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August 2026

September 2026

Where’s the Beef?

The lab-grown-meat revolution that wasn’t

by Erin Somers,

[Letter from Italy]

Regarding the Pain of Uggos

A weekend at the Ugly People Festival

by Barrett Swanson,

The Chaos Machine

Prediction markets and the triumph of crypto-anarchy

by Finn Brunton,

Harper’s Magazine welcomes reader response.

Email us about articles in the magazine.

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated number of excess deaths in India caused by a single day of extreme heat : 3,400

[Harper’s Index]

Caused by five consecutive days of extreme heat : 30,000

[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of heat-related deaths in Europe since 2022 : 200,000

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated increase, in terawatt-hours, in annual worldwide electricity demand by 2030 for air-conditioning : 640

[Harper’s Index]

For data centers : 529

[Harper’s Index]

Portion of Americans who say they would oppose the construction of a nuclear power plant in their area : 1/2

[Harper’s Index]

Who say they would oppose the construction of a data center : 7/10

[Harper’s Index]

Ratio of ChatGPT users who are men to users who are women : 1:1

[Harper’s Index]

Of Grok users who are men to users who are women : 3:1

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of short stories written by ChatGPT whose plots are driven by gossip and rumor : 64

[Harper’s Index]

Of those written by humans : 44

[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of U.S. court cases in which filed documents were found by a judge to contain AI-hallucinated content : 1,180

[Harper’s Index]

Chance that a biomedical research paper contained at least one citation for a nonexistent source in 2023 : 1 in 2,828

[Harper’s Index]

Last year : 458

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change in the frequency of em dashes in ecology journals between 2021 and 2025 : +202

[Harper’s Index]

In the frequency of semicolons : –58

[Harper’s Index]

Average score on the take-home midterm exam in Brown University’s course Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory : 96

[Harper’s Index]

On the course’s in-person final exam : 49

[Harper’s Index]

Average number of seconds allotted per question on the SAT in 1926, the year of the test’s introduction : 18

[Harper’s Index]

Today : 82

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated number of NIH grants canceled as a result of federal efforts to combat anti-Semitism : 668

[Harper’s Index]

Portion of the affected researchers who were Jewish : 1/5

[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which black researchers were overrepresented in politically targeted NIH grant terminations : 3

[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of times Donald Trump has referred to individuals as “low-IQ” in public statements since 2016 : 139

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of those statements that were directed toward black people : 66

[Harper’s Index]

Number of refugees admitted to the United States between October 2025 and July 2026 : 7,730

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated percentage of these refugees who were white South Africans : 95

[Harper’s Index]

Number of individuals who died in ICE custody during the Biden Administration : 26

[Harper’s Index]

During the first Trump Administration : 50

[Harper’s Index]

During the first eighteen months of the second Trump Administration : 54

[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which the number of lawsuits pertaining to unlawful ICE detentions has increased over the past year : 48

[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of total years in prison to which individuals protesting ICE facilities have been sentenced : 450

[Harper’s Index]

To which individuals convicted for involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring have been sentenced : 20

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated number of the world’s millionaires who relocated to a new country in 2015 : 64,000

[Harper’s Index]

Who did so last year : 142,000

[Harper’s Index]

Rank in 2025 of the United Arab Emirates as a relocation destination for millionaires : 1

[Harper’s Index]

Of the United States : 2

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated number of millionaires created in the United States last year : 441,078

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated portion of the world’s new millionaires that this figure represents : 1/2

Readings

[Epistles]

Flight of the Muse

by Robert Frost,

[Rule]

Advertising Guidance System

[Memoir]