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About 250 miles above the Earth, NASA astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) will enjoy an off-duty day for Thanksgiving, along with a group meal that features some celebratory foods.
How they did it: This fall, NASA included a "Holiday Bulk Overwrapped Bag," or BOB, on a resupply mission that went up to the station. The bag contained festive items like clams, oysters, crab meat, quail, and smoked salmon.
About 250 miles above the Earth, NASA astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) will enjoy an off-duty day for Thanksgiving, along with a group meal that features some celebratory foods.
"This is my second Thanksgiving in space, so I highly recommend it," said Mike Fincke, in a video message beamed down from the outpost.
This fall, NASA included a "Holiday Bulk Overwrapped Bag," or BOB, on a resupply mission that went up to the station. The bag contained festive items like clams, oysters, crab meat, quail, and smoked salmon.
"Our ground teams and the food lab at NASA have taken such great care of us," said Zena Cardman, who noted that they'll also have traditional fare like turkey and mashed potatoes, all packaged up in ways that won't cause a mess in microgravity. "We've even got some lobster, which is amazing. So I think it's going to be a really, really delicious meal."
Fincke displayed a can of cranberry sauce, which happened to come from the Russian space agency.
"It's kind of neat to have that up here because that's one of my favorite parts," he said. "I'm going to miss my family, of course. But I'm up here with my space family and it's really awesome."
Cardman and Fincke, along with fellow NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, will share their holiday meal with three Russian cosmonauts and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Kimiya Yui.
"We don't have Thanksgiving in Japan, but here, on ISS, everybody respects each other's culture," said Yui, who added that he was looking forward to the dinner.
And if all goes as planned, more guests will arrive in time for the meal, because a Soyuz rocket with three new crew members for the station, including NASA astronaut Chris Williams, is scheduled to blast off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:27 am Eastern time on Thursday.
Copyright 2025 NPR
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In the early morning hours before the Los Angeles Marathon this Sunday, hundreds of cyclists will take over the streets for a cherished yearly tradition.
For more than a decade, cyclists have come together for the L.A. Marathon Crash Ride, which piggybacks on the 26-mile route and street closures that are in effect for the marathon.
The details: Hundreds of bikers typically pedal to Century City, with some diehards opting to head all the way to Santa Monica. While no one group organizes the ride, numerous local bike clubs meet at the event every year.
The quote: Raff Hernandez, who runs the LA Cycling Community and Calendar, said it’s one of the few times a year when this wave of red lights and cyclists of all kinds are able to reclaim the public space.
Read on... for details on how to join and first-timer tips.
In the early morning hours before the Los Angeles Marathon this Sunday, hundreds of cyclists will take over the streets for a cherished yearly tradition.
For more than a decade, cyclists have come together for the L.A. Marathon Crash Ride, which piggybacks on the 26-mile route and street closures that are in effect for the marathon.
Cyclists typically begin their journey around 4 a.m. Sunday (March 8) at the former site of Tang’s Donuts in Silver Lake. The hundreds of bikers then pedal to Century City, with some diehards opting to head all the way to Santa Monica. While no one group organizes the ride, numerous local bike clubs meet at the event every year.
Raff Hernandez, who runs the LA Cycling Community and Calendar, said it’s one of the few times a year when this wave of red lights and cyclists of all kinds are able to reclaim the public space.
“It helps us not feel so alone. Especially in this ever-growing hostility — especially in this country and around the world — I think that having these groups is really important,” Hernandez said.
He said he's seen the event grow over the years, particularly around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were looking to connect with others outside of a computer screen.
Similar to the rise in running clubs and other communities centered around exercise and the outdoors, Hernandez said there’s no shortage of cycling clubs that funnel into the crash ride every year.
“It’s kind of funny, because you’ll arrive there with your friends and may not actually see them until the very end. Because it becomes that big of a sweeping parade,” he said.
First-timer tips:
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Flock Safety cameras, installed at L.A. State Historic Park in late 2024, are drawing privacy concerns. Critics argue that Flock’s license plate readers constitute unwarranted mass surveillance.
About Flock cameras: The cameras are license plate readers made by Flock Safety, a controversial private surveillance company that works with thousands of police departments and cities in the United States. Flock’s products—which range from automatic license plate readers (ALRPs) to more traditional cameras that can track people in real time—are marketed as AI solutions to help communities reduce crime. Research, however, shows that Flock Safety’s technology isn’t as effective at reducing crime as the technology company claims.
Why it matters: In recent months, amidst ongoing federal immigration raids, police across the country have faced increased pushback from members of the public who fear that federal authorities will get their hands on Flock data collected by local law enforcement agencies. Law enforcement agencies in Southern California—including the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and sheriff’s departments in San Diego and Orange County—searched license plate readers for ICE and Customs and Border Protection (Border Patrol) over 100 times, CalMatters reported.
As cars pull in and out of the parking lot at L.A. State Historic Park in Chinatown, two nondescript-looking black cameras powered by solar panels quietly keep an eye on every vehicle entering or leaving the property.
The cameras are license plate readers made by Flock Safety, a controversial private surveillance company that works with thousands of police departments and cities in the United States.
Flock’s products — which range from automatic license plate readers (ALRPs) to more traditional cameras that can track people in real time — are marketed as AI solutions to help communities reduce crime.
Research, however, shows that Flock Safety’s technology isn’t as effective at reducing crime as the technology company claims. And critics argue that Flock’s license plate readers constitute unwarranted mass surveillance.
“The problem with mass surveillance is that it always expands beyond the uses for which it is initially justified—and sure enough, Flock’s system is undergoing insidious expansion across multiple dimensions,” wrote Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The cameras in L.A. State Historic Park were installed in late 2024, a spokesperson for California State Parks confirmed.
In recent months, amidst ongoing federal immigration raids, police across the country have faced increased pushback from members of the public who fear that federal authorities will get their hands on Flock data collected by local law enforcement agencies.
Last year, 404 Media reported that, although ICE does not have a contract with Flock Safety, researchers found that federal immigration authorities can access Flock’s license plate data by making requests to local law enforcement.
When reached for comment, a park official initially declined to answer basic questions about the Flock cameras.
“This is a public records request that needs to be requested through our legal office in Sacramento,” Public Safety Superintendent Captain Jeff Langley claimed when asked for the date the cameras were installed and for what purpose.
Langley also declined to confirm which law enforcement agencies have access to the license plate readers.
After multiple follow-up emails, Marty Greenstein, Director of Communications for California State Parks, told L.A. TACO in a written statement that the cameras were installed in late 2024, “to deter theft and vandalism, provide useful information for investigating incidents at the park, and provide important notices such as Amber Alert identification.”
Greenstein confirmed that park officials share data from the Flock cameras with “local and state law enforcement agencies in California.” They do not share data with “out-of-state law enforcement agencies or federal agencies,” according to Greenstein.
“State Parks has found these cameras to be a helpful tool at parks throughout the state,” Greenstein noted. “For example, the cameras have assisted in identifying stolen vehicles and locating missing, at-risk individuals.”
California law prohibits local police from sharing data obtained through license plate readers with out-of-state and federal law enforcement agencies without a warrant.
However, previous reporting and audits have shown that California police regularly violate those laws.
Law enforcement agencies in Southern California — including the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and sheriff’s departments in San Diego and Orange County — searched license plate readers for ICE and Customs and Border Protection (Border Patrol) over 100 times, CalMatters reported.
And a 2023 American Civil Liberties Unions (ACLU) study found that 71 California law enforcement agencies violated state law by sharing license plate reader data with out-of-state agencies.
While Flock license plate readers have become regular fixtures in Home Depot parking lots and on private property, it is not common to see Flock cameras in public settings like parks in Los Angeles.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks confirmed with L.A. TACO that there are no Flock cameras across the city’s more than 500 parks and facilities.
In recent years, communities in Los Angeles have increasingly resorted to crowdfunding to pay for and install Flock license plate readers.
Flock Safety credits a camera that was installed by the Baldwin Vista Hillside Neighborhood Association at the only entrance into the neighborhood with helping law enforcement arrest a suspect who was accused of breaking into L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ Baldwin Hills home and stealing two firearms.
Last year, a public debate ensued after wealthy residents in Cheviot Hills raised over $200,000 to buy Flock cameras. The residents donated the cameras to the Los Angeles Police Foundation with one stipulation: the police could use them only in Cheviot Hills.
Efforts to install Flock cameras in neighboring cities have been met with intense pushback.
Last month, the city of Santa Cruz became the first California city to cancel its contract with Flock Safety.
L.A. State Historic Park is unique in that it is a state-run park within the city of Los Angeles that is not only one of the few green spaces in the area but is also a park that regularly hosts community events, concerts, and film shoots, as well as multi-day festivals that bring tens of thousands of people to the park.
Joel Garcia, the director and co-founder of Meztli Projects, an Indigenous-based arts and culture collaborative, was surprised to learn about the Flock cameras in L.A. State Historic Park.
In January, Meztli Projects hosted an event there that brought together various drum-based communities to share in song and dance. At the event, screen printing stations were set up to create posters and other “pro-immigration” materials and resource guides, Garcia explained.
‘It was a response directly to what’s happening with ICE and the Trump administration," Garcia told L.A. TACO during an interview.
Garcia said he noticed the solar panel that powers one of the Flock cameras upon entering the parking lot. But he thought it powered a light.
“I always thought that was solar paneling for lighting,” he said.
When he checked with his colleagues, nobody said they were aware that there were license plate readers in the parking lot.
“I didn’t notice them either,” Garcia said.
“Unfortunately we are getting normalized to a level of surveillance [similar to] post 9-11, but this weaponizing of ‘public safety tools’ especially at a state park is unacceptable,” Garcia said in a written statement to L.A. TACO. “For many the state park [and] Yaanga, has been a place of convening and arrival since before this country. The irony of these cameras disrupting that legacy is upsetting."
Across from the present-day park once stood River Station, Garcia noted, a major passenger railroad stop during the late 1800s and early 1900s that brought huge numbers of immigrants to Los Angeles.
“[The park] has been a place of arrival for many different societies,” Garcia noted.
Having worked with the park before, Garcia said he’s noticed that there is sometimes a “disconnect” between what local park staff believes in and the decisions that regional park staff make for the park.
“There’s a huge disconnect between what happens up top and what happens at the park,” Garcia said.
Ultimately, however, Garcia sees this conflict as an “opportunity to empower.”
“[At times] there’s folks on the inside who want to help, and sometimes we as organizers have to provide them the tools to help,” Garcia said. “That may include connecting park staff with tribal leadership, or delivering the messaging that community members want to convey.”
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The Library of Congress has found and restored a long-lost silent film by Georges Méliès. In an Instagram post, Library of Congress moving image curator Jason Evans Groth said the film represents, "probably the first instance of a robot ever captured in a moving image."
About the film: The 45-second-long, one-reel short Gugusse et l'Automate – Gugusse and the Automaton – was made nearly 130 years ago. But the subject matter still feels timely. The film, which can be viewed on the Library of Congress' website, depicts a child-sized robot clown who grows to the size of an adult and then attacks a human clown with a stick. The human then decimates the machine with a hammer.
About the filmmaker: The famed 19th century French filmmaker is best known for his groundbreaking 1902 science fiction adventure masterpiece Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon). The scene in which a rocket lands playfully in the eye of Méliès' anthropomorphic moon in Le Voyage dans la Lune is one of the most famous moments in cinematic history. And he helped to popularize such special effects as multiple exposures and time-lapse photography.
The Library of Congress has found and restored a long-lost silent film by Georges Méliès.
The famed 19th century French filmmaker is best known for his groundbreaking 1902 science fiction adventure masterpiece Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon).
The 45-second-long, one-reel short Gugusse et l'Automate – Gugusse and the Automaton – was made nearly 130 years ago. But the subject matter still feels timely. The film, which can be viewed on the Library of Congress' website, depicts a child-sized robot clown who grows to the size of an adult and then attacks a human clown with a stick. The human then decimates the machine with a hammer.
In an Instagram post, Library of Congress moving image curator Jason Evans Groth said the film represents, "probably the first instance of a robot ever captured in a moving image." (The word "robot" didn't appear until 1921, when Czech dramatist Karel Čapek coined it in his science fiction play R.U.R..)
"Today, many of us are worried about AI and robots," said archivist and filmmaker Rick Prelinger, in an email to NPR. "Well, people were thinking about robots in 1897. Very little is new."
Groth said the film arrived in a box last September from a donor in Michigan, Bill McFarland. "Bill's great grandfather, William Frisbee, was a person who loved technology," Groth said. "And in the late 19th century, must have bought a projector and a bunch of films and decided to drive them around in his buggy to share them with folks in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York."
McFarland didn't know what was on the 10 rusty reels he dropped off at the Library of Congress' National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Va. A Library article about the discovery describes the battered, pre-World War I artifacts as having been, "shuttled around from basements to barns to garages," and that they, "could no longer be safely run through a projector," owing to their delicate condition. "The nitrate film stock had crumbled to bits on some; other strips were stuck together," the article said. It was a lab technician in Michigan who suggested McFarland contact the Library of Congress.
"The moment we set our eyes on this box of film, we knew it was something special," said George Willeman, who heads up the Library's nitrate film vault, in the article.
Willeman's team carefully inspected the trove of footage, which also contained another well-known Méliès film, Nouvelles Luttes extravagantes (The Fat and Lean Wrestling Match) and parts of The Burning Stable, an early Thomas Edison work. With the help of an external expert, they identified the reel as having been created by Méliès because it features a star painted on a pedestal in the center of the screen – the logo for Méliès Star Film Company.
Méliès was one of the great pioneers of cinema. The scene in which a rocket lands playfully in the eye of Méliès' anthropomorphic moon in Le Voyage dans la Lune is one of the most famous moments in cinematic history. And he helped to popularize such special effects as multiple exposures and time-lapse photography.
Presumed lost until the Library of Congress's discovery, Gugusse et L'Automate loomed large in the imaginations of science fiction and early cinema buffs for more than a century. In their 1977 book Things to Come: An Illustrated History of the Science Fiction Film, authors Douglas Menville and R. Reginald described Gugusse as possibly being, "the first true SF [science fiction] film."
"While it may seem that no more discoveries remain to be made, that's not the case," said Prelinger of the work's reappearance. "Here's a genuine discovery from the early days of film that no one anticipated."
Copyright 2026 NPR
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Two months past a statutory deadline, California’s top fire safety regulator published a report Monday on whether and how the state should legalize mid-rise apartment buildings with a lone staircase.
The backstory: In California, as in much of North America, apartment buildings over three stories are required to have at least two staircases. This rule is meant to give residents multiple ways out in the event of a fire. But a coalition of Yes in my Backyard activists, architects and urbanists argue that much of the world does just fine with single-stair apartment blocks and that the state’s restrictive stairwell regs make it more difficult and costly to build modestly sized apartments on small city parcels.
About the report: The report, published by the Office of the State Fire Marshal, takes a fairly dim view of the “single stair” cause, but offers a few policy recommendations to state legislators should they move forward with the idea anyway. Though modern safety measures, such as automatic sprinkler systems, smoke detectors and self-closing doors reduce the risks associated with smoke and flame, they “do not fully substitute for the redundancy of two independent stairway” which “is important for maintaining safety in the face of unforeseen failures,” the report read. It also recommends that the state should not consider going up to six stories, the current standard in Culver City.
Two months past a statutory deadline, California’s top fire safety regulator published a report Monday on whether and how the state should legalize mid-rise apartment buildings with a lone staircase.
If this doesn’t sound like riveting news, you may have missed the brewing battle between pro-housing advocates and firefighting professionals over the cause of “single-stair reform” and whether America’s fire-averse building standards are standing in the way of more affordable, higher quality urban living.
The report, published by the Office of the State Fire Marshal, takes a fairly dim view of the “single stair” cause, but offers a few policy recommendations to state legislators should they move forward with the idea anyway.
At least one Democratic legislator appears intent on doing just that with legislation aimed at rewriting the state building code.
In California, as in much of North America, apartment buildings over three stories are required to have at least two staircases. This rule is meant to give residents multiple ways out in the event of a fire. But a coalition of Yes in my Backyard activists, architects and urbanists argue that much of the world does just fine with single-stair apartment blocks and that the state’s restrictive stairwell regs make it more difficult and costly to build modestly sized apartments on small city parcels.
Though modern safety measures, such as automatic sprinkler systems, smoke detectors and self-closing doors reduce the risks associated with smoke and flame, they “do not fully substitute for the redundancy of two independent stairway” which “is important for maintaining safety in the face of unforeseen failures,” the report read.
If state lawmakers opt to change the law anyway, the report recommended that single-stair apartment buildings max out at four stories, rather than three, and that they be subject to additional safety rules. The state should not consider going up to six stories — the current standard in New York City, Seattle, Honolulu and Culver City — without a second fire marshal study, the report concluded.
In its section on financial implications, the report also evaluated three mid-rise apartment projects and found that a second staircase made up between 7.5% and 12% of estimated total construction costs.
Though the findings mirror those contained in an earlier draft of the report CalMatters obtained in February, they came as a disappointment to some supporters of looser staircase requirements.
“As to be expected from this group,” said Bubba Fish, the Culver City councilmember who spearheaded that city’s single stair ordinance last year, in a text message. He called the four story max “ridiculous,” noting that even with that modestly relaxed requirement, California’s building code would remain out of step with much of the world.
The report is more than two months tardy, missing the January 1 deadline set by a 2023 bill authored by Milpitas Democratic Assemblymember Alex Lee.
Lee said that his office was still reviewing the report’s findings late Monday afternoon. But in a written statement, he expressed enthusiasm for future changes to the building code.
“Stairway requirements can have a profound effect on what does and does not get built in our neighborhoods, Lee said. “With the development of modern fire mitigation measures, it is critical that we re-evaluate our building codes and unlock previously undevelopable properties to build more housing."
Last month, Lee introduced a bill with the express intent of allowing “housing buildings with 4 or more stories to have a single stair entry and exit,” but which so far includes no additional detail.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
