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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Hummingbirds Thrive On an Extreme Lifestyle. Here’s How. (Maria)
The author writes, “Everyone loves to watch hummingbirds — tiny, brightly colored blurs that dart about, hovering at flowers and pugnaciously defending their ownership of a feeder. But to the scientists who study them, hummingbirds offer much more than an entertaining spectacle. Their small size and blazing metabolism mean they live life on a knife-edge, sometimes needing to shut down their bodies almost completely just to conserve enough energy to survive the night — or to migrate thousands of miles, at times across open ocean. … Here’s some of what scientists have learned about the unique adaptations of hummingbirds.”
The Real Eric Adams Scandal: Is This Guy the Best NYC Had to Offer? (Russ)
The author writes, “The real Eric Adams scandal is that, in a city of 8.3 million people, this clown was somehow the best we had to offer. Adams, a Democrat, became the first mayor in the city’s history to be indicted while in office. (Though, New York being New York, he’s not the first to be criminally investigated.) The federal inquiry concluded with five criminal charges, all related to campaign donations and bribes that Adams allegedly received from the Turkish government. After the news broke on Wednesday evening, the beleaguered mayor released a recorded statement proclaiming his innocence. Then, reportedly, he went out clubbing.”
If Trump Wins the Election, This Is What’s at Stake (Gerry)
From The Guardian: “Donald Trump gave an interview last week, in which he laid out his understanding of climate change: ‘… These poor fools talk about global warming all the time, you know the planet’s going to global warm to a point where the oceans will rise an eighth of an inch in 355 years, you know, they have no idea what’s going to happen. It’s weather.’ … This could again be the most important man on the planet, talking about the most important issue the planet has ever faced. And he’s gotten every word of it wrong. It’s gibberish.”
California Sues ExxonMobil for Deceiving Public About Recycling Plastics (Reader Jim)
The author writes, “California Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed a landmark lawsuit against ExxonMobil for ‘deceiving’ the public about the recyclability of plastic products and exacerbating the plastic pollution crisis. In a statement on Monday, Bonta’s office said ExxonMobil has spent decades promoting the false idea that all plastics are recyclable, when in reality, most single-use plastic products will likely not be recycled due to technological and economic limitations.”
States Own Lands on Reservations. To Use Them, Tribes Have To Pay. (Laura)
From High Country News and Grist: “To understand how land and resources taken from Indigenous peoples and nations continue to enrich non-Indigenous citizens, High Country News and Grist used publicly available data to identify which reservations have been impacted by state trust land laws and policies; researched the state institutions benefiting from these lands; and compiled data on many of the companies and individuals leasing the land on those reservations. Altogether, we located more than 2 million surface and subsurface acres of land on 79 reservations in 15 states that are used to support public institutions and reduce the financial burden on taxpayers. In at least four states, five tribal nations themselves are the lessees — paying the state for access to, collectively, more than 57,700 acres of land within their own reservation borders.”
How the Myth of the Coequal Branches Became the Norm (Al)
From The Dispatch: “It is a truism in modern politics that ours is a system of ‘coequal branches.’ Politicians of both parties solemnly invoke this principle all the time. We hear it even as early as civics class in elementary school. Former Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska encapsulated this tendency in a 2020 post, in which he wrote, ‘As all of us learned in School House Rock, the judiciary is not only a separate branch of government from the Executive and Legislative branches, but also a co-equal one.’ There is just one problem — it’s not true. The Constitution is not a system of coequal branches. Congress is the dominant branch of our government. How, then, did this idea become so embedded in our national consciousness.”
Giant Sea Creature Washes Up on Oregon Beach for Third Time in Months, Aquarium Says (Reader Steve)
The authors write, “A giant sunfish, also known as a mola mola, has washed up on an Oregon beach for the third time this summer, an aquarium reported. The fish washed ashore at Hug Point State Park in Clatsop County, the Seaside Aquarium said in a news release. … A giant sunfish, also known as a mola mola, has washed up on an Oregon beach for the third time this summer, an aquarium reported. The fish washed ashore at Hug Point State Park in Clatsop County, the Seaside Aquarium said in a news release.”
