May 2020

by Thomas Frank,

[Letter from Hong Kong]

Dream State

The radical imagination of the Hong Kong protest movement

by Yi-Ling Liu,

[Letter from Washington]

The Malaysian Job

How Wall Street enabled a global financial scandal

by Andrew Cockburn,

Harper’s Magazine welcomes reader response.

Email us about articles in the magazine.

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Americans who operate doors and sinks in public restrooms with paper towels to avoid germs : 65

[Harper’s Index]

Number of times that the price of an average U.S. domestic flight changes in a week : 59

[Harper’s Index]

Average percentage by which the price fluctuates with each change : 25

[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of motor vehicles that crashed into non-residential buildings in the United States last year : 20,000

[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of people inside those buildings who were killed : 500

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of time that ride-hailing vehicles on Manhattan streets lack passengers : 40

[Harper’s Index]

That taxis on Manhattan streets do : 35

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated number of Americans who spend at least three hours commuting each day : 4,300,000

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of American commuters who “typically” use their commuting time to work : 14

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Americans who believe that enjoying one’s career is essential to a fulfilling life for a man : 57

[Harper’s Index]

For a woman : 46

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Democrats who believe that their personal finances will improve over the next year : 60

[Harper’s Index]

Of Republicans who do : 83

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Americans who say they are better off now than when President Trump took office : 61

[Harper’s Index]

Who said they were better off during President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign than they were when he took office : 45

[Harper’s Index]

Number of current members of the Trump Administration who have worked as Fox News contributors : 7

[Harper’s Index]

Portion of Trump’s 2019 tweets that were live responses to Fox News or Fox Business programs : 1/10

[Harper’s Index]

Chance that an American has received a government document in the mail that he or she didn’t understand : 1 in 4

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Americans aged 65 and over who say it’s unlikely that they will fill out a census form : 6

[Harper’s Index]

Of Americans aged 18 to 34 who say so : 13

[Harper’s Index]

Rank of African Americans among demographic groups most likely to fear that census information will be used against them : 2

[Harper’s Index]

Rank of Asian Americans : 1

[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which the number of physical records in the National Archives has increased since 1991 : 3

[Harper’s Index]

By which the number of electronic records has increased since then : 1,654

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated number of years the National Archives will spend reviewing materials for George W. Bush’s presidential library : 250

[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which Americans go to the library more often than they go to the movies : 2

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage decrease from 2008 to 2017 in the number of full-time U.S. public school librarian positions : 26

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage increase between 2014 and 2018 in health care costs for Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance : 18

[Harper’s Index]

In the average retail price of prescription medicine : 21

[Harper’s Index]

Average U.S. retail price for a vial of prescription insulin : $400

[Harper’s Index]

Average Craigslist price for one : $30

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated amount that Utah spent last year sending public employees to Mexico to buy cheaper medicine : $250,000

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated number of dead-end streets in the world : 17,680,000

[Harper’s Index]

Portion of those dead ends that are in the United States : 1/4

Readings

[Essay]

To Infinity and Beyond

by Maël Renouard,Translated by Peter Behrman de Sinéty,

[Charges]

Killing Time

by Jean Giono,Translated by Jody Gladding,

[Ballots]

Freegrets III

by Anselm Berrigan,

“Twilight Dusk” and “Delicate Nests,” photographs by KangHee Kim, whose work was on view in March at Benrubi Gallery, in New York City.

Courtesy the artist and Benrubi Gallery, New York City

The Frick Museum as “Nature,” a painting by Gretchen Scherer, whose work is on view this month at Monya Rowe Gallery, in New York City.

“View of Catskill Mountains from Cole’s House, Catskill, August 12, 2019,” a camera-obscura photograph by Shi Guorui, whose work is on view this month at the Museum of Photographic Arts, in San Diego.

Sarah and Lea, a painting by Doron Langberg, whose work was on view in October at Yossi Milo Gallery, in New York City.

[Letters]

Monuments from the Holocene Humid Period in the Dhofar were built in a single episode by groups requiring as many as seven strong men, whereas the subsequent aridification of the climate and resulting dispersion of the population encouraged the creation of accretive monuments.

[Findings]

The world’s largest known clifftop boulder, the 1,300-ton Maka Lahi (“Big Rock”) in Tonga, whose placement is traditionally attributed to deposition by the demigod Maui while he was chasing chickens, was theorized to have been carried inland by a landslide-generated tsunami approximately seven thousand years ago.

[Findings]

Fumigation with psychoactive Syrian rue was practiced in Iron Age Arabia, and the elites of the Chavín Phenomenon tightly controlled access to hallucinogen-mediated mystical experiences.

[Findings]

The Large Hadron Collider turned lead into gold.

[Findings]

the universe will decay 10^1,022 times faster than previously expected.

[Findings]

Hot water circulating in the pants improves older adults’ cardiovascular health.

[Findings]

Among Israeli irritable bowel syndrome sufferers, Jews have more diarrhea, whereas Arabs have more constipation.

[Findings]

Life expectancy in Gaza fell by 34.9 years between October 2023 and September 2024, and the probability of death in childhood increased sixfold from 2022 to 2023.

[Findings]

Macaque mothers who lose an infant exhibit a period of protest but, unlike human mothers, do not subsequently exhibit despair.

[Findings]

The Antarctic midge, the continent’s sole native insect, was found to be the only organism to undergo both quiescence and obligate diapause.

[Findings]

A helicopter crash in South Africa was determined to have been caused by an unsecured penguin from Bird Island falling onto the cyclic-pitch controller.

[Findings]

An Egyptologist who examined depictions of the sky goddess Nut bending over her brother and father, drawn from 555 ancient coffins, theorized that the version on the outer coffin of Nesitaudjatakhet, a chantress to Amun-Re, represents the Great Rift that runs through the Milky Way as a dark line running through Nut’s starry body.

[Findings]

The universe may rotate at a rate of two turns every trillion years.

[Findings]

Danish scientists suggested that adults abstaining from all other meat can eat nine tenths of two chicken breasts a week without exceeding planetary boundaries.

[Findings]

Robot elephants are becoming increasingly popular at Indian temples.

[Findings]

Early Bronze Age burials in the Upper Tigris may have accorded special favor to dead adolescents, whereas after the emergence of social hierarchy burial privilege shifted to dead elites.

[Findings]

The dismembered skeletons in a pit at Bayanbulak, possibly the site Emperor Wu of Han’s chief historian termed the Fortification for Receiving Surrender, were likely farmers from northern China conscripted during the Han–Xiongnu Wars.

[Findings]

The first antique instance of cinnabar-stained teeth was documented in a Subeshi woman in Grave M11 at Shengjindian Cemetery.

[Findings]

Greco-Roman sculpture was perfumed.

[Findings]

Dogs act more jealous when their owners interact with robots than when they read magazines.

[Findings]

The foreheads of teddy bears grew significantly taller between 1900 and 1980, though the bears did not become appreciably cuter over the same period.

[Findings]

Across racial categories women’s eyelash length is perceived as increasingly healthy up to one third of the width of the eye, past which further elongation becomes perceived as less healthy but increasingly indicative of sexual receptivity.

[Findings]

Male fruit flies seek out alcohol because it makes them more attractive to female flies and more successful at mating, not, as was previously theorized, because they are depressed about not yet having mated.

[Findings]

Male bluelined octopuses inject poison into the aortas of their female partners at the start of copulation, likely to avoid being eaten afterward.

[Findings]

Chemists grew gold in total darkness.

[Findings]

Five zebra fish per liter of tank water can be collectively euthanized by electric shock.

[Findings]

Rats can distinguish between Riesling and sauvignon blanc.

[Findings]

A literature review enumerated cases of envenomation by dead snakes, including those of a Chinese chef killed by the severed head of a spitting cobra, a child in Minnesota injured by a freeze-dried prairie-rattlesnake head worn as a tie tack, and two drunk Indians hospitalized after they chewed on the head of a dead krait.

[Findings]

Americans with open personalities are less likely to express end-of-life regret about how much they spent on food, whereas agreeable people are disposed to regret spending money on food, clothing, leisure, and financial help to others.

[Findings]

Polish doctors urged further investigation into compulsive frotteurs.

[Findings]

Scottish hen parties were deemed to contain ritualistic profanation.

[Findings]

The mummy of the Mysterious Lady was not pregnant.

[Findings]

A skull previously thought to belong to Cleopatra’s sister was found to be that of an Italian boy with a deformed jaw.

[Findings]

Fifty-two experts were consulted to produce a six-criteria test for predicting vasectomy regret.

[Findings]

French archaeologists discovered a Gaulish curse tablet tucked between a skeleton’s legs.

[Findings]

A Viking grave in Norway appeared to contain a vulva stone.

[Findings]

Chinese scientists successfully raised to adulthood, then dissected, mice born of two fathers.

[Findings]

Rabbits are capable of digesting their teeth as they wear down and reusing the calcium to grow new ones.

[Findings]

It is possible that songbirds who migrate at night socialize with one another in flight and speak to other species.

[Findings]

A survey of 1,328 urinary events found that, unlike contagious yawning, the contagious urination of chimpanzees appears to be correlated to social rank rather than social closeness.

[Findings]

Coyotes in dense areas of Chicago die younger if the average human income is high.

[Findings]

Physicists detected negative time.

[Findings]

Excessive tearfulness in the right eye of a fifty-five-year-old Japanese woman was traced to a supernumerary punctum.

[Findings]

Six dead dolphins who washed up in Texas were found to have fentanyl in their blubber.

[Findings]

Archaeologists speculated that, in the largest known Bronze Age massacre in Britain, attackers killed, butchered, and ate men, women, and children as a political statement.

[Findings]

Scientists urged the abandonment of attempts to create mirror life, against which existing life-forms may possess no defenses.

[Findings]

Monkeys are faster at spotting a snake among salamanders than a salamander among snakes.

[Findings]

Medication may treat those who suffer from disorders that make them smooth-brained.

[Findings]

Brain scans corroborated the unpleasant psychoacoustic effects of Aztec death whistles.

[Findings]

Assamese tribesmen were found to identify with elephants through a sense of mutual loss, poverty, and uncertainty.

[Findings]

Scientists suggested that human culture is superior to that of other animals because it can integrate limitless sequences of subgoals.

[Findings]

In Europe, conservatives are outbreeding progressives.

[Findings]

Researchers noted the positive effects of ecstatic epilepsy and synthesized fifty-three theoretical models of delusion.

[Findings]

Witnessing cringeworthy moments improves the observer’s self-perception.

[Findings]

In Japan, erectile function among young men was determined to be low by the first nationwide survey employing the internationally validated Erection Hardness Score.

[Findings]

Pentoxifylline can mitigate the damage caused by subjecting stallions to scrotal heat stress.

[Findings]

Bay Area researchers debuted a Narcissism Interview Scale for Employment.

[Findings]

More than half of U.S. civilians tasked with evaluating a bombing target endorsed killing unidentified bystanders.

[Findings]

Solitary chicks emit fewer anxious peeps if given a mirror for company.

[Findings]

Marine biologists described the Red Sea’s grumpy dwarfgoby.

[Findings]

Bottlenose dolphins, who were found to inhale and exhale microplastics, respond to a smile with a smile one third of the time.

[Findings]

Archaeologists identified the skeleton recovered from the Sverresborg Castle’s well in 1938 as the man described in the Sverris Saga as having been thrown into the well in 1197.

[Findings]

A primatologist, a mammalogist, and a linguist concluded that the jerky, rhythmic dance of sexually mature female black crested gibbons is innate rather than culturally transmitted.

[Findings]

Parmesan researchers found that “benevolently sexist” adults are less likely to own “clit-oriented” sex toys.

[Findings]

Germans under thirty experience more climate distress and have more rough sex.

[Findings]

Mars gained and then lost a second moon in the autumn.

[Findings]

Scientists determined why some aging gray horses turn white faster than others.

[Findings]

The stranger churches of sixteenth-century London extensively spied on their congregants, noting when women accused other women of being “pocked whores.”

[Findings]

Evidence supporting the hypothesis that the Proto-Indo-European language was spread by humans on horseback may have overlooked how humans who ride cows, donkeys, and wild asses exhibit the same hip -socket deformations, as previously observed in twentieth-century nuns.

[Findings]

Scientists allowed a king oyster mushroom mycelial culture to control the movements of a soft five-limbed robot and a four-wheel vehicle.

[Findings]

Juvenile Japanese eels can escape from the stomachs of dark sleepers by pushing their tails back through the fish’s esophagus and out its gills.

[Findings]

EEG experts disagreed on whether, in the future, brain waves could be used to read dreams and long-term memories.

[Findings]

Turkish doctors reported a case of penile autoamputation with religious delusion.

[Findings]

AI researchers determined that large language models pose no existential threat to humanity and created an AI algorithm that can detect scientific articles written by other AI algorithms.

[Findings]

Mammoths may have been killed with planted pikes rather than with thrown spears.

[Findings]

The birth of a white buffalo fulfilled a Lakota prophecy portending better times.

[Findings]

Wildfires near Canadian mines were found to have released unprecedented levels of arsenic, and wildfires in Maui were making residents unhappy.

[Findings]

Living near oil and gas development sites depresses people who are trying to get pregnant.

[Findings]

The Journal of Pediatric Genetics retracted a study on Islamic beliefs concerning the possible supernatural causes of birth defects on the grounds that the research lacked a scientific basis.

[Findings]

A researcher noticed that a Tartessian slate tablet depicting battle scenes also contains a previously unknown alphabet.

[Findings]

The royal swan marker reported that the depression of the Thames population, previously noted during the late queen’s reign, continues under the king.

[Findings]

Researchers claimed that researchers have been underreporting same-sex sexual activity among animals.

[Findings]

Cocaine trafficking was found to threaten the golden-cheeked warbler.

[Findings]

A survey of 7 million parliamentary speeches across eight countries and several decades found that politicians use less complex language as it gets hotter.

[Findings]

The diet of Japanese youth is growing more confectionary, and Americans are poisoning themselves more severely.

[Findings]

Unaffiliated voters are growing more spiteful toward both Democrats and Republicans.

[Findings]

Researchers debuted an 88 percent accurate hate-speech detector and a superior sarcasm detector and may be able to send messages back in time.

[Findings]

Increased border-wall height was tentatively linked to a thirtyfold increase in the rate of migrant drowning deaths off San Diego.

[Findings]

Women bond more closely with therapy bulls than men do.

[Findings]

The perceived onset of old age increases by approximately one year for every four to five years a person ages.

[Findings]

A study of brain-injured but not brain-dead patients found that many would have survived had their families not chosen to withdraw life support.

[Findings]

Sets of both fraternal and identical twins exhibit internally similar metacognitive abilities, suggesting that metacognition is environmental rather than heritable.

[Findings]

Southern California beach erosion is expected to increase by 50 percent by 2050.

[Findings]

Archaeologists translated cuneiform tablets recording shareholder agreements for the first company in Anatolia.

[Findings]

The melting of the poles is making Earth’s days longer.

[Findings]

The hatching season of a male spear squid (Heterololigo bleekeri) determines whether he will pursue bold or sneaky mating tactics.

[Findings]

A bionic eye deciphered a scroll carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that reveals the burial place of Plato, who was found to have complained about the musical abilities of the enslaved Thracian girl who played the flute for him as he lay dying.

[Findings]

Humans are losing their ability to digest cellulose.

[Findings]

Toxicity has remained a consistent feature of online interactions since 1989.

[Findings]

Microplastics were found in sixty-two of sixty-two human placentas from a biobank in Texas.

Illustration by Dan Bejar Microfiche

May 2020

The Pessimistic Style in American Politics

And its eternal war on reform

Dream State

The radical imagination of the Hong Kong protest movement

The Malaysian Job

How Wall Street enabled a global financial scandal

Percentage of Americans who operate doors and sinks in public restrooms with paper towels to avoid germs : 65

Who flush with their feet : 44

Who hover over the toilet seat : 29

Portion of global ocean currents that have sped up since 1990 : 3/4

Average percentage by which those currents have accelerated : 10

Number of hurricane names that have been officially retired : 89

Number of countries that are carbon-negative : 2

Number of times that the price of an average U.S. domestic flight changes in a week : 59

Average percentage by which the price fluctuates with each change : 25

Minimum number of motor vehicles that crashed into non-residential buildings in the United States last year : 20,000

Minimum number of people inside those buildings who were killed : 500

Percentage of time that ride-hailing vehicles on Manhattan streets lack passengers : 40

That taxis on Manhattan streets do : 35

Estimated number of Americans who spend at least three hours commuting each day : 4,300,000

Percentage of American commuters who “typically” use their commuting time to work : 14

Percentage of Americans who believe that enjoying one’s career is essential to a fulfilling life for a man : 57

For a woman : 46

Percentage of Democrats who believe that their personal finances will improve over the next year : 60

Of Republicans who do : 83

Percentage of Americans who say they are better off now than when President Trump took office : 61

Who said they were better off during President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign than they were when he took office : 45

Number of current members of the Trump Administration who have worked as Fox News contributors : 7

Portion of Trump’s 2019 tweets that were live responses to Fox News or Fox Business programs : 1/10

Chance that an American has received a government document in the mail that he or she didn’t understand : 1 in 4

Percentage of Americans aged 65 and over who say it’s unlikely that they will fill out a census form : 6

Of Americans aged 18 to 34 who say so : 13

Rank of African Americans among demographic groups most likely to fear that census information will be used against them : 2

Rank of Asian Americans : 1

Factor by which the number of physical records in the National Archives has increased since 1991 : 3

By which the number of electronic records has increased since then : 1,654

Estimated number of years the National Archives will spend reviewing materials for George W. Bush’s presidential library : 250

Factor by which Americans go to the library more often than they go to the movies : 2

Percentage decrease from 2008 to 2017 in the number of full-time U.S. public school librarian positions : 26

Percentage increase between 2014 and 2018 in health care costs for Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance : 18

In the average retail price of prescription medicine : 21

Average U.S. retail price for a vial of prescription insulin : $400

Average Craigslist price for one : $30

Estimated amount that Utah spent last year sending public employees to Mexico to buy cheaper medicine : $250,000

Estimated number of dead-end streets in the world : 17,680,000

Portion of those dead ends that are in the United States : 1/4

Readings

To Infinity and Beyond

Permanent Record

Killing Time

Politics as Usual

White Light/White Heat

Cat Burglar

Lana Del Rey

Bedside Planner

Freegrets III

Letters

The Striking Gesture

Harper’s Index

The Pessimistic Style in American Politics

And its eternal war on reform

Fifty-One Percent

Dream State

The radical imagination of the Hong Kong protest movement

Common Enemy

The emerging resistance to Chinese Empire

Carrying On

My first years in America

The Malaysian Job

How Wall Street enabled a global financial scandal

I Incriminate Myself So No One Else Can

New Books

Difficulties Everywhere

Can Kierkegaard tell us how to live?

Constant Delighted Astonishment

On Jacques Tati

Long Time Coming

Findings

Monuments from the Holocene Humid Period in the Dhofar were built in a single episode by groups requiring as many as seven strong men, whereas the subsequent aridification of the climate and resulting dispersion of the population encouraged the creation of accretive monuments.

the universe will decay 10^1,022 times faster than previously expected.

A helicopter crash in South Africa was determined to have been caused by an unsecured penguin from Bird Island falling onto the cyclic-pitch controller.