NYC

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E Pluribus Unum: 13 Republican and Democratic States in Charts

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Contrary to the absurd belief that republicans are rugged individualists, born in log cabins they built with their own bare hands red states like Texas frequently receive WAY MORE from the federal government than they give. Put another way, red states, on average, enjoy the redistributed wealth produced in places exactly like New York and New Jersey. This blog post lays it out in a series of charts.

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Feats of “Dad Strength”

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Dad strength is the kind of physical strength that’s useful when stuff goes wrong and people are depending on you — in clutch situations. Every dad ought to meet or exceed his own minimal definition of strong, but I think these strength benchmarks are generally applicable because they scale to any weight.

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Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 378: Fully Vaccinated against Corona

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On Friday March 26, I received the second injection of the Pfizer vaccine at a Brooklyn health center on Clarkson Street. The appointment was automatically scheduled on the day of my first shot. There was just one complication: I didn’t bring my dumb card. And apparently, there is a black market for these things.

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Preparation for the SHSAT 2021 (in Covid times)

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On Wednesday 1/27/2021, my daughter will sit for the SHSAT, a 114-question math and english test, used by the 8 specialized New York City high schools. The outcome of this test is the sole determinant of admittance into a specialized high school. All other factors you’d think might play a role – grades, teacher recommendations, attendance, extracurricular activities, financial need – are ignored. We’ve been preparing in earnest since last August. This blog post recaps the highlights of that experience, and tries to answer a few questions some parents might have.

  • What is the SHSAT?

  • How to get sample SHSAT test content

  • The importance of Schoolwork

  • My advice to parents for ELA prep

  • How I prepared my daughter

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The Presumption of Savagery

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The week after George Floyd was killed by a police officer, I was sitting on my stoop, chatting with my neighbor. She’s a retired FDNY ladder chief in her sixties. She grew up here in Bedstuy. Our homes share a party wall and fence line. Before the virus, when the weather was nice, I’d often see her carrying supplies back and forth from her house next door to her two other properties, less than a quarter mile away. She’s a grandmother, a home owner, a real estate investor, and restaurant owner. She is black. And she said something that day that took me by surprise.

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Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 139

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It’s been 139 days since the official start of New York City's covid-19 lockdown. Unlike a lot of people, I have access to a Crossfit Rig in my back yard. About a week ago, I started making it a point to track some of my foundational strength benchmarks – rope climbing, muscle-ups, and pullups. The last 2 were for the orphans and BLM.

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Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 14: Gratitude

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I don’t think being grateful is one of the default configurations of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. It has to be activated somehow — compelled. Some people are compelled more intensely, and with greater frequency than others: refugees, combat veterans, cancer survivors. Those of us who habitually experience low levels of suffering meander through life with the default configuration, getting by with a game plan that takes us from point a to point b along a path of least resistance. But occasionally, people in this category (habitual non-sufferers) bang up against a moment of real suffering — and not of the lowercase ‘s’ variety such as getting stuck with the middle seat on a flight from JFK to LAX. I’m talking about discovering that your daughter has just been shot, or that your family’s apartment building is about to receive incoming artillery.

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Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 9: Aqua Best

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I decide to drive into the city on Tuesday around 5pm — almost on a whim. I head over the Manhattan bridge, take a right on Grand after passing the playground on Chrystie. All up and down Chrystie Street and Forsyth - and even along Grand - there are parking spots all over the place. Plastic bags and scraps of paper dart through the air, held up by wind that is unencumbered. On a normal Tuesday, those bags would be trampled down, kicked aside, swept away, somehow kept in check by one of several possible factors: delivery trucks, fire engines, cop cars, people exiting or entering cars, cabbies pulling into the cab stand, bus drivers, pedestrians, little old ladies with laundry baskets, bikers, men on trikes loaded up with tools, well dressed women pushing a $1,500 heavy duty stroller. Today, all such factors are gone.