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June 2020

[Essay]

The Lives of Others

When does imagination become appropriation?

by ,
[Report]

Grand Designs

Can the affordable-housing movement redeem its past failures?

by ,
[Story]

Terrace Story

by ,

Harper’s Magazine welcomes reader response.

Email us about articles in the magazine.

[Harper’s Index]

Chances an American has gone to work while feeling sick : 3 in 4

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. doctors who said in 2014 that they had gone to work sick in the past year : 83

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of those doctors who said they had done so because they “did not want to let their colleagues down” : 99

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Average number of text messages sent per second over AT&T’s network during peak traffic on New Year’s Eve : 15,000

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

During peak traffic in the last two weeks of March this year : 23,000

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage decrease in the total number of steps taken by New Yorkers during the first week of the city’s stay-at-home order : 50

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which Google searches for “bidet” increased in March : 7

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

By which searches for “bread recipes” increased : 3.3

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Americans who say they would spend most of a two-week quarantine learning a new skill : 3

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Who say they would spend most of it watching television or movies : 35

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which streaming of the film Contagion in mid-March exceeded the previous four-week average : 3,000

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which Netflix cut its European traffic in March by reducing its streaming quality : 25

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of countries in which Netflix has reduced its streaming quality : 71

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. adults who believed in March that the media had exaggerated the risks of COVID-19 : 62

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Who believed that COVID-19 was developed intentionally in a lab : 23

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated percentage chance that a laboratory will accidentally release a deadly, airborne avian flu in the next five years : 16

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated percentage chance that such a release will result in a pandemic : 15

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of U.S. deaths in a novel influenza pandemic simulation conducted by the federal government last year : 400,000

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Maximum value of damage done to the economy in that simulation : $3,790,000,000,000

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage increase since January in users of the top ten most popular teleconferencing apps : 142

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of paying Slack customers that the company’s CEO anticipates losing because of bankruptcies by September : 5

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Number of states that have laws requiring employers to provide paid sick leave : 12

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. workers in the top 25 percent of earners who have access to paid sick leave : 92

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Of U.S. workers in the bottom 10 percent of earners who do : 31

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Amount of money since 2017 that venture capitalists have invested in drug development : $42,000,000,000

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of that money that has gone toward drugs to treat rare diseases : 11

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

That has gone toward drugs to treat infectious diseases : 5

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change in CDC funding proposed in a 2021 Trump budget plan that was released in February : –9

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

In CDC funding proposed in a revised budget plan that was released in March : +8

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of Americans who think there will be an apocalyptic disaster in their lifetimes : 3/10

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of men who think they would survive a week or more in such a disaster : 49

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Of women who think they would : 36

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. adults who think the apocalypse will most likely be caused by climate change : 19

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Who think it will most likely be caused by a pandemic : 19

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of U.S. adults who believed in 2018 that Americans would cooperate with one another in a crisis : 3/4

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which a white American was more likely than a black American to believe this : 16

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of U.S. states that have treated gun stores as essential businesses during the pandemic : 27

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. adults who say they have prayed for an end to the spread of the coronavirus : 55

June 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of those people who say they seldom or never pray : 15

June 2020

Readings

[Essay]

Sick Sad World
by ,
[Shopping List]

Viral Goods
[Letter]

Survive and Advance
by ,Translated by ,
[Guidelines]

One Size Submits All
[Memoir]

Buried in the Sand
by ,Translated by ,
[Account]

Staycation
by , ,
[Poem]

1st Trial for the New Aubade
by ,
[Home Remedies]

Doctor Do Little
[Fiction]

Still Life
by ,
[Notice]

Can’t Spare a Square
[Poem]

That Passed, This May Too
by ,
“Pearsall, Texas 01.2018,” a photograph by Mark Power, from the first volume of his book Good Morning, America. The third volume will be published this fall by GOST Books.
© The artist/Magnum Photos
Western Lilies, a painting by Kirsten Everberg, whose work was on view last June at 1301PE, in Los Angeles.
© The artist. Courtesy 1301PE, Los Angeles
A photograph by Alfredo Sarabia, whose work was on view last July at Galería Habana, in Havana. The photograph is part of Round House, a project that documents trips Sarabia and his family have taken around Cuba in a Volkswagen that was passed down from his grandfather.
© The artist
Song to the Siren, a painting by Aaron Gilbert, whose work was on view in March at the Independent Art Fair, in New York City.
Courtesy the artist and P·P·O·W, New York City
From Polar Bears, a book of vintage photographs collected by Jochen Raiß, which was published in October by Hatje Cantz.
© Jochen Raiß
[Letters]

Letters
[Editor’s Desk]

Tests of Time
by ,
[Easy Chair]

A Malevolent Holiday
by ,
[Harper’s Index]

Harper’s Index
[Essay]

The Lives of Others

When does imagination become appropriation?

by ,
[From the Archive]

The Complicating Germs
by ,
[Letter from Massachusetts]

Ground Control

How forests adapt to climate change

by ,
[Report]

Grand Designs

Can the affordable-housing movement redeem its past failures?

by ,
[Letter from Ho Chi Minh City]

Going Home Again

The Vietnamese overseas return

by ,
[Story]

Terrace Story
by ,
[Reviews]

New Books
by ,
[Reviews]

Splinters and Mosaics

On women’s history and group biography

by ,
[Reviews]

Always Leave Them Wanting Less

How not to write about Andy Warhol

by ,
[Puzzle]

Perfect Settings
by ,
[Findings]

Findings
by ,
[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.

[Findings]

A metal scar on the surface of the white dwarf WD 0816-310 indicated that it has cannibalized other bodies in its orbit.

[Findings]

An orca acting alone killed a great white shark and ate its liver.

[Findings]

Genomic analysis indicated that psychedelic mushrooms emerged around the time of the Mesozoic–Cenozoic mass extinction.

[Findings]

The playing speed of a metal guitarist directly correlates with his intrasexual competitiveness but not his mating success.

[Findings]

Depression in humans is correlated with higher body temperature, and cold-water swimming mitigates menopause symptoms.

[Findings]

Researchers warned that, as temperatures rise, humans should prepare for more diarrhea.

[Findings]

A mother is 4.6 percent more likely to give birth in the same month she was born, and adjacent siblings are 12.1 percent more likely to be born in the same month as one another.

[Findings]

Electric eel discharge transforms the DNA of zebrafish larvae.

[Findings]

An AI that was fed the employment and health data of six million Danes turned out to be more accurate than existing sociological methods at predicting if a given person was about to die.

[Findings]

Onshore wind turbines severely deter German bats from foraging.

[Findings]

Astrophysicists argued that the development of advanced alien technology requires an atmosphere composed of at least 18 percent oxygen.

[Findings]

Off the Five Finger Islands, a team of cetologists aboard the Glacier Seal conducted an extended conversation with a female humpback named Twain.

[Findings]

True crabs independently evolved to live out of the ocean up to seventeen times.

[Findings]

The average American girl born in 2019 will take prescription drugs for more than half her life.

[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.

Untitled (Man on Couch), by Noah Davis © The Estate of Noah Davis. Courtesy the Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner Microfiche

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