“American society—grotesquely unequal and divided, helpless before its demagogic and oligarchic manipulators—is no longer a stranger to the dark ambiguities of lopsided economic progress.” —Pankaj Mishra
Harper's Magazine
36.2K posts
Harper's Magazine
@Harpers
- Golf carts $1,031,215 Peanut butter $457, 438 Calculators $379,897 From expenditures made by the U.S. Department of Defense in September 2025.
- A cover from Rasht, Iran, from the book The Atlas of World Embroidery: A Global Exploration of Heritage and Styles, by Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, which was published in February by Princeton University Press. Courtesy the Philadelphia Museum of Art harpers.org/harpersartdesk/
- “We could try to pray or behave in certain ways to influence their winds, but, in the end, the weather wasn’t up to us. God had the final say.” @wyatt_williams on the battle over weather modification and the theology of meteorology.
- Degas represented “Wow!” in the old days (5)
- “Senator Dan Sullivan enjoined voters not to vote for his rival, also named Dan Sullivan, in the bid for his congressional seat; The U.S. president endorsed a New Jersey representative whose whereabouts have been unknown for months.”
- “Recent surveys by the Pew Research Center have found that half of Americans are more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life; a similar proportion believe that it will worsen our ability to think creatively and form meaningful relationships…”
- “There would be less dirt to clean, probably, if everyone knew in advance that they couldn’t leave the cleaning to someone else.” From “Dirty Work Should Be Shared,” which appeared in the December 1982 issue.
- “Georges Bataille was right: excess is the accursed share of abundance, and no one can afford to bear it.” Simon Paré-Poupart on the life of the garbageman.
- “I thought I would be scared. I thought it was very strange. I thought, Wow.” From eyewitness testimonies sent to the National UFO Reporting Center.
- “Some were drawn first to the language and its interna ideo, only to later realize the travel benefits involved; others had learned the language specifically to bum around.” Katie Thornton reports from the 110th annual World Esperanto Congress in the Czech Republic.
- “Maya, as much as I love her, is no less susceptible than any of us to being blinded by a glimpse of something we desire—in this case, our long-discussed but repeatedly delayed plan to have a child together if both of us were still single by thirty-five…”
- “Humor allows people to stand back from what they are in reality.” From “The Hormone Pill,” by César Aira, a story in the collection Five, which will be published by New Directions next month.
