Happy Friday in New York City, where Mayor Mamdani is having one hell of a week.

The mayor barely had time to celebrate a slate of Primary Day victories on Tuesday before news broke of another monumental vindication. The Rent Guidelines Board voted last night to approve a rent freeze on approximately 1 million rent-stabilized homes in the city by a vote of 7-1, fulfilling one of the core promises of the Mamdani campaign.

This marks the first time in its history that the board has approved a rent freeze on two-year leases. During the Adams administration, the board chose to raise rents on one-year leases every year, totalling 12% over four years. For the roughly two million tenants affected, last night’s vote brings immediate relief.

For what seems like the hundredth time this month, jubilant New Yorkers hit the streets to celebrate. The festivities began in El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem, where the vote took place in front of a cheering audience of tenants and advocates holding signs reading “Freeze the Rent” and “Rent Rollback.” The crowd hung around to chant and sing in multiple languages about tenant power before spilling into the street after the vote.

But the news also drew furious backlash from skeptics and landlord groups across the city. One member of the Rent Guidelines Board, Christina Smyth, resigned before the vote even took place, claiming that the board ignored evidence that rent increases were required to keep up with rising operating costs in order to deliver on a mandate imposed by the mayor.

“This year’s RGB order was decided last year on the campaign trail,” Smyth wrote in a letter to reporters. “This rebuilt board was required to deliver a rent freeze. Everything since has been theater.”

Mamdani struck a triumphant tone following the vote.

“This is a historic victory for New York City tenants," Mamdani said in a statement. “After reviewing the data and hearing from New Yorkers across the city, the independent RGB has delivered a freeze on one-year leases, and the first-ever freeze on two-year leases in our city's history. This is the relief that working people across our city deserve.”

Now all Mamdani needs is to score an invitation to Taylor and Travis’ upcoming New York wedding to complete a week straight out of a manifestation journal.

At the end of 1999, I obtained a leaked book proposal for a secret invention so classified that its creator, the engineer and entrepreneur Dean Kamen, had given it a code name: Ginger. 

Investors who’d seen it had signed NDAs thick enough to choke on, but enough had slipped out to send Silicon Valley into a frenzy.

Steve Jobs said it was bigger than the personal computer. John Doerr, who had backed Amazon and Google, called it more important than the internet. Jeff Bezos put in money. Kamen raised $90 million at a $600 million valuation for a product nobody outside his lab had seen.

The coverage was inescapable. Ginger was on the cover of magazines. It was the subject of breathless speculation in every existing business and technology outlet. What was it? A cold fusion device? A new form of transportation? A machine that could end fossil fuels? The guessing was half the story, and the guessing was everywhere. I wanted in.

Read on to learn more.

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