Without further ado, here’s what’s on deck this week:
🚀 Dispatches from NASA HQ
🌳 The frontlines of deforestation law
👁️ Inside the world of people with no mind’s eye
But first, here’s a closer look at what’s been going on around the world in the last week or so:
A GIF of the world in numbers. // Kelly Kimball for Frame
$2 billion — The valuation of actor and entrepreneur Selena Gomez’s cosmetics company, Rare Beauty, as she currently weighs offers for its investment or acquisition, Bloomberg reported on Monday. Gomez reportedly wants to stay involved in Rare Beauty no matter what happens to the company.
2 — The number of employees of the unofficial gay bar Pose who were arrested in Russia on Monday and charged with creating an extremist group, according to the Russian news publication EAH. The arrests follow a November 2023 ruling by the Russian Supreme Court that gay activists should be designated as extremists. For decades, LGBTQ+ and human rights activists in Russia have expressed fears that declaring members of the gay community extremist would “effectively put all LGBTQ+ people in Russia at risk of administrative or criminal prosecution,” explained Radio Free Europe.
115 miles — The width of the path that the total Solar Eclypse will take up as it crosses North and Central America on April 8. During a Solar Eclipse, the Moon fully blocks the Sun while it passes between the Sun and Earth. 2024 is set to have five lunar or solar eclipses that will be visible worldwide. But this one will reportedly be the longest and most visible in the U.S. in 100 years.
An illustrated map of the 2023 and 2024 solar eclipses. // NASA
3,187 — The minimum number of Iranian citizens reportedly arrested on “ideological or political grounds'' between March 21, 2023, to March 15 of this year, according to the NGO Human Rights Activists in Iran. Iranian citizens continue to be rocked by a protracted government campaign of forceful repression ever since protests erupted following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s morality police in September 2022. While the resulting “Woman Life Freedom” movement has been clamped down on by Iranian authorities at this point, the dissent that blossomed from the movement’s reckoning lives on. Read Frame’s story on Iran’s morality police here.
The yearly inflation rate of olive oil across the European Union. // Eurostat
50% — The average percent increase in the price of olive oil across the EU between January 2023 and January 2024. Why the high price tag? Climate change-induced drought and extreme heatwaves have plagued the region, especially in southern European countries like Spain, Portugal, and Greece, making conditions harsher for olive trees to thrive. For curious minds, check out the EU’s food price monitoring tool to see how other products’ prices have fared over time.
If you were with us two weeks ago, you’ll remember our Fringes story about NASA’s new Artemis Generation and their big dreams to return humans to the moon. (You can catch up here or check out our TikTok about it here.) This week, we continue the saga of Kelly Investigating Childhood Dream Jobs™ with another view (literally) from up high:
On Tuesday, I met with four astronauts at NASA headquarters in Washington to discuss their recent six-month mission conducting a suite of scientific experiments aboard the International Space Station.
From left to right: Expedition 69 Astronauts Frank Rubio, Woody Hoburg, Sultan Alneyadi, and Stephen Bowen. // NASA
American astronauts Frank Rubio, Woody Hoburg, Stephen Bowen, and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi broke a few records while they were up in space: Rubio broke the record for the longest time an American astronaut has spent in space, clocking in 371 consecutive days before landing back on Earth in Kazakhstan last September. Alneyadi became the first astronaut from the Arab world to complete a 7-hour spacewalk on the ISS and remains just one of 17 Muslims who have traveled to space. He told me that “a sense of time was tricky” when considering appropriate time for prayer or fasting while aloft, as the ISS experiences 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets in one day. He stuck to the GMT timezone to help practice his faith.
So, what were the crew up to while aboard the ISS? They were curious about microgravity’s impact on the human body, fire, and microorganisms. If they could crack the code on how to keep humans and spacecraft healthy and safe in the cosmos longterm, it could open up immense possibilities for NASA’s future missions to put up a permanent base on the Moon and launch cosmonauts from that lunar base to Mars. They used samples of Woody Hoburg’s own DNA to partake in some of these experiments, with some results continuing to be processed at HQ this month.
Woody Hoburg rides a robotic arm while moving a solar array toward the International Space Station's truss roughly 257 miles above the Pacific Ocean. // NASA
I couldn’t help but feel comforted by the sheer earnestness and ambition of these four scientists and engineers. Even as they engaged in a lifelong mission to untangle the complicated science of space, they all had something profound to say about Earth’s special place in all of it.
Hoburg left me with this final thought: “You really get a sense of the dynamic nature of Earth; it’s a living, breathing, amazing planet to be in.”
Stay tuned. Another Frame original story is coming up next week.
Hey folks! Jeremy here with the latest Frame product news. If you didn’t catch the Sora release from OpenAI in February, Generative AI is quickly becoming more talented at creating digital content, creating an ever-greater threat to the verifiability of information and a challenge for journalists to credibly inform their readers.
Publications and organizations are being forced to adapt, to develop new frameworks for authenticating information. In 2018, the BBC launched Project Origin, and last year, BBC Verify. The C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) was created in 2019 by Adobe, the New York Times, and X, to trace the origins of digital media. Organizations such as Forensic Architecture break down reports where doctored information is suspected. As is Generative AI, this landscape is quickly evolving.
Here are some questions we’d love to hear your thoughts on:
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Also, how should news outlets address information they previously reported that they later found to be false? We’re fascinated by these questions. Please reply to this email or comment if you’d like!
Deforestation has a new gatekeeper in Europe. On Tuesday, the European Union tied up the final loose ends of a controversial deforestation law punctuated by talks that went into the early-morning hours. What’s keeping European policymakers up at night?
Apparently it’s seven products that are considered the key drivers of deforestation, including soy, beef, palm oil, wood, cocoa, coffee, and rubber. The seven will no longer be allowed in the EU starting December 2024 if sourced from areas affected by deforestation practices. The decision has stirred controversy — especially among small producers in South American countries who fear the laws will kick them out of European markets. In response to the uproar, the EU’s head of environmental policy, Virginijus Sinkevicius, has had to go on a tour of South America to defend what Sinkevicious has described as “a turning point in the global fight against deforestation.”
Yet farmers are fighting for their voices to be heard: Caio Penido, who represents cattle farmers from Mato Grosso, Brazil, told Euronews that farmers “need a kind of assistance that doesn't exist today, and small-scale farms will certainly be the most affected [by this law]."
We have more storytelling coming from South America. In the coming weeks, we’ll take a deeper look at how Argentina’s shadowy past has a surprising connection to its politics today. Writing from Buenos Aires, journalist Melisa Trad tells the true stories of four victims of Argentina’s “Dirty War” that occurred from 1974 to 1983.
On Thursday, March 21 — World leaders from at least 30 countries will gather in Brussels to take part in the first ever IAEA-led Nuclear Energy Summit. The theme? Nuclear power as a means to meet green-energy goals, nuclear arms control, and nonproliferation priorities. Earlier this year, the International Atomic Energy Agency forecast that nuclear capacity may double by 2050.
Also on Thursday, March 21 — The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) hosts its annual World Meteorological Day ceremony. This year, WMO will join forces with the UN Development Program to launch a “climate action campaign” that even has its own Trello board of materials the public can use. You can take a peek at their schedule of events here.
On Friday, March 22 — The UN will celebrate World Water Day by releasing a World Water Report that will tackle the theme of water’s crucial role in “fostering peace and sustainable development” while recommending tools for world leaders to implement future-proof water policies.
On Sunday March 24 — A lunar eclipse will occur over North America, South America, Antarctica, and northern Russia. It’s the less-spectacular cousin to April’s full solar eclipse, and the moon will look a little dim for a few hours.
Here’s a little test: Picture an apple. What do you see?
Is it a red and glistening with dew drops rolling down it on a table, a Granny Smith suspended in white space, or no image at all?
If you saw no image, it’s possible you have aphantasia. This is a psychological condition where people cannot visualize images in their mind’s eye. Around 1% of people have an extreme form of aphantasia where they can’t visualize images.
“- I never see a clear picture in my mind. I get a extremely fleeting ideas of what an image is, but I don't really see anything.
- I know I'm thinking about a picture,. I don't "see it", but I have a rudimentary idea of what it would look like, but I cant hold onto a visalization [sic] beyond a flicker.”
A screenshot of a Harry Potter meme about aphantasia. // Reddit.com
Some people with aphantasia can’t picture any images at all. Around 26% of people with it have multisensory aphantasia meaning they can’t picture visuals, sounds, smells, tastes, or touch.
When I first came across aphantasia I was fascinated by what it means for the diversity of mental experience. We can spend so much time with loved ones and friends, but I think infrequently ask, “What does it feel like to be in your brain?” or “How do you imagine things in your mind?” I think these questions both deepen our understanding of consciousness and can bring us closer to one another.
— Ben
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Until next week,
Kelly at Frame
Answer to last week's quiz: Procopius's “Anecdota” from 500 AD
