You have no idea how hard I looked to find this spot again, wouldn't have found it all if I didn't notice an english-character name on the right. Shinjuku is a labyrinth of light, darkness, and sound. And several nights I entered and didn't follow my pathing.
I'm not even lying I don't know where I was going to or why I took this path, but I found a place like this and thought it looked awesome. Was it tiresome at this point? Maybe. Because all the final few nights in Tokyo was at some point wandering and nothing else. I don't even have a story for this shot.
So instead let me tell you of all the wondrous things I did while editing. What you're seeing here is over 20 layers of colors and shadows, each exuding a different amount of highlights and temperature. To avoid the blurs of people, I put a gradient on the bottom, but still made care to have items close to it that had lights on it stand out (like the paper lanterns in the storefront window on the left). So this was not a premeditated shot in the slightest. Go anywhere in this busy maze of lights and a new composition will be find.
Google is again pressuring some longtime G Suite Legacy users to move onto paid Workspace plans, warning that accounts flagged as "commercial use" could lose access to Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and other services if appeals fail. "The trouble, according to users, is that the appeals system appears about as transparent as a brick," adds The Register. From the report: A reader alerted The Register to what appears to be a new crackdown on long-standing G Suite Legacy accounts, with similar complaints now piling up on Reddit from users accused of violating Google's non-commercial use policy, despite insisting they use the accounts only for family email and personal domains. Reports have been stacking up on Reddit's r/gsuitelegacymigration subreddit from users who say their long-running personal G Suite Legacy accounts are suddenly being classified as "commercial use" accounts and pushed toward paid Google Workspace plans by May 2026. A lot of users have been through this before. Google spent part of 2022 trying to wind down free G Suite Legacy accounts, then changed course after users running family domains made enough noise. Now some of those same users are being told they have fallen outside Google's rules after all.
Emails seen by The Register warn users their accounts have been "identified as being used for commercial purposes" and say Google may start suspending Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Meet, and other Workspace services if they do not either win an appeal or begin paying for Workspace subscriptions. "Please upgrade to a paid Google Workspace subscription to continue using your services. Look out for a notification regarding the appeal process in Google Admin console or email," the email reads. "If you don't take action during your 45-day appeal period, Google will begin suspending your Google Workspace core services, including Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Meet. As a result, you will lose access to these core services and data." One wrongly-flagged user said the company reversed its decision after they filed a GDPR data request seeking evidence. Others were less fortunate, with some reporting that family-only custom domains were permanently classified as commercial despite failed appeals.
‘The couple had been told the church was likely to be under water on their wedding day. But they were from an area of the Philippines prone to flooding – and stuck to their plan’
I’ve been working as a photographer for the Associated Press bureau in Metro Manila for nearly 30 years, and in that time floods in the Philippines have become increasingly common. One day last July, I returned to the office after a morning spent in my waders, photographing the after-effects of a monsoon that had flooded much of Manila and the surrounding areas.
While I was having lunch and drying out, I got a message from a photographer friend on assignment in Bulacan, the next province. She’d been shooting at Barásoain Church, a historic building that was flooded, and as she’d made to leave, someone had said: “Don’t you want to wait for the wedding?” It was hard to believe people were getting married in those conditions, but she told me the ceremony was due to start at three, which gave me an hour to get there. Even in ideal conditions it would have taken at least 40 minutes, but I jumped in a car with the AP driver and we made it to within a kilometre or two of the church, by which point the water was too deep to continue.
Choreography of back-to-back visits appeared deliberately mirrored but China made sure the differences were noticed
Days after Donald Trump was greeted in Beijing with a military band, an honour guard and dozens of youths waving American and Chinese flags, Vladimir Putin arrived in China to an almost identical spectacle.
The choreography of the two welcomes appeared deliberately mirrored, designed to showcase Beijing’s ability to host leaders from Washington and Moscow with equal grandeur.
Lithuania’s president and prime minister were rushed to underground bunkers and residents of the capital, Vilnius, urged to take shelter during a warning issued after a drone violated the country’s airspace.
Air and train traffic in and around the city was suspended after the mobile phone “take shelter” alert, the first issued in an EU and Nato country since the start of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
When drum’n’bass grew stale in the 90s, it got a samba-splicing Brazilian twist. As that style returns, the scene’s legends and newcomers celebrate a cross-cultural triumph
Wagner Ribeiro de Souza wasn’t carrying much in his backpack. A local compilation of techno, house and jungle hits, a couple of news clippings and a VHS tape with footage from the club where he played weekly: small fragments of a music scene that he, under the moniker DJ Patife, and some friends were building in São Paulo, Brazil.
It was 1998. He had travelled to London to talk his way into the office of Movement, one of Britain’s most important drum’n’bass nights, with a single goal: pitching an edition of the party in Brazil. “I played that tape recorded at the club,” Patife remembers. “And when Bryan Gee saw like 2,000 people singing, he said: ‘Let’s go to Brazil right now!’”
After months of discussion and outrage from residents, the city council of the tiny town of Bandera, Texas voted 3-2 to immediately end its contract with the surveillance company Flock. In the aftermath of the vote, one of the dissenting council members crashed out and said he would be introducing measures to ban cell phones, the internet, cameras, and nearly all technology in the town of roughly 900 people.
Bandera had a state grant to install eight Flock Safety AI license plate reader cameras in the tiny town. The technology proved to be incredibly controversial, with residents repeatedly turning out to city council meetings to say that they did not want government surveillance in the town; the poles that the cameras were installed on were repeatedly destroyed by vandals in protest, leading the town to have to replace them at their own expense. Last week, the town formally decided to abandon its contract with Flock entirely.
After the vote, Councilmember Jeff Flowers, a staunch Flock supporter, said that if people in the town wanted privacy then the city council should basically ban all technology, essentially calling people who did not want government surveillance hypocrites. Flowers said he would propose a series of new regulations at an upcoming city council meeting, which he is calling the “Bandera Declaration of Digital Independence.” In a letter posted by the local newspaper, the Bandera Bulletin, Flowers said that in the name of preserving privacy he would suggest the city go back to the days of 1880 .
“For months, I have listened to the outcry regarding License Plate Recognition (LPR) technology. I have seen the eyerolls, and I’ve even been met with ‘Nazi rhetoric,’ the dangerous claim that believing in accountability and community safety is somehow equivalent to totalitarianism,” Flowers wrote. “Comparing a neighbor’s desire for a safe street to a dark chapter of history is a classic case of comparing apples to oranges; it is a distraction used to avoid the reality of the threats our town faces today.”
Flowers said that at the next city council meeting he will propose “a total ban on all cellular and GPS-capable devices for all operations within city limits. If we are to be truly ‘private,’ we must leave our smartphones at the city line.” He will also propose “a total ban on outward facing cameras,” and “a total termination of all internet services and electronic record-keeping. We are going back to 1880, paper ledgers and cash only.”
Like in many other communities around the country, the use of Flock’s AI cameras has become a major topic of discussion in Bandera. In February, Bandera held a town hall meeting exclusively about Flock that Flowers moderated. Kerry McCormack, a former Cleveland city council member who is now on the public affairs team for Flock, came to that meeting to discuss the technology, demonstrating that the company is sending representatives even to tiny towns in order to promote its use. Bandera paid for its Flock cameras using a public safety grant from the state of Texas; in his letter, Flowers said that the city “didn’t just throw away a state grant (free money), they spent $15,000 of your local tax dollars out of pocket to back out of the deal.”
In an earlier February city council meeting, Flowers said, “I believe personally that guilty people act defensively. If you don’t have anything to hide, then it shouldn’t be a problem. I also believe when you are in a public space, your privacy kind of goes out the window because you are in essence in a public place.”
Bandera had eight Flock cameras installed. At the meeting last week where the town voted to end the Flock contract, residents noted that Bandera has one of the lowest crime rates in the state. Other residents noted that people in the town kept cutting down the poles the Flock cameras are installed on, leading the town to continually spend money and time to replace them. Residents said they felt like they made it clear that they do not want the cameras in the town, but that the town had dragged its feet on actually ending the contract.
“This is the fifth meeting [about Flock]. How many more meetings are we going to have to have before we get to the idea that we don’t need the Flock system?” one resident said in the meeting last week. “How many more meetings is it going to take before we understand the community didn’t vote for this? They don’t want it. How many more times are the cameras going to have to get cut down before somebody realizes it’s not worth the money? It’s coming to a point where we’re going to have to have meetings until we’re all dead […] By putting the cameras back up [after they’ve been cut down], you’re basically baiting someone else to come cut them down or shoot them down, you’re basically causing an issue because we didn’t vote for it.”
Another resident said Flock “doesn’t pass the vibe check. Bandera is the cowboy capital of the world. We don’t need to implement mass government surveillance in our town.”
At the meeting last week, city council members discussed how it was clear residents didn’t want Flock cameras, and that the town had stopped installing new ones, but that it never formally ended the contract. “Call for a vote please,” one council member eventually said. “It’s a waste of time,” to keep discussing a technology that residents didn’t want, they added. At that point, the council proposed to “deactivate and remove any Flock cameras that are city owned,” and voted to end the contract.
The discussion that happened in Bandera is essentially the same one that has played out throughout the country in small towns and large cities across the political spectrum. Time and time again, local politicians advocate for more surveillance even when it is clear their constituents don’t want it. In Troy, New York, the city council voted to end its Flock contract, for example, but the mayor declared a state of emergency to continue using the cameras, The Washington Post reported. In Dunwoody, Georgia, residents have been fighting against Flock after they learned the company was using cameras in the city in sales demos. The city council there elected to slightly tweak its contract with Flock but not end it entirely. Later this week, Flock is throwing a training for police officers about “how to speak with city councils: meeting the moment with confidence.”
In his letter to residents, Flowers said that they should stop being hypocrites by using technology.
“Let’s take Bandera back to 1880 properly. No double standards, no hypocrisy,” Flowers wrote. “If LPRs are ‘unconstitutional’ and invade our right to ‘public’ privacy, we need to be courageous enough to go all the way. I look forward to the ‘Privacy First’ crowd showing up to support these bans [...] just remember to leave your phones at home.”
Earlier this year, after the February town hall meeting, Flowers told the Bandera Bulletin that he believed town residents’ privacy concerns “deserve to be addressed directly and respectfully.” Flowers did not respond to multiple requests for comment from 404 Media.
The Formula 1 driver market is potentially just one domino away from exploding into a frenzy, so what exactly does an F1 driver need to do to get themselves into the best seat on the grid?
Tuapse has been under a state of emergency since late April, when successive waves of drone strikes sparked major fires at the Rosneft-operated oil refinery.
This year marks the 250th Anniversary of America's Declaration of Independence, and our country is at an unprecedented crossroads. At a time when our country should be coming together to celebrate all that we are, how far we've come, and commit to finishing the work to make America a place where freedom and equality are truly for all, a white supremacist faction is pushing our country in the opposite direction. We refuse to comply. Join us on June 27th for a unifying day of marches, rallies, and protests to reject the whitewashing of our past and future.
Of the 150 million appropriated by Congress for bipartisan celebrations, only 25 million is being used for its original purpose, while 100 million has been diverted by the Trumpists for their white supremacist and Christian Nationalist agenda and Trump glorification projects.
As Heather Cox Richardson says, "Replacing Americans' civic identity with Christian nationalism destroys that vitally important understanding of the role of citizens in a democracy. Instead, it demands that Americans do as they are told, turning them into subjects."
See the event partners here. Major events are currently planned in Washington DC, Oakland, Boston, Miami, Philadelphia, Chicago and NYC. You can sign up to host an event in your town here. There will be a nationwide organizing call for event hosts on June 6th.
Personally I wanted to make this post because I'm angry about the 1.1776 billion dollars Trump & co are pretending is a "settlement" for Trump's fake 10 billion against the IRS, which was about to be thrown out by the judge because Trump was directing both sides of the lawsuit.
Congressional democrats are correct, this is not a judicial settlement overseen by a court, it is a slush fund and a way for Trump to pay January 6th riots including the child molesters millions of dollars of taxpayer money with no oversight and no Congressional approval.
***
Anyway. If you're as mad as I am about these corrupt, treasonous, seditionist mofos trying to steal "1776" and the entire concept of a truth and reconciliation commission for their project to end US democracy, make a plan to attend one of these rallies on June 27th. And help spread the word.
Israël enterde opnieuw schepen in internationale wateren. Ditmaal ging het om de Global Sumud Flotilla, een vloot met activisten en hulpgoederen op weg naar Gaza, waaronder ook Nederlandse opvarenden. De onderschepping gebeurde honderden kilometers van Gaza vandaan, nabij Cyprus en Kreta.
Dat detail is juridisch relevant. Een staat mag namelijk niet willekeurig schepen op volle zee enteren. Israël beroept zich al jaren op de blokkade van Gaza. In het internationaal oorlogsrecht bestaat inderdaad een beperkte mogelijkheid om een maritieme blokkade af te dwingen buiten territoriale wateren. Alleen zit daar een cruciale voorwaarde aan: die blokkade moet zelf rechtmatig zijn.
Tot een paar jaar geleden hield dat juridische en diplomatieke verhaal ook nog soort van stand. Alleen vooral omdat Israël voor het Westen nu eenmaal een bondgenoot is. Bondgenoten krijgen traditioneel meer ruimte binnen het internationale recht, zeker wanneer hun tegenstanders gemakkelijk als terroristen of schurkenstaten kunnen worden weggezet. Zolang de humanitaire gevolgen nog enigszins abstract bleven en westerse regeringen bereid waren weg te kijken, konden veel van Israëls acties nog worden verpakt als harde maar legitieme veiligheidspolitiek.
Die rek is er inmiddels al lang uit.
Een blokkade die collectieve bestraffing veroorzaakt, hongersnood faciliteert en humanitaire hulp structureel belemmert, verliest haar legitimiteit. Het Internationaal Gerechtshof, VN-organisaties, mensenrechtenorganisaties en inmiddels ook een groeiend aantal westerse regeringen spreken inmiddels openlijk over ernstige schendingen van het humanitair recht door Israël.
En als de blokkade zelf illegaal is, verdwijnt ook de grondslag om schepen in internationale wateren te onderscheppen. Dan resteert een staat die ver buiten de eigen territoriale wateren gewapenderhand burgerboten aanvalt, communicatie uitschakelt, opvarenden gevangenneemt en hen afvoert naar een Israëlische haven.
Dat valt juridisch nog net geen honderd procent onder de klassieke definitie van piraterij, omdat internationaal recht piraterij meestal definieert als geweld op zee door private actoren en voor private doeleinden. Staten vallen daar dus technisch vaak buiten. Alleen wordt dat onderscheid op een gegeven moment vooral semantisch. Want voor de bemanning van een burgerboot maakt het weinig verschil of ze op volle zee worden geënterd door ‘echte’ piraten of door militairen met een staatsvlag. Het resultaat blijft hetzelfde: gewapende mannen nemen een schip over in internationale wateren, voeren mensen af en verhinderen vrije doorgang op zee.
En ook nu zijn dus ook Nederlanders door een vreemde mogendheid van een schip gehaald en afgevoerd, terwijl de Nederlandse overheid oorverdovend stil is. Het blijft vooral ongemakkelijk geschuifel: “de situatie is nog in ontwikkeling en niet alle feiten zijn bekend”, aldus minister van Buitenlandse zaken Berendsen. Ammehoela. Dit is niet de eerste keer en zal ook niet de laatste keer zijn. Alsof het hier gaat om een vergeten vervoersbewijs in de trein. Stel je voor dat Rusland, Iran of Venezuela Nederlandse burgers in internationale wateren van een schip had gehaald en naar een buitenlandse haven had afgevoerd. Den Haag zou bol staan van spoeddebatten, ferme verklaringen en grote woorden over de internationale rechtsorde.
Ondertussen vaart een genocide plegende kernmacht de Middellandse Zee op om hulpboten te enteren die voedsel en medicijnen richting een uitgehongerde bevolking brengen. Op een gegeven moment houdt juridische acrobatiek op. Dan blijft alleen de daad
zelf over. En die daad begint steeds meer op georganiseerde staats-piraterij te lijken.
Meta's massive role reshuffle begins today, with thousands of staff being transferred to AI-focused teams and their managers reportedly laid off. The tech giant is reassigning 7,000 workers to AI projects, eliminating around 10 percent of its current workforce, and closing 6,000 open positions, according to Reuters, which saw copies of the internal memos. The workforce changes, the latest in a series of moves that started 2022, will affect roughly 20 percent of Meta's approximately 78,000 employees. Janelle Gale, Meta's chief people officer, penned the memos to affected staff. Some have already begun their new AI-related duties, while the rest will be told of their fates today, she reportedly said. "As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI-native design principles into their new org structures," Gale's memo read. "We're now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership." This flatter structure will involve, in part, managers being either laid off or moved into roles where they are producing work instead of overseeing teams. Previous memos sent to staff in April stated that top engineers – those who represented the company's "strong software engineering talent" – were being "selected" for brand-new divisions within the business. Among these were the Applied AI Engineering and Agent Transformation Accelerator units, as well as Central Analytics. Once famed for letting its staff pick and choose their projects, Meta said those selected for this new AI mission had no say in the matter. Responding to an employee's question, Maher Saba, VP of AAI Engineering, wrote: "AAI is one of the company's highest priorities and we're resourcing it by moving our strongest talent to address it. Therefore, the transfers aren't optional." Both AI units were established for engineers to develop AI agents capable of automating and taking over duties previously undertaken by human employees. Those transferred to Central Analytics will work on ways of assessing productivity and analytics for agent development. According to Gale's memo, another new unit called Enterprise Solutions will soon be established, but Meta has not yet revealed details. The Register asked Meta for a statement, but it did not immediately respond. The Great Flattening Gale's language regarding "flatter structures" echoes chief Mark Zuckerberg's wording from Meta's January earnings report, promising to flatten teams over the coming year. "We're elevating individual contributors, and flattening teams," Zuck wrote in a post-earnings note on January 28. "We're starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person. "I want to make sure as many of these very talented people as possible choose Meta as the place they can make the greatest impact – to deliver personalized products to billions of people around the world. And if we do this, then I think we'll get a lot more done and it's going to be a lot more fun." Reports surfaced around the same time about a major round of job cuts at the company, equivalent to 20 percent of its workforce, or around 15,000 roles, but it was unclear when or if this would materialize. Meta's latest round of layoffs follows a smaller-scale round in March, affecting 700 roles across Reality Labs, the social media division, and recruitment. The changes come against a backdrop of Meta investing heavily in AI, with the company saying it plans to spend between $162 billion and $167 billion this year, up from $118 billion in 2025. The company has reportedly also tried tempting top AI talent to join its ranks with nine-figure pay packets, and ex-OpenAI players with $100 million sign-on bonuses. The revolt Meta slashing roles to embrace AI replacements has led to protests across its Menlo Park HQ and internal Workspace comms platform, Reuters reports. First announced in April, Meta said it would be tracking mouse clicks and keystrokes to train AI rather than assess staff productivity. A company spokesperson told the BBC: "If we're building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them." They said the data is not used for any other purpose, and there are safeguards in place to protect sensitive content. But Meta staff have expressed their disdain for the changes in various ways, including by setting up an online petition – which now has over 1,000 signatures – and plastering flyers all over US offices referring to the company as an "Employee Data Extraction Factory." ®
Oceans cover nearly three-quarters of our planet, containing a staggering 96.5 percent of its water. And despite our ever-advancing technologies and cartographic tools, we’ve still only mapped about a tenth of the earth’s oceans. There’s so much we have yet to see or understand, but our reliance on things like fossil fuels and single-use plastics continue to have an indelible impact on the health of marine wildlife and habitats.
Arch Enemy Arts’ forthcoming exhibition, Common Waters, brings these concerns to the fore. From the ethereal weirdness of jellyfish to the delicate branches of corals, the works not only touch on the incredible biodiversity below the surface, but also remind us of the ocean’s power and how human actions can have dire consequences. And while the show takes a playful approach, with an emphasis on beauty and even quirkiness, there is an undeniable aura of anxiety and even sadness—an undercurrent that carries an urgent message.
Juliet Schreckinger, “Navigating”
Many works in Common Waters are fantastical, such as Gerlanda di Francia’s coral-haired siren or Juliet Schreckinger’s octopus being conveyed over the waves by (hopefully) helpful birds. You’ll also find miniature paintings inside of a vintage compact by Shannon Taylor, a sculpted paper relief of a graceful sea turtle by Marisa Aragón Ware, and a matryoshka-like fish coming up for air by Veks Van Villik, plus many more.
The exhibition is presented in collaboration with PangeaSeed, a non-profit that bridges art and science to educate the public about—and advocate for—conserving our oceans. The exhibition brings together works by 60 artists from around the world, focusing predominantly on square-format pieces, all of which draw our attention to some aspect of marine life. A portion of sales proceeds will be donated to PangeaSeed to help with their mission to get people excited about protecting the planet.
Common Waters runs from June 5 to July 5 in Philadelphia. See more on Arch Enemy Arts’ Instagram.
Alex Sugar, “Deep Clean”Gerlanda di Francia, “(Blue) I Am You”Shannon TaylorHanna Jaeun, “One of Us”Marisa Aragón Ware, “Honu”Maya Ripley, “See You On the Other Side”Jessica Dalva, “Seabird”Sophy Tuttle, “Elemental”Cassandra Kim, “Saint Nassau Grouper”Alex Kuno, “Common Waters”
