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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.
NYC Skyscraper Owners Turn to Carbon Capture to Fight Climate Change (Maria)
The author writes, “From the outside, the residential high-rise on Manhattan’s Upper West Side looks pretty much like any other luxury building: A doorman greets visitors in a spacious lobby adorned with tapestry and marble. Yet just below in the basement is an unusual set of equipment that no other building in New York City — indeed few in the world — can claim. In an effort to drastically reduce the 30-story building’s emissions, the owners have installed a maze of twisting pipes and tanks that collect carbon dioxide from the massive, gas-fired boilers in the basement before it goes to the chimney and is released into the air. The goal is to stop that climate-warming gas from entering the atmosphere.”
Group Trying to Gain Official Party Status Warned Against Misleading Voters (DonkeyHotey)
The author writes, “Maine’s secretary of state has sent a cease-and-desist letter to national organization No Labels, expressing concerns that it has confused voters who think they are signing a petition but instead are enrolling in a new party.”
An Arizona Elections Director Documented Errors, Certified Incorrect Results, and Then Cashed In (Reader Steve)
From Votebeat Arizona: “Pinal County elections chief Virginia Ross had proof of inaccuracies that she didn’t flag before county supervisors certified the November election results, a Votebeat investigation found. Instead, she told them she stood by the numbers — and then collected a $25,000 bonus.”
New Study Finds a High Minimum Wage Creates Jobs (Dana)
From New York Magazine: “When they narrowed their lens, the researchers [at the University of California, Berkeley] did in fact find that the employment impacts of minimum wage hikes became more profound: Rather than producing a slight increase in job growth, high minimum wages were associated with substantial increases in employment.”
End of a Love Affair: AM Radio Is Being Removed From Many Cars (Russ)
From The Washington Post: “America’s love affair between the automobile and AM radio — a century-long romance that provided the soundtrack for lovers’ lanes, kept the lonely company with ballgames and chat shows, sparked family singalongs and defined road trips — is on the verge of collapse, a victim of galloping technological change and swiftly changing consumer tastes.”
Human-Made Stuff Now Outweighs Earth’s Biomass (Sean)
The author writes, “In a new study published in the journal Nature, they [researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel] conclude that the weight of human-made materials — called anthropogenic mass — now surpasses, or soon will surpass, the mass of all other living beings on Earth (it has +/- of six years).”
At Eurovision, Ukrainians Find Community Far From Home (Roshni)
From The New York Times: “This week, there were reminders round every street corner in Liverpool that this northern English city is hosting the Eurovision Song Contest as a stand-in for last year’s winning country, Ukraine, where war continues to rage more than a year after Russia’s full-scale invasion.”
