But first, here’s a closer look at what’s been going on around the world in the last week or so:
7,000 — The approximate number of people in Toronto that went without power after a raccoon “made contact with equipment,” according to Ontario’s Hydro One power utility. The poor trash panda forced much of downtown Toronto into darkness, disrupted service on a subway line, shut off water, and even left some folks trapped in elevators, The Guardian reported. Don’t worry: All is well for Torontonians, as the power was restored after three hours. (But is the raccoon okay, tho?)
$3,499 — The amount of cash you’d need to afford the new Apple Vision Pro headset that was released on Friday, February 2. The augmented reality technology promises to be a game-changer that would allow its users to leverage what Apple calls “spatial computing” to use everyday iPhone apps and the internet right in your field of vision. The Verge has called it “a technical marvel,” and yet also said it provides a “pretty lonely” experience.
600 million — The approximate number of monthly active users on the Chinese social media app Weibo. In recent weeks, many of these users have fallen victim to U.S. civil war misinformation that has spread like wildfire. Misleading posts with #TexasDeclaresAStateOfWar have been shared thousands of times amid real tensions between Texas and Washington over the surge of migrants crossing into the Lone Star state to seek asylum status. Weibo posts have falsely suggested Texas has declared war to secede from the U.S. as a result. (Spoiler alert: This is not true.)
16 — The number of months that one of the world’s largest protests took place in India by the country’s enraged farmers from 2020 to 2021. Protests surged this week again in New Delhi, mere months before the next general election in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to win yet another term in office. This time around, farmers are demanding the government follow through with the concessions they promised in 2021, such as debt waivers, a legal minimum price for their crops, and other asks.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Philippines was the kidnapping capital of the world. Today, victims of the kidnapping gangs that flourished throughout the Southeast Asian country are finally telling their stories:
Chinese Filipino businesswoman Jane Kuo* was 50 years old when she was abducted by kidnappers from her Manila office in 2013. The kidnappers then took her to the southern city of Davao before she was eventually rescued during a shoot-out between police and her abductors.
Fred Hsieh* was a young father when kidnappers took his preschool-aged son and attempted to kidnap his daughter in 2004.
“Because my daughter cried, they figured she was a troublemaker, so they didn’t take her," said Hsieh.
*Fred Hsieh and Jane Kuo are pseudonyms. Frame adheres to the SPJ Code of Ethics when attributing anonymous sources.
Hi, I’m Jeremy, Frame’s Product Designer. In this new section of The Detour, I’ll give a behind-the-scenes look at how we build stories here at Frame, divulge the challenges we face each step of the way, and ask for your help in improving what we’re working on.
This week, I want to tell you about our Detours: This is our signature story feature that allows readers to dive down into complimentary subject matter that widens the tapestry of Frame stories in helpful, informative ways. This innovation was made possible by the custom software we started developing last year, and which we’ve built using all we’ve learned over the last five-plus years experimenting with new digital storytelling forms.
Detours are fundamental to how we tell stories at Frame: Our tappable form enables us to have branches at different points, which can introduce important contexts, relevant histories, alternative viewpoints, impacts of events at different levels of scale, and more, all there to give a more holistic view of the story, without interrupting the flow of the top-line narrative.
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We’re constantly adding more to the article experience. Here’s what we’ve worked on this past week:
🐛 Fixed a couple bugs: We made sure our videos weren’t stacking on top of video captions, and addressed a problem with the slides displaying photo and video credits at the end of our stories.
🖼️ Added a Ken Burns effect to images to provide a more dynamic visual storytelling experience.
Enjoy!
— Jeremy
Iceland has been in and out of the headlines lately, but no less than last Thursday when its Fagradalsfjal volcano system erupted for the third time since December, triggering the fastest-moving lava in recorded history. The photos from this phenomenon are – dare I say – hot fire.
Iceland’s Civil Protection Agency has raised this particular eruption to emergency status for the entire Reykjanes Peninsula region — particularly the tiny town of Grindavík with a population of around 3,600. The eruption has shut off water to thousands of local residents.
“The whole crust is readjusting,” the volcanology expert Rhian Meara told Scientific American during the volcano’s second eruption in January. “The literal structure of the earth has changed beneath the town.”
See for yourself: The photo on the left was captured less than 10 hours after the eruption began:
Pictured Left: Satellite imagery from Copernicus Sentinel/European Union on February 9, 2023. | Pictured Right: A volcano eruption outside of Grindavík, Iceland, in December 2023 from the Icelandic Meteorological Office/Wikimedia Commons
On Monday, February 19 — The Hague will continue its public hearings on South Africa's case against Israel and its claim that the country is in breach of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide amid Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza. Meanwhile, Nicaragua has added further grievances: The Central American country is accusing the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada of being complicit with Israel’s attacks on Palestinians. You can read more about Nicaragua’s official grievance here.
On Tuesday, February 20 — The memoir Slow Noodles by Cambodian writer Chantha Nguon will be released. In it, Nguion discusses her life as a refugee in Saigon, Vietnam, who loses her home and family following violent crackdowns of mostly ethnic Vietnamese Cambodians by dictator Pol Pot in the 1970s. She survives the immense loss and overcomes much of her grief through food: “cooking in a brothel, serving drinks in a nightclub, making and selling street food,” among other misadventures. Incredible books are published worldwide every day, but this one has really piqued my interest.
Throughout the rest of February — Keep your eye on Yosemite National Park’s Horsetail Falls. Most of the year, the humble waterfall is just your everyday natural wonder. *yawn* But for just a few evenings every year in mid- to late February, it has its annual ‘Firefall’. Now we’re awake!
Put simply, the water is illuminated by the sunset. But that molten orange color could have you convinced you’re looking at spewing lava. There are a lot of factors at play to make this phenomenon possible: The sun is only at the right angle for a few days per year, and it also depends on the amount of water in the fall, how cloudy it is, and if the viewer happens to snag a spot with the perfect vantage point.
Source: Ambitious Wench/Flickr/Wikimedia Commons
There’s something magical and strange that happens when astronauts ascend into space and look back at earth:
Most of them report a feeling of awe and wonder as they stare at our little blue dot surrounded by endless darkness. This powerful psychological phenomenon is called the overview effect.
Earthrise, a photograph of earth taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders // December 24, 1968 Credit: NASA/Bill Anders/Wikimedia Commons
Astronauts report an overwhelming sense of beauty, and some experience a change in their entire concept of self or their value system. These sorts of changes in how one views the world are called cognitive shifts in psychology and can also be caused by experiences such as the birth of a child or taking psychedelics.
A 2016 study suggests that the overview effect is triggered by perceptual vastness, such as looking at the Grand Canyon; or conceptual vastness, such as thinking about infinity or the edge of the universe. I find it interesting to think about how we can use the overview effect in our daily lives by trying to experience the vastness of life when confronted with a personal or professional dilemma.
Here’s Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins on his experience of the overview effect: “The thing that really surprised me was that [Earth] projected an air of fragility…And why, I don’t know. I don’t know to this day. I had a feeling it’s tiny, it’s shiny, it’s beautiful, it’s home, and it’s fragile.”
— Ben
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