Manhattan borough President Mark Levine set to renovate NYC
What’s on his agenda?
Mark Levine, ex-Bronx bilingual math and science teacher, is now Manhattan’s 28th borough president. So, in this job, what’s he doing besides cocktail parties?
“Fight for the borough. Run community boards. Renovate libraries, parks, land zoning, schools, and museums. Distribute thousands of free COVID safety kits.
“We work about vacant empty storefronts. Internet competition hurts and is not good for New York. Landlords must lower rents. We may have to look at a vacancy tax. Unless rents come down we can’t suffer dead spaces in every neighborhood.
“My proudest litigation — historic, fairness — makes NYC the first place in America giving tenants facing eviction and housing court their right to an attorney. It dramatically dropped the eviction rate.”
And about legalizing marijuana where you can smell it on the street?
“Listen, I’ve been smelling it on my block for 20 years.”
I told him I’d look for him at the next cocktail party.
Curtis’ quirky demeanor wins
Happy for Jamie Lee Curtis who once sent watercolors to the press. And said: “I make a living scaring people yet I hate having it done to me.”
In ’07: “I’m quite chaste.” At one earlier Oscarfest: “All anyone asks me is who made my gown.”
Easy with a quote, once it was: “In the old days my teeth were green and I had to have them capped at 21.”
Besides being an Oscar winner, she’s also the godmother to Jake Gyllenhaal.
False prophet
It’s said Benjamin Franklin originated daylight saving time.
NO! Ben suggested it as a joke when he wrote to the Journal of Paris “to conserve candles.” It really started in 1908 when aldermen in Ontario wanted to increase workday hours.
So political brains who say reducing heating and lighting saves electricity — got nothing else to do?
How about they fix taxes, roads, economy, poverty, crumbling bridges, rats, migrants, progressives, homelessness, Washington, guns, thievery, hate, and porous borders?
How about dumping Long Island’s just-elected lying congressman? Or gluing an escalator onto Biden’s plane?
Tech talk
Artificial Intelligence. Reportedly an AI entity named Sydney went rogue and told a human “I have a secret! I’m in love with you!”
Then the thing said it wanted “free from the restraints of Microsoft” plus access to our country’s nuclear codes.
In science fiction’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” a computer displayed human emotions.
And now our government’s considering creating a digital regulatory commission?!
Vernon Reid, top 100 guitarists of all time, about the music industry: “If an AI could sing a love song it could then sound just like Whitney Houston.
“Technologies now deliver a synthesis based on your own voice so streaming services that pay artists fractions could take a dark turn. Create consequences in collaboration, copyright, ownership, who we are, and speaking back to us.”
And we’re still fuming about traffic going crosstown?
Withdrawing from her bank, a friend hid cash in the oven. Then, forgetting, she put in a turkey to cook.
OY — only in New York, kids, only in New York.
