Good morning, it’s Friday, thankfully.
Yesterday was an eternity. because I – like so many others – fell victim to the Microsoft Outlook outage. The last email I received was at 1:10 p.m. I didn’t realize right away that things were stuck in my outbox, but did start thinking to myself “something isn’t quite right here” after getting no incoming missives for half an hour.
Usually, I get hundreds of emails a day. It was downright unnerving to see my email frozen in time. Of course, everyone quickly reverted to texting, and since yesterday was anything but a slow news day, my phone basically blew up for hours – and then promptly went and died when I neglected to charge the battery.
Apparently, some people were able to regain access to their email and other Microsoft products at 5 p.m., but as of this writing – 5:30 a.m. EST – my email remains eerily quiet.
UPDATE: MY EMAIL APPEARS TO BE COMING BACK TO LIFE!!! Hallelujah.
Such is life in the digital age.
It is somehow poetically appropriate that today is the anniversary of a famous 1960 mathematical thought experiment that was published in the journal Science titled “Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026”.
In short, paper’s the authors, Heinz von Foerster, an Austrian-American professor, and two of his students, Patricia M. Mora and Lawrence W. Amiot, predicted that on this day, the human population would approach infinity and effectively annihilate itself. Oddly, they suggested that the population would not starve to death or expire due to the lack of some other required resource, but rather “will be squeezed to death.”
At the time, this scientific trio had reason to be alarmed, as the number of births around the globe was skyrocketing. In 1960 alone, the global population grew by about 1.67% (a net increase of roughly 49.5 million people), reaching a total of approximately 3 billion.
Von Foerster, Mora, and W. Amiot didn’t actually intend for people to take their prediction literally, but rather hoped to spur a conversation and issue a warning about the dangers of unrestrained population growth. As it turns out, they needn’t have worried.
We’re still growing, but the rate has slowed considerably, with the addition of about 1 billion people every 12 years. Here in the U.S., specifically, the fertility rate has been steadily declining, with the number of Americans who are having children dropping by 23 percent since 2007 – well below the level necessary to replace people as they die. (This is why a working immigration system is so important, but this is a topic for another day).
There are now 7.5 people living on this planet. And while there certainly are problems – from hunger and disease to the threat of total annihilation by AI – one thing that is NOT a threat, I think I can safely say, is that we will be squeezed to death, though some parts of the world are admittedly overcrowded and overdeveloped.
I’m looking at the forecast and feeling a little smug, because I am in Florida for a few days and not home to experience the current snow/rain/cold situation that my fellow Capital Region denizens are suffering through. Sorry, not sorry.
Today will bring more of the same, with a mixture of snow and rain in the morning that will taper off by around noon. The rest of the day will be cloudy and dismal. High temperatures will struggle to hit 40 degrees.
The weekend is shaping up to be dry but chilly, with temperatures “warming” into the high 40s by Sunday. There will be clouds on both days, with a slight chance of sunshine breaking through by Sunday – but don’t count on it.
In the headlines…
Jensen Huang, who resigned as Nvidia’s CEO, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have been summoned to testify next month before a Senate committee as Huang’s affair with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy raises national security concerns.
The office of Stephen Miller, a longtime Trump aide who was elevated to chief of staff after Susie Wiles was ousted, issued a memo forbidding White House staff from meeting with lobbyists about policy issues on the building’s grounds without prior approval.
Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said Thursday that he will run for Senate Majority Leader in the next Congress, setting up a challenge to Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer after the party swept to power in the midterm elections.
Making his announcement in an interview on MS Now, Van Hollen said his challenge to Schumer was “not about any one individual.” Instead, he said, it was to ensure that Democrats answered “the call of the American people” in the midterms.
Asked what had changed from last weekend, when Van Hollen suggested he was not particularly interested in a run for majority leader, he pointed to “a generational opportunity for the Senate to respond to the call of the American people for change
Two Democratic senators are launching an investigation into whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lied to Congress about his reason for a 2019 trip to Samoa after The AP and The Guardian published documents in August refuting his testimony.
Democratic Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman drew his first declared 2028 primary challenger this week, and the candidate is a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is shaking up her team for the second time in the past few months as she prepares to make the biggest decision of her political life.
A soldier guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns loudly scolded Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his party for laughing and talking near the solemn memorial on Veterans Day, Hegseth responded by honoring the solider with the Joint Service Commendation Medal.
The global outage affecting Microsoft services reverberated around the world today, upending services relied upon by millions of people.
Microsoft said after 5 a.m. Eastern this morning that its efforts to repair the problem had made “incremental improvement” to its services. But major gaps persisted.
Newly reelected Gov. Kathy Hochul is eyeing control of the State Education Department in an effort to have more say over education policy — challenging New York’s more than 200 year-old power dynamic.
Business groups in the state are lobbying Hochul for changes to pending legislation that would ban the use of personal data to determine product pricing.
Hochul announced $100 million for repaving projects at 68 locations across New York on Nov. 10. The money will repave 642 lane miles of state highways in every region of the state under the State Department of Transportation’s Harsh Winter Paving program.
The New York Power Authority today took another step toward building the state’s first new nuclear plant in a generation by identifying 10 companies that are in the running to build a nuclear facility for the state.
A new group has entered the battle over charter schools in New York, seeded with at least $1 million from former Mayor Mike Bloomberg. The group, Great Public Schools New York, will be led by Kevin Elkins, ex-political director for the carpenters union.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to unveil a plan for disbanding the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group as early as this week, according to three people with knowledge of the long-awaited announcement of a key 2025 campaign pledge.
Mamdani is expected to announce the dissolution of the Strategic Response Group, made up of roughly 600 officers, and to separate the department’s protest response operations from its counterterrorism functions, according to a spokesman.
Mamdani said city officials would commence sweeps of 100 construction sites after eight people died in the collapse of a three-story Brooklyn apartment building.
Rescue workers stopped searching the rubble of the collapsed apartment building in Brooklyn on Thursday, saying they had determined there were no more victims.
The Brooklyn district attorney’s office has opened a criminal investigation into the building collapse in Flatbush on Wednesday that left eight people dead, including two children, the authorities said.
Harrowing new footage taken from an in-home surveillance camera captured the shocking moment a Brooklyn apartment building crumpled to the ground, killing eight people and injuring 18 more.
For years, the Brooklyn walk-up that crumbled Wednesday gave city inspectors no reason to worry about its bones. Then the wrecking crews showed up next door.
The developer of the property adjacent to the fatal Brooklyn building collapse had a record for cutting corners at the construction site, according to records from the city buildings department.
Dozens of New Yorkers have been forced from buildings near the deadly Flatbush collapse Thursday as the city worked to make sure their homes won’t fall down too.
The mayor’s effort to steer hundreds of deteriorating Manhattan apartments into nonprofit ownership has hit a wall — after creditors rejected a $110 million offer from a city-backed developer and pushed the buildings into foreclosure auctions.
Veteran Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf is repurposing his super PAC to block the expansion of the surging Democratic Socialists of America in New York.
The Big Apple’s budget has ballooned to almost $130 billion this year — as the Mamdani administration continues to fall short of its savings goals, officials said.
New York City’s budget outlook has been buoyed by nearly $1 billion in additional tax revenue collections this fiscal year, but fiscal watchdogs are urging the city to put more money into reserves and exercise caution over a potential AI bubble burst.
City attorneys told a Manhattan federal judge they are confident Mamdani’s plan for city-run supermarkets is sound against civil antitrust claims from a coalition of local grocers who claim the campaign promise amounts to anticompetitive business practices.
The City Council passed a bill to prohibit “surveillance pricing” Thursday, blocking companies from using browsing data to charge customers different prices for the same product.
Katie Suarez, the Brooklyn jogger who was callously killed by a crazed ex-cop, was remembered Thursday as a welcoming, loving and joyful person who led life with a smile.
A tornado warning was issued for parts of Queens on Thursday as an ominous cloud was seen on video swirling near John F. Kennedy Airport.
A humpback whale is enjoying a “pretty rare” multi-day vacation in New York Harbor waters in what might be a record-breaking visit for the area.
Peanut, the late Instagram-famous squirrel whose state-ordered euthanization in 2024 drew widespread backlash, is again in the national spotlight as one of its former owners faces deportation.
Albany Mayor Dorcey Applyrs signed an executive order prohibiting federal immigration enforcement agencies from using city property for staging, processing or detention operations, expanding immigrant protections amid record enforcement and rising fear.
Flock Safety is seeking to be removed as a party in a lawsuit that the Troy City Council and a city auditor filed against Mayor Carmella Mantello.
The Saratoga Springs City Council approved paying up to $25,000 in legal fees for Commissioner of Public Safety Tim Coll to defend himself in a civil suit.
A Kingston cancer support house that hospital officials planned to close last year will remain open after all, following months of pressure from patients, survivors and community advocates who fought to preserve the longtime resource.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
