harper’s FINDINGS

Artificial intelligence researchers estimated that, among categories of domestic labor, grocery shopping is the most automatable and childcare the least. Japanese subjects rated human-in-the-loop AI-generated haiku as superior to those written entirely by AI or by humans, and information scientists argued that AIs need to be taught not to plagiarize. The claustrum is unlikely to be the seat of consciousness. Bluestreak cleaner wrasse fish will attack photos of unfamiliar fish faces but not of themselves; they will also, if shown a photo of a parasite-like mark on their throats, attempt to remove it. Researchers proposed that animal consciousness is neither a binary proposition nor a continuous gradation but an assemblage of qualities: perceptual richness, evaluative richness, evaluative intensity, external synchronic unity, and external diachronic unity; self-synchronic unity, self-diachronic unity, experience of agency, and experience of ownership; reasoning, learning, and abstraction. “It is not necessarily worthwhile to ask whether a mouse has more consciousness than an octopus,” said the lead author of the study. 9

Scientists observed the brain waves of freely moving day octopuses for the first time by implanting sensors and data loggers inside their brains and mantles. A roboticist attempting to model the complex and wideranging movements of octopus arms observed that “the arm rests at the minimum of an energy landscape.” A fellow researcher noted, “Upstream, there are biologists who perform experiments on octopuses. Downstream, there are roboticists who are taking these mathematical ideas and applying them to real soft robots.” Male owners of sex dolls are more likely to see women as unknowable and the world as dangerous. Other studies found that men who treat female sex dolls as partners rather than as toys tend to exhibit greater objectification and hostility toward human women; that male and female torso sex dolls, unlike genital sex dolls, require a degree of symbolic social interaction; and that indications of the proclivity for abusing human children among owners of child-like sex dolls are mixed. Whereas in the late Nineties singing male humpback whales off Queensland’s Peregian Beach were twice as likely as non-singing males to be observed attempting to mate, by 2015 non-singing males had become five times as likely to try to mate as singing males. Australian scientists who played sounds for snakes found that woma pythons tend to move toward pink noise while death adders tend to move away. Researchers modified the genes of bee eggs to create seven transgenic queens who, when instrumentally inseminated, produced worker-caste descendants whose brains fluoresce in proportion to the intensity of their neural activity. Fibroblast growth factor 21 stops drunken mice from stumbling. 9

The crowdsourced collection of dead hedgehogs by Danes (whose teeth, among the long-dead, revealed recurrent plague reintroduction between 1333 and 1649) showed that male hedgehogs are likelier to die while crossing the road. Mongolian gerbils who receive semicircular canal fenestration in their left inner ears offer a successful animal model for superior semicircular canal dehiscence. A noble false widow ate a pygmy shrew in West Sussex, and the deaths of two kits who were released into Loch Lomond were blamed on an otter. Officials investigated whether the abduction of two tamarin monkeys from the Dallas Zoo who were later found in a suburban closet was connected to the escape of a clouded leopard and the suspicious death of a lappet-faced vulture, or to the kidnapping of twelve squirrel monkeys in Louisiana. Untrained humans can identify the meanings of common chimpanzee and bonobo gestures, and Nagasaki zookeepers concluded that Momo, a twelve-year-old white-handed gibbon, had become pregnant by Ito, a thirty-four-yearold agile gibbon, through a nine-millimeter hole in a steel plate between their cages. n

Year in which Japan’s population began to decline: 2011

In which South Korea’s did: 2021

China’s: 2022

Percentage increase in the U.S. maternal mortality rate in the past twenty years: 78

Percentage of U.S. population growth last year attributable to migration: 80

Percentage increase in the past year in the number of Russians entering the United States through Mexico: 430

Min. number of unaccompanied minors who have entered the U.S. through Mexico since 2020: 250,000

Portion of those minors officials have lost contact after releasing them to sponsors: 1/3

Estimated portion of those minors who work full-time jobs: 2/3

Min. % increase in the number of minors working in the U.S. since 2015: 300 Number of U.S. state legislatures that have proposed bills since 2021 loosening restrictions on child labor: 9

Number of weeks the median American head of household had to work to support a middle-class family in 1985: 40

In 2022: 62

% increase over the past 20 years in the number of Americans over 65 working: 132

Portion of U.S. retirees who are considering returning to work: 1/6

Minimum portion of Chinese men over 60 who still work: 7/10

Average % adults over 40 perceive themselves to be younger than they are: 20

Average number of hours per week Gen Z-ers say they spend helping older colleagues locate computer files: 8

Chances that a remote worker has worked more than one job at once in the past year: 4 in 5

That they have been fired from a job after an employer discovered this: 1 in 3

Portion of remote workers who say they’d prefer to be laid off in-person: 1/2

Percentage of Americans who have lied at least once on their résumé: 55

Portion who said they had a college degree when they did not: 1/4

Who took a job after lying and can complete the required daily tasks without issue: 9/10

Percentage increase since 2011 in the number of managers in the U.S. labor force: 32

Factor by which this is more than the overall increase in U.S. workers: 2.5

Percentage increase since 2017 in the rate at which women in senior positions are leaving their companies: 21

Portion of Americans who say they’re worse off financially today than they were last year: 1/2

Percentage increase in total U.S. credit card debt in the past year: 19

Percentage decrease in total U.S. home sales: 18

Minimum number of states proposing laws to restrict foreign ownership of land: 27

Minimum number of professional athletes who have invested in Iowa farmland: 24

Portion of Americans who moved last year who did so for political reasons: 1/10

Who regret having moved: 3/4

Number of U.S. homes owned and occupied by single men: 8,120,000

By single women: 10,760,000

Percentage of American women under thirty who are single: 34 Of American men under thirty who are: 63

Portion of Americans who think society is less moral than it was 250 years ago: 1/3

Than it was ten years ago: 1/2

SOURCES: 1 Statistics Bureau of Japan (Tokyo); 2 Statistics Korea (Daejeon, South Korea); 3 National Bureau of Statistics of China (Beijing); 4 World Health Organization (Geneva); 5 U.S. Census Bureau (Suitland, Md.); 6 U.S. Customs and Border Protection (Washington); 7–9 The New York Times (NYC); 10,11 Economic Policy Institute (Washington); 12,13 American Compass (Washington); 14 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Washington); 15 Paychex (Rochester, N.Y.); 16 Capital Economics (Toronto); 17 David C. Rubin, Duke University (Durham, N.C.); 18 OSlash (San Francisco); 19,20 ResumeBuilder. com (Seattle); 21 SurveyMonkey (San Mateo, Calif.); 22–24 StandOut CV (London); 25,26 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; 27 Lean In (San Francisco); 28 Gallup (Washington); 29 TransUnion (Chicago); 30 National Association of Realtors (Washington); 31 National Agricultural Law Center (Fayetteville, Ark.); 32 Patricof Co (NYC); 33,34 Clever Real Estate (St. Louis); 35,36 LendingTree (Charlotte, N.C.); 37,38 Pew Research Center (Washington); 39,40 YouGov (NYC).