December 2021

by Hedley Twidle,

[Essay]

A Posthumous Shock

How everything became trauma

by Will Self,

[Memoir]

Her Kind

On losing and finding my mind

by Naomi Jackson,

Harper’s Magazine welcomes reader response.

Email us about articles in the magazine.

[Harper’s Index]

Who considered the summer of 2021 to be bad or the “worst summer ever” : 1/4

[Harper’s Index]

Portion of Americans who considered the summer of 2020 to be average or above average : 1/2

[Harper’s Index]

Number of pounds by which the average weight of an adult male in the United States has increased since 1988 : 18.5

[Harper’s Index]

Average weight, in pounds, of a professional Santa : 245

[Harper’s Index]

Rank of New Mexico among states whose residents googled the phrase “is Santa real” most often this year : 1

[Harper’s Index]

Amount West Virginia will pay prospective residents to move to the state : $12,000

[Harper’s Index]

Rank of The Villages, a Florida retirement community, among the fastest-growing U.S. metropolitan areas : 1

[Harper’s Index]

Chance that an American planning to move in the next year blames natural disasters or extreme temperatures : 1 in 2

[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which the rate of body mass index growth for U.S. children has increased during the pandemic : 2

[Harper’s Index]

Portion of teen girls who say that Instagram has aggravated their body image issues : 1/3

[Harper’s Index]

Number of TikTok videos removed from the platform last year for violating its “minor safety” policies : 55,401,107

[Harper’s Index]

Ratio of school psychologists to K–12 students in the United States : 1 : 1,211

[Harper’s Index]

Number by which U.S. college enrollment has declined over the past five years : 1,500,000

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of this decline that can be attributed to male students : 71

[Harper’s Index]

Portion of adults worldwide who have experienced increased stress in the past year : 7/10

[Harper’s Index]

Who describe themselves as “emotionally exhausted” : 1/2

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. executives who think their workplace culture has improved since the start of the pandemic : 72

[Harper’s Index]

Of U.S. human resources professionals who think so : 21

[Harper’s Index]

Portion of U.S. adults who have not participated in a video call since the pandemic began : 1/5

[Harper’s Index]

Who say digital interactions are just as good as in-person ones : 1/5

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. adults taking virtual exercise classes who plan to continue as gyms reopen : 86

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. prisoners released in 2008 who were arrested again in the following decade : 82

[Harper’s Index]

Portion of those arrests that were for drug-related offenses : 1/2

[Harper’s Index]

Amount, in grams, of marijuana the Drug Enforcement Administration plans to produce this year : 2,000,000

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage increase in the amount of psilocybin the agency plans to produce : 4,900

[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who have been invited to join intradepartmental gangs : 254

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage increase last year in the number of deaths by overdose in the United States : 30

[Harper’s Index]

Rank of 2020 among years with the highest number of recorded deaths by overdose : 1

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change over the past two decades in the number of U.S. estates paying estate taxes : -96

[Harper’s Index]

Portion of millionaires who worry about leaving “too much” money to their heirs : 2/3

[Harper’s Index]

Average amount of outstanding student debt owed by U.S. public school teachers : $56,900

[Harper’s Index]

Average cost of a fake COVID-19 vaccination card on the messaging app Telegram : $250

[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of COVID-19 vaccine doses that have been made available to U.S. zoo animals : 11,000

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change since 2016 in the wild reindeer population : -13

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated year by which the woolly mammoth could become de-extinct : 2026

Readings

[Essay]

The Licentiate’s Children

by Juan Gabriel Vásquez,Translated by Phil Klay,

[Homework]

Writing Wrongs

[Interview]

Built to Spill

by Mohammad Hossein Jafarian, Salar Abdoh,

[Survey]

Claus and Effect

[Diorama]

Still Life

by Christopher Spencer,

[Statistics]

Buy the Numbers

by Colette Brooks,

[Q&A]

Kids Say the Darndest Things

Translated by Natascha Hoffmeyer,

[Rolodex]

Killing Time

by Lise Funderburg,

[Fiction]

Naked As We Came

by Miriam Toews,

[Poem]

Angel

by Rae Armantrout,

Night at the PS, a mixed-media artwork by Alison Elizabeth Taylor, whose work was on view in October at James Cohan Gallery, in New York City.

The artist. Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York City

Son las Tres en la Habana, a painting by Julio Larraz, whose work is on view through April at the Coral Gables Museum, in Florida.

A spread from “The First Day,” a chapter in Whatever You Say, Say Nothing by Gilles Peress. The book was published by Steidl in May.

Le Printemps, a painting by Marc Padeu, whose work was on view in October with Jack Bell Gallery at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, in London.

The artist. Courtesy Jack Bell Gallery, London

[Letters]

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.

Illustration by Fausta Kingué Microfiche

December 2021

To Spite His Face

What happened to Cecil Rhodes’s nose?

A Posthumous Shock

How everything became trauma

Her Kind

On losing and finding my mind

Who considered the summer of 2021 to be bad or the “worst summer ever” : 1/4

Portion of Americans who considered the summer of 2020 to be average or above average : 1/2

Number of pounds by which the average weight of an adult male in the United States has increased since 1988 : 18.5

Average weight, in pounds, of a professional Santa : 245

Rank of New Mexico among states whose residents googled the phrase “is Santa real” most often this year : 1

Amount West Virginia will pay prospective residents to move to the state : $12,000

Rank of The Villages, a Florida retirement community, among the fastest-growing U.S. metropolitan areas : 1

Chance that an American planning to move in the next year blames natural disasters or extreme temperatures : 1 in 2

Factor by which the rate of body mass index growth for U.S. children has increased during the pandemic : 2

Portion of teen girls who say that Instagram has aggravated their body image issues : 1/3

Number of TikTok videos removed from the platform last year for violating its “minor safety” policies : 55,401,107

Ratio of school psychologists to K–12 students in the United States : 1 : 1,211

Number by which U.S. college enrollment has declined over the past five years : 1,500,000

Percentage of this decline that can be attributed to male students : 71

Portion of adults worldwide who have experienced increased stress in the past year : 7/10

Who describe themselves as “emotionally exhausted” : 1/2

Percentage of U.S. executives who think their workplace culture has improved since the start of the pandemic : 72

Of U.S. human resources professionals who think so : 21

Portion of U.S. adults who have not participated in a video call since the pandemic began : 1/5

Who say digital interactions are just as good as in-person ones : 1/5

Percentage of U.S. adults taking virtual exercise classes who plan to continue as gyms reopen : 86

Percentage of U.S. prisoners released in 2008 who were arrested again in the following decade : 82

Portion of those arrests that were for drug-related offenses : 1/2

Amount, in grams, of marijuana the Drug Enforcement Administration plans to produce this year : 2,000,000

Percentage increase in the amount of psilocybin the agency plans to produce : 4,900

Minimum number of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who have been invited to join intradepartmental gangs : 254

Percentage increase last year in the number of deaths by overdose in the United States : 30

Rank of 2020 among years with the highest number of recorded deaths by overdose : 1

Percentage change over the past two decades in the number of U.S. estates paying estate taxes : -96

Portion of millionaires who worry about leaving “too much” money to their heirs : 2/3

Average amount of outstanding student debt owed by U.S. public school teachers : $56,900

Average salary of a U.S. public school teacher : $65,090

Percentage of U.S. families with health insurance that have medical debt : 16

Median amount of debt held by those families : $2,000

Average cost of a fake COVID-19 vaccination card on the messaging app Telegram : $250

Minimum number of COVID-19 vaccine doses that have been made available to U.S. zoo animals : 11,000

Percentage change since 2016 in the wild reindeer population : -13

Estimated year by which the woolly mammoth could become de-extinct : 2026

Readings

The Licentiate’s Children

Writing Wrongs

Built to Spill

Claus and Effect

Still Life

Buy the Numbers

Kids Say the Darndest Things

Killing Time

Naked As We Came

Angel

Letters

Under the Surface

Harper’s Index

A Posthumous Shock

How everything became trauma

Grand Illusion

To Spite His Face

What happened to Cecil Rhodes’s nose?

The Odor of Things

Solving the mysteries of scent

Divine Logic

Kurt Gödel’s last proof

Her Kind

On losing and finding my mind

Song of the Andoumboulou: 292 1/2

Stopping Distance

New Books

Desperately Seeking Sebald

A writer’s quest

Theme and Variations

See the solution to last month’s puzzle here

Findings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.