Snap decisions: why crowding into a photo booth with friends is still a magical experience | Nova Weetman
Last New Year’s Eve, I was out with a friend,We had no plans, so we met at a local cinema and then wandered the long street between our houses, pausing for a drink or two in various bars and chatting to strangers doing the same,We stopped when we became hungry and shared a plate of curries and drank beer in the window of an Indian restaurant, watching the parade of partygoers outside,Then we walked to the top of the hill to watch the fireworks lighting up the sky,It was after midnight as we strolled back but we weren’t quite ready to call it a night, and we found ourselves in a games arcade where a bunch of women were cramming into a photo booth to take a strip of black-and-white photos together.
Their enthusiasm was infectious and so we waited until they were finished and did the same.I now have the strip of photos stuck on my fridge, secured under a magnet for a local plumber.In them, we are both grinning wildly at the camera, our faces squashed close, the years of friendship evident in our expressions.When I was cleaning up my parents’ house after my dad died, I found boxes of photographs that I’d left behind when I moved out.They chronicled my teens and 20s and showed faces that I’d long forgotten.
Among them was a single rectangle black-and-white frame that looked to be cut from a much-longer strip of photos.I like to imagine that, after crowding into the photo booth and posing for the shots, the three of us couldn’t afford more strips, so we cut this one up and took a panel each.In the shot, I have long hair pulled tight into a ponytail but my smile is much the same as it is now.I don’t remember when we posed for the photo but it would probably have been on a rare night out in the city as we trekked in on the train from the outer eastern suburbs and spilled out to all the promise of the grown-up world.I stuck this single frame next to the New Year’s Eve photos on my fridge.
Two nights out, nearly 40 years apart.And a record of who I was as a young friend and of who I am now.Looking at the photos, I decided that I needed more to fill my fridge and so these became the beginning of something bigger.Now, whenever I’m out late with friends and we pass a photo booth, I drag them in so that I can add to the mini gallery of faces I love looking at each day.There is something about the strip photos that preserves friendship for me in a way that a single photograph does not.
Perhaps it is because the photographs exist as a series of changing poses that suggests evolution or complexity to a friendship, where a single image captures an isolated pose.Or perhaps it is due to being squashed together and staring up at the lens, waiting for the flash that never seems to go off when you imagine it will, and finally when it does come you’ve already given up posing so the images are more candid than any you prepare for.Despite most of us carrying mobile phones equipped with technology that takes far better photographs than a booth does, crowding into a machine with friends to take strip photos is still a thing.I wonder if it is because there is something magical about having to wait by the booth for the strip to finish printing and pop out into the tray before we then crowd around to check if our hair looks OK or if our smile is straight.The rarity of waiting for the photos to print seems to increase the joy.
I have thousands of photographs on my phone snapped without much consideration for form or composition and I rarely look at them,But a strip photo is proof of something, it’s tangible and real,And importantly, these tiny squares don’t tell the whole picture of whatever is happening because there is no background,They aren’t an attempt at capturing an event like other photos are,These are something simpler, a reminder of a mood, a feeling, a connection between us and the people we care about.
And they are a record of a moment in time that we can stick on our fridge.Nova Weetman is an award-winning author of books for children and young adults, including The Edge of Thirteen, winner of the Abia award 2022
Facebook slow to act on posts celebrating Bondi beach massacre, anti-hate group says
Facebook hosted terrorist propaganda that celebrated the murder of Jews and praised Islamic State, a leading anti-hate group has alleged.The posts included celebrations of the Bondi beach massacre that the Community Security Trust says Facebook has been too slow to take down. The posts were still on Facebook on 16 December, two days after the attack, and received shares and likes.Some accounts are Britain-based and those have been reported to counter-terrorism police in the UK as a matter of urgency.One post shows video of the aftermath of the Bondi beach attack, which was allegedly carried out by a father and son who were IS supporters, and says: “Allah is the greatest and praise to Allah
We must take control of AI now, before it’s too late | Letters
“When the AI bubble bursts, humans will finally have their chance to take back control”, says the headline on Rafael Behr’s article (23 December). I think it’s more likely that when the AI bubble bursts, the creators of the crisis, along with other wealthy economic actors, will be in the rooms with the politicians telling them how to “rescue” us all by transferring wealth in some way from average citizens to the already extremely wealthy. Just like they did during the financial crisis of 2008.We need to be ready with alternative plans. For example, world governments could coordinate to buy, for suitably low prices, majority shares in any crashing tech company that actually produces something useful, ensuring that those shares come with full voting rights
When swiping up doesn’t get you far | Letters
Speaking of odd habits as a result of using technology (Letters, 25 December), I once passed a bus shelter where a mother was waiting with her young child. The shelter had a huge poster of a new mobile phone and the toddler was leaning out of its buggy and desperately swiping the screen of the phone, presumably in the hope of getting cartoons.Ron BaileyNewcastle upon Tyne I read Joanna Rimmer’s letter on this subject and tried to “like” it.Heather BradfordWinchester Which tablet/ebook user hasn’t absentmindedly put their finger on a printed word they don’t know expecting to see the dictionary definition pop up?Tim MartineauWirral, Merseyside I don’t understand why, when reading a physical copy of the Guardian, the page doesn’t scroll when I swipe up. Can this be corrected, please?Geoff Skinner Kensal Green, London I once picked up a pencil to underline something on Wikipedia
Cryptocurrency slump erases 2025 financial gains and Trump-inspired optimism
As 2025 comes to a close, Donald Trump’s favorable approach to cryptocurrency has not proven to be enough to sustain the industry’s gains, once the source of market-wide optimism and enthusiasm. The last few months of the year have seen $1tn in value wiped from the digital asset market, despite bitcoin hitting an all-time-high price of $126,000 on 6 October.The October price peak was short-lived. Bitcoin’s price tumbled just days later after Trump’s announcement of 100% tariffs on China sent shockwaves across the market on 12 October. The crypto market saw $19bn liquidated in 24 hours – the largest liquidation event on record
‘This will be a stressful job’: Sam Altman offers $555k salary to fill most daunting role in AI
The maker of ChatGPT has advertised a $555,000-a-year vacancy with a daunting job description that would cause Superman to take a sharp intake of breath.In what may be close to the impossible job, the “head of preparedness” at OpenAI will be directly responsible for defending against risks from ever more powerful AIs to human mental health, cybersecurity and biological weapons.That is before the successful candidate has to start worrying about the possibility that AIs may soon begin training themselves amid fears from some experts they could “turn against us”.“This will be a stressful job, and you’ll jump into the deep end pretty much immediately,” said Sam Altman, the chief executive of the San Francisco-based organisation, as he launched the hunt to fill “a critical role” to “help the world”.The successful candidate will be responsible for evaluating and mitigating emerging threats and “tracking and preparing for frontier capabilities that create new risks of severe harm”
‘Why should we pay these criminals?’: the hidden world of ransomware negotiations
They call it “stopping the bleeding”: the vital window to prevent an entire database from being ransacked by criminals or a production line grinding to a halt.When a call comes into the cybersecurity firm S-RM, headquartered on Whitechapel High Street in east London, a hacked business or institution may have just minutes to protect themselves.S-RM, which helped a high-profile retail client recover from a Scattered Spider cyber-attack has become a quiet, often word-of-mouth, success.Many of the company’s senior workers are multilingual and have a minimal online footprint, which reveals scant but impressive CVs suggestive of corporate or government intelligence-based careers.S-RM now claims the UK’s largest cyber-incident response team
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