Weekend Reading
What fresh hell is this? #Corruption #Incompetence
“The first step of Mamdani’s successful campaign was rallying his base, namely young people from all race and class backgrounds. Across the Commie Corridor, the neighborhoods where Millennial and Gen-Z renters makeup an growing percentage of the electorate, voter turnout increased dramatically compared to four years ago. Over the course of several months, Zohran Mamdani worked to expand the electorate; combining moment-meeting, ubiquitous comms (macro) with an unprecedented ground game (field). On Tuesday, turnout increased by between twenty and foty-five percent, and Mamdani went on to annihilate Cuomo in: Ridgewood (+69), Bushwick (+66), East Williamsburg (+66), Greenpoint (+57), Astoria (+52), Greenwood Heights (+42), Fort Greene (+37). Mamdani and Comptroller Brad Lander, who cross-endorsed one another, tag-teamed Cuomo in several of the Brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods west of Prospect Park (Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Carroll Gardens). In the 44th (36K votes) and 52nd (41.5K votes) Assembly Districts, the most vote-rich areas of New York City, Cuomo earned a paltry 14.5% and 16.6% of the vote, respectively. In fact, Cuomo lost more ground to Mamdani in those two Assembly Districts (minus 26K votes), than he gained by winning the Bronx and Staten Island (plus 21K votes). ‘A thorough ass kicking,’ was how a colleague described the carnage. Across left-liberal and progressive neighborhoods, the Mamdani campaign’s flesh-pressing (local) combined with Trump 2.0 dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party establishment (national), spurred a record number of voters to the polls in said ‘No Kings’ neighborhoods.” (Michael Lange/The Narrative Wars)
“(Andrew) Cuomo’s biggest advantage was in money. Billionaires, fearful of Mamdani’s promises to tax the rich, make buses free, and freeze the rent, made it their mission to secure the nomination for Cuomo. According to The New York Times, the pro-Cuomo super PAC Fix the City raised $25 million (including more than $8 million from Michael Bloomberg), making it ‘a financial juggernaut on track to spend three times as much as Mr. Cuomo’s actual campaign legally can.’ Combined with the $8 million that he was legally allowed to spend, the pro-Cuomo campaign spent $33 million. Pro-Mamdani super PACs had less money to work with (roughly $1.7 million in addition to the $8 million in donations to the campaign). Coupled with the money was the support of the media. It was hard not to notice an anti-Mamdani slant not just in the familiar right-wing press (the New York Post) but also in mainstream publications. The New York Times kept harping on Mamdani’s lack of experience and The Atlantic suggested Mamdani was a threat to the safety of Jews. But if all of Cuomo’s advantages led to a thorough election thrashing, perhaps they weren’t advantages. Mamdani proved to be a superb campaigner with a message about affordability that resonated with voters. Cuomo, by contrast, was aloof and seemed to try to see as little of voters as he could get away with. Perhaps he felt that as a former governor, the job was beneath him.” (Jeet Heer/The Nation)
“Zohran was born five years after his father had returned to Kampala from exile in 1986. Two years earlier, Mahmood became stateless after the government of Milton Obote revoked his Ugandan citizenship, while he was attending a conference in Dakar, in response to his outspoken criticism of its policies. He was initially expelled in 1972 by Ugandan President Idi Amin due to his Indian ethnicity. Mahmood carried the scars of rupture, experiences that shaped Zohran’s upbringing and gave him an intimate grasp of what it means to be politically homeless and how to resist it.” (Sherriff Bojang Jnr/TheAfricaReport)
“(Amanda) Marcotte: Everything with Donald Trump obviously is psychological projection—everything he accuses somebody else of is. You know him, he’s a narcissist, so he’s putting his own insecurities on other people. I think often this thing happens more when the object of his ire is a woman. Everything he’s saying about AOC could not be more just projecting his own inadequacies onto her, calling her ‘dumb’ and ‘chaotic.’ It’s so funny because you look at the exchange and she’s everything he’s trying to convince people he is. She’s calm, she’s intelligent, she understands the gravity of the situation, whereas he is a disorderly, stupid, mental child. Greg Sargent: Yeah. And by the way, a woman of color, too, really tends to trigger him more than I think even white women do. Marcotte: Low IQ is one of his favorite go-to racist insults for sure. Sargent: Yes, he constantly applies that to women of color.” (TNR)
“My Marcia (Resnick) memories date back to the Soho News as well. We clicked after discovering our Brooklyn roots, a Mill Basin girl whose father had a print shop on Brighton Beach Avenue around the corner from where I lived. When space opened up on the back page next to the horoscope and Tom Hachtman’s Gertrude’s Follies comix, she proposed a weekly column that would consist of a photo and an extended caption that showed a surrealistic aspect of her persona … Our friendship came in handy when I was assigned to write about John Belushi’s long night on the town, his drug-fueled binge before leaving New York for L.A’s. Chateau Marmont where he ODed six months later. Marcia’s photo of Belushi in a ski mask is perhaps her most famous. My hunch was confirmed in the Washington Post obituary (by Anusha Mathur) that refers to ‘the last studio images of John Belushi …before his fatal drug overdose in 1982’ — in the very first sentence. (Though for me , nothing beats her paparazzi pic of Studio 54’s Steve Rubell embracing evil Roy Cohn, the McCarthy hearings prosecutor and consigliere to Donald Trump, both stoned out of their minds).” (David Hershkovits)
“Vice President JD Vance is on top of the world. Once a critic of President Donald Trump and now his right-hand man, Vance is everywhere—with full MAGA backing. He’s on television promoting the US bombing of Iran. He’s a repeat guest on Theo Von’s podcast. He’s reportedly been key to negotiating the tenuous détente between Elon Musk and Trump. He’s even carved out time to enjoy an offseason soccer tournament match between a German and South Korean team in Cincinnati on Wednesday. Most importantly, he’s also become the highest point of contact in the administration for the Silicon Valley billionaires who helped propel Trump to a second term. The vice president has a much closer relationship with these new players in the GOP than the president does, Trumpworld sources inside and around the administration tell WIRED. Five sources, who all requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, described Vance to me as the most reliable link between the tech industry and the White House, something of a newly constructed bridge between the tech right and the populist MAGA loyalists who stood by Trump through the Capitol riot on January 6. Up-and-comers in the Republican Party have consolidated power thanks to both factions, but with Musk gone for now, Vance is the load-bearing link between the two.” (Jake Lahut/WIRED)
“The Jeff Bezos-Lauren (circa $56 million) Venice-sinking nuptials, tying up every tender on the Grand Canal (and 90 private jets expected), is the big beautiful buster bomb of high-net-worth exhibitionism. Now that the 55- year-old bride Sánchez has proved that landing the fourth richest man in the world requires the permanent display of breasts like genetically modified grapefruit and behemoth buttocks bursting from a leopard-print thong bikini, she’s exuberantly and unapologetically shown that the route to power and glory for women hasn't changed since the first Venetian Republic.” (Tina Brown/Fresh Hell)
“It didn’t take long for Great Defender of the Oligarchy Bill Ackman to step up in defense of the poor quivering capitalists watching Zohran Mamdani from the glass aeries of Manhattan and the deck chairs of the Hamptons estates. Less than 48 hours after the Democratic primary voters of New York City resoundingly kicked Cuomo to the curb in favor of the 33-year-old Democratic Socialist, the Boston-based hedge funder stepped in with some Musk-style electoral bribe money. Seriously, what disorder afflicts this billionaire with a net worth of $9.3 billion that he is so concerned about people getting free bus rides and decent housing? Remember too that Bill lives in – groan, retch – Boston! In what ways could a dent in the wealth inequality of New York City hurt him and his cronies at Pershing Capital? Like the rest of his gang, many of whom are participating this weekend in the Bezos-Sanchez billionaire hog-trough grotesquery in Venice, presumably Bill is either untroubled by, or literally does not see, the toiling multitudes in New York City who work their asses off in multiple menial jobs that keep the urban system running – nurses, taxi drivers, construction, grocery clerks, just to name a few – only to be unable to pay for housing in the nation’s biggest city.” (Nina Burleigh/American Freakshow)
“The 2025 NATO summit in The Hague was all about making U.S. President Donald Trump happy. The red carpet was rolled out for him, both literally and figuratively. Trump was hosted by the Dutch king and queen in the royal palace, making him the first U.S. president to stay there. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte went above and beyond to shower Trump with flattery and ensure his experience in The Hague was positive. ‘He’s a good friend. I trust him,’ Rutte said of Trump at a press conference on Wednesday. Rutte called Trump a ‘man of peace’ but also a ‘man of strength.’ He brushed off questions from reporters as to whether his ingratiating behavior toward Trump was potentially ‘demeaning’ and made him look ‘weak’ … It’s clear that Rutte and other NATO allies are desperate to reverse that trend, and avoiding antagonizing Trump appeared to be one of the primary objectives of the summit—as evidenced by both the shorter schedule and the diminished focus on Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, on top of the efforts to applaud the president for the 5 percent goal … The president’s ambiguity extended to NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause. When asked by reporters on Air Force One whether he was committed to Article 5 while en route to The Hague, Trump said it ‘depends on your definition’ of the principle. But after waking up at the Dutch king’s palace on Wednesday—evidently in an excellent mood—Trump changed his tune. ‘We’re with them all the way,’ he said when asked about his commitment to Article 5.” (Rishi Iyengar and John Haltiwanger/FP)
“An enormous bug-eyed dragon fends off an attack by a pair of lions. The toothy maw of a killer whale erupts from the earth across the way from an immense lumbering tortoise that carries a female figure, perhaps the goddess Fame, on its back. A huge siren with two tails sits opposite an equally large winged harpy with a serpent’s tail and a lion’s claws. These fantastical sculptures are among dozens of such creations lining the paths that wind through a forested ravine below Bomarzo, a medieval town in the Lazio region of Italy. Known as the Sacro Bosco, or the Sacred Wood, this is among the most unusual designed landscapes of the Italian Renaissance. ‘Upon first visiting the Sacro Bosco, I was completely overwhelmed by the scale of the statuary and how interestingly it was woven into the landscape,’ says John Garton, an art historian at Clark University. ‘You would literally come out of vegetation and suddenly there would be this more than two-story-tall monument carved out of native stone. I’ve since realized it’s meant to be jarring. It’s intended to be this site of spectacular revelations where monsters come to life and things that have only been known through literature and books jump out at you.’ The Sacro Bosco was the brainchild of Pier Francesco Orsini, who inherited the duchy of Bomarzo in 1542 and began work on the sculpture park around a decade later. Orsini and others who visited the grounds in the sixteenth century left only a few written references to the wood. Scholars have proposed a variety of ways to interpret the park, but there is little agreement as to what message—if any—Orsini intended to convey through his creation. ‘We have so little information about both the design and the experience of the site when it was laid out,’ says art historian Luke Morgan of Monash University. ‘There are very few documents from the period. No building records exist, for example.’ Even the most basic element of this experience—whether guests were meant to follow a particular route when navigating the park’s walkways, and what that route might have been—is unknown. In the latest attempt to understand Orsini’s vision, Garton, Morgan, and colleagues at the University of Padua and the University of Brescia have launched the Digital Bomarzo Project. They are employing modern imaging technology to thoroughly document the site and better identify what a visitor roaming the Sacro Bosco in the years after it was constructed might have encountered there. In particular, they have made tantalizing new discoveries about how now-defunct fountains would have added an additional sensory dimension to a journey through the unique park.” (Daniel Weiss/Archaeology Magazine)
“The death of music star Liam Payne. Sex trafficking allegations against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs. A deadly car crash involving an Instagram model. Many Americans have only recently learned of the drug known as ‘pink cocaine’ from a deluge of celebrity horror stories. Joseph Palamar, an associate professor of population health at NYU Langone, would say they are late to the party. ‘A lot of people just think it's this new powder that's going around,’ Palamar said. ‘It's a pretty pink powder, and everyone's starting to use it, when it really started increasing was around mid-2023.’ When Palamar first heard of pink cocaine, his team immediately scoured posts on Reddit as part of his research for the National Drug Early Warning System. The organization specializes in narcotics surveillance and collects data on drugs that could rise in popularity and lethality. ‘We've looked at other drugs, and what we found ... is that a lot of times the chatter increases before a lot of poisonings occur,’ said Palamar. Palamar explained there's a whole community called ‘Psychonauts,’ in which people use novel drugs or induce ‘altered states of consciousness’ and post about their experiences. For drug use, Palamar equated it to a diary to alert people to the effects of drugs …One pink cocaine user, who takes the drug at least once a month, agreed to speak with CBS News without revealing her identity. She said she tests each batch for fentanyl but admits she doesn't otherwise know the contents of the drug mixtures she's buying.’ You don't know what is in it every time.’ she said. ‘You don't know what is inside ... there are the ingredients that make you dance. There are ingredients that can make you feel more chill. There are ingredients can make you feel more trippy.’”(Tom Hanson, Laura Geller and Justin Sherman/CBS News)
“It’s hard not to be consumed by outrage whenever glancing at the headlines, what with the world’s most obnoxious person running the place. The only way I can calm down is to read the comments section. I prefer the comments in the Washington Post to those in the New York Times because in the Washington Post they’re allowed to use curse words, and their hate is more vociferous. Also, they give him hilarious nicknames. The New York Times comments section usually calls it quits at around three thousand comments. The Washington Post used to go up to twenty thousand. Which was another plus. Would I sit there reading twenty thousand effusions of hate sometimes tinged with hilarity, sometimes juvenile hilarity? Sometimes. Except it’s not really that hilarious anymore because the situation is so dire. Who knew that politics could hold such tragedy? Shakespeare, I guess. Usually I skip the articles and go straight to the comments section. Because it provides more technical info. For an article about Boeing, the comments will be written by pilots and other aviation professionals including retired air-traffic controllers; an article about legal matters, by trial lawyers or retired judges. In other words: experts, as opposed to some pip-squeak reporter who has to scarf up and assimilate vast amounts of specialized knowledge and then be a genius to produce an accurate assessment of it all. I have learned so much from the comments section. So much more than I have learned from the news articles.” (Nancy Lehmann/The Paris Review)
”His father, who dismissed crypto in 2019 as ‘highly volatile,’ ‘based on thin air’ and a facilitator of illegal activity, is now leading a charge in Washington to boost the industry. At the same time, Eric Trump, who says the Trump Organization is worth between $8bn and $12bn, is striking real estate deals across the world, despite a pledge the group made ahead of his father’s first term to avoid new foreign ventures. ‘We got absolutely no credit for doing it, and we’ve done everything right,” he added, referring to the pledge. ‘I’m really busy and my father’s trying to stop World War Three,’ he said. ‘My father has nothing to do with companies; he’s not running any of our entities. I run great hotels around the world. It’s what I’ve done my entire life; I started on our construction jobs when I was 11 years old. It’s all I’ve ever known.’ Eric Trump said that he was working on ‘several’ hotels in India. A group connected to Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, recently paid a $10mn ‘development fee’ to the Trump Organization. ‘Pick the five biggest cities [in India], and we’re going to be there,’ he said. But, noting the role of geopolitics in potential deals, he said if there were ‘true political stability’ he would enter the Israeli market and has had ‘a hundred’ opportunities to enter China. ‘Our brand is hugely popular in China,’ he said.” (Alex Rogers/FT)
“In a propaganda video entitled ‘Empowerment Generation,’ terrorists with Islamic State West Africa Province show scenes from a training camp in northeastern Nigeria. The video includes aerial views filmed using off-the-shelf quadcopter drones. Unmanned aerial systems (UAS), known as drones, have become indispensable tools for government troops and terrorist groups across Africa due to their low cost, ease of operation and payload flexibility. Although terrorist groups are increasingly weaponizing drones in kamikaze-style attacks against enemy targets, they also are using them to create propaganda videos for recruitment. Rather than dive-bomb a target, some drones hover above the battlefield, capturing footage that is edited into slickly produced videos distributed across social media. In that way, drones again have leveled the battlefield for terrorists, this time by creating an image among potential recruits that terrorist groups such as ISWAP, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin and al-Shabaab are powerful and influential. ‘The mere claim to be using UAS sends a significant psychological message,’ analyst Karen Allen wrote recently for the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies. ‘Communication tools and visual imagery have major symbolic value.’ The new style of terrorist propaganda is heavy on action, including sweeping drone shots of terrorist forces on the move. They’re also light on the lengthy lectures that were terrorist video staples a generation ago. The Islamic State group, widely known as ISIS, adopted drone technology for propaganda purposes early. Since its founding in Syria and Iraq a decade ago, the terror group has become well known for its ability to create propaganda videos. Those skills have spread to Africa as the group seeks footholds on the continent.” (Africa Defense Forum)