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February 2021

[A Special Supplement]

Life After Trump

by , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
[Letter from Washington]

Hard Times

Will America recover under Biden?

by ,
[Annotation]

Signs of the Covenant

The old media of the ultra-Orthodox

by , ,

Harper’s Magazine welcomes reader response.

Email us about articles in the magazine.

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated amount spent on 2020 campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives, Senate, and White House : $14,000,000,000

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which this exceeds the previous record for an election year : 2

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated amount of global tax revenue lost each year to companies that incorporate in tax havens : $245,000,000,000

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

To individuals who store their assets in tax havens : $182,000,000,000

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of American travelers who do not support opening their own communities to visitors : 37

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which the smoke plumes from those fires decreased the amount of sunlight reaching Australia : 90

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Area, in square kilometers, of the hole in the ozone layer produced by the Australian wildfires last year : 800,000

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated percentage of greenhouse-gas emissions that were covered by a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system last year : 22

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Who plan to use them less often : 10

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Americans who plan to use their cars more often after the pandemic ends than they did before it began : 41

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Who hesitate to travel for fear that they would not be welcome at their destinations : 25

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Minimum percentage by which the U.S. birth rate is expected to fall this year : 8

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Chance that an American knew someone who died of COVID-19 last year : 1 in 2

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Of countries where activists have reported police violence as a component of the pandemic response : 59

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of countries that have placed restrictions on news organizations during the pandemic : 91

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated total value of federal COVID-19 loans that were paid out to fraudulent or ineligible applicants : $71,400,000,000

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Average amount of money those Americans keep secret : $2,006

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Americans in a relationship who keep some of their money secret from their partner : 37

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated amount of carbon, in metric tons, produced each year by the sending and receiving of emails : 12,000,000

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

By the sending and receiving of text messages : 7,000,000

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated percentage of greenhouse-gas emissions that are caused by the health care industry : 4.6

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of those emissions for which the United States is responsible : 1/4

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of U.S. health care facilities that regularly test their employees for COVID-19 : 1/2

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Of U.S. companies overall that do : 1/6

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which U.S. health care workers have requested leave more often since the onset of the pandemic : 4

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. doctors who have closed their practices since then : 8

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of U.S. doctors and nurse clinicians who have retired early or plan to do so because of the pandemic : 1/5

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. workers over 55 who plan to delay their retirement because of the pandemic : 13

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of senior White House jobs that turned over during the Trump presidency : 91

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of those jobs that did so more than once : 39

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Chance that an outgoing senior White House employee was fired or pressured into resigning : 1 in 4

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of U.S. remote employees who say they have been working harder than ever : 7/10

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Who say they have not felt as appreciated by their employer since they began working remotely : 1/2

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage decrease, in the first half of 2020, in direct foreign investment in the United States : 61

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

In China : 4

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which the American economy is expected to contract this year : 4.3

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

By which the Chinese economy is expected to expand : 1.9

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of documentaries that the Chinese government has produced about Wuhan’s response to the coronavirus : 21

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Of animated shorts : 1

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Of operas : 1

February 2021
[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which the number of Amazon employees worldwide exceeds the population of Wyoming : 2

February 2021

Readings

[Essay]

The Left Behind
by ,
[Harassment]

My Scummy Valentine
[Screenplay]

The Rival
by ,
[Press Release]

Grand Slam
[Poem]

Red Wall
by ,Translated by , ,
[Personal Ads]

American Dreamers
[Letter]

A Unified Theory
by ,
[Negotiation]

MAGA Carta
[Memoir]

An Honest Living
by ,Edited by ,Translated by ,
[Responses]

Immodest Proposal
[Methodology]

Head Over Heels
[Author’s Note]

The Double Role
by , ,
[Fiction]

Last Cigarette
by ,Translated by ,
[Rules]

New World Orders
[Evaluation]

Infertility Clinic
by ,
Pharaoh’s Dance, a painting by Sanam Khatibi, whose work was on view last month at Rodolphe Janssen, in Brussels.
Courtesy the artist and Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels
Photograph by Carolyn Drake from her monograph Knit Club, which was published last year by TBW Books.
© The artist/Magnum Photos. Courtesy TBW Books
Photograph by Carolyn Drake from her monograph Knit Club, which was published last year by TBW Books.
© The Artist/Magnum Photos. Courtesy TBW Books
La Casa del Mar Menor, a mixed-media artwork by Mar Hernández, whose work was on view in September at White Noise, in Rome.
© The artist. Courtesy private collection and White Noise, Rome
Tom, His Family, and His Friends, a painting by Liu Xiaodong, whose work is on view through May at Dallas Contemporary.
© The artist. Courtesy Massimo de Carlo, Hong Kong, London, and Milan
“A New Life,” a photograph by Diana Markosian from her monograph Santa Barbara, which was published last year by Aperture. Markosian’s work is on view through June at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
© The artist. Courtesy Aperture Foundation, New York City
Departure (After El Lissitzky), a mixed-media artwork by Mernet Larsen, whose work was on view last month at James Cohan, in New York City.
© The artist. Courtesy James Cohan, New York City
[Letters]

Letters
[Easy Chair]

Shades of Blue
by ,
[Harper’s Index]

Harper’s Index
[Letter from Washington]

Hard Times

Will America recover under Biden?

by ,
[From the Archive]

The Adversary
by ,
[A Special Supplement]

Life After Trump
by , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
[Letter from Antananarivo]

Stowaways

Madagascar reckons with an invasive crayfish

by ,
[Annotation]

Signs of the Covenant

The old media of the ultra-Orthodox

by , ,
[Poetry]

Detail of the Rice Chest
by ,
[Story]

The Very Beneficial Changeling Society
by ,
[Reviews]

New Books
by ,
[Reviews]

Parable of the Butler

A science-fiction pioneer finds posthumous fame

by ,
[Reviews]

The Artist Disappears

Helen Frankenthaler’s earthbound genius

by ,
[Puzzle]

Split Personalities
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.

Photograph of Donald Trump, 2019 (detail) © Dan Kitwood/Getty Images. Typography by Tina Smith Microfiche

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