|
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.
Colorado Bear Takes Hundreds of ‘Selfies’ on Wildlife Camera (Maria)
The author writes, “A curious bear has become the surprise star of wildlife cameras set up in Boulder, Colorado, taking hundreds of ‘selfies’ in an apparent impromptu photoshoot, local officials said. The city’s Open Space and Mountain Parks team set out to track animals that live in the area using motion-capture cameras — but they were surprised to find that of 580 images captured by one camera, around 400 were of the same bear. … ‘In this instance, a bear took a special interest in one of our wildlife cameras and took the opportunity to capture hundreds of “selfies,”’ Phillip Yates, a spokesperson for Open Space and Mountain Parks, said in a statement Thursday.”
Notes on the January 6 Committee’s Notes (Gerry)
From Lawfare: “The first thing that struck me in reading the executive summary of the Jan. 6 select committee’s final report last month was footnote number 50. The text it supports in the main document is the following bald statement: ‘As the Committee’s hearings demonstrated, President Trump made a series of statements to White House staff and others during this time period indicating his understanding that he had lost’ the 2020 election. But wait a minute, I thought as I read this. I don’t recall from the hearings Trump’s making statements indicating that he acknowledged privately that he had lost. He had seemed to me, rather, quite delusionally confident of the fraud he was alleging. Willful blindness, definitely, but actual knowledge that he had lost? I didn’t remember that.”
Judge Orders Private Special Education School to Turn Over Records to Seattle Times (Reader Steve)
From The Seattle Times and ProPublica: “A King County judge ruled last week that a private special education school that has been the subject of a recent Seattle Times and ProPublica investigation has to comply with public information laws and release records to The Times. The ruling has the potential to shed light on an obscure part of Washington’s special education system, in which school districts send students with disabilities to private programs at taxpayer expense. Few other legal rulings have defined how the state’s public records laws apply to private organizations that assume the functions of government agencies.”
Virginia Senate Panel Kills Republican Abortion Ban Proposals (DonkeyHotey)
The author writes, “A Virginia Senate panel with a Democratic majority rejected three different Republican proposals to restrict abortion, including a 15-week ban that Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) pushed for the day Roe fell. The Senate Education and Health Committee swiftly killed bills put forward by three Republican state senators on Thursday morning, each with various restrictions. There was little suspense about the outcome after a subcommittee recommended that the measures be defeated.”
Great Salt Lake on Track to Disappear in Five Years, Scientists Warn (Laura)
The authors write, “Without dramatic cuts to water consumption, Utah’s Great Salt Lake is on track to disappear within five years, a dire new report warns, imperiling ecosystems and exposing millions of people to toxic dust from the drying lake bed. The report … found that unsustainable water use has shrunk the lake to just 37 percent of its former volume. The West’s ongoing megadrought — a crisis made worse by climate change — has accelerated its decline to rates far faster than scientists had predicted.”
Hypertension Inside Your Eye Could Be Making It Age Faster, Scientists Say (Mili)
The author writes, “Just like most parts of the human body, our eyes gradually deteriorate over time. A new study now shows how stress can accelerate this aging process, a discovery that could help us treat eye problems that develop as we get older, including the group of diseases responsible for vision loss known as glaucoma.”
How Quantum Physicists ‘Flipped Time’ (and How They Didn’t) (Sean)
From Quanta Magazine: “Physicists have coaxed particles of light into undergoing opposite transformations simultaneously, like a human turning into a werewolf as the werewolf turns into a human. In carefully engineered circuits, the photons act as if time were flowing in a quantum combination of forward and backward. ‘For the first time ever, we kind of have a time-traveling machine going in both directions,’ said Sonja Franke-Arnold, a quantum physicist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland who was not involved in the research. Regrettably for science fiction fans, the devices have nothing in common with a 1982 DeLorean.”
