“We’re all human.”
Mistaking a painting of a tunnel for an actual one, a driver in Scotland drove directly into a wall.
A weekly dispatch written by Harper’s staff members taking aim at the relentless absurdity of the 24-hour news cycle.
The U.S. president rejected Iran’s peace proposal as “totally unacceptable”; the prime minister of Israel, who admitted in an interview to not having “perfect foresight,” claimed that his country’s war with Iran would continue as long as the Islamic Republic possessed enriched uranium; and the president of Russia reiterated his offer to store the republic’s fissile matter in his own country.1 2 3 The parliament of North Korea amended the country’s constitution to empower the government to launch an immediate nuclear strike in the event of the supreme leader’s assassination.4 The U.S. State Department authorized the sale of 4,250 missiles, worth $17 billion, to Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates; and the U.S. military conducted three strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in five days.5 6 The Justice Department determined that the medical school at the University of California, Los Angeles, had discriminated against white applicants; it was reported that the Trump Administration is considering doubling the quota of white South Africans permitted to immigrate to the United States as “refugees”; and the government’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is investigating Nike for the company’s supposedly “disparate” treatment of white workers, announced that it was suing the New York Times for not promoting a white man employed by the paper.7 8 9 10 The Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, formed by the U.S. president last year, released a two-hundred-page report detailing the discrimination faced by Christians in the United States that accuses the president’s predecessor of replacing Easter with Transgender Visibility Day.11 Mistaking a painted mural for an entrance to a tunnel, a driver in Scotland drove directly into a wall.12
It was reported that Germany had overtaken the United States as the world’s leading manufacturer of ammunition, and France commemorated the eighty-first anniversary of the end of the Second World War.13 14 A far-right politician in Britain defended one of his party’s candidates, who had described the Nazis as “real visionaries,” by offering the platitude, “We’re all human.”15 Six paratroopers parachuted onto a golf course in the British overseas territory Tristan da Cunha to deliver oxygen to one of the island’s 221 residents, who had contracted hantavirus on a cruise ship.16 It was discovered that the thirty thousand cubic yards of debris that was generated by the demolition of the White House’s East Wing and dumped onto a nearby golf course contained toxins and harmful chemicals.17 “Let me be clear: this is not a golden calf,” said an evangelical pastor at the U.S. president’s golf course in Doral, Florida, where he unveiled a 22-foot golden statue of the president that had been bankrolled by crypto investors.18 French prosecutors opened an investigation into Elon Musk over the propagation of child sexual-abuse material on X; an explosion at SpaceX’s site in Texas sent a large plume and scraps rocketing into the air; and Tesla recalled a model of its Cybertruck after discovering that an issue with the wheel stud could cause the wheels to fall off.19 20 21
A local council in Hachirogata, Japan, initiated a no-confidence vote against its mayor, who has been unconscious since February; the mayor of Cohutta, Georgia, fired the town’s entire police force after officers criticized his wife; and it was reported that the U.S. defense secretary has started bringing his wife to meetings at the Pentagon.22 23 24 Hungary’s incoming health minister danced ecstatically in front of a crowd celebrating the inauguration of the country’s new prime minister.25 The Ugandan army chief, who last month demanded from Turkey $1 billion and the country’s “most beautiful woman” in exchange for continued military support in Somalia, instructed troops set to perform at the new president’s inauguration ceremony not to faint.26 27 After vowing to respect human life and not talk back, an android whose name translates to “Mercy” joined a Buddhist temple in South Korea.28 A town in Italy was terrorized by peacocks, a seagull made its nest outside the Polish pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and the annual European Seagull Screeching Contest took place in Belgium.29 30 31 It was announced that Ted Turner, the creator of the 24-hour news cycle, died.32 —Megan Evershed
