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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How Bugs and Beet Juice Could Play Roles in Replacing Artificial Food Dyes (Maria)
The author writes, “As pressure grows to get artificial colors out of the U.S. food supply, the shift may well start at Abby Tampow’s laboratory desk. On an April afternoon, the scientist hovered over tiny dishes of red dye, each a slightly different ruby hue. Her task? To match the synthetic shade used for years in a commercial bottled raspberry vinaigrette — but by using only natural ingredients. … Tampow is part of the team at Sensient Technologies Corp., one of the world’s largest dyemakers, that is rushing to help the salad dressing manufacturer meet demands to overhaul colors used to brighten products from cereals to sports drinks.”
Trump’s Mass-Deportation Push Overcrowds Miami’s Krome ICE Center (Dana)
From Bloomberg: “The Trump administration’s fast-paced mass deportation campaign has created extreme overcrowding at a detention center in Miami, where throngs of people have been forced to sleep on floors and kept for days in short-term holding areas. The Krome North Service Processing Center is one of more than 140 facilities around the US where immigrants are being detained — and it is being stretched far beyond its capacity, interviews with people who were held at the facility and analysis of publicly available data suggests.”
Trump Makes Alarming Confession on Wrongly Deported Immigrant (Mili)
The author writes, “President Trump told Time magazine that he is essentially doing nothing to comply with the Supreme Court order to bring back wrongly deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the CECOT megaprison in El Salvador. In an interview published Friday, Trump said he hadn’t asked Salvador President Nayib Bukele to release Abrego Garcia because ‘nobody asked me to ask him that question.’”
WA Can Now Restrict Outside National Guard From Entering State (Reader Steve)
From The Seattle Times: “Gov. Bob Ferguson signed a bill into law Monday that prohibits other states, territories or districts from sending their National Guard troops to Washington state without approval from the governor. The bill contains an emergency clause, which means it went into effect immediately after the governor penned his signature. ‘We just cannot allow as a state to have armed forces come into our home and enforce policies that are against our core values,’ Ferguson said before signing the bill.”
‘It’s Going to Cost Me $150,000’: Honey Farmer Now Regrets Voting for Trump Three Times As President’s Policies Wipe Out a ‘Major Source of Reliable Revenue’ (Sean)
From Atlanta Black Star: “Farmers, among Donald Trump’s most loyal constituencies, are expected to be hit harder than just about anyone by the president’s tariff policy. Though he put larger tariffs on hold, an across-the-board 10 percent tariff on goods from 60 countries remains. Trump exempted tariffs on herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers but farmers remain fearful that other countries could respond with retaliatory tariffs directly on their exports. Jim Hartman, a North Carolina beekeeper who makes raw honey, said it’s not just the tariffs that have him fretting about the future. Hartman said he lost a $150,000 contract with the federal government, which would in turn provide the raw honey to schools and food banks.”
AI Models of the Brain Could Serve as ‘Digital Twins’ in Research (Sean)
The author writes, “Much as a pilot might practice maneuvers in a flight simulator, scientists might soon be able to perform experiments on a realistic simulation of the mouse brain. In a new study, Stanford Medicine researchers and collaborators used an artificial intelligence model to build a ‘digital twin’ of the part of the mouse brain that processes visual information. The digital twin was trained on large datasets of brain activity collected from the visual cortex of real mice as they watched movie clips. It could then predict the response of tens of thousands of neurons to new videos and images. Digital twins could make studying the inner workings of the brain easier and more efficient.”
PODCAST: How Science Fiction Led Elon Musk to DOGE (William)
From The New Yorker Radio Hour: “Jill Lepore says that the SpaceX C.E.O., an avid sci-fi fan, misreads cautionary tales as instruction manuals — and that his obsessions will shape America’s future.”
