From "information wants to be free" to this

I just want to update everybody that in waiting out the hot-rat-piss smell weather, I then was faced with the "nah, man, you don't want to lie down in that puddle" weather, which I also used as an excuse to not do the job

Don’t cross the picket line today, Tuesday, May 26! Join us by refusing to click any articles or interacting in any way with our five McClatchy newspapers.

Penn Station news rundown: Streetsblog reports this morning that the $8 billion "investment" touted by USDOT Sec. Sean Duffy last week was really just the estimated cost of the project -- not an investment being made by the feds. This is interesting given another thing that happened last week...

Fun fact I learned while reporting on BusPatrol's efforts to get their tech aboard NYC school buses: The company was formed by board members of another school-bus-tech firm named "Force Multiplier Solutions"

I saw chaos inside and outside of the ICE detention center Delaney Hall today. Detainees protesting the lack of due process, the disgusting food and poor treatment while their families and advocates stood outside calling for help. 1/4

New Yorkers, they get the job done.

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

Another reminder: if there exists *any* class of people who don't have due process rights, then *nobody* actually has due process rights because the government can always just say you're in that class.

I would frankly watch an entire season of Colbert on public access alongside Jack White...

Bikes on the beat, Union Square edition: A Bud Light branded 90s Canondale MTB with the most amazing cantilever return spring setup I’ve ever seen

I wrote about why governments must stop relying upon Facebook and X/Twitter to communicate vital disaster information to the public a while back - unfortunately, this issue is only getting worse. You can do something about it: write to your local authorities and demand they change their approach.

First time doing a darning repair by hand. Pleased with it, might reinforce it with a patch on the inside.

Hudson Highland Hiking News

A 1y/o baby had elevated lead levels traced to a Black and Decker blender, according to an incident report filed by a local health official to the CPSC. When Consumer Reports found lead in two of the same B&D blenders, the CPSC report disappeared. Stellar work from @lkirchner.bsky.social

NYDN ed board: "...it can’t be the case that federal agents can openly, even gleefully violate the law and the only consequence is that their arrests don’t quite stick, after they’ve already upended someone’s life and only if that person happens to get pro bono legal assistance."

“Assuming courts will save us absolves our political leaders of both responsibility and accountability for allowing this kind of mischief to continue, and it absolves all of us of our responsibility to refuse to tolerate those who would just as quickly shrug their shoulders and move on.” My latest:

“Everyone, especially in South Sudan, wanted to know if the US really had cut off aid. It was easier for them to believe that the aid organizations were lying to them than to think that the United States would do this.”

Fantastically written, this one www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/u...

HOLY SHIT prosecutors kicked off grand jurors and then re-presented the case against the Broadview 6, then altered the grand jury transcripts to hide it from the judge. www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

I’ve covered Chicago’s federal courthouse for 11 years and have never seen a hearing like this one.

Solidarity among a press corps makes it a much harder one to spin/control

There’s political reporting, and then there’s gumshoe work. @josepagliery.bsky.social Knocks it out of the park, hot on the heels of NJ’s missing rep

When this happens, the next reporter has to ask the EXACT SAME QUESTION. This is not that hard!

Exclusive @theathleticfc.bsky.social NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani secures 1,000 World Cup tickets at $50 to be balloted for New Yorkers (the cheapest at the WC) Inside the meeting with Infantino (& Wenger on FaceTime) & how Mamdani negotiated a rare FIFA concession. www.nytimes.com/athletic/729...

This isn't in the opinion section; this is in the news.

That big ball of wind and rain that just hit the city seems to have played havoc with the trains. Delays on E and F due to flooding at Jamaica-179 in Queens, delays on the Q and the B due to downed trees in Brooklyn. Scattered signal issues on the L and Franklin Ave. Shuttle.

A follow-up from @gothamist.com on my scoop from last week: a loose panel on Amtrak's brand new Acela train kicked off the fire that strangled Penn Station service for a day and a half.

USDOT announced its pick for a developer to rebuild Penn Station today. And its the same one Trump teased to a New York Post columnist before submissions were even closed.

Minnesota prohibits prediction markets, promptly gets sued by Trump admin arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

BREAKING: Feds announce Halmar / ASTM as their pick to rebuild Penn Station -- same plan Trump hinted at weeks ago in an interview with the NY Post Story TK

MTA Board approved a refund for LIRR customers who hold May monthly tickets, for the four days that service was suspended due to a labor action. That would amount to an approx 13% refund, which will be automatically applied to a customers’ payment method if tickets were purchased in TrainTime.

Tidbit from the MTA Board Meeting -- LIRR monthly ticket holders will be receiving a refund for the days the railroad was down during the strike

Don’t sleep on “let’s have that debate” from a guy who gutted a national newspaper

👀👀👀👀

This is Bayonne erasure www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/u...

“It turns out that would-be authoritarians don’t need to staff their regimes with ideological true believers…They just need to figure out how to target their ideal labor pool: the frustrated and mediocre.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/w...

File under: pivot to print

Why, yes, it *is* the perfect weather in New York to climb into the curbside rat urine under my car after work and change out the ancient fuel filter!

I asked @simko-bednarski.bsky.social the correct pronunciation once and iirc he told me Rob Free, who worked his way from station cleaner to president of the rail road, always says the full "Long Island Rail Road"

Hotel housekeepers used to track their work on a clipboard. Now they work for an app that docks points if a room cleaning takes too long. “You have a device telling you, ‘move here, move there,’ like if you were a robot." The latest from @proofnews.bsky.social: www.proofnews.org/hotel-housek...

I call New York “the Hot Apple” like “ayyyy I’m goin to the HOT APPLE baby” and I recently learned that my youngest didn’t clock it as a personal joke and there’s now a group of middle schoolers in Maine that think that’s a real nickname for NY, so in a few more years the Times can cover that too

A “fun” thing about the 1776 number is it makes it more clear how much the settlement agreement is corrupt. Todd Blanche signed his name to an official government document claiming this figure was “based on the projected valuation of future claimants’ claims,” which is clearly, obviously, a lie.

MTA: LIRR strike ends at midnight tonight. Train service is set to resume at noon tomorrow on the main electric branches, with full systemwide service returning by the p.m. rush

Here's the Star Tribune report on today's charges (including the charging documents) against an ICE agent in connection with the Jan. 14 shooting of a man: www.startribune.com/ice-agent-ch...

JFC There could never be an easier case for impeaching a president. The fact that impeachment & removal is universally acknowledged among the political class to be impossible is the clearest possible sign that the constitutional order has collapsed into some form of dictatorship.

I don't think folks younger than 30 know what the internet once legitimately promised to be (and I would argue briefly was): a boundary-less space of pretty much uncommodified information and communication. A mix between community bulletin boards and university library stacks.

My 1999 self would weep at how totally broken the internet has become. AI slop, social media walled gardens that rot the brain, surveillance pricing and advertising, every single goddamn website has an endless cloudflare captcha loop before you get to read anything. Burn it all down.