Is there anything more soothing than a sleeping baby swan—known as a cygnet? Or anything more illustrative of the relationship between nature and urban development in the U.K. than the red fox, which are seen in neighborhoods as often as in the wild? For this year’s British Wildlife Photography Awards (BWPA), photographers from around Great Britain and its islands—including young, budding documentarians—highlight some of the region’s most beloved creatures.

Paul Hobson’s black-and-white image of a leaping, silhouetted toad takes top honors this year, captured at a pond near his home in Sheffield. He snapped the photo from inside the pond, having built a glass box that could settle into the water and protect his camera as the active amphibians bounding over it. The right shot took some patience, too, as toads would often swim over the box and sit on top of it rather than jumping across.

Additional category winners include Barry Webb’s slime molds, Sarah Darnell’s dramatic feud between two brown hares in Norfolk, Alastair Marsh’s bold portrait of a pine marten amid the heather in Arnamurchan, Scotland, and Jamie Smart’s up-close snap of a leaf-cutter bee peeping out from its nest.

Smart’s bold photo won the 11 and Under category, in which kids get to show their stuff. There are also 12 to 14 Years and 15 to 17 Years categories. “I adore bees and have spent a lot of time this year studying them and finding out about what I can do to help the wild bees around our garden thrive,” Smart says. She built a bee hotel for her back yard and managed to capture the leaf-cutter specimen peeking out from its safe place.

See all the winning images in BWPA’s online gallery, plus a print publication. And if you’d like to submit your own wildlife photos taken in Great Britain, you have until June 7 to enter your own images to next year’s contest.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Dueling Hares and Leaping Toads Top the 2026 British Wildlife Photography Awards appeared first on Colossal.

ARNHEM (ANP) - Een 21-jarige man uit Zoetermeer is vorige week woensdag opgepakt in verband met een schietincident in het winkelcentrum Kronenburg in Arnhem, meldt de politie dinsdag. Hierbij raakte op zaterdag 21 februari een omstander lichtgewond.

De politie laat weten dat de rechter-commissaris het voorarrest van de opgepakte verdachte dinsdag met veertien dagen heeft verlengd. Op de dag van het schietincident werd ook al iemand opgepakt. Diegene werd kort daarna weer vrijgelaten en is geen verdachte meer in de zaak.

Het slachtoffer dat lichtgewond raakte was "op het verkeerde moment op de verkeerde plek", liet de politie destijds weten.

Het winkelcentrum ligt in de gelijknamige wijk Kronenburg.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Grote uitvaartverzorgers in Nederland zien vooralsnog geen reden om de prijs van crematies te verhogen, ondanks de sterk stijgende kosten voor gas. Dat komt doordat de bedrijven werken met langlopende vaste gascontracten, zeggen Monuta en DELA.

"De situatie in het Midden-Oosten heeft niet direct een effect", zegt een woordvoerster van Monuta. Daarbij maakt het uitvaartbedrijf ook gebruik van elektrische crematieovens. "Wij werken met verschillende gascontracten, de eerste die bij ons afloopt is in 2027", zegt een woordvoerster van DELA.

Volgens haar worden hogere kosten sowieso niet een-op-een doorberekend aan de consument. "We kijken altijd wat we zelf kunnen opvangen", aldus de zegsvrouw. DELA, eigenaar van Yarden, is de grootste uitvaartverzorger in Nederland.

Crematieovens zijn aangesloten op het gasnet en gemiddeld is voor een crematie ongeveer 60 kubieke meter gas nodig. De prijs van gas is sinds de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten met bijna de helft gestegen.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - De Tweede Kamer heeft tegen aangekondigde bezuinigingen op de gehandicaptenzorg van het nieuwe kabinet gestemd. Met een minimale meerderheid van 75 tegen 74 sprak de Kamer zich uit tegen de plannen.

Tijdens een debat vorige week werd duidelijk dat bijna alle oppositiepartijen de bezuinigingen op de gehandicaptenzorg niet zien zitten. Ook veel andere zorgbezuinigingen kunnen niet op steun van de meeste oppositiepartijen rekenen. Het kabinet heeft met 66 zetels een minderheid in de Tweede Kamer en is afhankelijk van andere partijen om plannen erdoor te krijgen.

De coalitie kwam één stem tekort, omdat een VVD-Kamerlid niet bij de stemmingen aanwezig was. Nadat de motie van onder meer Mirjam Bikker (ChristenUnie) was aangenomen, werd luid op de bankjes geroffeld, een teken van goedkeuring in de Kamer.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Asielminister Bart van den Brink (CDA) wil optreden als migranten ten onrechte een verblijfsvergunning hebben gekregen door fraude te plegen met de erkenning van het ouderschap van een kind. Als zij hierop worden betrapt, beloofde de CDA-bewindsman tijdens het wekelijkse vragenuur om hun verblijfsvergunning in te trekken, ook als zij die al langere tijd hebben.

Bij deze vorm van fraude laten migranten hun kind erkennen door een wildvreemde Nederlander, vaak tegen betaling. Vervolgens maken het kind en de ouder aanspraak op een verblijfsvergunning.

D66, VVD en CDA hebben in hun coalitieakkoord afspraken gemaakt om hiertegen op te treden. De partijen willen een select aantal gemeenten verantwoordelijk maken voor de erkenning van buitenlandse kinderen. Het idee is dat ze daardoor expertise opbouwen en fraude sneller herkennen.

Kamerleden van rechtse partijen vroegen in het debat om meer actie. De minister beloofde om begin april met een plan van aanpak te komen.

PARIJS (ANP) - Het Internationaal Energieagentschap (IEA) houdt dinsdag een buitengewone vergadering over de leveringszekerheid van olie en brandstoffen, maakte directeur Fatih Birol bekend. Op de bijeenkomst bespreken leden, waaronder Nederland, de mogelijke vrijgave van noodreserves olie.

De bekendmaking volgt op een bijeenkomst van energieministers van de G7-landen. Daar gaf Birol een update over de visie van het agentschap op de ontwikkelingen op de gas- en oliemarkten. Het IEA speelt bij problemen op de wereldwijde energiemarkten de rol van coördinator. Birol verklaarde dat hij ook in nauw contact staat met landen die veel energie produceren en verbruiken.

Door de oorlog van Israël en de Verenigde Staten tegen Iran is er amper vervoer mogelijk via de Straat van Hormuz. Die zeestraat is erg belangrijk voor de toevoer van olie en vloeibaar gemaakt aardgas uit het Midden-Oosten. Dat leidde tot stijgende prijzen. Een afschaling van de olieproductie in de regio verergerde die situatie de afgelopen dagen, stipte Birol aan.

“Billionaires made 19 percent of all reported federal campaign contributions in 2024, a Times analysis shows, and even more in some local elections.” The Scale of Billionaires’ Campaign Donations is Overwhelming U.S. Politics.

Today's links

• Ad-tech is fascist tech: Surveillance advertising is just surveillance.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Washpo v Bernie; Activists v Saif Gadaffi's London mansion; Spacefaring v contract language; Tuna-can tiffin pail; France v encryption.
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

Ad-tech is fascist tech (permalink)

A core tenet of the enshittification hypothesis is that all the terrible stuff we're subjected to in our digital lives today is the result of foreseeable (and foreseen) policy choices, which created the enshittogenic policy environment in which the worst people's worst ideas make the most money:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/10/say-their-names/#object-permanence

Take commercial surveillance. Google didn't have to switch from content-based ads (which chose ads based on your search terms and the contents of webpages) to surveillance-based ads (which used dossiers on your searches, emails, purchases and physical movements to target ads to you, personally). The content-based ads made Google billions, but the company made a gamble that surveillance-based ads would make them more money.

That gamble had two parts: the first was that advertisers would pay more for surveillance ads. This is the part we all focus on – the collusion between people who want to sell us stuff and companies willing to spy on us to help them do it.

But the other half of the bet is far more important: namely, whether spying on us would cost Google anything. Would they face fines? Would users collect massive civil judgments over these privacy violations? Would Google face criminal charges? These are the critical questions, because even if advertisers are willing to pay a premium for surveillance ads, it only makes sense to collect that premium if the excess profit it represents is larger than the anticipated penalties for committing surveillance crimes.

What's more, advertisers and Google execs all work for their shareholders, in a psychotic "market system" in which the myth of "fiduciary duty" is said to require companies to hurt us right up to the point where the harms they inflict on the world cost them more than the additional profits those harms deliver:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/18/falsifiability/#figleaves-not-rubrics

But the policymakers who ultimately determine whether the fines, judgments and criminal penalties outstrip the profits from spying – they work for us. They draw their paychecks from the public purse in exchange for safeguarding our interests, and they have manifestly failed at this.

Why did Google decide to start spying on us? For the same reason your dog licks its balls: because they could. The last consumer privacy law to make it out of the US Congress was a 1988 bill that banned video-store clerks from disclosing your VHS rentals:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/31/losing-the-crypto-wars/#surveillance-monopolism

And yes, the EU did pass a comprehensive consumer privacy law, but then abdicated any duty to enforce the GDPR, because US Big Tech companies pretend to be Irish, and Ireland is a crime-haven that lets the tax-evaders who maintain the fiction of a Dublin HQ break any EU law they find inconvenient:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/01/erin-go-blagged/#big-tech-omerta

The most important question for Google wasn't "Will advertisers pay more for surveillance targeting?" It was "Will lawmakers clobber us for spying on the whole internet?" And the answer to that second question was a resounding no.

Why did policymakers fail us? It's not much of a mystery, I'm afraid. Policymakers failed us because cops and spies hate privacy laws and lobby like hell against them. Cops and spies love commercial surveillance, because the private sector's massive surveillance dossiers are an off-the-books trove of warrantless surveillance data that the government can't legally collect. What's more, even if the spying was legal, buying private sector surveillance data is much cheaper than creating a public sector surveillance apparatus to collect the same info:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

The harms of mass commercial surveillance were never hard to foresee. 20 years ago, Radar magazine commissioned a story from me about "the day Google turned evil," and I turned in "Scroogled," which was widely shared and reprinted:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070920193501/https://radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2007/09/google_fiction_evil_dangerous_surveillance_control_1.php/

Radar is long gone, though it's back in the news now, thanks to the revelation that it was financed via Jeffrey Epstein as part of his plan to both control and loot magazines and newspapers:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Epstein/comments/142bufo/radar_magazine_lines_up_financing_published_2004/

But the premise of "Scroogled" lives on. 20 years ago, I wrote a story in which the bloated, paranoid, lawless DHS raided ad-tech databases of behavioral data in order to target people for secret arrests, extraordinary rendition, and torture.

It took a minute, but today, the DHS is paying data-brokers and ad-tech giants like Google for commercial surveillance data that it is using to feed the systems that automatically decide who will be kidnapped, rendered and tortured by ICE:

https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/27/ice_data_advertising_tech_firms/

I want to be clear here: I'm not claiming any prescience – quite the reverse in fact. My point is that it just wasn't very hard to see what would happen if we let the surveillance advertising industry run wild. Our lawmakers were warned. They did nothing. They exposed us to this risk, which was both foreseeable and foreseen.

Nor did the ICE/ad-tech alliance drop out of the sky. The fascist mobilization of ad-tech data for a racist pogrom is the latest installment in a series of extremely visible, worsening weaponizations of commercial surveillance. Just last year, I testified before Biden's CFPB at hearings on a rule to kill the data-broker industry, where we heard from the Pentagon about ad-tech targeting of American military personnel with gambling problems with location-based ads that reached them in their barracks:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/20/privacy-first-second-third/#malvertising

Biden's CFPB passed the data broker-killing rule, but Trump and DOGE nuked it before it went into effect. Trump officials didn't offer any rationale for this, despite the fact that the testimony in that hearing included a rep from the AARP who described how data brokers let advertisers target seniors with signs of dementia (a core Trump voter bloc). I don't know for sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Stephen Miller wing of the Trump coalition wanted data brokers intact so that they could use them to round up and imprison/torture/murder/enslave non-white people and Trump's political enemies.

Despite this eminently foreseeable outcome of the ad-tech industry, many perfectly nice people who made extremely nice salaries working in ad-tech are rather alarmed by this turn of events:

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/

On Adxchanger.com, ad-tech exec David Nyurenberg writes, "The Privacy ‘Zealots’ Were Right: Ad Tech’s Infrastructure Was Always A Risk":

https://www.adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/the-privacy-zealots-were-right-ad-techs-infrastructure-was-always-a-risk/

Nyurenberg opens with a very important point – not only is ad-tech dangerous, it's also just not very good at selling stuff. The claims for the efficacy of surveillance advertising are grossly overblown, and used to bilk advertisers out of high premiums for a defective product:

https://truthset.com/the-state-of-data-accuracy-form/

There's another point that Nyurenberg doesn't make, but which is every bit as important: many of ad-tech's fiercest critics have abetted ad-tech's rise by engaging in "criti-hype" (repeating hype claims as criticism):

https://peoples-things.ghost.io/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype/

The "surveillance capitalism" critics who repeated tech's self-serving mumbo-jumbo about "hacking our dopamine loops" helped ad-tech cast itself in the role of mind-controlling evil sorcerers, which greatly benefited these self-styled Cyber-Rasputins when they pitched their ads to credulous advertisers:

https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

Nyurenberg points to European privacy activists like Johnny Ryan and Max Schrems, who have chased American surveillance advertising companies out of the Irish courts and into other EU territories and even Europe's federal court, pointing out that these two (and many others!) have long warned the world about the way that this data would be weaponized. Johnny Ryan famously called ad-tech's "realtime bidding" system, "the largest data breach ever recorded":

https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/453/html/

Ryan is referring to the fact that you don't even have to buy an ad to amass vast databases of surveillance data about internet users. When you land on a webpage, every one of the little boxes where an ad will eventually show up gets its own high-speed auction in which your private data is dangled before anyone with an ad-tech account, who gets to bid on the right to shove an ad into your eyeballs. The losers of that auction are supposed to delete all your private data that they get to see through this process, but obviously they do not.

And Max Schrems has hollered from the mountaintops for years about the inevitability of authoritarian governments helping themselves to ad-tech data in order to suppress dissent and terrorize their political opposition:

https://www.bipc.com/european-high-court-finds-eu-us-privacy-shield-invalid

Nyurenberg says his friends in ad-tech are really upset that these (eminently foreseeable) outcomes have come to pass, but (he says), ad-tech bosses claim they have no choice but to collaborate with the Trump regime. After all, we've seen what Trump does to companies that don't agree to help him commit crimes:

https://apnews.com/article/anthropic-trump-pentagon-hegseth-ai-104c6c39306f1adeea3b637d2c1c601b

Nyurenberg closes by upbraiding his ad-tech peers for refusing to engage with their critics during the decades in which it would have been possible to do something to prevent this outcome. Ad-tech insiders dismissed privacy activists as unrealistic extremists who wanted to end advertising itself and accused ad-tech execs of wanting to create a repressive state system of surveillance. In reality, critics were just pointing out the entirely foreseeable repressive state surveillance that ad-tech would end up enabling.

I'm quite pleased to see Nyurenberg calling for a reckoning among his colleagues, but I think there's plenty of blame to spread around. Sure, the ad-tech industry built this fascist dragnet – but a series of governments around the world let them do it. There was nothing inevitable about mass commercial surveillance. It doesn't even work very well! Mass commercial surveillance is the public-private partnership from hell, where cops and spies shielded ad-tech companies from regulation in exchange for those ad-tech companies selling cops and spies unlimited access to their databases.

Our policymakers are supposed to work for us. They failed us. Don't let anyone tell you that the greed and depravity of ad-tech are the sole causes of Trump's use of ad-tech to decide who to kidnap and send to a Salvadoran slave-labor camp. Policymakers should have known. They did know. They had every chance to stop this. They did not.

(Image: Jakub Hałun, CC BY 4.0; Myotus, CC BY-SA 4.0; Lewis Clarke, CC BY-SA 2.0; modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)

• A Wild Day as Trump DOJ Settles with Live Nation/Ticketmaster, State Enforcers Balk https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/a-wild-day-as-trump-doj-settles-with

• Waging war for the lulz https://www.garbageday.email/p/waging-war-for-the-lulz

• Live Nation Settlement Spurs Chaos in Court https://prospect.org/2026/03/09/live-nation-settlement-spurs-chaos-in-court/

• Wikilinker https://whitelabel.org/2026/03/09/wikilinker/

• Centrists: Better Things Aren’t Possible https://prospect.org/2026/03/10/centrists-better-things-arent-possible-democrats-south-carolina-third-way/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Toronto transit fans to Commission: withdraw anagram map lawsuit threat https://web.archive.org/web/20060407230329/http://www.ttcrider.ca/anagram.php

#15yrsago BBC newsteam kidnapped, hooded and beaten by Gadaffi’s forces https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-12695077

#15yrsago Activists seize Saif Gadaffi’s London mansion https://web.archive.org/web/20110310091023/https://london.indymedia.org/articles/7766

#10yrsago Spacefaring and contractual obligations: who’s with me? https://memex.craphound.com/2016/03/09/spacefaring-and-contractual-obligations-whos-with-me/

#10yrsago Home Depot might pay up to $0.34 in compensation for each of the 53 million credit cards it leaked https://web.archive.org/web/20160310041148/https://www.csoonline.com/article/3041994/security/home-depot-will-pay-up-to-195-million-for-massive-2014-data-breach.html

#10yrsago How to make a tiffin lunch pail from used tuna fish cans https://www.instructables.com/Tiffin-Box-from-Tuna-Cans/

#10yrsago “Water Bar” celebrates the wonder and fragility of tap water https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2016/03/world-s-first-full-fledged-water-bar-about-open-minneapolis/

#10yrsago French Parliament votes to imprison tech execs for refusal to decrypt https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/france-votes-to-penalise-companies-for-refusing-to-decrypt-devices-messages/

#10yrsago Anti-censorship coalition urges Virginia governor to veto “Beloved” bill https://ncac.org/incident/coalition-to-virginia-governor-veto-the-beloved-bill

#10yrsago Washington Post: 16 negative stories about Bernie Sanders in 16 hours https://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/08/washington-post-ran-16-negative-stories-bernie-sanders-16-hours

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• San Francisco: Launch for Cindy Cohn's "Privacy's Defender" (City Lights), Mar 10
  https://citylights.com/events/cindy-cohn-launch-party-for-privacys-defender/

• Barcelona: Enshittification with Simona Levi/Xnet (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
  https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doctorow/

• Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
  https://conference.bioneers.org/

• Montreal: Bronfman Lecture (McGill) Apr 10
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disrupter-tickets-1982706623885

• London: Resisting Big Tech Empires (LSBU)
  https://www.tickettailor.com/events/globaljusticenow/2042691

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

Recent appearances (permalink)

• Chicken Mating Harnesses (This Week in Tech)
  https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1074

• The Virtual Jewel Box (U Utah)
  https://tanner.utah.edu/podcast/enshittification-cory-doctorow-matthew-potolsky/

• Tanner Humanities Lecture (U Utah)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Yf1nSyekI

• The Lost Cause
  https://streets.mn/2026/03/02/book-club-the-lost-cause/

• Should Democrats Make A Nuremberg Caucus? (Make It Make Sense)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWxKrnNfrlo

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1038 words today, 46380 total)

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

Launch predictions continue to be optimistic as 2027 and Artemis III near

SpaceX has rolled another Starship super heavy booster to the launch pad as the company's boss, Elon Musk, admits the first launch of Starship V3 had slipped.…

Eight people were killed by 18-year-old in Canada, who had described violent scenarios involving guns to ChatGPT

• Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox

The family of a child critically injured one of Canada’s worst mass shootings is suing OpenAI, arguing the technology company could have prevented the attack on a school last month.

The lawsuit comes days after the head of OpenAI said he would apologize to the families of a remote Canadian town after violence shattered the tight-knit community.

I’ve spent my adult years fighting to pay the bill, drinking insultingly weak cups of tea and making small talk on the bus. But life is too short

Sunday lunch guests often check in the day before, but this text was different. Rather than making sure of the time, or wondering what to bring, it was a bold, direct question. “Is it cold in your house?”

I stared at my phone screen in awe. This was revolutionary. I’ve been freezing in so many homes, but it had never occurred to me to make temperature inquiries in advance so I could wear a thicker jumper or thermals. Even if I’d had the idea, I probably wouldn’t have followed through for fear of appearing rude, preferring instead to slowly lose the feeling in my toes. But here was proof that, for a host, this kind of query is welcome – after all, most people want their guests to be comfortable and have a nice time, unless they’re a dominatrix.

The 600kg Van Allen probe A will re-enter Tuesday evening, with most of it burning before reaching Earth’s surface

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Parts of a giant Nasa satellite will crash to Earth on Tuesday evening, the US space agency is warning – but the chance of being struck is extremely low.

According to the US military’s Space Force, the roughly 1,323lb (600kg) spacecraft, one of twin probes launched in 2012 to investigate the Van Allen radiation belt, is estimated to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at about 7.45pm EDT.

Every year, we bring attention to some the events and features that focus around the art, profession and expression of film photography. And within that broad and beautiful practice lies a more specific medium, instant film. While Flickr is a digital platform, all forms of analog photography are shared, appreciated and celebrated here. That’s why we chatted with a community that truly lives and breaths instant film. Meet the Instant Film Society! Get to know their community and the exciting things they’re doing to keep the world of instant film connected and thriving.

Flickr: Can you tell us about Instant Film Society? What are your organization’s mission and goals?  

Instant Film Society: Instant Film Society was formed in 2012 by Daniel Rodrigue and Justin Goode in Denton, TX, to increase awareness and understanding of instant film photography. At the time, Polaroid film had just shut down and the future was bleak, but film could still be found and the fledgling fan base was still looking for community. Daniel and Justin started organizing photo walks, or “polawalks”, around the Dallas/Fort Worth region, and soon they were attracting folks from all over the country. 

Flickr: What kind of services do you offer your members?  

IFS: We’re a 501(c)(3) non-profit, so everything we do is to serve the instant film community. We offer educational workshops to the community and organize regular photo walks and other gatherings to give other likeminded people a group to share their love of instant photography. For the past 10 years, we’ve also hosted the 3-day PolaCon conference in Denton/Dallas, TX each September, which has grown to include events in San Francisco in March and Brooklyn, NY in May.

Flickr: Among the different programs you run, which one stands out as the most successful? What factors do you believe have contributed to its success? 

IFS: By far, our most successful event, not a program really, are the three annual PolaCon conferences. Each event draws hundreds of photographers from all over the world for three days of walks, workshops, product demos, and community. We’ve had attendees come as far as England, Germany, and Argentina! I think one thing that makes it so successful is the scope and the chance to meet other photographers from other places. Many communities have photography groups or organize walks, which is so important. But PolaCon has emerged as an opportunity to meet artists from other places IRL instead of only communicating on Instagram, or elsewhere online.

Flickr: Can you share an example of how your organization has made a difference in someone’s life or the community? 

IFS: Each year at PolaCon, we hear attendees say they’ve finally found a place where they truly belong. Many look forward to reconnecting with their PolaCon friends all year long — and even joke about experiencing “post-PolaCon depression” when the event ends.

By intentionally creating an environment where like-minded people can gather to share ideas, inspire one another, and create together, we’ve helped build genuine community. That sense of belonging has sparked photo walks and instant film groups in cities across the U.S., extending the impact far beyond the event itself. We’ve also watched complete beginners attend PolaCon having never shot instant film before — only to return the following year with their own instant camera in hand. Seeing people discover a new creative outlet, gain confidence, and find their community is the difference we’re most proud of.

Flickr: How are IFS members utilizing Flickr’s site & features?  

IFS: Flickr provides an uncluttered experience for IFS members to gather online where we can just focus on sharing and enjoying each others’ work and not working about what the algorithm wants us to see, or without having to navigate through irrelevant and annoying video content. We can use message features to ask questions and learn from one another, and just appreciate each others’ work. It helps foster our wider community in-between PolaCons. I hope that doesn’t sound like a promo, but many of our community members – especially our younger ones – want an alternative to the big corporate apps, and Flickr has emerged as a perfect alternative.

Flickr: Is there anything that you wish more people knew about IFS? 

IFS: We’re a 501(c)(3) non-profit, so everything we do is for the community, and goes back to the community. We’re also an all-volunteer organization. Everything we do is for the love of instant film.

Flickr: What are some ways people can get involved and support the efforts of your organization? 

IFS:  Yes, first you can attend PolaCon! PolaCon Bay Area is March 12-15, 2026, and PolaCon NYC take place May 29-31, 2026. The original PolaCon will take place this Fall in Denton and Dallas, TX. You can stay up to date by visiting our website, or following our Instagram accounts. You can also sign up on our email list on our website, and even make a donation there if you’d like. 

Flickr: What are you most excited about for IFS in the next year?  

IFS: We keep growing! Our board just expanded to include a East Coast Director and West Coast Director, so we’re off to a very encouraging start with two new members. Meanwhile, we have lots of conversations going for new events and ideas, but we can’t talk about those yet. 

Thanks to the Instant Film Society for being part of the Flickr community! If you’re a long time fan of instant film or just checking it out for the first time, visit Instant Film Society’s Flickr group to meet other instant film fans. And if you haven’t heard about ‘RoidWeek, then we have another instant film focused event to share while you are setting up your calendars for Polacons and photography walks with friends. Headed this way in April is the spring edition of Polaroid Week aka ‘RoidWeek, so give the group a join and continue your journey on capturing those instant film classics!

photo credit: AndyOdom, Alexas, Laurent Été, Steve Rainwater

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