Documenting children's bedtime stories in Gaza
Documenting children's bedtime stories in Gaza
… plus curiosities from a Honduran crypto city, the United Nations, and more.
Welcome back to another edition of The Detour! My name is Kelly, and I’m the newsletter’s founding writer. We created The Detour to cut through the noise of the internet and deliver journalism that sparks curiosity from all corners of the globe. We're so grateful for the time you spend with us each week.
To support this mission and ensure we can keep creating The Detour, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5/month or $50/year. You’ll receive top-to-bottom access to the newsletter every week (instead of just a teaser), and your subscription will go directly toward The Detour’s creation. Fact: If just 10% of you reading this got a monthly subscription today, we could keep publishing The Detour for an entire year!
Thank you for reading,
Kelly
Without further ado, here’s what’s on deck:
📖 “We don’t want them to lose their roots”: A tsunami survivor’s mission to comfort children in Gaza
🪙 The Honduran for-profit island run by tech bros, new “aristotrash” TV, and a Paralympian’s perfect bull’s eye
😵💫 The science behind doomscrolling
$120 million — The amount of investment money raised by the controversial for-profit city of Próspera, Honduras. Investors like tech billionaires Sam Altman and Peter Thiel have taken advantage of the Central American country’s laws to build their version of a libertarian utopia on the Honduran island of Roatán. The island is currently in the middle of a tense legal battle with the Honduran government.
40 million — The number of Americans that currently have federal student debt. Come September 30, the repayment grace period rolled out by President Joe Biden ends, and these folks will have to start paying them back again. However, Biden may try again to forgive student debt in October.
A cascade of Republican-led legal challenges has prevented Biden from implementing student loan relief throughout his term as president. Here’s a timeline of that battle:
August 2022
Biden announces he will cancel $10,000 per borrower and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients earning under $125,000 per year, or married couples earning under $250,000.
September 2022
The six states of Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, and South Carolina (plus several other parties in the months to follow) sue Biden and the Department of Education for these student loan forgiveness proposals, claiming Biden and the Education Department misused their authority.
October 2022
Student loan forgiveness applications open despite these legal challenges. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court dismisses the six states' lawsuit. But then, these six states appeal the Court’s decision, and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis eventually hands down an emergency order temporarily blocking the forgiveness plan.
November 2022
The Department of Education stops accepting student loan forgiveness applications until June 2023, or until the debt relief program is implemented or the legal challenges are resolved.
August 2023
Biden launches the SAVE loan repayment plan, which ties monthly payments to a borrower’s income and household size.
July 2024
A federal appeals court temporarily blocks the SAVE plan, preventing borrowers from applying to the plan.
August 2024
Biden administration officials email millions of borrowers to alert them to resurged efforts to cancel student debt.
There’s so much more to The Detour this week. Subscribe below for a free seven-day trial to keep reading!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Detour by frame.media to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.