PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
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Guess How Much of the Ocean Floor Humans Have Explored. Now Try Again. (Maria)
The author writes, “It is a common refrain that we know more about the surface of Mars than the bottom of the oceans. Now, oceanographer Katherine Bell and her collaborators have quantified just how little of the deep seafloor scientists have actually explored: less than 0.001%, an area equivalent to about one-tenth the size of Belgium. The findings were published on May 7 in Science Advances. … Moreover, data from many of the dives are owned by private companies and unavailable to researchers.”
Bill Gates Accuses Elon Musk of ‘Killing’ Children With USAID Cuts (DonkeyHotey)
The author writes, “The co-founder of Microsoft, and once the world’s richest man himself, said the abruptness of the cuts had left life-saving food and medicines expiring in warehouses and could cause the resurgence of diseases such as measles, HIV and polio. ‘The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,’ he told the Financial Times. Gates said Musk had cancelled grants to a hospital in Gaza Province, Mozambique, that prevents women transmitting HIV to their babies, in the mistaken belief that the US was supplying condoms to Hamas in Gaza in the Middle East. ‘I’d love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,’ he said.”
Denmark Summons US Diplomat Over Report on Increased US Intel Gathering in Greenland (Reader Steve)
From AP News: “Denmark on Thursday summoned the top American diplomat in the country for an explanation following a Wall Street Journal report about the United States stepping up intelligence gathering on Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Jennifer Hall Godfrey, acting head of the US Embassy in Copenhagen, met with high-ranking Danish diplomat Jeppe Tranholm-Mikkelsen at the Danish Foreign Ministry over the Journal article published Tuesday, the ministry said in an email. It provided no further details. The embassy declined to comment. The Journal, citing two people familiar with the US effort that it did not identify, reported that several high-ranking officials under the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had directed intelligence agency heads to learn more about Greenland’s independence movement and sentiment about US resource extraction there.”
Millions of People Depend on the Great Lakes’ Water Supply. Trump Decimated the Lab Protecting It (Laura)
From ProPublica: “President Donald Trump’s administration is imposing deep cuts and new restrictions, upending the very restoration efforts that Vance once championed. With the peak summer season just around the corner, Great Lakes scientists are concerned that they have lost the ability to protect the public from toxic algal blooms, which can kill animals and sicken people. Cutbacks have gutted the staff at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Severe spending limits have made it difficult to purchase ordinary equipment for processing samples, such as filters and containers. Remaining staff plans to launch large data-collecting buoys into the water this week, but it’s late for a field season that typically runs from April to October.”
Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College (Laryn)
From New York Magazine: “Students at large state schools, the Ivies, liberal-arts schools in New England, universities abroad, professional schools, and community colleges are relying on AI to ease their way through every facet of their education. Generative-AI chatbots — ChatGPT but also Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, Microsoft’s Copilot, and others — take their notes during class, devise their study guides and practice tests, summarize novels and textbooks, and brainstorm, outline, and draft their essays. STEM students are using AI to automate their research and data analyses and to sail through dense coding and debugging assignments. ‘College is just how well I can use ChatGPT at this point,’ a student in Utah recently captioned a video of herself copy-and-pasting a chapter from her Genocide and Mass Atrocity textbook into ChatGPT.”
Glittering Blue Creatures Are Washing up on California Beaches. Here’s Why (Dana)
The author writes, “California beaches have been the site of some ghastly scenes this year. Dying sea lions, dolphins, seagulls, pelicans and even a minke whale have washed up on the sands from San Diego to Santa Barbara. But lately, beachgoers have been treated to a beautiful marine life wonder: Hundreds of thousands of glittering Velella velella, also known as by-the-wind sailors, sea rafts, purple sails and little sails, have washed ashore up and down the California coast.”
