“We’re just drunk on punishment.”

A weekly dispatch written by Harper’s staff members taking aim at the relentless absurdity of the 24-hour news cycle.

A commercial ship in the Red Sea was struck by three Houthi ballistic missiles, killing at least six people, in the first deadly attack by the group on a vessel since the U.S. and Israel began striking Iran in February.^{1 2 3} Multiple service members aboard the warship USS Abraham Lincoln attempted to jump overboard after an indefinite extension of their deployment to support military operations in Iran, and a Democratic senator condemned the U.S. president’s “lackadaisical attitude” regarding living conditions and exhaustion aboard.^{4 5} On the beaches of Ceuta, migrants staged a protest, urging the Spanish government to grant them asylum after tens of thousands of people attempted to cross from Morocco to the Spanish enclave, an event, partly spurred by the wide dissemination of a video seeming to legitimize rumors that the Spanish Supreme Court had recently ruled that migrants who had arrived illegally by sea could stay.^{6 7 8} China established the first regularly scheduled transits through a shipping route in the Arctic Ocean, made possible by melting ice, which bypasses the blocked Strait of Hormuz; the Trump Administration pulled federal funding for the Arctic Report Card, an annual document that compiled climate data on the region, which is warming several times faster than the rest of the planet; and a glacier researcher says he now has enough free time to circumnavigate the 10,000 or so nautical miles around the Arctic Ocean after the National Science Foundation awarded 88% less money in grants to its polar office last year.^{9 10 11 12} Extreme heat and wildfires in Europe were linked to the excess deaths of 16,000 people mostly residing in countries unaccustomed to prolonged high temperatures; it was reported that heat, floods, and droughts are straining traditional red chili pepper farming practices in Pakistan; and Israeli settlers created a recreational pool at an archaeological site after seizing an irrigation pipeline from a freshwater spring used by Palestinian farmers.^{13 14 15 16} The Israeli finance minister stated that the Israel Defense Forces “cannot retreat one millimeter in the Gaza Strip” after the Israeli prime minister announced that he would reject White House’s plan for the disarmament of Hamas; and the minister of national security in Israel criticized the prime minister’s reduction of strikes in Gaza, attacks that have killed more than 1,250 people since an October truce deal came into effect, advocating that the country kill 30 to 40 people nightly in the region.^{17 18 19}

Months after Columbia University agreed to pay millions to Jewish students alleging that the university failed to properly address anti-Semitism on campus, two Palestinian alumni, two lecturers, and one current student filed a lawsuit against Columbia University, including claims that the university hired private investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian students.^{20 21} It was reported that Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, dubbed “pervert glasses,” have caused an uptick “pick-up artistry” content that centers on point-of-view videos of women being approached in public and videotaped without their knowledge; 60 percent of over 350 of the videos analyzed by Australian researchers involved behavior classified as potentially harassing; and in 43 percent of the videos, women were subjected to derogatory commentary.^{22 23} A retired teacher from Berkeley, California, who has been dubbed the “Rosa Parks of AI risk,” is believed to have become the first person to be jailed for protesting AI and entered a plea of not guilty to multiple misdemeanor charges; a math professor at UC Berkeley claimed that some of her students needed help with middle-school-level mathematics and pleaded for the reinstatement of standardized testing in college admissions; and Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty to stalking UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and using a 3D-printed gun to assassinate him; “We’re just drunk on punishment,” said one of Mangione’s supporters hoping for a lenient sentence.^{24 25 26} Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced plans to spend up to $20 million on electric-shock gloves, whose manual includes a graphic saying “evil is powerless when the good are unafraid” laid over a Blue Lives Matter flag, and whose manufacturer, Compliant Technologies LLC, which is named in a pending wrongful-death lawsuit after the gloves were used to shock a man 27 times, warn that the device should not be used as punishment.^{27 28} The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the Satanic Temple stemming from the state’s repeated refusal to grant permission for “a family-friendly winter holiday event” in the Iowa Capitol rotunda.²⁹ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced she was stepping down from her role at the end of August to spend more time with her family, after the president reportedly contacted her frequently during her maternity leave.^{30 31}

A Shake Shack employee returned to work two days after he robbed the store by locking two co-workers in a walk-in cooler, threatening them at gunpoint, and throwing their phones into a sink filled with water; Italian officials announced that they had recovered works by Cézanne, Renoir and Matisse, which had previously been stolen from a museum near Parma; and Brazilian police recovered eight works by Henri Matisse after they were stolen during public viewing hours.^{32 33 34} In Reykjavik, average hotel prices climbed to $1,012 per night, and around 450,000 additional tourists descended on Spain to view the first total solar eclipse visible from Europe since 1999.^{35 36} NASA debunked a conspiracy theory purporting the Earth’s gravity would vanish for seven seconds amid an alignment of celestial events.³⁷ “When I got to the hospital I realized the gravity,” a shark researcher said after being bitten in the calf. “I cannot say if it was a deliberate attack or it was not a deliberate attack, but the fish is in the right anyway.”³⁸ —Shreya Khullar