WHAT WE LEARNED IN 2020.

The first thing we learned in 2020 was that we never want to be in 2020 again, and most commercial dealers in time machines have already installed safety rigs in their devices to make it impossible to land in 2020 by accident. But readers of this Magazine also learned a number of other useful things. It is traditional for such publications to dull their readers’ senses with a year-end roundup, and this celebrated Magazine is nothing if not traditional.

We started off the year in January with “The 7 Most Intriguing Clickbait Headlines You Can’t Actually Click On.” People are still trying to click on them.

February was regrettably full of haiku, with some advice on how to sneak form past the formless.

In March we gained a historical perspective on “early music.”

In April we discovered a strange anomaly in a photograph of Paul Whiteman and His Ambassador Orchestra. Naturally we reported our findings to the police.

May brought us a very topical Handy Guide to Demics. We strive to avoid topicality, but sometimes it seeps in.

In June we made an original contribution to literary scholarship with the discovery of a hitherto unknown portrait from life of the great classicist Charles Anthon.

In July we painted a zebra in its true colors.

In August we learned the meaning of the word “transgressive.” It turns out that the word “transgressive” perfectly describes every item in this Magazine.

September brought us a number of signs of the end times. We have since lived through the end times and discovered that they’re not all they’re cracked up to be.

In October, Sir Montague Blastoff met himself from an alternate universe, and himself from an alternate universe, and himself from an alternate universe, &c.

November taught us about Green Tea and Our Health, which was a welcome contribution at a time when good health information was sorely needed.

In December we learned how to upgrade the memory in a laptop computer, which would have made it much easier to enjoy the memory-intensive multimedia content in this celebrated Magazine if there had been any memory-intensive multimedia content in this celebrated Magazine.