The frontiers of neural capitalism
… plus curiosities from space, Swedish coffee culture, and more.
Welcome back to another edition of The Detour. Right now, we are a free weekly newsletter. But if you have loved reading The Detour as much as we have loved writing it for you, consider supporting our work by pledging a weekly or monthly subscription using the button below.
By doing so, you will help ensure that our team of independent journalists can keep publishing The Detour as well as multimedia stories from around the world at frame.media!
Thank you for being part of a community of Detour readers of over 27,000 strong. Your support directly benefits independent journalism.
Without further ado, here’s what’s on deck this week:
🧑🚀 What happens when space debris falls on your house
🌺 The U.S. government’s unfulfilled promise to Hawaii
☕ The philosophy of coffee breaks
1 — The number of votes against a new bill in Colorado which extends privacy protections to Colorodans “neural data.” The bill was signed into law by CO governor Jared Polis on Wednesday and is the first of its kind in the U.S. The law will now allow citizens to ask for companies to delete their brain data and ask that it not be sold for advertising purposes. Brain data is already being gathered by companies that help optimize meditations or the dating app experience through neural headbands.
$2.7 trillion — The estimated economic value of coral reefs annually, which nurture around 25% of ocean species at some stage in their life cycles. Scientists announced on Monday that the world’s coral reefs are about to undergo a global bleaching event (which they warn will occur in the next few weeks). Bleaching happens when coral reefs lose the symbiotic algae that keeps them alive. This bleaching event could be the most widespread on record, with 54% of the world’s coral area already having been subjected to bleaching-level heat stress in the last year. This will be the fourth global bleaching event on record.
“I do get depressed sometimes, because the feeling is like, ‘My God, this is happening,’ … Now we’re at the point where we’re in the disaster movie.”
— Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Professor of marine studies at the University of Queensland in an interview with the New York Times
5,800 pounds — The weight of a pallet of aging nickel-hydrogen batteries that NASA discarded into space in 2021. Rather than completely incinerating upon entering the earth’s orbit like NASA thought, a smartphone-sized piece of it crashed into a residential home in Naples, Florida in March, tearing through the roof. NASA confirmed the object was from the International Space Station in a press release on Monday and said it would look into updating its models to prevent debris survival. Thousands of pieces of space junk (weighing more than 8,000 metric tons!) orbit the earth and the vast majority of them burn up upon entering Earth’s atmosphere. The chances of actually being hit by space junk is incredibly low, but yikes (!).
Many victims of the Maui Fire last August are still displaced. If you’ve been with us for a while, you may recall our coverage of Lahaina’s aftermath. (An update: The town council voted on a designated plot of land to store the burnt wreckage, which they are moving piecemeal.)
But Lahaina is significant in another way: It was once a spiritual and cultural capital for Native Hawaiians — a gateway to the Kingdom of Hawaii, where Queen Liliʻuokalani was the last sovereign before the U.S. annexed the Hawaiian islands.
This historical backdrop is important to remember as Lahaina and Maui at large continue to recover from this tragedy. Last year for Frame, journalist Mary Yang reported the story of how the U.S. government promised to repatriate 200,000 acres of land back to Hawaii’s Indigenous community in the 1920s, but never fulfilled its promise.
On Thursday, April 18 — The new Broadway musical Suffs premieres at the Music Box Theater in New York City. It tracks the real-life story of the women suffragists who secured the Constitutional amendment that would give (mostly white) women the right to vote. The show’s plot features the first-ever suffragist march on Washington in 1913 and, for those who loved Hamilton, it showcases the vocal talent of Tony-nominated star Phillipa Soo.
On Friday, April 19 — The World Bank and International Monetary Fund end their annual Spring Meetings in Washington, DC. Among several things on their docket is a meeting among country delegates to confront Africa’s sovereign debt. These meetings have historically festered disappointment among African leaders, who believe their myriad financial priorities are given a back seat — especially when it comes to re-imagining the lending models which African politicians have criticized as not doing enough to help distressed countries.
On Monday, April 22 — Earth Day occurs worldwide. During the United Nations General Assembly in February, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres emphasized a need to take climate action with an eye toward sustainable development and peace. These last few years have had the most armed conflicts since World War II, creating greater obstacles to combating climate change, while climate change threatens to further exacerbate global conflicts by fueling social and economic instability.
In Sweden the practice of fika is a daily ritual. It means taking a coffee break, often accompanied by a sweet pastry and socializing with friends. The term comes with a certain coziness and emphasizes slowing down to catch up with friends or loved ones.
It’s a stark contrast to coffee culture in the U.S. where grabbing coffee on the go is a more common practice, and coffee is often consumed in between places or at one’s desk or workplace.
Fika, which some believe is an inversion of an old Swedish spelling for coffee — kaffi — is a reminder to treat coffee breaks as a social ritual — a moment to slow down, laugh, and socially bask.
— Ben
We’re a small team of independent journalists creating stories we love and believe in. This takes a considerable amount of time and heart. Our focus on undercovered features and smart, cultural commentary wouldn’t be possible without your support. We’d be so grateful if you pledged your support below to keep Frame going.
Thanks for being part of the flywheel of thoughtful, nuanced journalism, made in formats that fit our modern lives.
If you didn’t get the chance to, we’d be so grateful if you voted for Frame to receive the Webby’s People Voice Award. Today is the last day of voting!
Until next week,
Kelly at Frame