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.
Ten Years Ago, Occupy Wall Street Lit a Spark in Zuccotti Park (Maria)
The author writes, “Ten years ago this month, the story goes, a few dozen activists squatted in Zuccotti Park, near Wall Street. Three years had passed since Barack Obama declared ‘the audacity of hope’; now came the autumn of despair, fury and hand-painted placards. They set up tents, a kitchen, wi-fi for blogging and livestreaming, and congregated for meetings where anyone could speak and the crowd would repeat, phrase by phrase, what the speaker said (they called this the human mic) — and, to signal agreement, wiggled their fingers instead of applauding.”
‘It’s Spreading’: Phony Election Fraud Conspiracies Infect Midterms (DonkeyHotey)
From Politico: “It started as one big, false claim — that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. But nearly a year later, the Big Lie is metastasizing, with Republicans throughout the country raising the specter of rigged elections in their own campaigns ahead of the midterms. The preemptive spin is everywhere. … Trump may have started the election-truther movement. But what was once the province of an aggrieved former president has spread far beyond him, infecting elections at every level with vague, unspecified claims that future races are already rigged.”
Threats Against Members of Congress Are Skyrocketing. It’s Changing the Job (Reader Steve)
The author writes, “A few months ago Rep. Norma Torres (D-Pomona) received an anonymous video of someone following her car. The camera pans down to a 9mm handgun on the seat as a male voice says: ‘I see you. I got something for you.’ In June, police charged a man with making ‘terroristic threats’ against New York Republican Rep. Tom Reed by leaving a dead rat with a noose around its neck and a brick with one of his family member’s names on the congressman’s doorstep. Police intervened in January when more than a dozen Trump supporters confronted, surrounded and threatened Rep. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) as he was catching a flight at a Washington airport. In a year that kicked off with the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, threats against members of Congress are soaring.”
How Accounting Giants Craft Favorable Tax Rules From Inside Government (Russ)
From The New York Times: “The largest U.S. accounting firms have perfected a remarkably effective behind-the-scenes system to promote their interests in Washington. Their tax lawyers take senior jobs at the Treasury Department, where they write policies that are frequently favorable to their former corporate clients, often with the expectation that they will soon return to their old employers. The firms welcome them back with loftier titles and higher pay, according to public records reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with current and former government and industry officials.”
Wildfires in Australia Caused an Explosion of Sea Life Thousands of Miles Away (Mili)
The author writes, “Two years ago, in the southern Pacific Ocean, an explosion of algae grew to more than 2,000 miles wide — about the width of Australia. Giant algal blooms are often tied to land pollution such as runoff from farmland, which is full of nutrients like nitrogen that these plant-like organisms need to thrive. But there were no nearby farms or factories here in the middle of the ocean. The sprawling bloom was fueled instead by something faraway and unexpected: wildfires thousands of miles to the west.”
The 100-Year-Old Fiction That Predicted Today (Sean)
The author writes, “One day in 1920, the Czech writer Karel Čapek sought the advice of his older brother Josef, a painter. Karel was writing a play about artificial workers but he was struggling for a name. ‘I’d call them laborators, but it seems to me somewhat stilted,’ he told Josef, who was hard at work on a canvas. ‘Call them robots then,’ replied Josef, a paintbrush in his mouth. At the same time in Petrograd (formerly St Petersburg), a Russian writer named Yevgeny Zamyatin was writing a novel whose hi-tech future dictatorship would eventually prove as influential as Čapek’s robots. Both works are celebrating a joint centenary, albeit a slippery one.”
Wild Rice Sues to Stop Oil Pipeline (Dan)
From High Country News: “In 2018, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe and the 1855 Treaty Authority, an organization that upholds treaty rights for Chippewa bands, enacted legal personhood for manoomin — wild rice. Manoomin, which translates to ‘good berry’ in Ojibwe, is a sacred food for Chippewa, Ojibwe and Anishinaabe people and has been a part of traditional teachings, stories and way of life since time immemorial. … In August, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe exercised the Rights of Manoomin in a legal effort to halt the construction of Enbridge Energy’s Line 3 oil pipeline.”
