October 2021

by John le Carré,

[Letter from Pulaski]

Minor Threat

MLB puts the farm system out to pasture

by Will Bardenwerper,

[Report]

To Be a Field of Poppies

The elegant science of turning cadavers into compost

by Lisa Wells,

Harper’s Magazine welcomes reader response.

Email us about articles in the magazine.

[Harper’s Index]

Ratio of residents to publicly available bathrooms in New York City : 7,258:1

[Harper’s Index]

In Singapore : 197:1

[Harper’s Index]

Minimum percentage of federal funds for pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure last year that went to roads, bridges, and highways : 15

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which the wealthiest neighborhoods in U.S. cities have more trees than the poorest : 65

[Harper’s Index]

By which the whitest neighborhoods have more trees than those that are the least white : 78

[Harper’s Index]

Number of additional trees needed to achieve an equitable distribution across U.S. neighborhoods : 522,000,000

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated portion of the contiguous United States affected by wildfire smoke on July 21, 2021 : 9/10

[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which monthly heat records are more likely to be set now than in the preindustrial era : 5

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated portion of new monthly heat records attributable to climate change : 4/5

[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which the earth’s heating rate increased from 2005 to 2020 : 2.4

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which average nighttime temperatures have increased more quickly than daytime temperatures since 1951 : 37

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated number of Americans it takes to produce enough carbon dioxide to cause one temperature-related death : 3

[Harper’s Index]

Minimum amount that FEMA has spent to cover the funeral expenses of COVID-19 victims : $804,000

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Americans who have “zero confidence” in the health-care system’s ability to handle a future emergency : 45

[Harper’s Index]

Portion of Americans who would agree to live in a colony on Mars for the rest of their lives : 1/4

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage increase since 2015 in the amount of money raised annually by space startups : 174

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which open-plan offices have been found to decrease face-to-face interactions : 70

[Harper’s Index]

Portion of Americans who think their productivity would improve or remain the same if they worked four-day weeks : 3/4

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change in Icelandic workers’ output after they began working five fewer hours per week

[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which Americans would prefer working four-day forty-hour weeks to five-day forty-hour weeks : 3

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage decrease last year in the hours worked by the average European : 4.5

[Harper’s Index]

By the average American : 0.6

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage increase in the rate of police resignations from April 2020 to March 2021 compared with the previous year : 18

[Harper’s Index]

In the rate of police retirements : 45

[Harper’s Index]

Chance that a U.S. election official feels “unsafe” in his or her job : 1 in 3

[Harper’s Index]

That he or she is concerned about death threats : 1 in 5

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of local U.S. election officials who plan to resign or retire before the 2024 election : 22

[Harper’s Index]

Number of state immunization managers who have left their jobs since the COVID-19 vaccine became available : 10

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage increase last year in the volume of cardboard used to ship goods directly to households : 38

[Harper’s Index]

Weight, in tons, of that cardboard : 23,203,653

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change in the number of babies named Alexa since the launch of the Amazon product : -79

[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of children named Alexa who have legally changed their names because of it : 4

Readings

[Essay]

The Mourning After

by Maggie Nelson,

[Excuses]

Winner Fakes All

[Craft]

End Rhymes

by Michael Robbins,

[Musicology]

Heaven or St. Louis

by Patricia Lockwood,

[Day Job]

Chamber of Secrets

by Sophie Calle,

[Entrepreneurship]

Publish or Perish

[Correspondence]

Negative Thinking

by Jonas Mekas,

[Color Theory]

Tangled Up in Blue

by Benjamín Labatut,Translated by Adrian Nathan West,

[Uniform]

Pump Action

[Fiction]

Colored Angel Levine

by John Edgar Wideman,

[Poem]

White Serpent

by Nelly Sachs,Translated by Joshua Weiner,

Weltlandschaft, a painting by Emma Webster, whose work is on view this month at Alexander Berggruen, in New York City.

Courtesy the artist and Alexander Berggruen, New York City

The Courtier, a painting by Julien Nguyen, whose work was on view in August at Matthew Marks Gallery, in New York City.

Relationship, a painting by Andrew Cranston, whose work was on view in June at Masterpiece London Art Fair.

[Letters]

Letters

[Easy Chair]

Continental Divide

by Thomas Chatterton Williams,

[Harper’s Index]

Harper’s Index

[Letter from Pulaski]

Minor Threat

MLB puts the farm system out to pasture

by Will Bardenwerper,

[From the Archive]

Paradise Lost

by A. Bartlett Giamatti,

[Report]

To Be a Field of Poppies

The elegant science of turning cadavers into compost

by Lisa Wells,

[Annotation]

The Big Frieze

Cartoonist Ben Garrison’s MAGA in winter

by Dan Brooks,

[Memoir]

Good Mother

Custody and care in the shadow of colonization

by Sierra Crane Murdoch,

[Essay]

“Put on the Diamonds”

Notes on humiliation

by Vivian Gornick,

[Fiction]

The Republic of Literature

From the novel Silverview

by John le Carré,

[Poetry]

Three Poems

by John Keene,

[Reviews]

New Books

by Claire Messud,

[Reviews]

The Last Cigarette

On Italo Svevo

by Sigrid Nunez,

[Reviews]

Status Anxiety

Has Jonathan Franzen found the key?

by Alan Jacobs,

[Puzzle]

Placeholders

See the solution to last month’s puzzle here

by Richard E. Maltby Jr.,

[Findings]

Findings

by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi,

[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.

Illustration by Fausta Kingué Microfiche

October 2021

The Republic of Literature

From the novel Silverview

Minor Threat

MLB puts the farm system out to pasture

To Be a Field of Poppies

The elegant science of turning cadavers into compost

Ratio of residents to publicly available bathrooms in New York City : 7,258:1

In Singapore : 197:1

Minimum percentage of federal funds for pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure last year that went to roads, bridges, and highways : 15

Percentage by which the wealthiest neighborhoods in U.S. cities have more trees than the poorest : 65

By which the whitest neighborhoods have more trees than those that are the least white : 78

Number of additional trees needed to achieve an equitable distribution across U.S. neighborhoods : 522,000,000

Estimated portion of the contiguous United States affected by wildfire smoke on July 21, 2021 : 9/10

Factor by which monthly heat records are more likely to be set now than in the preindustrial era : 5

Estimated portion of new monthly heat records attributable to climate change : 4/5

Factor by which the earth’s heating rate increased from 2005 to 2020 : 2.4

Percentage by which average nighttime temperatures have increased more quickly than daytime temperatures since 1951 : 37

Estimated number of Americans it takes to produce enough carbon dioxide to cause one temperature-related death : 3

Minimum amount that FEMA has spent to cover the funeral expenses of COVID-19 victims : $804,000

Percentage of Americans who have “zero confidence” in the health-care system’s ability to handle a future emergency : 45

Portion of Americans who would agree to live in a colony on Mars for the rest of their lives : 1/4

Percentage increase since 2015 in the amount of money raised annually by space startups : 174

Average number of annual spacecraft launches from 2015 to 2019 : 381

Number of launches last year : 1,282

Percentage of Americans who developed a new hobby during the pandemic : 59

Percentage of those Americans who have successfully monetized that hobby : 48

Percentage of U.S. cryptocurrency holders who are men : 74

Who are white men : 56

Chance that an office space in Manhattan is available for lease : 1 in 5

Percentage by which open-plan offices have been found to decrease face-to-face interactions : 70

Portion of Americans who think their productivity would improve or remain the same if they worked four-day weeks : 3/4

Percentage change in Icelandic workers’ output after they began working five fewer hours per week

Factor by which Americans would prefer working four-day forty-hour weeks to five-day forty-hour weeks : 3

Percentage decrease last year in the hours worked by the average European : 4.5

By the average American : 0.6

Percentage increase in the rate of police resignations from April 2020 to March 2021 compared with the previous year : 18

In the rate of police retirements : 45

Chance that a U.S. election official feels “unsafe” in his or her job : 1 in 3

That he or she is concerned about death threats : 1 in 5

Percentage of local U.S. election officials who plan to resign or retire before the 2024 election : 22

Number of state immunization managers who have left their jobs since the COVID-19 vaccine became available : 10

Percentage increase last year in the volume of cardboard used to ship goods directly to households : 38

Weight, in tons, of that cardboard : 23,203,653

Percentage change in the number of babies named Alexa since the launch of the Amazon product : -79

Minimum number of children named Alexa who have legally changed their names because of it : 4

Readings

The Mourning After

Winner Fakes All

End Rhymes

Heaven or St. Louis

Chamber of Secrets

Publish or Perish

Negative Thinking

Tangled Up in Blue

Pump Action

Colored Angel Levine

White Serpent

Letters

Continental Divide

Harper’s Index

Minor Threat

MLB puts the farm system out to pasture

Paradise Lost

To Be a Field of Poppies

The elegant science of turning cadavers into compost

The Big Frieze

Cartoonist Ben Garrison’s MAGA in winter

Good Mother

Custody and care in the shadow of colonization

“Put on the Diamonds”

Notes on humiliation

The Republic of Literature

From the novel Silverview

Three Poems

New Books

The Last Cigarette

On Italo Svevo

Status Anxiety

Has Jonathan Franzen found the key?

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.