Seeing notable but small art in a big space, The Great Wave edition

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The Art Institute of Chicago is currently displaying The Great Wave by Katsushika Hokusai. I enjoyed seeing the print and reading more about it as it is not always on display.

But it was also notable the setting in which the print is displayed. The Ando Gallery is unique; hear the audio tour experience here. The room has darker lighting and there is a high ceiling. The print is on a long wall to the back left from the entrance.

Because the print it smaller and the gallery has space, here is what the scene looks like:

On the day I was there, the print had a small crowd around it as people took in the work and the text on the wall. I was reminded of the gallery of The Louvre with the Mona Lisa where a large crowd presses to see what is a smaller painting. In both places, the work and its status attracts crowds.

This is a different experience compared to other common settings. First, large paintings – like A Sunday on La Grande Jatte at the Art Institute – can attract crowds. However, the size of the painting means many people can still see the whole thing even when there are numerous people around. Second, numerous works in art museums have few or no people looking at them. Even on busy days, one can find quiet rooms where there are no crowds and an observer can take it all in on their own.

Even as we might interact with art as individuals regularly, whether in museums or in books or elsewhere, this also serves as a reminder that we often do it in interaction with others. The small crowd around The Great Wave were quiet, even reverent, as each person or group took it in. But they could not ignore that many others were also right there having their own experience.

The many people still on public housing waiting lists in Chicago

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Many Chicagoans are on public housing waiting lists:

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There are 164,000 unique applicants across CHA waitlists, a CHA spokesperson said.

Americans on the whole may not like public housing but that does not mean there is not a need for it. Chicago, like many major cities, has long provided some public housing but what was provided did not adequately meet the housing needs (and created other issues). And the CHA waiting lists historically were long and did not open often for people to join.

Who has a plan to reduce the waiting lists and provide housing? Large-scale public housing is probably not in the works, but small-scale projects and scattered-site projects often only make small dents in the waiting lists and the larger need for housing.

Tackling housing at a metropolitan scale would be helpful. If Chicago does not want to or cannot address these housing needs, what other communities can or will? Or what if housing was viewed as an opportunity for the whole region to collectively address a pressing need?

Clubs and organizations: “Join or Die”

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A new documentary follows up on the argument of Bowling Alone and why it is worthwhile to join a club:

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If you’ve been feeling depleted and disconnected from a world of diminished meaningful in-person interactions, “Join or Die” explores one reason why, as laid out by social scientist Robert Putnam. Collectively, we’re less involved in organized gatherings. There are all kinds of reasons for that, but it’s a fundamental shift that’s affected our quality of life, because the social bonds that result when you join a club or organization are not just a matter of “warm, cuddly feelings,” Putnam says in the film. “In area after area of our community life, our communities don’t work as well when we’re not connected.” And that, he says, has far-reaching effects not only on us as individuals, but on democracy itself…

Putnam’s thesis is that communal activities build social ties, which have value beyond the immediate satisfaction of just doing things together. It creates a sense of mutual obligation.

I was thinking about some of these ideas as I was reading an article in the Chicago Reader about dog owners letting their pets run off-leash in city parks. Technically it’s not allowed and the practice can be controversial, but the story focused on an aspect I hadn’t considered: “While proximity and green space may have motivated people to start utilizing unofficial areas, the community that forms within is what keeps them coming back.”

This is more or less Putnam’s theory come to life. According to the story, because of the “community-oriented and unregulated nature of the unofficial dog parks, their patrons feel that they look out for each other’s dogs more than people do when at an official (dog-friendly area). The sentiment that ‘we all look out for one another’ was repeated more times than I could count, whether in the context of cleaning up after dogs, calling dogs that run outside the gates and/or begin to wander off and explore new scents, or maintaining space for other park patrons.”…

Putnam says TV is one of the reasons we’re fractured. He calls it “lethal for social connectedness — basically we’re now watching ‘Friends’ instead of having friends.” But I think it goes even deeper. The kind of stories we see on TV reinforce many of the factors he’s citing. Instead of stories rooted in the idea that life is a group project, we’re fed the message that fixing or changing anything is, as Putnam put it, “the business of somebody else” — and on screen that’s usually the police or superheroes, rather than regular people working together to solve problems.

Another way to think about it is that there are collective and individual benefits to joining a club: it can help one’s well-being and improve social connections. At the same time, the social relationships and social networks formed can help tighten bonds and communities.

In contrast, other common activities may not do the same things. Online or social media activity can bring people together – but it can also lead to atomization and relationships that work differently when not regularly conducted in-person. Television tends to be a more solo activity or occurs with a small group, even as mass media has the potential to bring people together to some degree (common experiences, etc.).

I am curious to hear more about the actual in-person component of joining a club and how much this matters for building social capital. As Randall Collins explains in Interaction Ritual Chains, unique things happen when humans are in physical proximity.

Suburbanites who like to vote in national elections but not in local ones

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Ahead of yesterday’s elections, I read this from the DuPage County Clerk:

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“While it’s too early to make predictions, it appears that DuPage County is on track to have a large turnout for this presidential election. There’s excitement in the air,” Kaczmarek says. “In 2020, the turnout was 76.55% with 491,067 ballots cast – the largest turnout in DuPage history.”

In recent years, DuPage County has had the highest voter turnout in the region in every election.

In other words, voter turnout was high with a presidential election. But this high level of turnout does not carry over to local elections. See posts from 2022, 2019, and 2018.

I can understand why turnout is high during presidential and national races. The rhetoric is persuasive, the stakes are high, and the advertising is plentiful.

But suburbanites like local government and local control. They like seeing their tax dollars at work in the community. They like the access to local leaders. They select communities based on particular amenities that they want to preserve or enhance.

National and state politics do affect what happens in communities. But the huge drop-off between voting for the president voting for the local mayor or council is a bit odd; in day-to-day life, the suburbanite may see experience more affected by local government than by the president. With the federal system the United States has, local government (municipalities, townships, counties, etc.) have significant decision-making and monetary powers. To not participate in local elections at similar rates to national elections is to indicate less concern and interest for the former.

Median home prices up 39% in four years

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How long can median home prices rapidly increase:

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The median U.S. home price is now $435,000, per NAR — up 39% since 2020 — while the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has more than doubled to over 6% in that time

This is a quick jump in a short amount of time. Americans expect that housing values will go up over time – this is what can make it such a valuable investment – but can it keep going up this quickly?

Skepticism about this rise continuing at this rate could emphasize multiple unusual factors at play. A global pandemic. Interest rates shooting up. A quick turn toward working from home. A slow-down in housing construction, particularly for less expensive homes and starter homes. And housing prices do not always go up every year – they ten to over decades but not at every point.

On the other hand, why shouldn’t this rise continues? Where is a bunch of new housing going to come from? Will mortgage rates drop dramatically soon?

This statistic came from an article that primarily discusses how these rising prices mean many are priced out of the market. Those with resources already, particularly those with equity in a home, can better compete for the limited number of houses.

Whether values continue to increase or slow or even decline could go a long way toward affecting who can pursue the American Dream of homeownership.

Political ad season has been most intense in Pittsburgh

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Political ad season 2024 been the most intense in this city:

Pittsburgh viewers tuning into Monday Night Football this week watched their Steelers beat the New York Giants — and 26 political ads.

That’s just a small slice of the roughly 2,300 political ads the typical Pittsburgh household has seen on television this year, according to AdImpact, more than any other market in the country. 

The nonstop political onslaught for viewers, however, means a windfall for the stations. The local ABC affiliate broadcasting Monday’s game charged as much $150,000 for a single 30-second ad, an astronomical sum for the market.

Pittsburgh is the most extreme example of a phenomenon happening in swing states across the country: Campaigns and their allies are buying so many political ads that local businesses — the personal injury lawyers, car dealers and furniture stores that are usually staples of local news commercial breaks — often can’t reserve any airtime even if they could afford the inflated rates. 

While political ads are likely airing almost everywhere due to local and state races, the presidential race depends on a few select states and big markets within them. Which party can turn out the most voters in the key suburban districts?

It would be interesting to see data after the election about how Pittsburgh area residents responded to these ads. How many people did they convince? What did it cost roughly to pickup each vote? How did these big ad buys perform compared to social media campaigns that can target specific individuals? Money was spent…but how effective was it.

Similarly, how might these ad seasons boost local media organizations? Is this like Christmas season for media where the money that comes in during political ad season covers budgets for a much longer time? If political ad season was reduced in length or in spending, how might these media organizations do with less money?

Trying to prove (or disprove) the Infinite Monkey Theorem

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A new paper suggests monkeys will have a hard time coming up with the works of Shakespeare:

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The Infinite Monkey Theorem is a famous thought experiment that states that a monkey pressing random keys on a typewriter would eventually reproduce the works of the Bard if given an infinite amount of time and/or if there were an infinite number of monkeys.

However, in the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Franklin Open, two mathematicians from Australia’s University of Technology Sydney have rejected this theorem as “misleading” within the confines of our finite universe…

They took the assumption that the current population of around 200,000 chimpanzees would remain the same over the lifespan of the universe of one googol years (that’s 1 followed by 100 zeros). They also assumed that each chimpanzee would type one key per second for every second of the day, with each monkey having a working lifespan of just over 30 years.

Using these assumptions, the researchers calculated that among these randomly-typing monkeys, there is just a 5% chance that a word as simple as “bananas” would occur in the lifespan of one chimpanzee…

“By the time you’re at the scale of a full book, you’re billions of billions of times less likely,” he continued.

Perhaps this needs to be updated for today’s world: instead of animals, why not consider an infinite number of machines randomly producing text? Could they do the work of monkeys much faster and eventually converge on Shakespeare?

I also wonder how this parallels thinking about what humans or societies can accomplish. Given infinite or finite sets of resources, what can be produced? If humans have X amount of resources over X amount of time, how likely is it that a particular issue can be solved or a particular innovation will emerge or a particular problem will arise? Such predictions would rely on estimating probabilities, something that is very hard to do given forecasting future conditions and possibilities.

How many items large museums have that are not on display

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The final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark involves an expanding shot of the ark being taken into a vast warehouse in a nondescript box. Is this what really happens to important items from the past?

Years ago, I had the opportunity to visit some of the storage rooms of the Field Museum in Chicago. This large museum has lots of exhibit space – over 480,000 square feet, according to the museum – but there is even more behind the scenes. The rooms were not full of anonymous boxes but there were shelf after shelf of items.

Or take the British Museum in London. According to the museum, just 1% of their collection is on display. Even as millions of visitors walk through large displays, there are many more items they never see.

Is this all part of a conspiracy theory – as suggested in the Indiana Jones movie – or is this simply how museums operate? The latter is the case as these items may not be on display for a variety of reasons and they serve as resources for ongoing research. The public may see a wealth of items but there is much more in storage.

Outside of working in the museum and archives business, I am not sure how one might see such storerooms around the world. I was impressed by what I saw at the Field Museum and can only imagine what is in secure storage elsewhere.

The shift in voting patterns among the wealthiest Americans

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Here is one political shift that occurred in recent years:

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Over the past decade and a half, however, the dynamic has dramatically shifted. In 2008, the top fifth of earners favored Democrats by just a few percentage points; by 2020, they were the group most likely to vote for Democrats and did so by a nearly 15-point margin. (Democrats won the poorest fifth of voters by a similarly large margin.) Democrats now represent 24 of the 25 highest-income congressional districts and 43 of the top 50 counties by economic output. A similarly stark shift has occurred if you look at college education rather than income. Perhaps most dramatic of all has been the change among wealthy white people. Among white voters, in every presidential election from 1948 until 2012, the richest 5 percent were the group most likely to vote Republican, according to analysis by the political scientist Thomas Wood. In 2016 and 2020, this dynamic reversed itself: The top 5 percent became the group most likely to vote Democratic…

That realignment leaves both parties in a strange place heading into November. Voters consistently say that the economy is the most important issue of the 2024 election. And yet the affluent overwhelmingly support Kamala Harris, whose administration favored bold redistribution and big government spending, while a critical mass of working-class voters favor Donald Trump, whose economic agenda consisted largely of cutting taxes for the rich and trying to kill the Affordable Care Act.

This is not the only political shift in recent years but an interesting one nonetheless. Are these political shifts enduring? Such a shift disrupts short-term activity but there could also be long-term consequences. With the resources and connections elites have, does a shift like this lead to other consequential changes?

While the article focuses on whether these voters are voting in their material best interests, another part is intriguing: how then does this fit with the American obsession on the middle-class and the political rhetoric and activity that goes along with this? Does the composition of who comprises the electorate for a political party than affect how much the party talks about the middle-class or pursues policy aimed to help that group?

And since I think about the suburbs a lot, how does this affect how the two parties view suburbs in the United States? Traditionally viewed as middle-class places with powerful local control, does this shift with new political bases at play?

“Wall Street landlords” don’t own a big percentage of residential properties though percentages are higher in some clusters

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An analysis of “Wall Street landlords,” big firms buying up residential properties, suggests they do not own a large percentage of residences overall but their property does tend to be in some clusters:

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Nationally, Wall Street landlords that have more than 1,000 units in their portfolios own just 1% of all of America’s family homes and 4% of all of the houses that are rented out. In most areas, their presence is still too small to have much effect on local housing dynamics. If current trends continue, though, their share of the market for single-family rentals could increase 10-fold by the end of the decade, MetLife Investment Management estimates. 

There are a handful of U.S. neighborhoods where investors are densely clustered, particularly in Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and Texas. They have bought more than 1,000 homes in 53 zip codes, putting their ownership of the local housing stock anywhere from 4% to 12%, according to data from real-estate analytics firm Parcl Labs. The data includes some houses temporarily owned by builders, as well as foreclosed properties on banks’ books, but most are held by institutional landlords. 

Wall Street housing investors tend to herd into the same neighborhoods because their algorithms spot the same opportunities. They screen the country for cities and towns with population growth and job openings—places where there is likely to be competition for homes. They prefer to own three-bedroom, suburban properties that are around 1,500 square feet in size and offer a convenient commute downtown. Young parents like these kinds of homes, and landlords like to rent to families because they become sticky tenants once their children enroll in local schools.  

Big landlords are also able to sift through reams of data to spot bargains. The 53 zip codes where they are most densely clustered offer cheap housing. The median single-family home price in these areas is $345,400, based on Redfin data—around a fifth below the national level. Rents, however, are only 3% below the national median. 

It sounds like they have bought more in places where there are deals and money to be made relatively quickly. If unchecked, would they then uncover more places that offer deals and just keep going until there are no deals left?

Or might conditions and the approach of landlords change in the future. Some communities might restrict who can purchase residences. The landlords might be willing to hold on to properties for longer, particularly if higher rents are sustainable. Or the broader housing market twists and turns (currently few sales) might affect how landlords and communities act.

At the moment, I am most intrigued by the numbers: 1% of single-family homes, 4% of rented homes. Are these large enough percentages to fundamentally alter housing? I could see how there would be effects in clusters of owned properties and these clusters could introduce spillover effects to nearby locations or the broader market.