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On Birthday Headlines, you can see the stuff that was going on in the world the day you were born. Simply type in your birthday and then click "show headlines." If you're lucky, you'll find out that something really cool and exciting happened on the day you were born. — Read the rest
The post "Happy birthday, you were born during a cabbage recall": this website tells you what was happening when you entered the world appeared first on Boing Boing.
I did it. After a lifetime of using light mode on all my devices, I switched to dark mode. My eyes just can’t take it anymore, and after a few days of using it, I decided dark mode was actually kind of cozy and nice. So it was time to update my light mode art with a new version!
Two recent statements from the surveillance company—one addressing Illinois privacy violations and another defending the company’s national surveillance network—reveal a troubling pattern: when confronted by evidence of widespread abuse, Flock Safety has blamed users, downplayed harms, and doubled down on the very systems that enabled the violations in the first place.
Flock’s aggressive public relations campaign to salvage its reputation comes as no surprise. Last month, we described how investigative reporting from 404 Media revealed that a sheriff’s office in Texas searched data from more than 83,000 automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras to track down a woman suspected of self-managing an abortion. (A scenario that may have been avoided, it’s worth noting, had Flock taken action when they were first warned about this threat three years ago).
Flock calls the reporting on the Texas sheriff’s office “purposefully misleading,” claiming the woman was searched for as a missing person at her family’s request rather than for her abortion. But that ignores the core issue: this officer used a nationwide surveillance dragnet (again: over 83,000 cameras) to track someone down, and used her suspected healthcare decisions as a reason to do so. Framing this as concern for her safety plays directly into anti-abortion narratives that depict abortion as dangerous and traumatic in order to justify increased policing, criminalization, control—and, ultimately, surveillance.
As if that weren’t enough, the company has also come under fire for how its ALPR network data is being actively used to assist in mass deportation. Despite U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) having no formal agreement with Flock Safety, public records revealed “more than 4,000 nation and statewide lookups by local and state police done either at the behest of the federal government or as an ‘informal’ favor to federal law enforcement, or with a potential immigration focus.” The network audit data analyzed by 404 exposed an informal data-sharing environment that creates an end-run around oversight and accountability measures: federal agencies can access the surveillance network through local partnerships without the transparency and legal constraints that would apply to direct federal contracts.
Flock Safety is adamant this is “not Flock’s decision,” and by implication, not their fault. Instead, the responsibility lies with each individual local law enforcement agency. In the same breath, they insist that data sharing is essential, loudly claiming credit when the technology is involved in cross-jurisdictional investigations—but failing to show the same attitude when that data-sharing ecosystem is used to terrorize abortion seekers or immigrants.
In growing from a 2017 startup to a $7.5 billion company “serving over 5,000 communities,” Flock allowed individual agencies wide berth to set and regulate their own policies. In effect, this approach offered cheap surveillance technology with minimal restrictions, leaving major decisions and actions in the hands of law enforcement while the company scaled rapidly.
And they have no intention of slowing down. Just this week, Flock launched its Business Network, facilitating unregulated data sharing amongst its private sector security clients. “For years, our law enforcement customers have used the power of a shared network to identify threats, connect cases, and reduce crime. Now, we’re extending that same network effect to the private sector,” Flock Safety’s CEO announced.
The company is building out a new mass surveillance network using the exact template that ended with the company having to retrain thousands of officers in Illinois on how not to break state law—the same template that made it easy for officers to do so in the first place. Flock’s continued integration of disparate surveillance networks across the public and private spheres—despite the harms that have already occurred—is owed in part to the one thing that it’s gotten really good at over the past couple of years: facilitating a surveillance social network.
Employing marketing phrases like “collaboration” and “force multiplier,” Flock encourages as much sharing as possible, going as far as to claim that network effects can significantly improve case closure rates. They cultivate a sense of shared community and purpose among users so they opt into good faith sharing relationships with other law enforcement agencies across the country. But it’s precisely that social layer that creates uncontrollable risk.
The possibility of human workarounds at every level undermines any technical safeguards Flock may claim. Search term blocking relies on officers accurately labeling search intent—a system easily defeated by entering vague reasons like “investigation” or incorrect justifications, made either intentionally or not. And, of course, words like “investigation” or “missing person” can mean virtually anything, offering no value to meaningful oversight of how and for what the system is being used. Moving forward, sheriff’s offices looking to avoid negative press can surveil abortion seekers or immigrants with ease, so long as they use vague and unsuspecting reasons.
The same can be said for case number requirements, which depend on manual entry. This can easily be circumvented by reusing legitimate case numbers for unauthorized searches. Audit logs only track inputs, not contextual legitimacy. Flock’s proposed AI-driven audit alerts, something that may be able to flag suspicious activity after searches (and harm) have already occurred, relies on local agencies to self-monitor misuse—despite their demonstrated inability to do so.
And, of course, even the most restrictive department policy may not be enough. Austin, Texas, had implemented one of the most restrictive ALPR programs in the country, and the program still failed: the city’s own audit revealed systematic compliance failures that rendered its guardrails meaningless. The company’s continued appeal to “local policies” means nothing when Flock’s data-sharing network does not account for how law enforcement policies, regulations, and accountability vary by jurisdiction. You may have a good relationship with your local police, who solicit your input on what their policy looks like; you don’t have that same relationship with hundreds or thousands of other agencies with whom they share their data. So if an officer on the other side of the country violates your privacy, it’d be difficult to hold them accountable.
ALPR surveillance systems are inherently vulnerable to both technical exploitation and human manipulation. These vulnerabilities are not theoretical—they represent real pathways for bad actors to access vast databases containing millions of Americans’ location data. When surveillance databases are breached, the consequences extend far beyond typical data theft—this information can be used to harass, stalk, or even extort. The intimate details of people’s daily routines, their associations, and their political activities may become available to anyone with malicious intent. Flock operates as a single point of failure that can compromise—and has compromised—the privacy of millions of Americans simultaneously.
Rather than addressing legitimate concerns about privacy, security, and constitutional rights, Flock has only promised updates that fall short of meaningful reforms. These software tweaks and feature rollouts cannot assuage the fear engendered by the massive surveillance system it has built and continues to expand.
Flock’s insistence that what’s happening with abortion criminalization and immigration enforcement has nothing to do with them—that these are just red-state problems or the fault of rogue officers—is concerning. Flock designed the network that is being used, and the public should hold them accountable for failing to build in protections from abuse that cannot be easily circumvented.
Thankfully, that’s exactly what’s happening: cities like Austin, San Marcos, Denver, Norfolk, and San Diego are pushing back. And it’s not nearly as hard a choice as Flock would have you believe: Austinites are weighing the benefits of a surveillance system that generates a hit less than 0.02% of the time against the possibility that scanning 75 million license plates will result in an abortion seeker being tracked down by police, or an immigrant being flagged by ICE in a so-called “sanctuary city.” These are not hypothetical risks. It is already happening.
Given how pervasive, sprawling, and ungovernable ALPR sharing networks have become, the only feature update we can truly rely on to protect people’s rights and safety is no network at all. And we applaud the communities taking decisive action to dismantle its surveillance infrastructure.
Follow their lead: don’t stop de-flocking.
Originally published to the EFF Deeplinks blog.
When Joe Biden wanted the Department of Education to forgive student loans, the Supreme Court shut him down hard. The Court spent pages in Biden v. Nebraska explaining why the Department lacked authority under the HEROES Act, demanding “clear congressional authorization” for such a significant policy change.
But when Donald Trump wants to dismantle the entire Department of Education without any congressional authorization? That gets a rubber stamp with no explanation at all.
The hypocrisy is staggering, and it reveals everything you need to know about how the Roberts Court actually operates.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about how the Supreme Court blessed human trafficking with literally zero explanation. The Court stayed a lower court order that required basic due process protections for people being shipped to random countries around the world—including war zones where migrants face torture, slavery, or death. No analysis. No reasoning. Just: “go ahead and traffic people to South Sudan” (which has now happened).
This wasn’t an aberration. Yesterday, they did it again. This time, they’re letting Trump dismantle the Department of Education.
In Linda McMahon v. New York, the Supreme Court issued an order that allows the Trump regime to move forward with gutting the Department of Education.
Without explaining the reasoning.
After Trump’s Secretary of Education Linda McMahon put in place plans to fire nearly 50% of the department’s workforce overnight—what she called “the first step on the road to a total shutdown of the Department”—two lower courts stepped in to block this obvious violation of the separation of powers.
The Supreme Court’s response? Lift the injunction. Let Trump proceed with dismantling a Cabinet-level agency that only Congress has the power to abolish. And offer absolutely no explanation for why this is legal or constitutional.
As law professor Steve Vladeck pointed out, the statistics are damning:
Since April 4, #SCOTUS has issued 15 rulings on 17 emergency applications filed by Trump (three birthright citizenship apps were consolidated).
It has granted relief to Trump … in all 15 rulings.
It has written majority opinions in only 3.
Today’s order is the 7th with no explanation at all.
Fifteen for fifteen. That’s not jurisprudence—that’s a rubber stamp. By way of comparison, in the 16 years of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies, the two presidents combined only asked (let alone got) emergency docket relief eight times.
The emergency docket is supposed to be for… emergencies. It’s supposed to preserve the status quo while more fully briefed cases make their way through the courts. Instead, the Court is using it to let Trump implement his most legally dubious policies while avoiding the scrutiny that comes with actually having to explain their reasoning.
And the hypocrisy here is staggering.
Just two years ago, having the Department of Education forgive student loans was supposedly beyond the pale and required extended analysis. But letting Trump fire half the department’s workforce overnight and effectively shut down the agency that Congress created? That gets a rubber stamp with no explanation at all.
Justice Sotomayor’s 19-page dissent (joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson) is a masterpiece of righteous indignation. She methodically dismantles the majority’s abandonment of constitutional principles:
This case arises out of the President’s unilateral efforts to eliminate a Cabinet-level agency established by Congress nearly half a century ago: the Department of Education. As Congress mandated, the Department plays a vital role in this Nation’s education system, safeguarding equal access to learning and channeling billions of dollars to schools and students across the country each year.
Only Congress has the power to abolish the Department.
She then delivers the key point:
When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.
But the conservative majority couldn’t be bothered to address any of this. They just waved through Trump’s power grab without explanation.
Justice Sotomayor’s dissent here follows the path that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has blazed recently: writing not just for her colleagues, but for the public and for history. As Jay Willis noted at Balls & Strikes, Justice Jackson has been remarkably willing to call out the Court’s partisan hackery. In case after case, she’s been pointing out that the Court has “demonstrated enthusiasm for green lighting this president’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture.”
Sotomayor appears to be joining this approach. Rather than maintaining polite judicial fiction, she’s directly calling out the majority’s “willful blindness” and warning about the “grave” threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers. Jackson’s dissents have become a running commentary on the Court’s transformation from a judicial body into a partisan enabler of authoritarian rule. Now Sotomayor is adding her voice to this historical record. As Wills notes, they’re writing for the public, assuring millions of Americans that they’re not wrong to question the good faith of a Republican-controlled Court that keeps siding with a Republican president.
For as long as she remains stuck in the minority, it might also be the most important part of her job: If she cannot persuade her colleagues that the Constitution does not imbue Donald Trump with an inviolate right to ignore it, she can at least use her platform to show the public that the institution is captured, broken, and not to be taken seriously.
This approach has reportedly frustrated some of their colleagues, who seem to think there’s still value in maintaining decorum among justices. But Jackson and (hopefully, now) Sotomayor understand something important: when the Court stops explaining itself, it stops being a court and becomes just another political institution.
As Vladeck wrote about the human trafficking case, the Court’s refusal to explain itself creates chaos:
The more important point is that this dispute has happened only because the six (or five) justices who voted to stay some of Judge Murphy’s earlier rulings didn’t explain themselves. In that respect, the contretemps in D.V.D. can be directly traced to one of my biggest criticisms of the shadow docket—the justices’ regular refusal, even when granting emergency relief, to explain why they’ve done so. Alas, I’ve been beating this drum for years. But it’s hard to think of a more pointed or compelling example of what can happen when the Court doesn’t write.
Well, now he’s got a second example.
Without explanations, parties and lower courts are left to speculate about what the justices actually meant. That’s particularly problematic when the disputes involve governmental policies affecting millions of people.
More fundamentally, principled explanations are what separate judicial power from raw political power. When the Court stops explaining itself, it stops being a court worthy of respect.
This isn’t just about immigration or education policy. It’s about the fundamental principle that government officials must follow court orders until they’re properly overturned. By repeatedly rewarding Trump’s defiance of lower court rulings, the Supreme Court is teaching every future administration that court orders are optional if you have the right political connections.
Well, at least he’s teaching Republican administrations that, as the Biden v. Nebraska case appears to make it clear, this doesn’t apply to Democratic administrations.
The McMahon case is particularly egregious because, as Sotomayor details, the Trump administration openly admitted it was trying to shut down an agency that only Congress can abolish. They fired thousands of employees without any analysis of how this would affect the department’s statutorily mandated functions. When asked during a congressional hearing whether they had conducted such an analysis, McMahon simply said “No.”
This is executive lawlessness, plain and simple. And the Supreme Court is actively enabling it.
The Department of Education administers over $120 billion in federal student aid to over 13 million students. It enforces civil rights laws in schools. It provides funding for special education services for more than 7 million students with disabilities. It channels over $100 billion annually to public schools.
It is fundamental infrastructure to the American education system.
All of this is now at risk because six justices couldn’t be bothered to write a few paragraphs explaining why the President can unilaterally dismantle Cabinet-level agencies.
Students with disabilities will lose services. Schools will lose funding. Civil rights protections will disappear. All so Trump can fulfill a campaign promise to “close up the Department of Education” without the inconvenience of actually getting Congress to agree.
Each lawless decision like this makes it clearer that the Roberts Court’s legacy will be the complete destruction of public faith in the judiciary. John Roberts spent years wringing his hands about declining trust in the Court, but he’s presiding over its transformation into a partisan institution that serves power rather than law.
This isn’t just about “declining trust”—that’s already happened. The question now is what comes next when courts stop being courts and become just another political institution competing for legitimacy.
The Court is teaching Americans that the rule of law only applies to those without political connections to the right people. Why should anyone respect judicial decisions when the justices themselves have abandoned any pretense of impartiality?
Justice Sotomayor’s dissent ends with a warning that applies far beyond this case:
The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.
The conservative majority isn’t naive. They know exactly what they’re doing. They’re systematically dismantling the constraints on executive power, one unexplained shadow docket ruling at a time.
And they’re doing it without even having the decency to explain why.
One of the remarkable things about a city like London, which has been inhabited for nearly 2,000 years, is that no matter where a developer chooses to build, chances are there’s some relic of the past buried below ground. Archaeologists are routinely called to new development sites to carefully verify the presence—or not—of everything from early structures to centuries-old graveyards. And in a place founded by the Romans shortly after 43 C.E., we can occasionally glimpse astonishing finds from well over 1,000 years ago.
This year, a team of researchers from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) has been hard at work in a development site known as The Liberty, which has already revealed ancient mosaics and a mausoleum. But the discoveries keep coming. Scattered in pieces, the city’s largest-ever collection of painted Roman plaster was found amid the rubble, dating back at least 1,800 years.
The first structures on this site appeared between 43 and 150 C.E., and the frescoed wall would have stood in a high-status Roman building. Sometime before 200 C.E., the building was demolished and the plaster pieces discarded in a pit. Seeing the light of day for the first time since, it was a dream opportunity for MOLA researchers.
Han Li, MOLA’s Senior Building Material Specialist, spent three months reconfiguring the artwork with the help of a team of researchers. He explained that pieces had been jumbled together when the building was demolished, so figuring out how the fresco was originally composed took a lot of tinkering and patience. “It was like assembling the world’s most difficult jigsaw puzzle,” he says.
Even the most avid jigsaw fans will appreciate that this type of puzzle is a real mind-bender—there’s no picture to look at for comparison. But there are clues. This era of Roman painting commonly incorporated color panels with border motifs and elements that imitated stone slabs like porphyry without the expense or labor involved in hauling that much material. And while this work is fairly representative of the style, the use of the color yellow is particularly rare and found in only a few very luxurious buildings around the U.K.
The fresco also tells the story of visitors and passersby who left graffiti, including an image of a crying woman with a hairstyle common in the Flavian period (69 to 96 C.E.) and a carved Greek alphabet. It’s thought that the latter could have served a practical purpose, like a tally sheet or a checklist.
One special detail comes in the form of what’s known as a tabula ansata, a carving of a decorative tablet that Roman artists used to sign their work. It contains the Latin word “FECIT,” which means “has made this.” Sadly, the part where the artist’s name would have appeared is too broken to determine, so their identity will likely remain a mystery.
Explore more of MOLA’s excavations and projects on its website.
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 London’s Largest Ancient Roman Fresco Makes for the ‘World’s Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle’ appeared first on Colossal.
ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2025, hosted by Royal Observatory Greenwich and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, has just released its shortlist of remarkable images to this year’s competition (previously). For its 17th edition, jurors selected 30 photos from more than 5,580 entries, submitted from all over the world, that highlight the incredible formations and phenomena of the Solar System.
In the Eastern New District of Xinxing County, Guangdong, China, PengFei Chou captured the Sun during a solar prominence, with a plasma eruption that extended more than 310,000 miles into space. The image comprises 20 stacked data sets to illuminate the entire process, as if caught in slow-motion.
Along with distant nebulae, comets, and eclipses, photographers also captured cosmic drama framed by terrestrial landscapes. Benjamin Barakat chronicles stars making circles in the sky as the Earth appears to spin around a dragon tree in Firmihin Forest, Hidaybu District, Yemen. And Jim Hildreth documented a glowing arc of the Milky Way as it swept over Moonscape Overlook in Wayne County, Utah.
Winners in 10 categories, including an overall winner, will be announced on September 11. An exhibition then opens the following day at the National Maritime Museum. Peruse all of the shortlisted photographs and plan your visit on the Royal Museums Greenwich website.
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 The ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2025 Shortlist Revels in Our Remarkable Solar System appeared first on Colossal.
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