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.
A Wild Hope: Two Decades After It Disappeared in Nature, a Rare Macaw Will Be Reintroduced to Its Home (Maria)
The author writes, “In 1995, conservationists and scientists embarked on a desperate attempt to save the world’s rarest bird, a blue-gray parrot called the Spix’s macaw. The bird had scarcely been spotted since scientists first described it in the early 19th century. … By the mid-1990s, only a single individual remained alive in the wild. … The wild male vanished a few years later, and the Spix’s fate seemed sealed — another species lost. Now, conservationists are attempting to undo that fate.”
‘They Keep Threatening to Arrest Us.’ The Obstacles Facing Local News in Uvalde (Sean)
From Poynter: “By now, many who have been following this story know that the official narrative of the tragedy that left 19 students and two teachers dead has shifted, with early accounts being amended or retracted. … Over the past two weeks, Nora Lopez, executive editor of the Express-News, has led her staff in covering this story. The job has been made more difficult, she said, by the obstacles facing her reporters and photographers. Visiting law enforcement officials and bikers obstructed reporters’ abilities to cover the funerals of victims. ‘In addition to the trauma of covering such an event, then to have to deal with all this harassment and attempts to stop us from reporting this story has been really disconcerting,’ Lopez said.”
Mastriano Brings Election Denier Onto PA Governor Campaign (Reader Steve)
The author writes, “Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania’s Republican nominee for governor who has pushed Donald Trump’s election lies, said Monday that he had appointed Trump’s former campaign lawyer as a senior legal adviser to his own campaign. The lawyer, Jenna Ellis, endorsed Mastriano in the state’s contested Republican primary, campaigned with Mastriano and hosted Mastriano on her podcast, where he once discussed how to overturn Trump’s defeat to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.”
A Negative COVID Test Has Never Been So Meaningless (Mili)
The author writes, “In early May, 27-year-old Hayley Furmaniuk felt tired and a bit congested, but after rapid-testing negative for the coronavirus two days in a row, she dined indoors with friends. The next morning, her symptoms worsened. Knowing her parents were driving in for Mother’s Day, she tested again — and saw a very bright positive. Which meant three not-so-great things: She needed to cancel with her parents; she had likely exposed her friends; a test had apparently taken three days to register what her vaccinated body had already figured out.”
How ‘Fairy Tale’ Farms Are Ruining Hudson Valley Agriculture (Bethany)
From The New York Times: “Farmers are losing properties to wealthy buyers from the city, while leasing land from the new owners can feel like a ‘modern-day feudal system.’”
The Collapse of an Atlantic Ocean Current Would Ripple Across the World, Says Study (Mili)
The author writes, “Climate change is slowing down the conveyor belt of ocean currents that brings warm water from the tropics up to the North Atlantic. Our research … looks at the profound consequences to global climate if this Atlantic conveyor collapses entirely. We found the collapse of this system — called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation — would shift the Earth’s climate to a more La Niña-like state. This would mean more flooding rains over eastern Australia and worse droughts and bushfire seasons over southwest United States.”
Tiny Robot Crab Army Could Assist With Surgeries One Day (Dana)
The author writes, “Northwestern University researchers announced … their quite adorable prototype of a crab-shaped mini-robot. It can run. It can jump. It’s tiny enough to fit inside the ‘o’ in this sentence. And it’s record-breaking. The team calls it the smallest remote-controlled walking robot ever constructed. This crawly critter is much more than cute, though. It’s poised to seriously level-up endeavors like helping build other devices by traveling into tight, hard-to-reach spaces. Plus, because its entire less-than-a-millimeter robot body doesn’t need wires or electricity to operate, it could even roam the human body one day, acting like some sort of dextrous, six-legged medical assistant.”
