harper’s FINDINGS Researchers identified an outbreak of social-mediainduced illness wherein young people appropriated the functional Tourette’s syndrome of a German YouTuber, found that atmospheric lead exposure in childhood made adults in thirty-eight countries more neurotic and less agreeable and conscientious, defined seven major feline personality traits by polling the owners of four thousand cats, and described a new form of uncanniness in faces that are lifelike and identical. Testicular volume was determined to be the prime predictor of successful sperm retrieval in puberty-suppressed transfeminine adolescents, and a four-decade literature review found that incels consistently report feeling as if they have missed important milestones in life. Medical students and practitioners in Dar es Salaam feared that masturbation shrinks the penis, while German men were finding greater enjoyment in masturbation during the pandemic. Pyraclostrobin causes tilapia to engage in water jacking, tummy turning, and cartwheeling, and early jacking among supermale Atlantic salmon is attributable more to the dam than to the sire. Female octopuses throw shells at males who harass them, and octopuses also throw shells, out of frustration, at nothing in particular.
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Cuttlefish remember their most recent meal. Deadwood-eating insects were found to release 3.1 gigatons of carbon annually; LED streetlights were cutting caterpillar populations in half; birds have been evolving larger beaks in response to rising temperatures; and giant anteaters are roaming farther afield in search of cool forests. The higher the social standing of a Eurasian jay, the angrier it gets when its preferred snack is surreptitiously swapped out for an inferior one. Male acorn woodpeckers who share mates with their brothers live longer, and friendly male chimps have more children. Zoologists reported the birth of the first known wild albino chimpanzee, who was killed days later by the group’s alpha male. The dental plaque found on the teeth of Swedish brown bears between 1951 and 1970 revealed a doubling in the genetic antibiotic resistance of bacteria. The aerosols of the Salton Sea trigger unique pulmonary problems in the lungs of mice. An examination of three gorillas at the Detroit Zoo revealed that they preferred artificial noises to natural ones, though one gorilla displayed a strong preference for silence.
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Arachnologists created a daddy shortlegs. A four-legged whale, Phiomicetus anubis, was discovered in the Western Desert. The Croatoan tribe, which may have absorbed Roanoke’s missing colonists in the late sixteenth century, was itself partly composed of earlier Sephardic and Croatian settlers. Three quarters of the world’s medicinal-plant knowledge may exist in no more than one language. The cultural artifact that most closely tracks genetics is grammar. The Great Unconformity may have developed slowly. Fool’s gold sometimes contains gold. An old recording of a talking duck emerged. “You bloody fool,” said the duck. 26
ICON | DECEMBER 2021 | ICONDV.COM
INDEX Percentage change since 2010 in the portion of Americans who identify as exclusively white: −9 Who identify as white in combination with another race: +316 Percentage of Republican-leaning Americans who say the declining share of white people is bad for society: 34 Portion of new U.S. hires who are in occupations that typically require at least a bachelor’s degree: 3/4 Portion of U.S. adults who do not have a bachelor’s degree: 2/3 Of black U.S. adults who do not: 4/5 Percentage of U.S. adults working remotely who would take a pay cut to continue doing so indefinitely: 65 Who would give up social media for a year to do so: 55 Who would give up their right to vote: 34 Chance that a U.S. worker feels their job does not make a meaningful contribution to the world: 1 in 5 Percentage of American office workers who have cried on the job: 45 Portion of U.S. remote workers who admit to regularly streaming video while on the job: 3/10 Percentage of total U.S. TV-watching time accounted for by Netflix: 7 By cable or broadcast television: 62 Percentage change since 2019 in the number of Republicans who say that large corporations benefit the country: −44 In the number of Democrats who say so: +22 In the number of Republicans who say that financial institutions benefit the country: −21 In the number of Democrats who say so: +30 Percentage by which more Americans are “very concerned” about domestic extremist groups than international ones: 30 Factor by which this is more likely to be true of a Democrat than a Republican: 9 Percentage by which more Americans believe Iran has nuclear weapons than believe Israel does: 17 By which more Republicans believe this: 37 Percentage change since 2018 in the number of U.S. adults who say the government should restrict false information online: +23 Portion of time spent on smartphones in the US that can be attributed to “self-control problems”: 3/10 Number of hours per week that children in China are legally allowed to spend playing video games: 3 Percentage change since 1990 in the number of Americans who say they have a best friend: −21 In the number of Americans who say they have ten or more close friends: −61 Portion of Americans who lost touch with at least a few friends in the past year: 1/2 Who lost touch with most of their friends: 1/10 Rank of August 2021 among months with the largest number of active dating-app users ever recorded: 1 Portion of Americans who, on an average day between May and December 2020, did not spend any time on grooming: 1/4 Minimum percentage by which carbon emissions of the average single man exceed those of the average single woman: 16 Factor by which Democrats are more likely than Republicans to have noticed an increase in extreme local weather events: 2 Date on which forest fire smoke was first detected at the North Pole: 8/2/2021 On which rain was first detected at the highest point of Greenland’s ice cap: 8/14/2021 Year in which the first known insect species was driven extinct in the United States by humans: 1941 Rank of New Zealand among countries best suited to survive a global societal collapse: 1 Of the United States: 6 Estimated number of potentially habitable planets from which aliens could detect life on Earth: 29 SOURCES: 1,2 U.S. Census Bureau (Suitland, Md.); 3 Pew Research Center (Washington); 4 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; 5,6 U.S. Census Bureau; 7–9 Breeze (Omaha, Neb.); 10 YouGov (NYC); 11 Robert Half (Menlo Park, Calif.); 12 Solitaired (NYC); 13,14 Nielsen (NYC); 15–18 Pew Research Center; 19,20 AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (Chicago); 21,22 Shibley Telhami, University of Maryland (College Park); 23 Pew Research Center; 24 New YorkUniversity; 25 Embassy of the People’s Republic of China (Washington); 26–29 American Enterprise Institute (Washington); 30 Apptopia (Boston); 31 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; 32 Annika Carlsson Kanyama, Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm); 33 YouGov; 34 Santiago Gass , University of Maryland; 35 Ted Scambos, University of Colorado Boulder; 36 Corrie Moreau, Cornell University(Ithaca, N.Y.); 37,38 Aled Jones, Anglia Ruskin University (Cambridge, England); 39 Lisa Kaltenegger, Cornell University.
