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October 2020

[Fiction]

Time to Destination

From the novel The Silence

by ,
[Letter from Minneapolis]

The Sanctuary

Life in a cop-free zone

by ,
[Letters]

On Justice and Open Debate

by ,

Harper’s Magazine welcomes reader response.

Email us about articles in the magazine.

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of registered U.S. voters who said in 2016 they would consider moving to Canada if Donald Trump were elected : 28

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Number of Americans who have done so since then : 33,965

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change in the win rate of professional soccer teams playing at home when the stadium is empty : -23

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of recording artists who have sent cease-and-desist letters to the Trump campaign for using their music at rallies : 9

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

In the penalty rate : +21

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which white players are more likely than black players to be praised for their hard work on European soccer broadcasts : 1.5

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

By which black players are more likely to be praised for their strength : 6.6

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated number of Americans who have participated in Black Lives Matter protests this year : 15,000,000

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which the annual number of people killed by U.S. police officers has fallen in rural areas since 2013 : 29

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

By which it has increased in urban areas : 33

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of trademark applications for Black Lives Matter that were filed following George Floyd’s death : 26

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

That had been filed over the previous five years : 18

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of white Americans who say the benefits of experimental medical treatments outweigh the risks : 2/3

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Of black Americans who say the risks outweigh the benefits : 2/3

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Date on which the FDA approved the first prescription video game, for the treatment of ADHD : 6/15/2020

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which the portion of Americans who believe that polygamy is morally acceptable has increased since 2005 : 4

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of Americans aged 20 to 31 who violated stay-at-home orders in April to have sex : 1/4

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Number of countries whose governments have released contact-tracing apps : 47

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Amount that Qataris are fined for failing to download their government’s app : $55,000

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Qataris who have downloaded it : 92

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of Colombians killed by drug cartels or paramilitary groups for failing to observe social distancing : 8

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Amount Uzbekistan is offering to compensate foreigners who contract COVID-19 while visiting the country : $3,000

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Amount the United States has received in coronavirus-related humanitarian aid from Lithuania : $113,690

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which the U.S. Mint has increased coin production since June in response to shortages : 65

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Number of additional coins it is producing each month : 650,000,000

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Chance that a packaged food, beverage, or household good is out of stock in a U.S. supermarket : 1 in 10

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which Dollar General’s stock price has increased since the start of the pandemic : 23

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Chance that a U.S. household missed a rent or mortgage payment in July : 1 in 3

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated percentage decrease in the money that migrant workers from low- and middle-income countries will send home this year : 20

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of fossil-fuel companies that have received COVID-19 relief aid from the U.S. government : 7,283

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Minimum value of stimulus checks sent to deceased Americans this spring : $1,600,000,000

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Amount of those payments that the federal government has yet to recover : $600,000,000

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of American households that have spent their stimulus checks : 70

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

That have used the money to pay off debt : 16

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of U.S. adults who have delayed or are considering delaying retirement because of the pandemic : 2/5

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Of U.S. women aged 18 to 49 who plan to postpone or forgo pregnancy : 1/3

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated number of British smokers who have quit since the pandemic began : 1,000,000

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which someone with Neanderthal genes is more likely to suffer severe respiratory illness from COVID-19 : 70

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which unprovoked shark attacks on humans outnumbered provoked attacks last year : 56

October 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Maximum number of hours by which the irrational behavior of animals has been observed to predict a major earthquake : 20

October 2020

Readings

[Essay]

No Time But the Present
by ,
[Process]

Save the Whales
by ,
[Classification]

The Trouble with Angels
by ,
[Discussion]

Motherboard Issues
by ,
[Scene]

Not Throwing Away My Yacht
by ,
[Arsenals]

Brute Force
[Investment]

Mortgage-backed Insecurities
by ,
[Poem]

Hawthorne
by ,
[Fiction]

Le Nozze
by ,
[Liner Notes]

B-Sighs
by ,
A photograph of thermal blankets insulating an ice grotto tourist attraction in the Rhône Glacier, in Switzerland, by Simon Norfolk and Klaus Thymann. Their work is on view this month at BredaPhoto, in Breda, the Netherlands.
© The artists/Project Pressure
Roma, Testaccio, a painting by Los Bravú (the artists Dea Gómez and Diego Omil), whose work was on view in March at Volta New York.
© The artists. Courtesy Galería 6mas1, Madrid, and Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
“Valinda, Los Angeles 7/18/1981,” a photograph by Simone Kappeler, from her monograph Simone Kappeler–America 1981, which was published in August by Scheidegger and Spiess.
© The artist. Courtesy Scheidegger and Spiess
Area code, a painting by Ena Swansea, whose work was on view in January at Robilant + Voena Gallery, in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
© The artist. Courtesy Ben Brown Fine Arts, London
[Editor’s Desk]

The Letter and Its Discontents
by ,
[Letters]

On Justice and Open Debate
by ,
[Easy Chair]

A Game of Chance
by ,
[Harper’s Index]

Harper’s Index
[Letter from Minneapolis]

The Sanctuary

Life in a cop-free zone

by ,
[From the Archive]

Life During Wartime
by ,
[Memoir]

On Defense

Twenty-five years of fighting mass incarceration in court

by ,
[Annotation]

If I’m to Go

How to fight a deportation

by ,
[Letter from Saipan]

Perfect Storm

When is it time to abandon a place to climate change?

by ,
[Poetry]

I Imitate You
by ,
[Report]

America’s Game

The reprise and demise of the XFL

by ,
[Miscellany]

Reason Not the Need

Self-storage and the dream of infinite space

by ,
[Fiction]

Time to Destination

From the novel The Silence

by ,
[Reviews]

New Books
by ,
[Reviews]

The Well-Tempered Synthesizer

Wendy Carlos’s music of the spheres

by ,
[Reviews]

Le Mot Juste

The soothing clarity of Shirley Hazzard

by ,
[Puzzle]

Sixes and Sevens (and Twelves)
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.

Design by Tyler Comrie Microfiche

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