Good morning, it’s FRIDAY – and a summer Friday, at that. Hooray!
I did a lot of things this week. Worked primarily, of course, which is my general MO. Ran and lifted a lot. (See MO). Learned how to use the new grill without setting myself or anything else on fire. Made gazpacho (pro tip: add a dash of cumin; it’s delicious). Chased a runaway dog into the woods. Had dinner on the deck.
And got a new tattoo.
At this point, you might say that getting tattoos is also part of my MO, since I’ve amassed well over a dozen of them over my 50+ years on the planet. I got the first one while I was still in college – a small rose on my lower abdomen that has held up fairly well over time, though it is slightly faded.
The second acquisition was a small black and red lizard on my left shoulder. (“Lizard” was a hated nickname in my high school days, but I decided to embrace it). For a while, I would get a tattoo when something significant occurred in my life – the Ironman tat on my right calf, for example, came after I finished my first 140.6 distance race in New York City.
This habit continued well into my 20s, and then I took a break from tattoos for a while. I am not big on needles (I know, this is a significant contradiction, given how many times I have willingly subjected myself to them), nor on pain (also a big contradiction, given that I run and hike endless miles for “fun”).
I even went in the opposite direction for a hot second, paying an enormous amount of money to get my lower back tattoo removed.
The removal process is long and excruciating, which should give anyone who is contemplating a tattoo but is on the fence about it pause. I made it halfway through the year-long schedule of monthly appointments and had to stop. The sessions were just too intensely painful, and the post-session blisters that you had to pop and then dress to prevent infection just got overwhelming.
A few years back I picked the tattoo up again after a friend took up the stick-and-poke method. Sometimes referred to as “hand-poke” tattoos, these are done manually, rather than with a tattooing machine (which, by the way, was patented by a New York City barber named Samuel O’Reilly in 1891). I find stick-and-poke far less painful than the machine method, and the result is preferably, too, since the line is a lot more delicate.
The practice of marking human skin is one of the world’s oldest known art forms. It dates back centuries and has been used by cultures across the globe for everything from punishing people to signifying social status and/or religious beliefs. The word “tattoo” comes from “tatau“, which is Polynesian for “to tap or to mark.
According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 32 percent of Americans have at least one tattoo. (I’m betting that number has increased at least slightly since then). Interestingly, Italy is where tattoos are the most popular, followed closely by Sweden.
Today is National Tattoo Day, and I probably should have times my new ink better. (I got it on Wednesday, but no matter…I was close enough).
It’s looking like a bit of a mixed bag, weather-wise, for the weekend. Today will be lovely – a typical mid-summer day – with highs in the low 80s and sunny skies.
Saturday and Sunday will be on the cooler side, with highs potentially failing to break into the 80s at all. Sunday will be nice and clear, with only a few passing clouds, but Saturday will bring rain – lots of it – with showers in the morning and thunderstorms potentially developing in the afternoon into the evening.
In the headlines…
President Donald Trump yesterday announced that his administration is declassifying documents that he says outline vulnerabilities in U.S. election systems.
In his 25-minute speech from the White House, Trump described efforts by China to access U.S. voter rolls and offered details about long-studied risks with electronic voting machines.
As many Republican officials took to social media to push for passing the SAVE America Act, Democrats used the address to argue against the Act — which passed the House in February but is stalled in the Senate.
CBS News aired part of President Trump’s prime-time speech on election fraud, joining in late and switching away as the commander-in-chief called for ABC and NBC to lose their licenses for not showing his remarks.
In fact, ABC and NBC did carry Trump’s speech live on their streaming platforms. After the president concluded, both networks broke into regularly scheduled entertainment programming to air special reports that analyzed his claims.
A White House teleprompter operator used his position to win around $100,000 by placing bets on the prediction market Kalshi about what President Trump would say in his speeches, the company said on Thursday.
The Trump administration revived a policy that gives immigration officers wide authority to deny green cards to people they deem likely to rely on public assistance, a change that could deter hundreds of thousands of immigrants from using such programs.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has linked an outbreak of cyclosporiasis to iceberg lettuce that Taylor Farms supplied to Taco Bell, according to two federal officials who declined to be named.
The CDC said the shredded lettuce was sent to Taco Bell locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. In a notice posted last night, the agency warned the public not to eat shredded iceberg lettuce at Taco Bell locations in those states.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is defending her data center moratorium from criticism being leveled by business groups, some unions and President Trump.
Hochul told stakeholders at a roundtable in Albany Thursday that in addition to the moratorium, her recent executive order also provides local governments with resources to ensure they will benefit from any data center development that moves forward.
The governor said that in weighing the pros and cons of data centers against other large load users like Micron, data centers come up short. because they don’t create anywhere near the number of permanent jobs that a semi-conductor facility like Micron will.
Beginning early next year, millions of SNAP recipients in New York will be sent new cards with chip-enabled technology designed to keep their benefits safe from card-skimming devices.
Two state DOH officials and a company contracted to administer the state’s $10 billion Medicaid home care program are asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the DOJ claiming the deal was the result of a conspiracy and a “sham bid process.”
Actress Cynthia Nixon, who isn’t a lawyer but played one on the hit HBO show “Sex and the City” — was just appointed to serve on the Commission on Judicial Nomination, which vets judges for the state’s highest court, by New York Chief Judge Rowan Wilson.
The Mamdani administration was able to dig itself out of a major cash flow crisis thanks to an unanticipated billion-dollar windfall from Wall Street last month — and by delaying payments to a health care trust fund for retired city workers.
Mamdani, who was boosted by public matching funds during his successful 2025 campaign, is now forgoing the taxpayer-funded benefit over reported concerns the fundraising caps would limit him as he seeks to exert “national” influence.
New York City and surrounding regions fell under a dangerous, code red air quality alert yesterday as smoke from Canadian wildfires continued drifting east from Ontario, coating skies in yellow and orange haze.
The haze is likely to ease in the East this weekend but linger in the Upper Midwest, where some cities recorded extremely high pollution indexes on Thursday.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin is no socialist, but she’s staking out positions seemingly to the left of Mayor Mamdani.
The City Council approved an 18.2% pay raise for themselves and other city elected officials in a vote yesterday. The raise, representing the first pay increase since 2016, passed 42-6, with Speaker Julie Menin abstaining.
A summer prep program meant to improve racial diversity at the city’s elite specialized high schools is itself lacking, data from the education department shows.
Federal investigators searched the home of former New York City Sheriff Anthony Miranda on Thursday morning as part of an ongoing federal investigation, according to city officials and a law enforcement official.
Newly released federal investigative records suggest a bird strike may have played a role in last year’s Hudson River sightseeing helicopter crash that killed a family of five visiting from Spain and the pilot.
Former FDNY firefighter Michael Pena was sentenced Thursday to four to 12 years in prison for a 2025 crash that killed 23-year-old Justin Diaz in East Elmhurst, officials said.
A white man who fatally stabbed a gay Black dancer at a Brooklyn gas station in 2023 was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday, ending a hate-crime case that shocked the city’s L.G.B.T.Q. community.
The heartbroken family of the grandmother killed after falling into a steaming, open manhole two months ago has filed a wrongful death suit against Con Edison for failing to secure the access point that also left her long-term boyfriend burned and bedridden.
Drawings obtained by The New York Times show the columns called for additional steel plates, but engineers reviewing site photos said they appeared to be missing.
The engineering firm that designed the structural plans for the city’s largest office-to-housing conversion project says reinforcing steel to support the weight of a 14-story addition to the building was never installed before a pair of columns collapsed there.
An illness caused by a parasite that may be found in salad greens has swept across the United States in recent weeks — and some salad eaters in New York City are having second thoughts about their meal choices.
An avid Upper West Side jogger was run down from behind by an e-bike rider allegedly going the wrong way in Central Park — and is now in a medically induced coma, according to her family and a witness.
A major credit rating agency has downgraded Albany’s creditworthiness and assigned the city a negative outlook, citing the fiscal crisis that has gripped City Hall for much of the year.
The Rensselaer City School District is preparing to file its own lawsuit in response to one the city filed Tuesday that accuses the district of failing to pay its share of a school rseeking to recoup $258,616’s salary for almost a decade.
Big things are happening at GE Vernova’s new $110 million research campus in Niskayuna.
A 22-year-old standout college baseball player detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this month was released on bond Wednesday, his attorney said.
A driver and their passenger were arrested on Thursday after allegedly leading police on a nearly hour-long chase that ended after the driver drove the wrong way up the Northway and struck a State Police vehicle.
The Rensselaer County Legislature unanimously approved the appointment of William “Bill” Film, a retired bureaucrat and former town lawmaker, to fill the seat of Wayne Gendron, who ended his legislative tenure as a critic of county leadership and oversight.
A Washington County man died from his injuries this week after becoming entangled in a hay baler, according to Washington County Sheriff Jeffrey J. Murphy.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
