A search for the "holy grail" of shipwrecks beneath the sea
... plus curiosities from The Webby Awards, Seneca Falls, and beyond.
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Without further ado, here’s what’s on deck this week:
🌸 The not-so-rare occurrence of California superblooms
☠️ The real-life search for stolen pirate booty
🧠 The commodification of the soul
3 — Don’t quote me on this, but I think I found the one “good” thing about climate change: more super blooms. The formerly rare occurrence of oodles and oodles of flora in California (especially SoCal) has now become commonplace in the springtime as the Golden State oscillates between mega-dry and mega-wet years. The toggling of extremes, thanks to climate change, are apparently optimal for a blossom boon.
Since 2017, the state has already had three super blooms, and 2024 may become the fourth. Keep an eye on this website to see when flowers hit peak bloom in state and national parks across California.
7 — The number of aftershocks that may occur in Taiwan over the next three to four days following a 7.2 magnitude earthquake that rocked the island on Tuesday, according to the Taiwanese director of the Earthquake Forecasting Center of the Meteorological Administration Wu Chien-fu at a press conference. The quake has killed at least nine and injured thousands, per CNN, and it has been the largest quake in the country since the 1999 Jiji earthquake.
5 — The number of religious and ethnic minority activists that have been jailed in Vietnam so far this year. The latest is Y Krec Bya, who has been given a 13-year jail sentence and has been an outspoken advocate for religious minority groups mostly based in the Central Highlands. On Monday the U.S. State Department condemned Vietnam’s arrest of Bya and that of the four other activists serving multi-year prison terms: Nay Y Blang, Danh Minh Quang, Thach Cuong, and To Hoang Chuong. This topic has had sparse coverage over the years, but The Vietnamese magazine published a helpful primer on the topic here.
370 — The number of days that the 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has spent in Moscow's Lefortovo Prison with no notice of when — or if —he will face trial. Last year, he was detained by Russia’s Federal Security Service and accused of espionage despite having full press credentials from Russia's own foreign ministry. He is the first American journalist detained and accused of espionage since the Cold War, according to The Wall Street Journal, who has closely covered his detainment.
Did anyone else absolutely rip through The Wager in 2023? Just me? Okay. For those who haven’t, in an undisclosed location off the coast of Colombia another real-life seafaring tale of epic proportions has unfolded, pinning Spain, Colombia, an American salvage company, and Indigenous Bolivian communities against one another.
This month, the Colombian government will begin excavating the site of a 1708 shipwreck of the Spanish galleon San José, said to hold a whopping $17 billion worth of gold, silver, and emeralds. Colombia maintains the excavation is for archeological purposes and not a means to draw up the Letters of Marque or rifle for doubloons in its coffers. Amid its alleged “archeological” curiosities, Colombia at one point tried to engage in a bidding process for the loot before UNESCO issued a letter criticizing the process, claiming the move “would cause the irretrievable loss of significant heritage.” Because Colombia is not a member of U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, it doesn’t technically need to abide by UNESCO, but ignoring the criticism would be, well, a total bilge.
Whose heritage is on the line, specifically? Bolivia’s Caranga, Chicha, and Killaka Indigenous communities have entered the chat. They claim the treasures buried in Davy Jones' Locker were mined by their enslaved ancestors and therefore belong to them.
But the plot thickens: In 1980 the U.S.-based salvage company Glocca Morra — renamed the Sea Search Armada in 2015 — physically located the wreckage and has been in legal battles with Colombia for ownership rights ever since, claiming if the government wants to lay claim to the treasure, “it can do so, but it has to compensate our clients for having found it in the first place,” a lawyer representing the salvage company told the New York Times back in 2023. The company alleges the Colombian government agreed to give the company half of the treasure.
Spain, meanwhile, wants to remind everyone of its imperialist past and has also laid claim to the booty. 🤷♀️ (The San José was among the Spanish Navy’s many treasure fleets carrying loot from its South American colonies back to the Spanish empire.)
As ever, there is always more to stories like this. In late March, ABC News broke the news of many of these developments, which you can read here.
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On Friday, April 5 — The Vermont Senate will advance the “Climate Superfund Act” after it voted last night in overwhelming favor of the green-friendly policy. The bill seeks to charge companies responsible for excessive fossil fuel emissions from 1995 to 2024 for climate damage. If passed, it would be the first bill of its kind in the United States and could set a historic precedent that pins more responsibility on fossil fuel-generating companies to contribute to climate change adaptation projects. Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York are considering similar measures.
On Saturday, April 6 — It will be 30 years since the Rwandan genocide. On this day in 1994, Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira were shot down in a plane over the Rwandan capital Kigali, triggering nearly 100 days of coordinated ethnic killings. Hutu extremists blamed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) for the shoot-down, and the RPF blamed the Hutus. In all, 800,000 people were slaughtered by ethnic Hutu extremists. The question of who shot down the plane remains a matter of hot debate today. In recognition of these atrocities, UNESCO will hold a ceremony in Paris.
On Monday April 8 — Public hearings will occur amid Nicaragua’s ongoing lawsuit against Germany at the International Court of Justice. The Central American country claims Germany has facilitated Israel's bombardments impacting civilians in Gaza “by sending military equipment and now defunding UNRWA which provides essential support to the civilian population,” its filings detail.
Also on Monday April 8 — North America will experience a total solar eclipse, and national parks across the U.S. are having a heyday. According to the National Parks Service, just 27 of the 425 parks in its network will witness the totality of the eclipse. But one park in particular has my eye: The Women's Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls is hosting a viewing at the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House. In their words:
“When the last total solar eclipse passed over Seneca Falls, New York, in January of 1925, women had only had the legal right to vote for a little over four years. This time, it passes over the first national park dedicated to women’s rights. … Additionally, this will be the only chance to witness a total eclipse in Seneca Falls for at least the next two centuries.”
I recently came across the work of Albert Borgmann, a German-born American philosopher whose work focused on how technology shapes humans and society. I was drawn to his definition of commodification as it relates to technology.
Borgmann argues that technology and modernization commodifies the world and the self, taking away depth and spirituality from everyday life. In an interview on the podcast Luminary, Borgmann gives the example of bread to explain the impact of commodification.
Historically the making of bread was an activity that tied entire communities together. When buying bread at the bakery, people knew where the wheat had been tilled to make it and had attended the harvest festival celebrating the gathering of the grain. When they saw the loaf on their table, they saw not only an object but a web of social relationships and a connection to the natural cycles of the earth that produced it.
Commodification obscures and simplifies these relationships. Borgmann talks about how the antithesis to this aforementioned bread is Wonder Bread, which obscures its making and has no connection to a community, its producers, and littlebond with the natural world.
This concept of commodification can be useful in understanding our relationship with technology such as social media. Similar toWonder Bread, social media commodifies and abstracts individuals and social scenes into small fragments. Borgmann's work makes me ask: How can we re-enchant and re-see the complex histories and depth that technology obscures?
— Ben
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Kelly at Frame