Why Madison, WI could be the next Laguna Beach
… plus curiosities from the path of totality, Switzerland, and beyond.
Welcome back to another edition of The Detour. Last week, Frame was nominated for a Webby Award in the News & Politics Website category! We’d be so grateful if you voted for us to win the People’s Voice Award!
Without further ado, here’s what’s on deck this week:
☀️ Ditching TikTok for the eclipse
💧 A water fight festival in Thailand
✨ A word for those chills down your spine
40-60% — The dip in internet traffic during the time of the solar eclipse on April 8th, in some U.S. states that experienced full totality — Vermont, Arkansas, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire and Ohio. At 3:25pm ET in New York, at the height of the eclipse, internet traffic was down 29% compared to the previous week.
23 million — The number of student loan borrowers who could have all of their student loan interest forgiven under President Biden’s new loan forgiveness plan, announced on Monday. The plan could waive all interest for “low and middle income borrowers” who are enrolled in income-driven repayment plans. Biden’s plan will likely face legal challenges, like his 2022 forgiveness plan which was blocked by the Supreme Court.
2,000+ — The number of Swiss women who brought a case against Switzerland’s government arguing the country’s neglect of climate change was undermining their health and putting them at risk. On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of the women.
“Today’s rulings against Switzerland sets a historic precedent that applies to all European countries,” Gerry Liston, a lawyer at Global Legal Action Network, which supported the Portugal case, said in a statement. “It means that all European countries must urgently revise their targets so that they are science-based and aligned to 1.5 degrees. This is a massive win for all generations.” – CNN
1803 — The last time that the XIX and XIII cicada broods — specific cicadas with a certain geographic footprints — co-emerged during the spring in the U.S. Entomologists have announced that it will happen again this spring, 221 years later. Periodical cicadas are an amazing type of cicadas that have 13- and 17-year life cycles depending on the kind. That means that they live for around 4-6 weeks, hatch eggs, which turn into nymphs that burrow in the ground and then wait 13 or 17 years (!) to re-emerge. Scientists aren’t concerned about a “cicadapocaplyse” as the two broods likely won’t overlap much if it all.
The great climate migration is here — and the Great Lakes Region (GLR) in the United States may well become the next climate-friendly destination.
For those looking to circumvent climate change-induced wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, sea level rise, and other forms of extreme environmental change elsewhere, new research reveals that Great Lakes states from Minnesota to Illinois are among those least vulnerable to climate change, due in part to their proximity to the greatest sources of freshwater in the world and their “apparently favorable environmental and social conditions,” research shows.
But according to the Environmental Defense Fund, the “GLR” urban communities need to prepare now — and quickly — for the potential population boom. The region already faces some significant challenges:
“The rapid loss of manufacturing and labor force in the past five decades has profoundly affected the region's economic sustainability and social equity,” the report says.
Will the GLR rise to meet the future realities of climate change? Check out what Abrahm Lustgarten wrote in The Atlantic last week about the possible birth of “climate boomtowns” from Ann Arbor to Duluth:
“Imagine the economic center of gravity of the United States shifting north, and the seesaw effects of that change on the geographic locus of American society. … The displacement erupting from climate stress in some places will put others on track toward greater security, wealth, and prosperity.”
Sure, Madison, Wisconsin, isn’t exactly the sunshine paradise of Laguna Beach, California. But who knows if Laguna starts to feel like the Sahara. Let us know what you think:
A message from our friend Luke Harold:
Luke Harold’s newsletter delves into court documents to tell the underreported stories happening along the U.S./Mexico border, especially in California. Subscribe for regular coverage of the court cases, data and other insights that create more transparency in our judicial system.
El Salvador has employed an infamously hardline tactic for dealing with gangs: lock them all up. But in President Nayib Bukele’s crusade to make the country gang free, the anti-crime strategy of “Bukelism” has tamped down on human rights and freedoms of innocent people, human rights groups warn.
Last year, Frame contributor Matthew Kendrick mapped the origins of Bukelism. In it, he writes:
“Despite the institutional abuse evident in Salvadoran prisons, local polls put Bukele’s approval rating around 90%. Many Salvadorans say they feel safe in neighborhoods previously terrorized by gangs for decades, during which 1.4 million Salvadorans migrated to the United States.”
Dive into the winding history of Salvadoran gang violence in our piece from last fall.
On Friday, April 12 — The world celebrates the International Day of Human Space Flight. On this day in 1961, the Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin made the first human space flight in history, which paved the way for the space exploration era. Today, NASA’s Artemis II generation will be the first team of astronauts to return to the Moon since 1972.
All weekend beginning Saturday, April 13 — Songkran occurs in Thailand. The Buddhist celebration is a kind of joyous water festival that signals the start of the traditional Thai New Year. Think Holi, but instead of colorful powder, streets are closed for intergenerational water fights. This year, tourists in Bangkok can celebrate early, on April 11, when The Maha Songkran World Water Festival begins — all of which is part of “government’s soft power promotion policy to boost the country’s cultural significance on the global stage,” according to Thai Tourism Minister Sudawan Wangsuphakijkosol.
On Monday, April 15 — France, Germany, and the European Union will meet in Paris to discuss how to confront the unfolding crisis in Sudan and bordering states. Since 2023, a war has unfolded between two rival factions of the country’s military government. The crisis has been marked by the exodus of over 1.5 million people, the displacement of over 8 million people, and the death of over 13,000. Many millions are in critical need of food, shelter, and other basic resources. On the docket for this summit: mobilize more funding and further crystalize a plan for a wholesale humanitarian response.
In Spanish there’s a word that loosely translates to chills we get down our spine and skin when we’re moved by a powerful experience: duende. Duende originally referred to a sort of fantastic forest gremlin that parents warned their kids about, but the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca used it to describe the overwhelm one feels when experiencing music or dance. He describes the concept in a lecture he gave in Buenos Aires in 1933:
So, then, the duende is a force not a labour, a struggle not a thought. I heard an old maestro of the guitar say: ‘The duende is not in the throat: the duende surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning, it’s not a question of skill, but of a style that’s truly alive: meaning, it’s in the veins: meaning, it’s of the most ancient culture of immediate creation. - Theory and Play Of The Duende by Federico García Lorca (Translated by A. S. Kline)
Moments of duende can come when a singer pushes their voices to the limit, or a sprinter nearly breaks from exhaustion bursting through the finish line. They are moments of reaching the limit of human expression, and of experiencing the sublime.
In a chapter before Frame, I ran a literary magazine called Table Talk, whose inaugural issue was focused on the concept of duende. You can read more about the magazine and duende here.
— Ben
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Until next week,
Kelly at Frame