The tech business will remake New York even without Amazon.
If an instrument could measure the level of New Yorkers’ complaints about their city, it would probably register a constant, four century-long roar increasing with the population. Vocal discontent is an unreliable indicator of how we actually live. Say, then, that a computer could grind through the city’s history, compiling photographs, newspapers, art, and piles of data into a quotient that measured the richness of urban life. When, precisely, would that number have peaked? In 1999, when crime had plummeted from its highest point a decade earlier but the words Times Square were regularly hitched to Disneyfied? In 1979, when the city had emptied out into the suburbs but a rebellious creativity broke out amid broken glass and empty lots? In 1959, when the middle class took center stage but black and Latino neighborhoods were being bulldozed for the sake of opera and ballet? In every era, some people’s vision of the future conflicts with another group’s experience of the present and with a third cohort’s nostalgia: “You should have seen it back when …” But maybe if you could run all those waves of happiness and discontent through a wisely formulated (aye, there’s the rub) algorithm, you could determine on which date New York was at its finest and why that was so. Wouldn’t it be shocking to discover that the peak is actually today?
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
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