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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‘Best Slow TV Ever’: Scientists Put Cameras on Endangered Sea Lions to Map Australian Ocean Floor (Maria)
The author writes, “The Australian sea lions glide and dart through underwater tunnels, over seagrass beds and rocky reefs, searching for a meal and dancing with dolphins around a giant bait ball of fish — all the action captured by a camera stuck on their backs. ‘I can watch this stuff for hours,’ says Prof Simon Goldsworthy. … The sea lions have mapped rocky reefs and seagrass meadows along the continental shelf, and shown humans the places that are important to them. With that information, conservationists will have much clearer ideas on how to protect the country’s only endemic seal.”
Why, as a Republican Mayor, I Support Kamala Harris Over Trump (Dana)
From The Arizona Republic: “The time has come for my fellow Arizona Republicans to return to the core foundations of the Grand Old Party. Our party used to stand for the belief that every Arizonan, no matter their background or circumstances, should have the freedom, opportunity and security to live out their American Dream. But since Donald Trump refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, Republicans have yet to course correct. The Republican Party with Trump at its helm continues down the path of political extremism, away from focusing on our fundamental freedoms. Now more than ever, we need leaders who will put country over party.”
The Google Antitrust Remedy Should Extinguish Surveillance, Not Democratize It (DonkeyHotey)
The author writes, “If you are even slightly plugged into the doings and goings on in this tired old world of ours, then you have heard that Google has lost its antitrust case against the DOJ Antitrust Division, and is now an official, no-foolin’, convicted monopolist. This is huge. Epochal. The DOJ, under the leadership of the fire-breathing trustbuster Jonathan Kanter, has done something that was inconceivable four years ago when he was appointed. On Kanter’s first day on the job as head of the Antitrust Division, he addressed his gathered prosecutors and asked them to raise their hands if they’d never lost a case. It was a canny trap. As the proud, victorious DOJ lawyers thrust their arms into the air, Kanter quoted James Comey, who did the same thing on his first day on the job as DA for the Southern District of New York: ‘You people are the chickenshit club.’”
RNC Bust Shows That Tourism and Entertainment Alone Won’t Transform Milwaukee’s Economy (Al)
From Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “It’s now clear that the claims of an economic windfall for Milwaukee from the RNC were greatly exaggerated. The failure to deliver for most small businesses and all but a few service workers, however, points to an even larger and longer-term failure by Milwaukee’s civic elite: until these leaders promote Community Benefits Agreements that guarantee living wages and the right to a union, economic development in our city will be thwarted by the extreme poverty of the working poor.”
The Small African Country With the World’s Highest Suicide Rate (Mili)
The author writes, “It is a steep climb from the main road to 79-year-old Matlohang Moloi’s home, through the mountains that make Lesotho one of the highest countries in the world. The mother of 10 welcomes me to her neat house, showing me photos of her large family. I am here to talk about one of her children — her firstborn son, Tlohang. At 38 he became part of a grim statistic. Lesotho, the kingdom in the sky, is home to the world’s highest suicide rate. … According to the World Health Organization, 87.5 people per 100,000 of the population take their own life every year in Lesotho. By contrast that is more than double the next country on the list, Guyana in South America, where the figure is just more than 40.”
Republican Activist Becomes First Person To Be Convicted in Arizona’s Fake Elector Case (Reader Steve)
From the AP: “A Republican activist who signed a document falsely claiming Donald Trump had won Arizona in 2020 became the first person to be convicted in the state’s fake elector case. Loraine Pellegrino, a past president of the group Ahwatukee Republican Women, has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false document. … Seventeen other people had been charged in the case, including 10 other Republicans who had signed a certificate saying they were ‘duly elected and qualified’ electors and claimed Trump had carried Arizona in the 2020 election.”
A Booming Industry of AI Age Scanners, Aimed at Children’s Faces (Russ)
The author writes, “With promises of protecting children, a little-known group of companies in an experimental corner of the tech industry known as ‘age assurance’ has begun engaging in a massive collection of faces, opening the door to privacy risks for anyone who uses the web. The companies say their age-check tools could give parents a better sense of control and peace of mind. But by scanning tens of millions of faces a year, the tools could also subject children — and everyone else — to a level of inspection rarely seen on the open internet and boost the chances their personal data could be hacked, leaked or misused.”
What Links Lady Gaga, Obama and Hitler? How Famous People Can Give New Species a Bad Name (Laura)
From The Guardian: “When Lady Gaga held a Q&A on Reddit for a 2014 album release, there was one question that took the botany world by storm: what’s it like to have a genus of ferns named after you? ‘Pretty cool,’ she responded, ‘especially since it’s an asexual fern.’ The 19 fern species of the Gaga genus are found from Bolivia to the south-west US, and were named after the singer partly for their G-A-G-A genetic sequence. … The American singer and actor is among thousands of celebrities and figures, real and fictional, after which animals and plants have been named. … But scientists are increasingly questioning whether celebrity names really help species conservation.”
