Saturday, August 23, 2025

Yellow Is the New White

 

Saturday, August 16, 2025
Now we know that it’s true. Upon returning from Alaska, your president recounted: 

“Vladimir Putin said something – one of the most interesting things. He said: ‘Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting … No country has mail-in voting. It’s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.’

“And he said that to me because we talked about 2020. He said: ‘You won that election by so much and that’s how we got here.’ He said: ‘And if you would have won, we wouldn’t have had a war. You’d have all these millions of people alive now instead of dead. And he said: ‘You lost it because of mail-in voting. It was a rigged election.’” 
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Involuntarily uprooted people relocate and mostly thrive in their new environment. A good thing? Not if they are Jews and you can label it Settler Colonialism. 
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The sofa in our living room is quite comfortable and we are often reluctant to arise from it. This evening, though, we decided to venture out to a movie. We chose “An Officer and A Spy,” Roman Polanski’s relatively faithful telling of  the Dreyfus Affair, an ugly French antisemitic episode, not the first, not the last.

We agreed that it was an excellent movie, wonderfully photographed. Some reviewers drew a parallel to Polanski’s thoroughly justified prosecution and conviction for rape, which led him to flee the United States. The New Yorker had a particularly strong takedown of Polanski. 

However, while I was willing to watch and enjoy a film written and directed by a sexual predator, French and vaguely Jewish as Dreyfus, my distinct views of Polanski the man and the artist remain unchanged. It’s a classic conflict — the public vs. the private person: Richard Wagner, Kevin Spacey, Woody Allen. At first, I thought of adding Donald Trump to this list, he is, after all, a convicted sexual abuser. But, nothing in his public life distinguishes him from his private life.
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The movie was shown at the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, on the southwestern edge of Greenwich Village. That afforded us a large variety of restaurants for dinner, leaning towards the funky, away from the corporate. We chose Jack’s Wife Freda, 50 Carmine Street, describing itself as “South African Israeli Jewish Grandmother Cuisine.” The availability of one of a half dozen tables outdoors on this balmy night was also an attraction. I can’t describe the interior, because I never set foot inside.

Our food choices were hardly ethnocentric although there were a few haimish items on the menu. Madam had the Grilled Eggplant Baguette with roasted tomato, mozzarella, olive tapenade & pesto, with a green salad ($20) and I had the Prego Roll, a smallish Portuguese skirt steak sandwich with garlic butter, accompanied by very good French fries ($25). Both were quite satisfying and good values. 

In all, our loyalty to our sofa was weakened by the end of the evening.

Monday, August 18, 2025
There is an essay online today by a woman whose 29-year old daughter committed suicide after announcing her intentions only to a ChatGPT “therapist.” I was intrigued by the woman identifying herself as “a former mother.” Somehow, I believe that is a role that you can never leave.

Tuesday, August 19, 2025
Proving how nimble we are, the Boyz Club gathered for lunch far away from Chinatown at  The Corner, 698 Ninth Avenue, a respectable Chinese restaurant. Coming uptown did not curb our appetites, fueled by a Groupon coupon that knocked a lot off our bill.

We five shared two filet mignon egg rolls ($6 each), Singapore style duck fried rice ($18), walnut shrimp in Grand Marnier sauce ($28) (so sweet that Trent suggested it come with vanilla ice cream), Chung King beef ($24, too chewy and too salty) and Tangy Tangerine Peel Chicken ($19). On the whole, a very good and abundant lunch with Diet Coke the beverage of choice.
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Yes, Virginia, he is a racist. The president insists that "The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was.”

Wednesday, August 20, 2025
Ever attentive Bob Saginaw wants to know if the proven socioeconomic influence on the SATs also is found in the testing for New York City's specialized high schools, particularly for our alma mater Stuyvesant High School where Black students gain 1% of the seats year in and year out. In 2018, I found a 2016 survey of the nation's best schools, ranking Stuyvesant third, claiming that 47.3% of the students were living below the poverty line. It's an extraordinary figure, since 8 of the top 10 schools range from 0.0 to 18.9%, with one Chicago school reaching 37.5%. https://www.newsweek.com/high-schools/americas-top-high-schools-2016

A more recent source identifies 50% of the students as "economically disadvantaged," 3% homeless. https://data.nysed.gov/enrollment.php year=2024&instid=800000046741

Another current report has 43% of the students qualifying for the federal free lunch program. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/new-york/districts/new-york-city-public-schools/stuyvesant-high-school-13092

The wild card in looking at Stuyvesant demographics is the overwhelming Asian (Chinese) student population. "Asian students constituted 6 percent of the enrollment at Stuyvesant in 1970 and 50 percent in 1994; they make up an incredible 73 percent of the student body this year." https://nypost.com/2014/07/19/why-nycs-push-to-change-school-admissions-will-punish-poor-asians/

Looking at the nationwide SATs, socioeconomic factors heavily influence results. In New York, however, I believe the culture of the community and the family are the drivers in the competition for high school admissions. "If, as sometimes appears the case, 'Harvard' is the first English word that immigrant Chinese mothers learn, the second is probably 'Stuyvesant,' the name of one of New York City’s most competitive public high schools." https://www.city-journal.org/article/brooklyns-chinese-pioneers

Friday, August 22, 2025
Stony Brook Steve and I had lunch at Shanghai Dumplings Fusion, 158 West 72nd Street, awkwardly named, now beyond its "soft opening," but not seeing much traffic. We have been there several times, never more than the second party eating in. I hope things improve. This neighborhood loaded with Members of the Tribe can absorb more Chinese restaurants.

Actually, I ordered Thai, Pad Thai, rice noodles with chicken, red onion, green onion, bean sprouts and lots of ground peanuts ($15.95). The very generous portion was very good. Let's keep them in business. 
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It took Donald Trump to make John Bolton likeable.
 
 

Saturday, August 16, 2025

Hot Stuff

Saturday, August 9, 2025
A little insight. “The barbarity displayed on Oct. 7, combined with the cheering chorus from enemies and the silence from many friends, hardened the conflict for many Israelis to the fundamental, zero-sum and inherently violent struggle for land and sovereignty that so many of the kibbutzniks murdered in their homes that day had sought to overcome with their peaceful intentions.”
On the other hand, enough is enough.
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When I taught introductory American government classes, representation was one of the very first subjects addressed. What is democracy? How best to represent the public? As inheritors of British practice, we generally rely on single member constituencies and "first past the post," the most votes = the winner. Accordingly, slight differences in vote count may produce great differences in political power. The remedy for political scientists then and now is proportional representation, allocation of legislative seats according to the distribution of the popular vote. 

In 2022, "more than 200 leading political scientists and historians . . . call[ed] on the House of Representatives to adopt proportional representation — an intuitive and widely used electoral system that ensures parties earn seats in proportion to how many people vote for them."

Germany uses a mixed system to elect the Bundestag, the national legislature, half the seats filled by proportional representation, the other half by single-member constituencies. The purest system, however, is Israel's, where the unicameral Knesset of 120 members is elected entirely by proportional representation. Voters select a party and the party gets the number of legislative seats corresponding to their percentage of the vote, if it reaches a threshold of 3.25%, yielding four seats. This has led to a proliferation of parties, often with very narrow agendas. The will of peoples may defeat the will of the people. Why would the United States not face the same dilemma?

Sunday, August 10, 2025
Last week, I cited statistics from the SAT which seem to pose an unbridgeable racial gap in achievement. A couple of numbers, though, give an insufficient picture and leave open the question of causality, why the racial gap? Much of the answer lies outside the classroom. Valuable data are found at:

Most notable is the information that students with parents who have graduate degrees achieved the highest total SAT score while students with parents without high school diplomas had the lowest total SAT scores. Similarly, the difference between test takers from the lowest economic quintile and the highest quintile was 265 points in total score. In brief, “the rich get richer.” The problem is that, while these factors are not immutable, it might take generations to neutralize them.

There are other interesting factoids, such as Kansas and Utah having the highest average scores and New Mexico and West Virginia having the lowest, men significantly outperform women in the mathematics section of the SAT and “mixed race” students have the highest scores after Asians. 

Monday, August 11, 2025
I spent three years living in Ithaca, New York. Most of the time, I had limited use of an automobile, so I barely had the opportunity to experience the natural beauty of the environment. It looks very good in retrospect.

On Sunday, Anas Al-Sharif, a Palestinian journalist working for Al Jazeera, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a media tent outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Israel accused him of being a Hamas fighter posing as a reporter. Accepting that as a given in spite of strong denials, six other people, including four other reporters were killed at the same time. The ratio of 6:1, civilians to Hamas, seems less destructive than the toll on the general Gazan population, but is it really anything more than an example of bloodlust? See above.

Tuesday, August 12, 2025
“Despite rising temperatures, only about half of homes in Italy today have air conditioning, according to Italy’s national statistics institute. In Spain, real estate data indicates the share is roughly 40%. And in France, only an estimated 20% to 25% of households are equipped with air conditioning.” 
How hot is it? “National records for the maximum June temperature in both Portugal and Spain were broken when temperatures surpassed 46 °C (115 °F), whilst regional records were also broken in at least ten other countries.” 

Wednesday, August 13, 2025
My trip to Citi Field to see the New York Mets play baseball started very well. In spite of a rain delay of 95 minutes, I had the good company of two talented young men, William Franklin Harrison, establishing himself as a filmmaker before setting course for the White House, and Toby McMullen, the last stand-up comic standing.

The Mets initially cooperated, coming out smoking, scoring three runs in each of the first two innings. Then, as our pitcher ran out of gas, evident to everyone but our manager, the bad guys scored nine runs in one inning, a Herculean feat. This resulted in another rarity, my departure before the game ended.

Thursday, August 14, 2025
I had lunch with Irwin Pronin, CCNY Student-Government-President-In-Perpetuity. We ate at Dagon, 2454 Broadway, his suggestion, one of my favorites. I turned to the Summer Restaurant Week menu, two courses for $30. Actually, there was plenty to eat. A big portion of hummus was my first course, with a large roll, called flatbread by them, very hot from the oven, flavored with za’atar (an Arab spice mix including marjoram, thyme, and oregano). Then, I had chicken schnitzel, a slab of chicken breast, pounded thin, breaded and fried. Accompanying it was an Israeli salad, diced tomatoes, cucumbers and onions with tahini dressing, and shoestring French fries, both first rate.
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We have a sense of humor in these parts. An online headline today reads: “Does Earning $142,000 in New York City Make You Rich?" https://www.resetera.com/threads/nyt-does-earning-142-000-in-new-york-city-make-you-rich.1270545/

The answer: Basically not. The figure is the salary of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist candidate for mayor. His wife is an artist/illustrator whose earnings are unknown. They live in a rent-regulated apartment for $2,300 per month. Andrew Cuomo, his major opponent, charges that Mamdani earns more than most New Yorkers and pays less than many. Does this translate into prosperity? Stay tuned.

Friday, August 15, 2025
If an enemy force took over control of the United States government, would it do more harm than we are now experiencing?
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I am always aware of my educational role, bringing vital information to your attention. Here is the graphic illustration of America's preference in potato chips.
 


 
 

Saturday, August 9, 2025

Test Taking

Saturday, August 2, 2025
The White House has announced plans for construction of a 90,000 square foot ballroom.

In addition to aesthetic concerns, the schedule for completion has been questioned. Acknowledging that the original building project had been carried on with slave labor, an administration spokesperson suggested using that approach would be consistent with our great historic traditions.
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I can’t escape seductive offers by the faux L.L. Bean website uncovered a few weeks ago. Canvas bags and sweaters with moose patterns at 80% off continue to be waved under my electronic nose. Rather than placing an order that would only deliver a debit to my bank account and no credit to my wardrobe, I dug a little further. Here's how to communicate with this phony business:

  • Email: sihaiyidin88@gmail.com

    Whatspp Business: 18195094465

  • Address:
    GALAXY EXCEED TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT COMPANY LIMITED
    DO2, Unit 10, 1st Floor, Hewlett Centre, No. 54 Hoi Yuen Road,
    Kwun Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong


Proceed at your own risk.
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It has been suggested that substantially increased investment in elementary education should help eliminate the racial disparity in admission to New York's specialized high schools. I would like to agree, but wonder if that would really make a difference. At the state level, “[p]er-student spending for [public] elementary and secondary education in New York is 91 percent above the national average and between 9 percent and 170 percent higher than neighboring and competitor states.” 

The evidence, though, is that many parents are far from satisfied with our local public schools. The city’s public school population is 16% white while the general population is about 45% white. At the same time, Black and “Latino” students make up over 89% of local charter school enrollment. 

Here is another very disturbing piece of the puzzle. "Of the high school graduates who scored between 1400 and 1600 on the SAT in 2024, the highest possible scores, 1 percent were African American, and 27 percent were Asian, according to the College Board, the private organization that administers the test. About 12 percent of students taking the test were Black and 10 percent were Asian."
Sunday, August 3, 2025
Observations:
“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.” Ehud Olmert, former Israeli Prime Minister. 

“Israel has shown, time and again, that it is better at winning wars than at winning what comes after.” David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. 
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My friends are generally well-read and well-spoken, qualities that attracted me to them. As a result, I am not surprised to see their names in print. However, I still got a big and happy surprise to read New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd give a shoutout to Paul Bergman active CCNY alumnus and retired criminal lawyer.

If you’re a teenager who wants to avoid Blacks, going to Stuyvesant High School is an option, but that won’t shield you from other others. Adults have a better choice for ethnic purity by moving to Return to the Land, an Arkansas community that excludes Jews and non-whites. Party on.
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Usually, the intersection of supply and demand determines pricing. That, apparently, is not the case in the U.S. housing market. Last month, sales of existing homes dropped by 2.7 percent from the previous month, while the median home price, at $435,300, hit a record high for the month of June, according to the National Association of Realtors. https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics

Monday, August 4, 2025
Here’s a headline that made me swallow deeply. “Ministers set to fire AG.” Upon examination, it’s the Israeli Attorney General who is under the gun, not yours truly.

I just learned that a woman taking the New York State Bar Examination last month suffered a heart attack. https://people.com/woman-suffers-cardiac-arrest-while-taking-bar-exam-proctors-allegedly-didnt-stop-11783707

I recall my own experience 24 years ago (Oy, gevalt! That was so long ago). I took the exam at the Javits Center in Manhattan with approximately 10,000 other candidates. Unlike many of them who were nervously sucking on cigarettes outside the building, I was cool. I felt thoroughly prepared and was comforted by the knowledge that nearly 80% of the first-time test takers pass.

Results are still released in November for the July examination which surprises me, because we hand wrote our answers while today computers are used. I’ve seen estimates of over 90% computer usage which should dramatically speed up grading. Maybe sadists remain in charge.
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I caught up with Ittai Hershman today, which wasn’t easy because he walks miles every day up and down Manhattan Island. It was worth the pursuit, because Ittai is one of the best informed people around and a good storyteller.

We had lunch at Friend of a Farmer, 58 West 71st Street, a label that neither of us qualifies for. It is the second branch of the long-established Gramercy Park establishment. The interior has a rustic feel, though more cabin than barn. We sat in a quiet, brick-clad nook near the front. I had a stack of medium-sized lemon ricotta pancakes with a little pitcher of lemon zest on the side ($21). It was a good dish and maybe I should stop complaining how expensive everything is. Or not.

Tuesday, August 5, 2025
I’m an old guy, so pardon me if I give you an old story, although one that I just learned. If people are given Coke and Pepsi blind, they prefer Pepsi. If they know what they are drinking, they prefer Coke.

The authors, neuroscientists, point out that “behavioral preferences for food and beverages are potentially modulated by an enormous number of sensory variables, hedonic states, expectations, semantic priming, and social context.” In other words, things go better with Coke.
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Eyes open or closed, the food at Tim Ho Wan, 610 Ninth Avenue, was always recognizably good. This was the second American branch of the Michelin-starred Hong Kong dim sum specialist. I am sad to report that it is closing, while its East Village location, 85 Fourth Avenue, remains open. Though much less centrally located, it deserves your patronage more than ever.

Wednesday, August 6, 2025
The bombing of Hiroshima was 80 years ago today. For those few of us who were alive then, it’s a long way back. Another 80 years prior and you get to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. L'dor v'dor is a Hebrew phrase that sticks with me. It means "from generation to generation."


Thursday, August 7, 2025
How to give your kids a complex
A big shot doctor at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn was sentenced on Wednesday to three years in prison after pleading guilty to stealing more than $1.4 million of public money from the hospital. About $176,000 was spent on pet care and $46,000 covered tuition payments for his children.  https://share.google/pGuQ18mPC5ZLg3w8X
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Realtor.com is the website of the very powerful National Association of Realtors. It just published its Hottest ZIP Code rankings based on 1) market demand, as measured by unique viewers per property on Realtor.com, and 2) the pace of the market as measured by the number of days a listing remains active on Realtor.com.

It's a very interesting collection, mostly in the Northeast, with New Jersey and Massachusetts particularly well represented. People may yearn for waterfront properties in the Sun Belt, but they settle for white picket fences in typical suburban communities.

Friday, August 8, 2025
I have good news for me. I am now considered one of the “super-agers,” people 80 and up who have the same memory ability as someone 20 to 30 years younger.
 
 Now, if I can only remember where I put my keys.

Saturday, August 2, 2025

Minority Report

Saturday, July 26, 2025
We had dinner tonight with Barbara & Bernie, cousins of cousins. We drove our great looking Supersonic Red Toyota Crown over to Maiella,   4610 Center Boulevard, Long Island City, behind the Pepsi-Cola sign on the East River waterfront. It’s a neighborhood now composed of new glassy, glitzy high-rise residential buildings where there was once a hodgepodge of small homes, factories and empty space. Between 2010 and 2017, 41 new residential apartment buildings were built in Long Island City (and many more since then).   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_City

Not surprisingly, street parking was near impossible, forcing me to break one of my commandments and pull into a garage.

Maiella occupies most of the ground floor of a new tower. It is large, the shape of a skewed square, wrapped in glass on two sides, interior walls of dark red brick and a high ceiling covered with thick slabs of wood. It was busy and noisy. Prices were almost reasonable.

An excellent heirloom tomato salad was attractively arranged ($17). Bernie and I shared calamari fritti ($18), a little too chewy, as was Bernie’s chicken parmigiana ($29), which I inherited a piece of. I had cacio e pepe, spaghetti and black pepper mixed in a scooped out wheel of pecorino cheese ($29), fattening and delicious.

The women had the salad, eggplant carrozza ($18), eggplant slices stacked with mozzarella, and roasted salmon ($32). No one had room for dessert. We also passed on strolling on the waterfront, just feet away, otherwise a pleasant way to end the evening.

Sunday, July 27, 2025
This website defines luxury homes as those in the top 5% of their respective metro area based on selling price. https://www.redfin.com/news/luxury-homes-million-dollar/

Currently, only seven major urban areas have luxury homes with a median price under $1 million, six are in the Rust Belt. Less than 10 years ago, 35 areas were presumably more affordable. Personal income has not moved up that sharply.

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Tom Lehrer is gone. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/arts/music/tom-lehrer-dead.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

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The New York Times has three full pages today on "Inside the Rise of the Multiracial Right.” https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/07/24/opinion/minority-voters-trump-right.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

It looks at Black, Asian and Hispanic Americans who have become Republican/Trump supporters. It boils down to this: The Democrats failed to keep their promises to improve their lives. Instead, they chose Republicans who made no such promises.

Monday, July 28, 2025
Flip Wilson, the very funny comedian who died far too young in 1998, portrayed Geraldine Jones, a somewhat impetuous young woman who often proclaimed that “The Devil made me do it!” Today, we have Eligio Regalado, a pastor at the online Victorious Grace Church, who said that God told him to sell cryptocurrency to his followers and was subsequently indicted on dozens of theft- and fraud-related charges for selling a digital coin that prosecutors said had no real value.  https://ministrywatch.com/online-pastor-indicted-in-3-4m-crypto-scheme/

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There was a terrible scene in midtown Manhattan this afternoon when a gunman from Nevada parked his car in front of 345 Park Avenue, walked into the building openly carrying a rifle, killed four people, including a policeman, before shooting himself in an office on the 33rd floor. 

I worked in 345 Park Avenue from August 1980 through December 1982, moving back to the Holy Land to take the job with a major financial services firm. As I write this, nothing is known about the killer’s motive. I don’t want to be irreverent, but only an out-of-towner would park his car on Park Avenue on a weekday.

 
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Last week, I described a phony L.L. Bean website offering great bargains on their merchandise. Well, the scam continues on the website “www.iieabnn.shop.”

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What’s wrong with this picture? “The New York City police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, has said the gunman [who killed four people at 345 Park Avenue] had a documented mental health history and legally purchased a revolver in June using a Nevada concealed carry permit.” https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/07/29/nyregion/nyc-shooting-manhattan?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

 
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Michael Ratner lives at Fifth Avenue and East 84th Street and I live at Amsterdam Avenue and West 69th Street. Lunch at Maison Pickle, 2535 Broadway at West 84th Street was about halfway and, even though the temperature was at 96°, I walked my part.

The joint is narrow and deep. You pass a long bar when entering, backed by mirrored shelves holding at least 100 bottles of spirits. 

I ordered from the three-course $30 Restaurant Week lunch menu, offering a good discount from  à la carte prices. I started with D’Olived Eggs (sic), four hard boiled egg halves, made with extra virgin olive oil, chives and too much Maldon salt, flaky sea salt produced in the village of Maldon, England. I then had Pickle’s signature dish, Classic French Dip, “Roasted Sirloin of Beef, House Baked French Bread, Horseradish Aioli, Big Dill Pickles, Maldon Sea Salt, Mustard.” Actually, I didn’t eat the pickles, else the sandwich was excellent.

The waiter kindly wrapped the Oreo Icebox Pie for me to take home, which was my main course for dinner. In all, there was enough food to provide a satisfying lunch for two normal human beings.

 
Friday, August 1, 2025
The New York City Police Department has 34,000 uniformed officers. Nearly 12 percent of them are Asian. Thirty-three percent of uniformed officers are Hispanic and 17 percent are Black. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/nyregion/nypd-didarul-islam-bangladesh.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
 
According to the 2020 U.S. Census, 15.6% of New Yorkers are of Asian origin, 28.3% Hispanic origin, and 20.2% Black

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Thanks to Governor Ron DeSantis, today is “Hulk Hogan Day in Florida.”   https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2025/flags-half-staff-honor-hulk-hogan

In case those of you in the other 49 states feel left out, sleep with your friend’s wife and sue for invasion of privacy when the sex tape is released. Gawker Media, LLC v. Bollea, 170 So.3d 125 (2015). In these progressive times, that celebration is available to both men and women.

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The New York City Department of Education announced the composition of the next entering class of the city’s competitive high schools. At Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, the most selective of the specialized schools, eight of the 781 offers this spring went to Black students while 27 went to Hispanic pupils. Asian students were offered 509 spots, and white students were offered 142. 95 students had either multiracial or unknown backgrounds. 


In the public school system, 42 percent of students are Hispanic, 20 percent are Black, 19 percent are Asian and 16 percent are white. As glaring as the problem is, it eludes solution.