Good morning, it’s Thursday. I am writing that as much for myself as for anyone who might be reading this. I’ve been a day ahead mentally all week, and every time I’m reminded that, no, it’s not actually a four-day workweek, I am bummed out all over again.
This is what happens when a five-day week follows a four-day week and your brain is struggling to catch up.
I had a whole post mapped out in my head for Friday, and then had to go scrambling back to the drawing board when I realized that no, it’s not Friday yet. You’ll just have to wait an extra day for that.
As a consolation prize, today we’re talking about something I think is universally loved – dolphins. Honestly, think about that for a second, do you know anyone who feels negatively about dolphins? I didn’t think so. Why? Because they are incredibly cool and smart, also very cute, with their perma-grins (sorry, they’re not actually smiling) and high-pitched voices.
First, let’s get one thing straight: Dolphins are whales, but not all whales are dolphins. Confused yet? Explanation: All dolphins, porpoises, and whales are classified as part of the Cetacea order of sea animals, which comes from the Greek word for whale, “ketos”, but there are significant differences that set them apart from one another.
Toothed whales include dolphins – of which there are 42 known species grouped into five “families” of which the oceanic is the largest with 38 members – and orcas (AKA “killer” whales).
Both are mammals (they give live birth and feed their young milk) and need to surface in order to breathe air. They also both travel in pods. Dolphins have the unique ability to echolocate, which baleen whales (those with plates instead of teeth, which orcas DO have) lack, and they eat different things. If you want to go deep on this, click here.
There are a number of days dedicated to honoring, celebrating, and raising awareness about dolphins, which, as with so many other living things, are endangered on many levels as a result of human impact and idiocy (sorry, not sorry). For example, April 14 is National Dolphin Day. The entirety of March is Dolphin Awareness Month.
Today is World Dolphin Day, which was established in 2022 by Sea Shepherd Global, a nonprofit marine conversation activism organization, in memory of more than 1,400 dolphins that were killed on this day in 2021 off the Faroe Islands as part of a cultural tradition called a “grind”, which continues to be practiced today.
Needless to say, this practice is very controversial. I haven’t done sufficient research to weigh in with an opinion here, other than to say that the photos are, well, awful. Click at your own risk.
Not to add to the bummer quality of this post, I know you want to do all the things to help the dolphins. But animal advocates say paying to swim with captive dolphins – as amazing an experience as that might seem – is really inadvisable, and swimming with wild dolphins can not only cause them harm, but be dangerous to humans.
Better ideas (and likely far more affordable, as they don’t require any travel): Buy sustainably, reduce your plastic consumption, support marine protection organizations, and – no brainer here – if you do encounter dolphins (lucky you!) do not feed or harass them.
Mother Nature, or whoever is in charge of the weather these days, just keeps on giving and I’m here for it. Today will be mostly sunny, with temperatures in the low 80s. I know you’ve unpacked your sweaters and are probably eager for all the pumpkin spice things, but hopefully, you haven’t relegated all your shorts and t-shirts to the back of the closet just yet.
In the headlines…
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump yesterday morning put aside their contentious and personal debate to mark the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks together at Ground Zero.
National and New York political leaders paused a busy campaign season to gather in Lower Manhattan to commemorate the Sept. 11th attacks today, 23 years after the tragedy.
On 9/11, firefighters greeted the former president with high fives and hugs. But across the street, other New Yorkers were icy.
New York City residents accounted for just 6% of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum’s visitors over the last year, while tristate area residents made up 20%, according to spokesperson Erin Gaddis.
Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado joined thousands to pack meals and remember the spirit of working together that followed Sept. 11 on the 23rd anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
New York’s City Council is set to vote on a bill that would force city agencies to reveal what they knew about about air toxins after the Sept. 11 attacks and what was withheld from the public — despite the Adams administration’s efforts to keep the info quiet.
Embattled NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban was a conspicuous no-show at the 9/11 memorial ceremony amid rumblings of his looming resignation. No top City Hall officials publicly touched by the federal investigations swirling around Adams attended.
Harris clearly defeated Trump in Tuesday night’s debate, but didn’t get any bounce as a result, according to a new poll commissioned by The NY Post.
Trump’s aggressive spinning of his debate performance suggested he knew it was suboptimal, and left aides considering how to move ahead with eight weeks to go in the campaign.
Tuesday’s televised clash between Harris and Trump drew 67.1 million live viewers, according to Nielsen, outdrawing Trump’s debate in June with President Joe Biden by 31 percent.
The Nielsen data did not include likely millions more who followed along on social media and a variety of websites and streaming platforms.
An hour after the Harris-Walz campaign received Taylor Swift’s endorsement, it started selling friendship bracelets inspired by the singer.
Before the debate, the father of Aiden, 11, an Ohio boy killed when an immigrant’s minivan crashed into a school bus, lashed out at Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, calling them “morally bankrupt” politicians spreading hate at his son’s expense.
A day after former Trump, in a debate watched by millions, doubled down on his campaign’s debunked position that immigrants are eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio, a local official pushed back on the outlandish claim.
Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck said it was “disappointing” the narrative about the city had been “skewed by misinformation circulating on social media and further amplified by political rhetoric in the current, highly charged presidential election cycle.”
The center of Hurricane Francine made landfall southwest of New Orleans yesterday, as the city’s residents deserted its flooding streets and 100 mile-per-hour winds battered the Louisiana coastline.
An estimated 4-9 inches of rain from the storm has fallen across a “very broad area” of southeastern Louisiana from 9 am-9 pm, according to the National Weather Service.
“Heavy rains and hurricane-force winds are spreading inland across southern Louisiana,” meteorologists wrote in an advisory. “Now is the time to stay inside and away from windows.”
The anxious shiver that the projected path of Francine induced in many Louisiana residents can be traced back to the last major storm to hit the state, which caused billions in damage and left a trail of devastating consequences still being widely felt years later.
An Israeli airstrike yesterday killed at least 18 people, Palestinian officials said, at a school turned shelter in the Gaza Strip that Israel said Hamas used as a command post, and a United Nations agency said six of the dead were its employees.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli troops launched raids in several towns backed by airstrikes, continuing a crackdown across the territory that the military says is targeting militants but has wrecked neighborhoods and killed civilians.
UN chief António Guterres has condemned an Israeli airstrike on a central Gaza school being used as a shelter for displaced Palestinians that killed 18 people, according to the Hamas-run territory’s civil defence agency.
For the first time under the Biden administration, the United States will send Egypt its full allotment of $1.3 billion in annual military aid, waiving human rights requirements on the spending mainly in recognition of Cairo’s efforts to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza.
Inflation continued to recede in August, paving the way for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates for the first time since early 2020 at their meeting next week.
But signs of stubbornness lingered under the surface, causing investors to ramp up their bets that central bankers will lower borrowing costs by a quarter-point from 5.33 percent, not the larger half-point that some had previously seen as possible.
Motorists with license plate covers starting this month face higher fines and the state DMV is promising a crackdown on the devices that can be used to evade tolls or detection by red-light cameras due to their ability to obscure photographic details.
New York is dedicating millions of dollars to expand healthy food options in underserved areas where families struggle to find fresh produce.
As the MTA’s congestion pricing scheme remains in limbo, state officials are mulling a simple question about the price of the Manhattan tolls: how low can they go?
City Hall is moving to embed NYPD members into other city agencies, even as the police commissioner and other top officials in the Adams administration are under scrutiny by federal law enforcement.
Who really ran Con Sofrito, the restaurant frequented by Adams and NYPD top brass? Officially, the restaurant belonged to Richard Caban, the NYPD commissioner’s brother. But social media pages tell a different story from the official liquor license and lease.
A top aide to Caban is associated with shadowy groups that do the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party.
Caban’s twin brother James Caban, reportedly being investigated by federal authorities on whether he “sold” security favors to nightclubs, has been chauffeured around in an NYPD vehicle when he’s in the city, sources say.
ProPublica reports that the NYPD has dismissed more than 500 cases of alleged officer misconduct without even looking at the evidence under Caban.
After physically attacking several security guards at a Midtown migrant shelter last year, top Adams adviser Tim Pearson visited a Midtown South precinct station house where he confronted the handcuffed guards, who now plan to sue the city.
New York’s City Council is set to vote today to authorize a controversial a task force to study reparations for black residents — a move that could lead to a call for billions in tax payer spending, as it has in other cities.
Adams’ sweeping plan to fuel housing development still has a few months to go before the City Council decides on its final fate, but the proposal is already factoring into a bitter building dispute brewing in Brooklyn.
New York Knicks owner James Dolan has been ordered to give sworn testimony in a civil case filed by ex-NBA player Charles Oakley over his infamous ejection from Madison Square Garden seven years ago.
Water testing at a major federal building in Lower Manhattan that houses immigration court and federal law enforcement offices has found bacteria that can cause Legionnaires’ disease in dozens of locations.
Three correction officers who watched a man bleed to death on Rikers Island for 10 minutes without helping were found to have contributed to his death, but their inaction did not rise to criminally negligent homicide, a state investigation found.
The report issued by AG Letitia James’ Office of Special Investigation concluded when correction officers observed Michael Nieves, 40, bleeding from his neck, they dropped a shirt and blanket at his feet, but made no effort to apply pressure to stop the bleeding.
Juilliard announced that it had received a $15 million gift to help expand creative work across music, dance and drama.
State Police shot and killed a 48-year-old man yesterday afternoon in a church parking lot on South Broadway.
The City of Schenectady is reviewing a Facebook comment made by an off-duty deputy fire chief that calls Vice President Harris a “filthy lying scumbag liberal whore.”
Jason T. Schofield, a former Rensselaer County Republican elections commissioner, took the stand yesterday afternoon as a prosecution witness during the third day of the criminal trial of three county officials charged with ballot fraud.
The Democratic-controlled Common Council has set a special meeting tonight to vote to override the expected veto by Republican Mayor Michael Stammel of legislation that reduced Schoefield’s city salary to $100 as he awaits sentencing on voter fraud charges.
Shenendehowa dropped the nickname Plainsmen, after old yearbooks made it clear that the name was used with oversized costumes depicting Indigenous People in derogatory ways.
Extra police were at all local schools yesterday after a caller the previous night threatened to “shoot up Bethlehem High School,” the district said in an alert.
After receiving an initial phone threat Tuesday night, Bethlehem schools received another phone threat yesterday “targeting outdoor activities” at the high school, causing teams and coaches to be hurriedly ushered off fields by police.
Parents raised concerns at a Guilderland school board meeting this week about a student who returned to school after being suspended earlier this year for making a list of school community members they said they intended to harm.
Dave Portnoy, the founder of the Barstool Sports media empire with a sideline in video reviews of pizza, recently visited the Troy home of a family whose late son was a big Portnoy fan and asked him to review the family’s pizza before he died in May at age 23.
For decades, David Gregson told few people about the years of molestation he said he had endured at the hands of a former state trooper, Roger L Coon Jr. This week he told his story yet again from the witness stand in a near-empty courtroom.
Justin Timberlake has snagged a plea deal over his New York DWI case that will allow him to dodge drunk driving charges and instead be slapped with a traffic violation, according to a new report.
The pop star, 43, signed off on the deal on Tuesday, with Timberlake officially charged with driving while ability impaired, sources familiar with the case told TMZ.
A spokeswoman for the office said that Timberlake, 43, is expected to enter the plea when he appears in person at the Sag Harbor Village Justice Court on Long Island tomorrow. She did not say what the lesser charge would be.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
