|
Listen To This Story
 |
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.
US Rivalry With China Is Newest Reason for Climate Optimism (Maria)
The authors write, “A clean energy arms race between the US and China — the world’s two superpowers and largest greenhouse gas emitters — has been the dream of climate advocates for decades. It may have just begun. The Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed on Tuesday will pour $369 billion into clean energy and help to build a domestic clean tech manufacturing sector designed to displace China as the key supplier of critical equipment for solar, wind and batteries.”
Trump Promises ‘Major Motion’ Pertaining to 4th Amendment Soon and It Will Fail (Reader Steve)
From PoliticusUSA: “Donald Trump is so aggrieved by the massive infringement on his Fourth Amendment rights that he’s come out guns blazing, promising a ‘major motion’ addressing this egregious abuse, the atrocious action, the punitive acts, and all other BAD words, soon. As is typical, Trump continues to violate the rule regarding under-promising and over-delivering. On this one, he might shatter a record for ‘not delivering.’ The government uses warrants to collect evidence in most criminal cases. It is how the government is designed. The Fourth Amendment protects us against ‘unreasonable searches and seizures.’ A judge determines whether the prosecutor’s facts and rationale are reasonable or unreasonable. But, given that law enforcement is key to an orderly society, prosecutors are awfully good at getting these warrants by now, having done it a couple of hundred years.”
Americans Are Too Pampered and Neurotic to Fight a Civil War (Reader Jim)
The author writes, “Are we, as a people, really going to fight each other on the beaches, in the fields, and in the streets? Shall we really fight in the hills, where there is no air conditioning? In the forests, without refrigerators? Do we hate each other enough to eat hardtack? To undergo battlefield surgeries? Who knows about foraging anymore? Can you start a fire with nothing but sticks? (And there’s no YouTube tutorial — they’d knock down the cell towers.) In the last two years, large swaths of the country declared their lungs too weak to breathe through a cotton cloth, while others insisted it was deadly dangerous to take an open-air walk on a beach without that same cloth.”
Defamation Suit About Election Falsehoods Puts Fox on Its Heels (DonkeyHotey)
The author writes, “Bogus assertions [by Fox hosts] — made day after day, including allegations that Dominion was a front for the communist government in Venezuela and that its voting machines could switch votes from one candidate to another — are at the center of the libel suit, one of the most extraordinary brought against an American media company in more than a generation.”
Here’s How to Track Down Your Childhood Vaccine Records (Sean)
From Self: “If you’ve recently texted your mom to ask her about which vaccines you got as a kid, well, you’re definitely not the only one. We’ve all heard our share of vaccine news lately, the most recent being tied to a case of polio in an unvaccinated person in Rockland County, New York. Coupled with the fact that we’re still living through a pandemic and now in the midst of a monkeypox outbreak — you may, reasonably, feel like you need to make sure you got all your necessary vaccinations, just in case.”
Falls From Higher Border Walls Overwhelm Trauma Services (Mili)
The author writes, “One night last October, UC San Diego Hillcrest hospital admitted nine patients ‘almost all at once’ for crushing injuries sustained after they fell from as high as 30 feet trying to climb over the border wall to enter the U.S. Open fractures of the tibia and feet and other lower extremities, as well as pelvic and spinal injuries, are common. There are brain injuries from skulls hitting the rocky ground. Often, open wounds fill with dirt as patients crawl into the fields from where they fell. … Since a Trump administration policy in 2019 raised the height of portions of the wall from 18 feet to as high as 30 feet, the injuries now were so much more severe and difficult to treat. The hospital had been admitting an average of one — and sometimes two — undocumented fall patients per day.”
Police Find Haul of Stolen Paintings Under a Bed in Rio de Janeiro (Dana)
From The Art Newspaper: “A stolen painting by the Brazilian Modernist artist Tarsila do Amaral, one of the most influential figures of Latin American art, was recovered underneath the bed of the suspected criminal Gabriel Nicolau Traslaviña Hafliger, whose home in Rio de Janeiro was raided by police this week. Hafliger was one of three individuals allegedly involved in a scheme to extort funds and steal art from an elderly woman whose daughter hired them to pretend to be Candomblé spiritual workers.”
