey, an associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, who studies past pandemics. Of course, she notes, there is an epidemiological component, but for practical purposes, the question of when this transition occurs largely comes down to human behavior. “Every time people walk into stores without masks or even just walk into stores for pleasure, they’re indicating they think the pandemic is winding down, if not over.”“An entire generation of writers,” he concludes, “has been taught to write with one eye on the delete key."

3. The Great Resignation is a Myth

Derek Thompson, in The Atlantic, pours cold water on the notion that Americans are quitting because they hate their jobs. In fact, job satisfaction has rarely been higher:

In April 2021, the Conference Board reported that job satisfaction in the first year of the pandemic was the highest that the organization had recorded since 1995. ... Let’s check with a gold-standard pollster, like the General Social Survey, which has been asking Americans about their working life since 2002. Every year of the survey, more than 80 percent of respondents have said that they’re “very” or “moderately” satisfied with their job. From 2018 to 2021—after an economic crisis, mass layoffs, and a surge in unemployment—the share of very or moderately satisfied workers fell from about 88 percent to … about 84 percent. These numbers aren’t outliers. They’re part of a boring tradition of American workers telling pollsters that they aren’t drowning in a sea of misery.

4. How Does the Public Square Work

Virginia Postrel reviews a new biography of William Whyte, most famous for his analysis of business culture in The Organization Man. He also moonlit as an urban design geek:

Beginning in 1970, he and a team of interns continuously observed public spaces in New York, recording how people used them. They took notes and made time-lapse films. The goal was to collect enough close observations to discover patterns. Small design variations, Whyte found, could radically change how hospitable a public place was. People would rarely go up or down more than about 3 feet to enter a park or plaza. Food vendors and (preferably movable) seating could turn just about any open spot into a gathering place.

5. Eating at the Masters

Golf Digest makes a gleeful review of every sandwich offered by the concession stands at Augusta National – famously delicious and inexpensive – and assesses what your choice reveals. The patron who selects the pimento cheese sandwich is comfortable in their own skin. But woe to the patron who chooses a turkey and cheese on wheat:

You are a broken man. Throw in the towel. There is a wealth of wonder and color in your panorama, and yet you're beaten down to the point of apathy. The type of person who lets a bogey on the first hole set the tone for the round. How else can you explain ordering the most boring deli meat on the scientifically-proven worst bread? I don't know who hurt you, but it's time you get off the sidelines of life.

6. How Will Crypto be Regulated?

Katie Haun, who just launched a $1.5 billion fund to invest in Web 3.0, welcomes federal regulation. Why? It validates that crypto is here to stay:

One thing we’re very encouraged by is the executive order that came out of the Biden administration a couple weeks ago, for two reasons—one, it directs every agency in the federal government to come up with a strategy for crypto and Web3. I think that's a reflection of what I said earlier that this landscape is about much more than just financial products and services, and the EO is a recognition of that. It's also recognition that crypto and Web3 aren't going anywhere.

The second reason we were encouraged by the executive order is because it also directs those agencies to engage with industry and academics and people outside the government.

Websites Worth Reading

The Languages of Europe: Visual map of European languages

Animal Stowaways: Lapham’s guide to hitchhikers

Khodorkovsky: Russian anti-war committee

Feeds We Follow

@MrSollozzo: Thread on Eisenhower’s Heart Attack

@PhillipsPOBrien: Thread on Lessons From Ukraine War

@KofmanMichael: Overestimating the Russian Military