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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.
The Sound Ecologist Capturing a Disappearing World (Maria)
The author writes, “In a small black box theater at San Francisco’s Exploratorium, the arid plains of Zimbabwe come to life in the thrum of chattering baboons and honking geese, and the shores of California materialize in the squawks of gulls and lapping waves. … This is The Great Animal Orchestra, a sonic voyage through seven ecosystems composed by the pioneering soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause. After its 2016 premiere at the Fondation Cartier museum in Paris and subsequent tour through Europe and Asia, the immersive exhibit arrived on the West Coast for the first time. ‘It’s about damn time,’ said Krause, who’s called the San Francisco Bay Area his home since the late 1950s.”
Biden Is Selling Weapons to the Majority of the World’s Autocracies (Laura)
From The Intercept: “Despite the White House’s rhetoric about supporting global democracy, the U.S. sold weapons in 2022 to 57 percent of the world’s authoritarian regimes.”
Borrowing Tactics From the US Army, the Ukrainian Marine Corps Is Thundering Through Russian Lines in Fast-Moving Columns (Sean)
From Forbes: “Ukrainian forces are advancing along three or four axes in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk Oblasts. On the axis running along the Mokri Yaly River, the Ukrainians aren’t just advancing. They’re thundering. Rolling fast along the unpaved road threading north to south from the town of Velyka Novosilka toward Makarivka, 10 miles away, the Ukrainian navy’s 35th Marine Brigade has borrowed a tactic from the U.S. Army.”
Top Law Firm Outs Ex-Partners’ Racist, Sexist Emails, Sinks Competing Firm (Reader Steve)
The authors write, “Last month, Lewis, Brisbois, Bisgaard and Smith, one of the nation’s largest law firms, was rocked by the announcement that two top partners [John Barber and Jeff Ranen] were starting their own boutique practice and taking as many as 140 colleagues with them. The shock inside Lewis Brisbois’ downtown Los Angeles headquarters soon gave way to anger as the recently departed partners embarked on a press campaign that portrayed their former employer as a profit-focused legal mill that ground down the aspirations of its lawyers. … In an extraordinary move, [Lewis Brisbois] directed the release of scores of emails in which Barber and Ranen used vile terms for women, Black people, Armenians, Persians, and gay men and traded in offensive stereotypes of Jews and Asians. In one fell swoop, the venerable firm managed to torpedo its new rival, destroy the defecting partners’ careers and send the legal establishment reeling.”
‘Inspirational’ Landscape of Glacier National Park Emerges as Thread in Climate Trial (Dana)
From the Flathead Beacon: “Attorneys representing 16 youth plaintiffs in a constitutional climate-change lawsuit against the state of Montana on Tuesday presented testimony from an internationally renowned Earth scientist and a retired glaciologist who for three decades studied the diminishing ice masses of Glacier National Park. Both witnesses described to a Helena courtroom how the state’s steady warming trend is transforming the landscape for future generations, including one of the young plaintiffs who grew up on Glacier’s doorstep.”
Octopuses (and Their DNA) Suggest Antarctica Will Melt Again (Gerry)
The author writes, “Did the West Antarctic ice sheet completely collapse during the latest interglacial period, about 125,000 years ago? It’s an important question for climate scientists, but geology was giving them no answers. So they turned to genetics instead. Enter Turquet’s octopus (Pareledone turqueti), a cephalopod with a four-million-year pedigree that makes its home in the icy waters around Antarctica. Recent DNA analysis shows that two distinct populations of this species, one in the Weddell Sea and the other in the Ross Sea, mated about 125,000 years ago. This could only have happened if the massive ice sheet that now separates those populations wasn’t there at the time.”
Airbnb Let Its Workers Live and Work Anywhere. Spoiler: They’re Loving It (Al)
The author writes, “At a time when more and more workers are finding themselves back in their offices at least a few days a week, Airbnb is going full throttle on flexibility. … ‘The business has actually never performed better since we moved to this program,’ says Airbnb Chief Financial Officer Dave Stephenson. ‘It’s working really well for us.’”
