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April 2020

[Report]

Good Guys with Guns

Why the left should arm itself

by ,
[Essay]

Bright Stars

The unfulfilled promise of American citizenship

by ,
[Photo Essay]

Arrested Development

Among the child police of Chhattisgarh

by ,

Harper’s Magazine welcomes reader response.

Email us about articles in the magazine.

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Americans who said in 1995 that immigration should be reduced : 65

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Who say so today : 35

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Number of pregnant women jailed in the United States for immigration violations in 2018 : 2,098

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of new U.S. military recruits who have a parent who served : 1/4

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Who have a relative who served : 3/4

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Amount that the United States has spent on reconstruction in Afghanistan since 2001 : $137,000,000,000

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Amount, adjusted for inflation, that it spent on reconstruction in Europe after World War II : $135,000,000,000

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. Protestant churches with security protocols that involve armed church members : 45

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Number of pets owned by the average American who attends religious services once a week or more : 1.35

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

By the average American who never attends religious services : 1.95

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which the number of cosmetic surgeries performed on U.S. men has increased in the past two decades : 35

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated percentage of American men who have undergone such surgeries : 2

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Of male tech workers in Silicon Valley who have : 7

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of 401(k) plans that have at least one fund committed to environmental, social, or governmental responsibility : 2.9

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Average percentage by which a U.S. hedge fund run by a woman or person of color outperforms one run by a white man : 72

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. adults in households earning less than $35,000 who express dissatisfaction with their lives : 18

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Of U.S. adults in households earning at least $500,000 who do

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of people worldwide who believe capitalism “does more harm than good in the world” : 56

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Number of lobbyists that Amazon employed in 2010 : 8

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

That it employs today : 104

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Amount that Amazon has spent on lobbying since 2010 : $80,000,000

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated amount that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding generated for the British economy : $1,300,000,000

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage increase since 2011 in funding for the official duties and property of Queen Elizabeth II : 67

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated amount the U.K. spends annually on “legal costs to maintain royal secrecy” : $250,000

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Number of employees in the Northern Ireland Civil Service : 23,000

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Number of U.K. civil servants working on Brexit : 27,500

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change since 1992 in the share of Taiwan residents who identify as Taiwanese : +223

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

In the share who identify as Chinese : -86

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated minimum amount China spends each year on international propaganda and influence operations : $10,000,000,000

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which spending on the distribution of China Daily in the United States has increased over the past decade : 7

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Nigerians who get their news from Chinese state television : 8

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Who get their news from Nigeria’s national broadcasting agency : 7

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated percentage by which the number of U.S. podcast listeners increased between 2015 and 2019 : 88

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

By which podcast advertising revenue increased : 542

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of items reported missing last year from the New York City subway system that were headphones : 1/4

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. entry-level employees who sometimes or always feel that “no one really knows them well” : 65

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Of U.S. senior executives who feel so : 70

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Americans aged 18 to 24 who believe in soul mates : 54

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Of Americans over 55 who do : 55

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Rank of the United States among countries with the highest rates of immigrant children in detention : 1

April 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Amount per hour that the company People Walker charges for an “on-demand walking partner” : $14

April 2020

Readings

Download PDF
[Essay]

Color Theory
by ,
[Inquiries]

Sorry to Bother You
[History]

Becoming Human
by ,Translated by ,
[Consideration]

On Forgetting
by ,
[Memoir]

Lost and Found
by ,
[Poem]

After I Turn Sixty-Nine
by ,
[Word Association]

Terms of Art
by ,Translated by ,
[Interview]

Daydream Believer
by ,Translated by ,
[Definitions]

Lost Boys
[Fiction]

Ride or Die
by ,
Kosar, a heat-transfer print on khaddar with gota patti and zardozi embroidery, by Spandita Malik, whose work was on view in September at the Parsons School of Design, in New York City.
The artist. Courtesy Kunstwerk Sammlung Klein, Eberdingen, Germany, and Sarah Hasted
“Illinois,” a photographic collage by Kenneth Josephson, whose work was on view last month at Gitterman Gallery, in New York City.
© The artist. Courtesy Gitterman Gallery, New York City
Photographs from the series The Mouth of Krishna by Ángel Albarrán and Anna Cabrera, whose work is on view this month at Paris Photo New York, in New York City.
© The artists. Courtesy Editorial RM and Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York City
“Facing North, Looking West,” a photograph by Guanyu Xu, whose work is on view this month at Yancey Richardson Gallery, in New York City.
© The artist. Courtesy the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York City
“Ivins, Utah, #5,” a photograph by Steven B. Smith from Your Mountain Is Waiting, a monograph published last year by Radius Books.
© The artist. Courtesy Radius Books
Night Gazers, a painting by Keita Morimoto, whose work was on view in February at Nicholas Metivier Gallery, in Toronto.
© The artist. Courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto
[Letters]

Letters
[Easy Chair]

The Wanderer’s Port
by ,
[Harper’s Index]

Harper’s Index
[Report]

Good Guys with Guns

Why the left should arm itself

by ,
[From the Archive]

Who Has the Guns?
by ,
[Essay]

Bright Stars

The unfulfilled promise of American citizenship

by ,
[Photo Essay]

Arrested Development

Among the child police of Chhattisgarh

by ,
[Revision]

The Money Question

Is Trump right about the Fed?

by ,
[Letter from Lalibela]

Dreams of Stone

Searching for paradise in Ethiopia’s rock churches

by ,
[Story]

Padua, 1966
by ,
[Reviews]

New Books
by ,
[Reviews]

To Rebel Is Justified

On the long shadow of Maoism

by ,
[Reviews]

Through Clenched Teeth

The cold, frenzied genius of Kleist

by ,
[Puzzle]

Foursomes
by ,
[Findings]

Findings
by ,
[Findings]

The U.S. municipal bond market penalizes communities in proportion to the percentage of their population that is black but generally ignores their vulnerability to climate change.

[Findings]

Somalis, surveyed as proxies for earlier inhabitants of the Cradle of Humankind, were found to fear spiders less than scorpions but snakes to the expected degree.

[Findings]

The collapse of the Qing Dynasty was driven by the quadrupling of its population and consequent rural impoverishment, an overabundance of qualified applicants for elite academic degrees, rising costs and trade deficits, and falling productivity, which were variously associated with internal unrest, opium imports, and the depletion of silver reserves.

[Findings]

Geoscientists were confident that, given access to the oldest barnacles on the flaperon of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, they could help pinpoint its crash site.

[Findings]

Scientists were not certain whether the globally synchronized waves observed in the brains of wakeful rats on ketamine or LSD were a cause or a symptom of hallucinations.

[Findings]

Neuropsychologists developed a shorter IQ test for children with shorter attention spans.

[Findings]

The depression-prone are less attracted to the political right.

[Findings]

The nocturnal heart rate of young men can be predicted by their female partners’ daytime feelings of intimacy or annoyance.

[Findings]

Men who pose for photos with cats are seen as less datable.

[Findings]

Men can rate the facial attractiveness of women without paying attention, but women cannot do the same for men; gay men find the faces of purportedly fertile women and men more attractive; adolescents and adults both rate the faces of children younger than 4.6 years old as more appealing than those of older children; and body odors associated with fear quicken the visual processing of others’ facial expressions of fear.

[Findings]

Beak covering and nape-feather ruffling indicate calmness in sulfur-crested cockatoos.

[Findings]

Repetitive negative thinking was associated with an increased risk of dementia, and self-harm in female adolescents may prevent suicide.

[Findings]

Psychopaths recommend harsher punishments for homicides, whether accidental or motivated by profit, but exhibit relatively low concern about killing in general.

[Findings]

Online murder-for-hire advertisements seek to convey professionalism yet tend not to provide references up front.

[Findings]

Convalescent plasma helps Syrian hamsters fight SARS-CoV-2.

[Findings]

Plastic surgeons suggested that Botox could reduce the expression of negative emotions by masked faces.

[Findings]

The presence of a professional sports team increases a city’s seasonal flu deaths.

[Findings]

A psycholinguistic analysis of posts on Twitter and Weibo during COVID-19 lockdowns found that residents of Lombardy grew increasingly focused on leisure and residents of Wuhan grew increasingly focused on religion.

[Findings]

Recent toilet-­paper hoarding was more prevalent among Americans than Europeans and more prevalent among the old than the young.

[Findings]

Gerontologists cautioned that it would be difficult to predict individual Holocaust survivors’ trauma or resilience in response to the pandemic, which was expected to strengthen the market for laboratory mouse-suffocation chambers.

[Findings]

Researchers proposed replacing the paradigm of extinction with that of evanescence.

[Findings]

Climate change was expected to drive American lobsters to seek deeper waters, beavers to colonize new parts of Canada, and wolf spiders in the high Arctic to produce a second annual brood.

[Findings]

Humboldt penguins who nest in the open have more pollutant metabolites in their blood than do penguins who nest in guano-rich burrows.

[Findings]

The tiger snakes of Perth have heavy metals in their livers.

[Findings]

Satellite imagery captured ecosystem damage from fog loss, and aerial photography confirmed the existence of Roman military camps revealed by the 2018 Welsh drought.

[Findings]

A young woman in a Vilnius plague pit was found to have been coinfected with yaws.

[Findings]

A man buried at Newgrange passage tomb was found to be the product of first-degree incest, indicating that he was a member of the elite.

[Findings]

Scientists trained subjects to exercise control over a single neuron, linked the hippocampus to regret, and concluded that humans smell in stereo.

[Findings]

Straight Slovakians assume that a woman in high heels will inspire more intense mate-guarding.

[Findings]

Women who receive continuous rather than interrupted sutures for perineal repair after vaginal delivery report higher sexual levels of arousal and orgasmic function.

[Findings]

Pinkness predicts aggression in flamingos.

[Findings]

Chimpanzees have a bone in their hearts.

[Findings]

Rising population density, poor hygiene, and cold, moist weather led to a spike in ear infections in the Levant around 4000 bc, and postwar atmospheric nuclear testing led to increased cloud thickness and rainfall in the Shetland Islands.

[Findings]

A period of global coolness 4,200 years ago accelerated the diversification of japonica rice.

[Findings]

Ostrich-­shell beads indicating the onset of the Initial Upper Paleolithic were found to have reached Shuidonggou by 39000 bc, and strontium isotope levels revealed the social exchange of ostrich-­shell beads during the Late Quaternary in the Karoo Supergroup.

[Findings]

Interviews with reptile poachers in southwestern Balochistan indicated that the Caspian cobra, the desert monitor, the Iranian mastigure, Maynard’s longnose sand snake, the Persian spider gecko, and the Tartar sand boa were being captured for use by snake charmers.

[Findings]

Herpetologists inventoried the scars of snakes found in the Danube Gorge.

[Findings]

Half of Algeria’s marine turtle strandings are inexplicable.

[Findings]

Hemotoxic snakebite may be treatable with a heavy-­­metal chelator.

[Findings]

The mating calls of male Panama cross-­banded tree frogs are synchronized to confuse bats and midges.

[Findings]

Arson dogs’ noses remain better than lab equipment at detecting certain accelerants.

[Findings]

CBD improves quality of life in arthritic elderly dogs.

[Findings]

Finnish scientists identified the genomic region associated with fearfulness in Great Danes.

[Findings]

The decreasing transpiration of plants, a result of rising carbon dioxide levels, was partly to blame for recent heat waves in northern latitudes.

[Findings]

Peatlands, which now store roughly as much carbon as Earth’s forests or its atmosphere, can hold more carbon if exposed to low-­intensity fires.

[Findings]

Inland waters are emitting previously unaccounted-for levels of carbon dioxide, and freshwater insects are flourishing even as terrestrial insects are dying off.

[Findings]

Ocean acidity can now be predicted five years ahead of time.

[Findings]

Green snow is spreading across Antarctica.

[Findings]

The deepest octopus observed to date was photographed in the Java Trench.

[Findings]

Terrestrial bacteria can grow on extraterrestrial nutrients; the black hole nearest Earth was discovered in the constellation Telescopium; and X-­ray experiments conducted at the European Synchrotron indicated that moisture is destroying The Scream.

[Findings]

A fungal parasite that afflicts the reproductive organs of millipedes was named in honor of Twitter.

[Findings]

In Maine, a loon stabbed a bald eagle through the heart.

[Findings]

Six new coronaviruses were discovered in bats.

[Findings]

Falling levels of tourist trash during pandemic lockdowns was found to have caused rat infighting, and macaques were reported to have attacked a lab assistant in Delhi and stolen vials of COVID-­19-­infected blood, which at least one monkey then tried to eat.

[Findings]

Vampire bats who are strangers will groom one another before sharing blood via regurgitation.

[Findings]

Skin swabs are three times as accurate as fecal samples at predicting a person’s age.

[Findings]

Young burglars are driven first by thrills, then by skills.

[Findings]

Half of the flights taken by British men aged twenty to forty-five are for stag parties.

[Findings]

Drivers of fancy cars yield to pedestrians less often than drivers of humble cars, and still less if the pedestrians are non-white men.

[Findings]

Los Angeles scientists found that the city’s road network could be more efficiently designed by P. polycephalum, a slime mold.

[Findings]

Stinging water was blamed on jellyfish mucus.

[Findings]

Engineers reported success in deploying “ultra-­gentle” robotic “linguine fingers” to grab deep-sea jellyfish.

[Findings]

Children, unlike adults, are resilient against the Pinocchio Illusion when their fingers are pulled upward in sync with a tone ascending from 700 to 1200 Hz.

[Findings]

Fingertip injuries can indicate child abuse.

[Findings]

Damage to parts of the right frontotemporoinsular lobes that spares the anterior hypothalamus was linked to the emergence of acquired pedophilia.

[Findings]

Five primate electrophysiologists agreed that, upon 50 Hz stimulation of the central lateral thalamus, anesthetized Wisconsin monkeys become wakeful.

[Findings]

The high contrast provided by humans’ white scleras enhances our awareness of one another’s gazes.

[Findings]

It remained unknown whether Shanidar Z received a Neanderthal flower burial.

[Findings]

An extinction-­risk model was found to work well for bumblebees.

[Findings]

An interdisciplinary team suggested that climate-­driven societal collapse may stabilize once humans start accepting years with many disasters as the new normal.

[Findings]

The formation of pre–Silk Road Eurasian empires was driven partly by the spread of northern Chinese broomcorn millet; nano­diamonds and meltglass at Abu Hureyra point to a cosmic impact at the onset of the Younger Dryas; the collapse of Harappan society coincided with the loss of the Ghaggar River’s perenniality and the onset of the Meghalayan Stage; the breakdown of Easter Island society and the cessation of megalithic statue-building postdated European contact; and epigraphic evidence suggested a descent into total war during the Terminal Classic era of Mayan civilization.

[Findings]

A 46,000-year-old bird recovered from the Siberian permafrost was determined to be a female horned lark.

[Findings]

The tail of an unidentified herbivorous dinosaur in Alberta was found to contain a type of histiocytic tumor that primarily affects young children.

[Findings]

The exoplanet NGTS-10b was found to have a year lasting eighteen Earth hours and to be at risk of falling into its star.

[Findings]

Astronomers recorded, in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, the largest known post–Big Bang explosion, which lasted several hundred million years and created a void of fifteen galactic widths in the plasma around the cluster’s central black hole. “People were skeptical because of the size of the outburst,” said one of the scientists. “We don’t know why it’s so big.”

[Findings]

A spineless hedgehog in Fishcross regrew its spines and was released into the wild, and officials blamed the deaths of British black bees at Wisbech Castle on “morons.” 

[Findings]

A soggy Suffolk owl found in a ditch was diagnosed as too fat to fly.

[Findings]

Mount Vesuvius turned a Herculaneum man’s brain to glass, according to archaeologists, who also revived the voice of a priest from the reign of Ramesses XI and determined that a mummy in the Ulster Museum had been stabbed in the back.

[Findings]

Crystallized mud-wasp nests were used to revise the age of Aboriginal rock art, and a sheep hunters’ encampment was discovered in Nachcharini Cave.

[Findings]

India’s Supreme Court approved the importation of Namibian cheetahs.

[Findings]

Researchers who wear orange catch more anoles, and Australia began culling thousands of camels with helicopter snipers.

[Findings]

Sheep compensate well for lameness.

[Findings]

Southern white rhinos are threatened by inbreeding.

[Findings]

Veterinarians developed an ultrasound schedule for pregnant dolphins, and marine biologists discovered four new species of walking sharks and found that gray seals clap at each other to communicate underwater.

[Findings]

Cetaceans are least likely among mammals to dream profoundly.

[Findings]

African penguins were found to be the first non-primates whose speech exhibits both the Menzerath–­Altmann Law and Zipf’s Law of Brevity.

[Findings]

The asteroid strike at Yarrabubba may have ended Snowball Earth.

[Findings]

Ocean currents are speeding up.

[Findings]

Scientists looked forward to studying the flow of Antarctic bottom water from the Weddell Sea into the Scotia Sea.

[Findings]

Climate change will not encourage sugar maples to move northward, but it will drive Americans from the coasts toward Las Vegas.

[Findings]

Rising climate skepticism among Republicans in recent decades was attributed to backlash against Democratic elites.

[Findings]

Automation of the labor force may lead humans to overcome their differences, and researchers seeking to use personal voice-assistance to detect dementia among their users were awarded a $12 million grant.

[Findings]

Sugar ants will mine dried urine from sand.

[Findings]

The axolotl’s unusually large genome may be useful for something.

[Findings]

The world’s oldest bamboo fossil turned out to be a conifer.

[Findings]

Rumors seem more truthful when sourced to a friend of a friend.

[Findings]

Adolescent Dutch boys who instrumentalize sex are highly likely to nonconsensually forward sexts they receive from strangers.

[Findings]

A review of 250,000 pieces of erotica published between 2000 and 2016 found no significant increase in “transgressive” content, Saudi Arabians do not linger on porn websites, and neuroscientists reported that forceful, prosaic self-squeezing of the penile shaft more closely evokes the neurological signature of erotic touch than does gentle, prosaic self-squeezing of the glans.

[Findings]

Heterosexual women and men rated the erogeneity and appropriateness of having digital avatars of themselves touched by virtual men or women.

[Findings]

Straight women who can see and those who are blind care equally about dating good-looking men, though blind women place more importance on their partners having pleasant voices and odors.

A member of the Socialist Rifle Association. Photograph by Balazs Gardi for Harper’s Magazine. © The artist Microfiche

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