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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.
FTC Set to Launch Effort to Expand Online Privacy Protection Rules (Maria)
The author writes, “The Federal Trade Commission is expected to begin writing federal rules to expand online privacy protections as soon as [today], according to people familiar with the matter. If adopted, the rules could impose significant new responsibilities on businesses that handle consumer data, including potentially barring certain kinds of data collection practices, the people said.”
The Warrior-Cop Ethos and the Stand-Around Cops in Uvalde (Dana)
From The Bulwark: “Two bodies of information — the calamitous failure of police to use force to end a mass killing in progress on one side, the rise of the warrior cop on the other — might initially appear to conflict with one another. But as we attempt to square the rise of the warrior cop with the utter failure of the police in Uvalde, what becomes clear is that Uvalde is not an outlier. Rather, the Uvalde tragedy is perfectly consistent with the warrior-cop ethos.”
This Young Wisconsinite Could Give Democrats a ‘Real’ Senate Majority (Russ)
The author writes, “Mandela Barnes could become a model for progressive and Black candidates if he wins Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race this fall — and also give the Democrats a Manchin-and-Sinema-proof Senate majority.”
What Is Behind the Largest Protests in Panama in Years? (DonkeyHotey)
From Al Jazeera: “Thousands of Panamanian protesters have taken to the streets in recent weeks to demand the government put a stop to rising inflation and corruption. President Laurentino Cortizo recently announced measures to cut fuel costs and put a cap on the price of basic food items — but protesters said they were not enough and promised to continue demonstrating. Here is what you should know about the protests, some of the longest to have taken place in Panama in decades.”
Seven Years of Sex Abuse: How Mormon Officials Let It Happen (Reader Steve)
The author writes, “The Associated Press has obtained nearly 12,000 pages of sealed records from [a] child sex abuse lawsuit against the Mormon church in West Virginia. The documents offer the most detailed and comprehensive look yet at [a] so-called help line. … Families of survivors who filed the lawsuit said they show it’s part of a system that can easily be misused by church leaders to divert abuse accusations away from law enforcement and instead to church attorneys who may bury the problem, leaving victims in harm’s way.”
It’s Literally Raining ‘Forever Chemicals,’ and the Storm Could Last for Decades (Mili)
The author writes, “Humans are filling the world with trash, but not all of our waste is visible to the human eye. While plastic litter on the beach is easy to spot, microplastics and ‘forever chemicals’ have leached far and wide without our barely noticing. Both forms of pollution are now so ubiquitous in the environment, they are falling with the rain. But while the potential threat of microplastics is a regular point of discussion, some researchers argue the spread of other persistent synthetic compounds is comparatively overlooked.”
CEO Mark Zuckerberg Is ‘Creepy and Manipulative,’ Says Meta’s New AI Chatbot (Sean)
From Interesting Engineering: “On Friday, Facebook’s parent company Meta unveiled its latest artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot, BlenderBot 3. Naturally, everybody wanted to know what the chatbot thought of the CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and the chatbot had some interesting things to say.”
