This year when I was home for Thanksgiving, my mom said that she dug up a box of floppy disks, and asked if I cared about them or whether she should throw them away. Obviously, I am a data hoarder, and I was going to archive them all, so in my suitcase they went. Today, I spent an hour or so stuffing them in a drive and imaging them -- and occasionally spot-checking their contents. I came across this one, assuming that it had a Thanksgiving menu from 1999.
Instead, it had an artifact that told a whole-ass story about me as a kid.
I swear, if I ever run into this contractor ever again, I'm going to punch him right in the dick.
I'm not sure what happens next. Engineer said he would talk to permit wrangler and see what they could come up with, but that hasn't happened yet. I suspect he's trying to close out a bunch of work for end-of-year, so hopefully early next month there will be a plan.
***
Walked past a dog park on my way to the gf's a couple of days ago and a few of the owners had laced LEDs in different colours through their dogs' collars. It gets dark at 4:30 in Toronto, so all I could see were these clusters of bobbing lights running around in circles. It honestly took me a while to figure out what I was looking at.
Fucking genius to be frank.
***
Physio continues to go really well. I'm now running into the problem where I have been off my feet for so long they are a bit de-conditioned from walking so I'm getting sore arches and blisters as I get back into it. S'fine, I know that part is temporary.
I don't know if the news elsewhere is talking about it, but this year's version of the flu killed a couple of kids here in Canada, so it's getting talked about. It's either mutating faster than usual or the vaccine wasn't exactly for the right strain, because it's dodging the vaccine and it's an especially nasty version.
So my dad's wife has laid down the law about masking if family wants to visit him this winter and I am very relieved. I plan to remind everybody prior to the "official" Xmas dinner that they need to mask for the couple of weeks after New Years and partying like it's 1919.
***
I finally opened up the ancestry account and I've been futzing around with it a bit. My brief exposure to people who get into genealogy is that it's mostly retirees who take it up as a hobby and I can see why - it's time consuming. (Maybe possibly being from an Irish Catholic family where everybody has 12 kids does not help with that.)
So far I've found a bunch of relations that hie'd off to the USA and one possible connection to Australia. I'm mostly mining other peoples' family trees at the moment. There is a higher level membership that gets you access to newspaper archives, I figure I'll do that one when I've collected enough hints to make it worthwhile.
***
Spent too much time listening to Kneecap and now the Youtube algorithm is sending me Irish language bands.
So, this year, I chose two reading challenges for myself, and I tried to choose them advisedly, so they would affect my year's reading, but not control it.
I also found that this was a year where I was changing. And… there were times I resented the challenges that Early 2025 Me chose, because Current 2025 Me wanted to read other things but also wanted to complete the challenge she'd set for herself previously.
I suspect that I may not do any structured reading challenges next year. Or, maybe if I find some shorter-term ones. They aren't something I've traditionally done: 2025 was a first time. And I enjoyed it, despite my grumbling here. But… I also think I need less pressure on my reading life going into 2026. Let my interests take me where they will and push myself to make the decisions, rather than letting those choices be influenced as much by previous decisions.
Zohran Mamdani has promised to have 1 percent of the city budget go to the Parks Department — but so did Eric Adams, who never came close to delivering.
Three experts and advocates — Katie Denny Horowitz of NBK Parks, Anthony Samma of the Alliance for Flushing Meadows Corona Park and John Surico of the Center for an Urban Future — discuss all that and more with host Katie Honan.
Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a long-sought package of prison reform bills into law Friday, calling it “landmark” legislation that would improve safety for staff and incarcerated people alike. But days later, the scope and significance of the measure is still being fiercely debated, with some advocates saying that while it amounts to real progress, it falls well short of the systemic overhaul New York’s troubled prison system desperately needs.
The omnibus legislation, approved by the State Legislature earlier this year, makes ten changes to state law aimed at increasing transparency and accountability inside state prisons and local jails. It comes in the wake of the fatal beatings of Robert Brooks and Messiah Nantwi by corrections officers at Marcy and Mid-State correctional facilities.
The Brooks killing was captured on body camera video by a group of four officers who believed their cameras were turned off. The deaths shocked the public, reignited demands for sweeping reform and led to multiple criminal charges of state correction officers.
“Every single individual who enters our prisons deserves to be safe,” Hochul said in a statement announcing the signing. “Our work is never done.”
Advocates largely agreed the bill represents progress but said it leaves intact too much of the power structure that has allowed abuse to persist for decades. The bills do not include any changes to the state prison system’s maligned disciplinary system or new avenues to reduce the population behind bars.
“This is a serious step forward, but it is not the end of our struggle,” said state Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn), a prime sponsor of the legislation. “The final package does not include everything we sought.”
On Monday, the Brooklyn lawmaker pushed back on criticism circulating in activist circles that the governor had hollowed out the bill during months of negotiations.
“Some folks hit me up after the signing of the bill, and they just kind of heard little bits and pieces here and there, and they’re like, ‘Oh, we’re so upset the bill has been gutted,’” Salazar told THE CITY. “And I’m like, you know, I’m not thrilled that any of it was changed, but I can assure you, the bill has not been gutted.”
The new law mandates full audio and video camera coverage in all Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) facilities and in vehicles used to transport incarcerated people. The legislation also requires footage tied to deaths in custody to be turned over to the state attorney general within 72 hours.
Additionally, it strengthens notification requirements for families after a prisoner dies in custody, expands autopsy documentation and increases reporting obligations for the department’s Office of Special Investigations.
Former state correction officer was captured on body camera footage choking Robert Brooks while he was incarcerated at the Marcy Correctional Facility. Credit: Image via Body Camera Footage
One of the most contested provisions partially reshapes the State Commission of Correction, the state watchdog with oversight authority over every jail and prison in New York.
The commission will expand from three members to five and for the first time must include a formerly incarcerated person, along with a commissioner with a health care or prisoner-rights background.
“This acknowledges that the commission has failed its responsibility and is in dire need of change,” said Yonah Zeitz of the Katal Center, which helped lead a coalition of more than 160 organizations pushing for the overhaul.
The final deal, however, left Hochul with sole authority to make those appointments, subject to Senate confirmation, abandoning earlier proposals that would have shared appointment power with the Legislature or outside groups.
Advocates have long argued the commission was effectively sidelined by its limited size, resources and insular makeup. They also pushed for the commission to be expanded to eight members.
But Hochul nixed that proposal, citing an added cost of approximately $1 million a year, according to Salazar.
At least one state lawmaker was upset that Hochul didn’t enact more sweeping changes. “The bill we got is not the bill we fought for,” said Assemblymember Emily Gallagher (D-Brooklyn). “The governor will own whether the commission is empowered to actually do its job.”
Still, Corrections Commissioner Daniel F. Martuscello III said the reforms, combined with steps already taken by DOCCS, position the department for “meaningful, lasting change,” citing expanded body-worn camera deployment, new de-escalation training, leadership changes at troubled facilities and additional resources for internal investigations.
On the positive side, Salazar pointed to provisions she said remained fully intact, particularly those designed to strengthen the state attorney general’s ability to investigate deaths at the hands of correction officers and other law enforcement.
Attorney General Leticia James was forced to recuse herself and her office from probing the Brooks and Nantwi deaths last year because her office was representing some correction officers in separate unrelated lawsuits.
Under the legislation, a deputy attorney general from the same office will be tapped whenever the AG has a conflict.
Another provision Salazar highlighted is the Terry Cooper Autopsy Accountability Act, which she sponsored. The law requires more detailed autopsy reports when incarcerated people die in state custody, including photographs and imaging, and mandates that those materials be shared with oversight bodies such as the Correctional Medical Review Board and the DOCCS commissioner.
The legislation is named after Terry Cooper, a man who was beaten to death by correction officers in 2017 at Clinton Correctional Facility. At the time, Salazar said, the autopsy report contained no photographs, allowing Cooper’s death to be mischaracterized as resulting from natural causes.
State Senator Julia Salazar along with other local officials demands entrance to an immigrant detention center at 26 Federal Plaza, Sept. 18, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
“It was only years later, through a civil lawsuit brought by his family, that it became clear he had been beaten to death,” Salazar said. That case ended with what was then the largest civil settlement ever awarded in the Northern District — more than $9 million in public funds — after no officers were criminally charged.
It wasn’t just prison reformers who were disappointed with the legislation.
Correction officers’ union leaders blasted the new laws, arguing Hochul overreacted to isolated crimes by imposing new layers of oversight on a workforce they say is already stretched thin and under constant scrutiny.
In a statement, the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association said it was “deeply disappointed” the governor signed the omnibus bill, even while acknowledging the gravity of Brooks’ death.
“The death of Robert Brooks was a profound tragedy and meaningful reforms to ensure that never happens again must be made,” the union said in a statement. “However, we cannot support legislation that responds to a single tragedy by imposing broad, punitive oversight on thousands of dedicated corrections professionals who had no role in it and who are already under constant surveillance and scrutiny.”
Advocates counter that decades of deference to correctional staff concerns helped entrench a culture where abuse went unchecked, and said the backlash underscores why stronger external oversight is necessary.
“This is a first step,” said Serena Martin, executive director of New Hour for Women & Children LI. “But New York’s prisons remain dangerous places, and there is far more work to do.”
Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.
The Trump administration on Monday renewed their campaign against two offshore wind projects in New York waters.
Citing unspecified national security risks, the U.S. Department of the Interior “paused” the leases for the Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind projects, both already under construction, plus three additional major offshore wind projects in other states.
“Today’s action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in a statement.
The press release by DOI also mentioned government reports that found towers and turbine blades can interfere with radar.
Gov. Kathy Hochul lambasted the federal government’s order, which she said jeopardized thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investments.
“I just want the Trump administration to know the widespread effect this is going to have on our economy, on people’s jobs, the ability to support their families,” she said Monday at an unrelated press conference in Albany. “It’s just another attack on a place like New York that is working so hard to have an all-the-above approach so I can keep the lights on.”
She questioned the DOI’s definition of national security, saying “reducing our reliability on foreign energy, like foreign oil, is a step toward our own energy future, and that’s why creating our own renewable energy like offshore wind is an important part of our national security.”
New York officials and experts have said offshore wind is key to ensure energy reliability for New York City by bringing large amounts of renewable power to a place that’s not conducive to building big energy projects. Absent Empire Wind and a transmission project that would carry hydropower from Canada, New York City’s grid is expected to face reliability challenges as soon as next summer — meaning possible blackouts or brownouts in times of high demand for electricity.
Sunrise Wind, by Danish developer Orsted, and Empire Wind, by the Norwegian developer Equinor, are projected to generate together enough power for about a million homes when they are in operation, which had been expected in 2027.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, along with 17 other states, also sued the Trump administration in response to the stop-work order. A federal judge decided in the state’s favor earlier this month.
It’s possible James could head to court once again in response to the latest federal action. In a social media post, Hochul indicated New York is “working with other impacted states to review every available option to get these projects back on track.”
The Monday pause also affected three other projects off the coasts of Massachusetts, Virginia, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Equinor spokesperson David Schoetz said the company is “evaluating the order and seeking further information from the federal government.”
On Friday, Equinor sent an update on Empire Wind’s progress, noting that workers had laid rock, installed monopiles and begun laying cables in the water. “These milestones mark major progress toward delivering renewable energy to New York City’s grid,” the update stated.
In a release, Orstead indicated it would suspend its construction activities and is “evaluating all options to resolve the matter expeditiously.” The company’s latest update on Sunrise Wind specified work was moving forward on the land side.
Offshore wind backers also criticized the federal government’s latest attempt to kill the offshore wind projects.
“Trump’s false claim that offshore is a threat to national security is like saying doctors are a threat to our healthcare system,” Adrienne Esposito, Executive Director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said in a statement that referred to Trump as The Grinch. “There is no sane justification for stopping these 5 wind projects, other than cruel and unusual punishment to the hard-working employees and to the American public who want clean air and stable electric rates.”
“These delays put both workers and energy security at risk, and are guaranteed to raise our electric rates. This is no time to halt the progress the offshore wind industry has already made,” said Marguerite Wells, Executive Director of the trade group Alliance for Clean Energy New York.
Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.
Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.
Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!
Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!
Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.
This is a book I wished I’d had when I started building, but it is also one that’s extraordinarily useful to more experienced builders. Mike Litchfield was the original editor of Fine Homebuilding; in 1982 he published the first version of Renovation, and it’s been updated periodically, this being the latest and 4th edition. Popular Science called it “The most comprehensive single volume on renovation ever” — which is totally true.
What differentiates this book from others of its ilk is that the author has gathered all this information in the field, interviewing carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and contractors, finding out what’s important, what works, what’s new. These guys love to talk about what they do well, and in this sense, the book is one of collective wisdom. It’s at the same time highly useful to professionals, but also one that’s invaluable for homeowners and people of the fixer-upper persuasion.
The chapter “Planning Your Renovation” is completely new, reflecting the current interest in smaller projects, spending wisely, and energy efficiency. The chapter on wiring covers code changes, and tells you things like how to fish wire, install wireless switches, or replace old incandescent ceiling lights with energy-efficient LEDs.
There’s a section on installing IKEA cabinets, tips and instructions on energy retrofits, working with paperless drywall (in wet areas), soundproofing, cutting into a concrete floor, working with PEX plumbing tubing, and installing engineered flooring. I found myself flipping through the book at random, and learning a lot. —Lloyd Kahn
Trim on older buildings is rarely level or parallel. Thus new trim maybe look better if it’s installed slightly out of level so that it aligns with what’s already there. For example, when stretching a chalkline to indicate the bottom of the water table, start level and then raise or lower the line until it looks right in relation to nearby windowsills and the like. Once the chalkline looks more or less parallel to existing trim, snap it on the building paper, and extend it to corner boards.
Avoid the sun around the house as you paint so that you apply paint in the shade if possible. Paint applied in full sunlight is more likely to blister later.
Cracked plaster often means that it has pulled free from its lath. Use screws and plaster washers to reattach it, countersinking them so they’ll be easier to patch.
To insert a replacement board into an existing tongue-and-groove floor, use a tablesaw to remove the bottom of the groove. Slightly back-cut the ends of the new board so it will slide in easier.
PEX Advantages
It installs quickly. Because lengths of flexible tubing easily turn corners and snake through walls, PEX systems require far fewer connections and fittings than do rigid materials. For that reason, it’s particularly well suited to renovation work.
Fewer leaks. PEX tubing runs to fixtures from hot- and cold-water manifolds with multiple takeoffs. Most of the fitting is simple, consisting of crimping steel or copper rings onto tubing ends. Because most leaks occur at joints, fewer fittings also mean fewer leaks.
It’s quiet. The tubind expands slightly, minimizing air hammer–the banging that takes place in rigid piping when taps are turned off suddenly and running water stops abruptly. That ability to expand also means less-pronounced pressure drops (fewer scalding or freezing showers), and PEX tubing is less likely to rupture if water freezes in it.
The beauty of working with PEX is that is required relatively few specialized tools. Here, an inexpensive PEX-cutting tool with a replaceable blade produces a clean, squared-off end.
Every building that endures will be modified. Yet few structures are built to be easily modified. The more stylized a building is now, the harder it is to change. Stewart Brand (who invented the ancestor of Cool Tools) teases out design principles for making buildings that can adapt — or “learn” — to new needs, new uses. While his examples are architectural, showing how the greatest buildings evolve, his advice is aimed at any kind of hard-to-change organization. Software programmers think this book is talking to them since they are often asked to adapt skyscrapers of code built with no concern about adapting it later. This book will be useful to anyone trying to build complicated things that will outlive them. — KK
Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.
Kyron Randall became the 15th person to die in DOC custody in 2025 when he experienced an allergic reaction on Rikers Island on Sunday, according to the DOC. AP file photo by Ted Shaffrey
By Jacob Kaye
The death toll on Rikers Island continued to rise to its second-highest point in the past four years on Monday, when a 33-year-old detainee died after allegedly having an allergic reaction in the city’s jail complex.
Kyron Randall was pronounced dead at Elmhurst Hospital around 1 a.m. Monday morning, approximately 12 hours after he first began experiencing an allergic reaction at Rikers Islands’ George R. Vierno Center on Sunday, according to the Department of Correction.
The exact cause of his death has yet to be determined.
Randall is the 15th person to die in Department of Correction custody this year, the highest death toll seen in the city’s troubled jails since 2022, when 19 people died.
Randall was the second Rikers detainee to die in December, and the third to die in the last month. He is also the 48th person to die in DOC custody since Mayor Eric Adams first took office.
Randall’s attorney, Brian Sullivan, declined to comment on his client’s death.
A spokesperson for the Department of Correction said the agency reported Randall’s death to a number of agencies and watchdog groups for further investigation, including the Board of Correction, the state attorney general’s office, the city’s Department of Investigation, the State Commission of Correction, local district attorneys and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The agency also reported the death to Steve J. Martin, the longtime federal monitor tasked by United States District Court for the Southern District of New York Chief Judge Laura Swain to track conditions in the city’s notoriously dangerous jails.
“As we investigate this incident, we keep Mr. Randall’s loved ones in our prayers,” DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie said in a statement. “This matter will be thoroughly investigated.”
The uptick in deaths comes at a pivotal moment for the city.
Days before Randall’s death, Swain issued a long-anticipated decision, outlining the expansive powers of the incoming “remediation manager,” a third-party official who will soon assume day-to-day control over much of the city’s jail system.
The order outlines a powerful position that would effectively displace the authority of both the mayor and the Department of Correction commissioner over the jails for the better part of the next decade.
The remediation manager, who will work full time either from Rikers Island or within DOC headquarters, will have administrative, financial, contracting, legal, operational and other powers over the city’s jail system. They’ll have the power to hire, train, promote, demote, transfer, investigate, evaluate and fire anyone currently working for the DOC except the commissioner. The receiver will also be granted “the authority to enact or change DOC policies, procedures, protocols, systems, and practices.”
Swain also gave the receiver “unlimited access to all records and files maintained by the DOC” and “unlimited access to all DOC facilities, persons in custody, and DOC staff.”
The Adams administration has been attempting to convince Swain for years that the appointment of a receiver was unnecessary, claiming that it had the ability to reduce violence in the jails on its own.
But the Legal Aid Society, which represents Rikers Island’s detainees in the ongoing civil rights case known as Nunez v. the City of New York, said the increase in deaths suggests otherwise.
“As deaths rise and conditions at Rikers continue to worsen, the city needs to use every alternative to incarceration and fully support real change in our broken jail system,” the public defense organization said in a statement on social media.
The rising death toll also comes as Mayor Eric Adams, who has fought against receivership and Rikers Island’s closure, is preparing to leave office.
Advocates have long been critical of Adams’ handling of Rikers, which was in a state of acute crisis when he first took office in 2022.
Deaths rose to a decade high during Adams’ first year in office as the population in the jails also began to rise to levels not seen in years. The mayor also took little action to advance the city toward the August 2027 deadline to close Rikers Island, which experts now say is an impossibility.
Darren Mack, the co-director of Freedom Agenda, said that Randall’s death on Monday was a result of Adams’ management of the jails.
“As we head into the holidays, another family is grieving, and thousands more are worried sick about their loved ones who are suffering at Rikers instead of celebrating with them,” Mack said. “But that is Mayor Adams' legacy – he took a place that was already creating such immense harm in our communities, and managed to make it even worse.”
“We know very clearly what we need from our incoming mayor – urgent action to stop sending people to this death camp, invest in real community safety, and finally get Rikers closed,” Mack added.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who has expressed his general support for receivership, told the Eagle in February that he would make it his “mission” to “comply with the law, to close Rikers and to decarcerate our jail population.”
“That is something that the city has for years paid lip service to, while doing nothing to make it a reality,” Mamdani told the Eagle earlier this year. “We have not invested in alternatives to incarceration, our courts have taken that lack of investment as a cue to continue shuffling New Yorkers to Rikers, and dozens of people have died as a result.”
This story was updated at 2:43 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 22, 2025.
A federal judge defined the broad powers the incoming federal receiver will have over the city’s jail system. Eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach
By Jacob Kaye
A federal judge last week rejected dozens of objections to her May ruling outlining the broad powers of the incoming Rikers Island receiver, a third-party official who will soon assume day-to-day control over much of the city’s jail system.
After generally outlining the position in May, Judge Laura Swain, who serves as the chief judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, specified the full powers of the receiver – which she’s dubbed the “remediation manager” – in a ruling issued Thursday afternoon.
The order outlines an expansive role that would effectively displace the authority of both the mayor and the Department of Correction commissioner over the jails for the better part of the next decade.
While Swain has yet to appoint the receiver, she received a short list of candidates in the fall after nearly 30 people applied for the position over the summer.
In her ruling issued on Thursday, the judge said that now that the details of the position have been worked out, she’ll turn her attention toward picking someone for the job, though she didn’t say exactly when she plans to name someone to the role.
Whoever is appointed to the position will assume major control over Rikers Island and the city’s jail system – Rikers Island is supposed to be replaced by four borough-based jails in 2027 but the city is at least five years behind its legally mandated deadline – for at least the next seven years.
The remediation manager will have “the authority to exercise all powers vested by law in the commissioner…with the goal of developing and implementing a sustainable system that protects the constitutional rights of persons in custody.”
Swain first ordered the receiver after finding in November 2024 that the city had violated over a dozen provisions of a settlement reached in the detainee rights case known as Nunez v. the City of New York, which was first brought because of alleged abuses committed by correction officers against detainees but later blossomed into a broader suit about a range of poor conditions and dangers in the jails. The judge said that because of turnover at the top of the Department of Correction and in the mayor’s office, the city had failed over the past decade to make any meaningful progress toward reducing violence in the jails. Only a receiver answerable exclusively to a judge would have the power to cut through the dysfunction that has come to define Rikers Island, Swain said in an earlier ruling.
The Legal Aid Society and Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, which together represent detainees in the class action case, celebrated Swain’s ruling on Thursday, calling it “a historic step toward correcting the egregious constitutional violations that incarcerated New Yorkers continue to suffer each day in New York City jails.”
“This decision represents a genuine opportunity to address dangerous problems that the city has failed to cure across multiple administrations, multiple commissioners, and multiple court orders,” the firms said in a statement.
The law firms also called on Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who has said he generally supports the appointment of a receiver, to “embrace this moment and work collaboratively with all parties to finally deliver the meaningful improvements New Yorkers need and deserve.”
A spokesperson for Mamdani did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
The receiver’s powers
After being appointed, the receiver will immediately begin meeting with the city, attorneys for the detainees and the federal monitoring team, which Swain has employed to track conditions in the jails for the past decade.
The receiver will then create the first of several remediation action plans, which will include “specific and concrete steps and milestones designed cumulatively to achieve compliance” with the settlement. The first plan will be due to the judge 90 days after the receiver officially takes office.
The remediation manager, who will work full time either from Rikers Island or within DOC headquarters, will have administrative, financial, contracting, legal, operational and other powers over the city’s jail system.
They’ll have the power to hire, train, promote, demote, transfer, investigate, evaluate and fire anyone currently working for the DOC except the commissioner. The receiver will also be granted “the authority to enact or change DOC policies, procedures, protocols, systems, and practices.”
Swain also gave the receiver “unlimited access to all records and files maintained by the DOC” and “unlimited access to all DOC facilities, persons in custody, and DOC staff.” They will also be allowed to confidentially interview staff and detainees.
While the exact cost of the remediation manager’s work has not yet been determined, the city will be responsible for paying for it. Each month, the receiver will invoice the city for their team’s work, which must be paid within 60 days, according to Swain’s ruling.
If at any point the receiver feels they need more money, they will tell the commissioner to notify the City Council and the mayor of the funds needed and the reasons why. If the city doesn’t pay up, the remediation manager can request a hearing before the judge.
While there’s no determined timeline for the receiver’s work, Swain suggested the city could begin to work itself out of the constraint in around seven years, granted they meet the goals set out by the receiver.
According to the order, the city will regain its powers over the jail gradually. Should it come into compliance with a specific action item over two consecutive six-month periods, the receiver will have 60 days to turn the responsibility back over to the city. However, should the city ever fall out of compliance with that action item again, it would go back into the receiver’s portfolio.
Some similar receiverships across the country have lasted anywhere from a couple of years to more than a decade.
If there's one food that's cheaper in Japan, it's low-end sushi. Supermarket had a tray of 8 seafood nigiri: 2 salmon, 2 tuna, mackerel, shrimp, the big roe, and some pink gel. 598 yen. $6 by PPP, which is already good deal; $4 by exchange rate. Probably would be $12 in a Philadelphia supermarket, or $15.
But! I actually got it at 50% discount, near closing time. So 8 nigiri for $2.
...maybe I should be more aggressive about walking off with as much discount sushi as I can carry...
On a recent frigid evening, visitors outside Newark’s Delaney Hall huddled under blankets while waiting to see family members or friends locked up inside the huge, privately operated immigrant lock-up.
Visitors are required to show up to the grim cinderblock building at least an hour before their scheduled 30-minute visit and often wait at least that long outdoors before entering the gated complex and passing through security.
Those who don’t arrive at least an hour early to the center, which is about a 20-minute bus ride away from Newark-Penn Station, are regularly turned away.
“They should find a way to accommodate us inside,” said Tatiana Conza, 32, in Spanish as she waited to see her cousin. “For me, this is a joke. You don’t even treat an animal this way.”
Conza has visited once a week for two months ever since her cousin was arrested at his credible-fear interview with immigration officials, a previously routine step in the asylum application process that’s recently become an arrest trap for ICE. She always comes with her two young daughters to try to keep her cousin’s spirit up.
“It’s hard to be in there,” she said.
Since this spring when Delaney Hall opened, groups of volunteers, most of them driving there from elsewhere in New Jersey, have been showing up on the four days a week that visits are allowed.
When THE CITY visited the center one recent evening, they were passing out hand warmers, gloves, instant ramen and cups of steaming tea and hot chocolate. They’d brought quilted blankets and cushions to cover the newly installed metal benches.
Mutual aid groups provide warm drinks to people visiting family members at the Delaney Hall immigrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey, Dec. 16, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
For many of the people visiting loved ones at Delaney Hall, “these are the last times they’re going to see each other for a very long time,” said Stephanie Campos. For months now, the Jersey City resident has been showing up for visiting hours twice a week. “This is it for them,” she told THE CITY.
Surrounded by fences and barbed wire on a difficult to access and desolate industrial strip, Delaney Hall quickly became the largest ICE detention center in the Northeast, with more than 900 people held there on a given day. It is a regular destination for New York City residents grabbed by ICE on the streets at immigration court appearances or at ICE check-ins.
That’s accelerated since the summer, when a federal judge limited the number of people who could be held at one time inside the ICE holding areas at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan.
But in the months since, the protests have largely given way to a steady stream of visitors, many knowing or fearing that it could be the last time they see their loved ones.
GEO Group, the private prison company that runs Delaney, didn’t return THE CITY’s request for comment on the long wait outdoors that visitors must endure.
The number of people in immigration detention has soared under President Donald Trump, reaching never-before-seen heights. While the Trump administration has claimed its focusing on the “worst of the worst,” half of the 65,000 people being held in detention as of late November had no criminal convictions or pending charges. In New York City arrests have skewed even more toward people with no criminal history, accounting for 70% of people arrested so far this year, THE CITY previously reported.
Advocates have been raising alarms about the conditions inside Delaney, complaints about rotten food, dirty water and difficulty accessing medical care. Last week, ICE reported the first death since it reopened. In a press release, it said a 41-year-old Haitian man died of “suspected natural causes.” Advocates are demanding a deeper investigation into what happened.
‘It Tears Me Apart’
Over the past months, volunteers have brought umbrellas and ponchos in the rain, tents and cool drinks in the summer, and clothing for people turned away due to the inscrutable dress code that seems to shift with the whims of guards.
Kathy O’Leary, the New Jersey region coordinator for Pax Christi, a Catholic services nonprofit, began attending vigils protesting Delaney’s imminent opening and remained as visitors started showing up.
“They need something more than just a word of kindness and moral support,” O’Leary said. “People need stuff. They need something physical. They needed chairs. They needed water. They needed information.”
The cold of recent weeks has presented a new host of challenges, she said.
Families brave frigid temperatures to visit loved ones held at the Delaney Hall immigrant detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, Dec. 16, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
“We’ve been telling everybody we need an indoor waiting area,” O’Leary said.
In November, after pressure from O’Leary and other volunteers, along with the office of U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, GEO Group installed a covered shelter and three rows of metal benches.
Advocates acknowledged it was an improvement, though the structure does nothing to protect visitors from the biting cold.
Jay Arisso, a pastor at Today’s Church in Elizabeth, was in line waiting to visit a parishioner whose family members were too terrified to come visit themselves.
“The walls are really just walls, he’s free in his mind,” Arisso said, he tried to console people during visits. “There’s another chapter after this.”
Another religious leader, Rev. Chloe Breyer of the Interfaith Center of New York, was turned away while trying to visit Bronx imam El Hadji Hady Thioub, whose arrest was reported on by the Religion Service News.
A guard had recognized her from a prayer service earlier in the week, when she had spent time tabling with volunteers, and decided she wasn’t allowed to enter, Breyer said.
“He seems to be making up a lot of rules,” Breyer continued. “There are people providing humanitarian aid here, and he has I guess decided that that somehow excludes them from visiting the people inside.”
The guard who’d turned away Breyer declined to comment, while telling a reporter for THE CITY to get off of GEO Group’s property.
The line demarcating the prison company’s property from the public space where the volunteers have their tables is painted in yellow on a stretch of tarmac.
Regular visitors and volunteers were used to the arbitrary anger of the guards at the gate, who bark orders at the shivering visitors huddled on the other side.
“Behind the barrier!” the guard shouted, as unmarked white vans holding newly detained immigrants raced in.
“The only thing I say to him is God bless you,” said Kenia Barragan, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico, who has come to Delaney as often as possible since her daughter’s boyfriend of six years was arrested in Yonkers in mid-October on his way to his construction job.
Barragan’s family spent Thanksgiving at Delaney Hall with her daughter’s boyfriend. The 23-year-old immigrated to the United States at age 15 and has no other family in the country.
Earlier that day, an immigration judge had denied his release on bond. Crestfallen, the family now intended to return for Christmas as well.
“The only way that we can help him is coming here, talk to him, make him feel hope, make him laugh, at least one hour,” Barragan said.
By around 8 p.m. a final group of visitors filed in behind the gates, while another group trickled back out into the cold night. Esperanza Valladolid, a 40-year-old Ecuadorian woman emerged from the gates, bouncing a fidgety toddler on her hip, as she waited for the Uber volunteers had ordered for her.
Valladolid’s life has been upended since her husband’s arrest at his credible-fear interview in Newark several weeks prior.
Esperanza Valladolid and her children braved a frigid night to visit the father at the Delaney Hall immigrant detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, Dec. 16, 2025. Credit: Gwynne Hogan/THE CITY
“To see my son every day pick up the phone, put in headphones and call his father, it tears me apart,” she said in Spanish.
Earlier that day, her husband had been ordered deported by an immigration judge, and she was still grappling with what to do. “We don’t know, I guess we’ll stay here and he will leave.”
Her husband had been the sole breadwinner of the family, and Valladolid was adjusting to life as a single parent to her two young kids. In the meantime, she said, she would return as many times as she could, no matter the weather.
“Any moment they’re going to take him,” she said.
Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.
The office of City Comptroller Brad Lander is auditing a key fund that pays for city employee’s health benefits, THE CITY has learned, as public sector unions and the administration of Mayor Eric Adams remain locked in a dispute over who is responsible for replenishing the cash pot.
For years, the Health Insurance Stabilization Fund has been used to pay for some city workers’ health insurance premiums and supplemental benefits, like prescription drugs and dental and vision plans. The fund ran dry last year as a planned cost-saving switch of retiree health coverage to Medicare Advantage was tied up in the state’s courts. The fund is paid for by taxpayers and jointly managed by the city and the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC), a consortium of the city’s 102 public-sector unions.
The comptroller’s office is investigating the use of the stabilization fund to pay for supplemental benefits and more, MLC leaders told their members in a Dec. 16 meeting, according to audio obtained by THE CITY.
Alan Klinger, the group’s attorney, told the union leaders in attendance that the comptroller’s office has taken the position that “the stabilization fund is a strict trust that could only be used for equalization” of premium rates, an assertion he told the group both the MLC and the city dispute. Klinger explained that equalization is one of many uses that the fund was established to address: “There’s no trust indenture that formally restricts that it can only be used for equalization.”
Henry Garrido, a co-chair of the MLC and the head of the city’s largest public sector union, told MLC members that he believes that Lander’s probe is unprecedented and a “political stunt” from the erstwhile Democratic mayoral primary candidate and current Congressional challenger.
“For him to take that position is not only outrageous, but unprecedented,” railed Garrido, according to the audio recording. “No other comptroller has ever done that because, so far, since the inception of the stabilization fund, it’s been a function of the collective bargaining process.”
Spokespersons for City Hall and District Council 37, Garrido’s union, did not respond to requests for comment. Klinger did not respond to a message seeking comment.
It is unclear when or why the comptroller’s office began its audit of the stabilization fund. A spokesperson did not respond to THE CITY’s questions about the probe.
The stabilization fund was created to balance the difference in rates between the city’s two most popular premium-free health plans, GHI and HIP, a process known as equalization. The fund grew as the cost of GHI began to exceed the HIP rate, growing from $30 million at its inception in the mid-1980s to more than $500 million by 2011 — a tempting pot of cash for the city and the unions at a time of fiscal uncertainty and rising health costs.
By the end of the 2024 fiscal year, the fund had a reported “disposable balance” of just $1 million, the comptroller’s office reported in June. It estimated that covering the stabilization fund will cost taxpayers $612 million alone in the fiscal year that ended in July.
“So basically, you created this fund, it amassed a substantial balance, and the city and the labor unions figured out different ways to use those dollars that provided additional health benefits and provided additional fiscal resources to the city,” said Ana Champeny, a budget expert at the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscally conservative watchdog group. “And this was all well and good up until the point when suddenly GHI cost more than HIP and they ran out of money, and there were no more deposits being made, and the balance got spent down.”
With the probe, Lander is inserting himself into a long-simmering conflict between the unions and the administration of Mayor Eric Adams that this spring exploded into public view over which side is responsible for billions of dollars in pledged health care savings that have failed to materialize.
The MLC argued in a lawsuit it filed against the city that it is not responsible for making up the stabilization fund’s cash and sought to block efforts by the Adams administration to pursue arbitration.
Lander’s term as comptroller expires at the end of the year, which would leave incoming Comptroller-elect Mark Levine to pick up the probe unless Lander wraps up before Dec. 31. Garrido is the co-chair of Levine’s transition committee.
In response to a question from an MLC member during the Dec. 16 meeting, Garrido said that the audit is “not part of the discussions” on the transition. A representative for Levine’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment.
New York faces a $2.18 billion budget gap for the remainder of the fiscal year ending in July 2026, and a $10 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year, the Comptroller’s office announced Thursday.
Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.
Most people wouldn't put a CT scanner on a cruise ship. The owners of the Odyssey aren't most people.
Or: Max meets Hugh "Doc" Laurent.
StableState prompted:
Who put a full-sized CT scanner on a cruise ship? Not to mention the HGTV feature wall of unlabeled medication in glass bottles (on a boat. With waves.) or the gene sequencer. Even the usual equipment is oddly gold and sleek. They have to be custom-ordered, or medical design is very different in our world.
I read that prompt, laughed, and immediately grabbed the pinch-hit. "Privileges of the Purse" is my best crack at the first three questions.
(The final question is unaddressed in the story, but I assert there is a medical supplier out there who does fake-gold-plated medical equipment for a few select customers overly invested in faux-opulence; chief among them is the Trump Organization.)
A splenic (but not asplenic!) cryptic criss-cross.
Just after I finished my Temeraire story, a second pinch-hit came up for StableState. After I confirmed with the mods that my "excess" 600 words from the first pinch-hit could be applied to this one, I picked it up. After all, there had been a second prompt of theirs that had interested me: one for a music video about spleens.
Fic In A Box has options for non-traditional fills: in addition to stories and art, it's possible to create works that fit various format or media opt-ins, one of which is cryptic crosswords. Which StableState had opted into for the spleen prompt! And what a lucky coincidence, I had just that week downloaded a course on how to do cryptic crosswords! I had read the first three chapters! Surely that was enough knowledge to design my own cryptic crossword??
(grrlpup laughs and confirms that I have always been like this.)
So I sailed in and did my best. It was fun! My grid was sub-standard (and I need to figure out how it is that people make up good grids), but it was neat to try to make up clues.
Happily, I had the wisdom to ask seekingferret, who is well-versed in all things puzzles, to beta. He warned me off the worst of my errors, kindly informed me that what I had created is called a criss-cross and not a crossword, and confirmed that it was in fact solvable.
(I am... not sure that anyone has solved it who isn't Ferret? But the recip left a nice thank you, and I shall be content with that.)
My Wheelchair House. I have EDS, like the author, and also arthritis (but not POTS). I've thought a lot about how to handle it if I start needing a wheelchair or a walker to get around.
Last Call for Mass Market Paperbacks. I buy all mine digitally now (or borrow them from the library). I also think about how bad this is for used bookstores.
They Burned the Alamo Express. A white Texan's story about his Confederate ancestors and their pro-slavery, racist, pre-war activities. I may have to subscribe to this guy's newsletter.
Sometimes I hit a romance in media and I'm like well. I don't know that I'd say that I ship this. I wouldn't be sad if these people broke up. But unfortunately I do actually believe that they are in love and find it compelling to watch what happens about it ....
anyway that's how I felt about the central relationship in The Legend of ShenLi, which is a xianxia cdrama about ✨ The Greatest General Of The Demon Realm ✨ and her epic romance with -- well. For the first five or six episodes ShenLi, the Greatest General of the Demon Realm, is trapped on Earth in the form of an angry CGI chicken, in the care of a sickly human scholar who has discovered that his angry CGI chicken is in fact some sort of supernatural entity and thinks the whole situation is very funny.
Here, for the record, is angry chicken ShenLi:
and here is ShenLi and her love interest when nobody is a chicken:
This whole introductory arc is really charming. Incredibly happy for that sickly scholar and his angry bird wife. But alas! all things must end, the lovers are parted, and ShenLi The Greatest General of the Demon Realm grimly returns home to confront her upcoming political marriage to a playboy from the Divine Realm, in the full assumption that she will never see her sickly scholar again because even aside from the political pressures one day in the Demon Realm equals a year in the human realm so the time difference is not workable.
However! then some monster nonsense starts happening in the Demon Realm, and so the Divine Realm sends its last surviving actual factual god to help out -- who bears a Mysterious Resemblance to ShenLi's sickly human boyfriend .... ( spoilers )
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joshua0
![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
