A three-alarm blaze inside a two-story home in Sunset Park killed six people and injured others during the early morning hours Thursday. 

According to the New York Fire Department, the fire started on the second floor of the home at 1:40 a.m. on 58th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues. Minutes later, it spread to the adjoining building.

Seventy-four units and 231 firefighters and Emergency Medical Service personnel rushed to the massive blaze, the deadliest fire in New York City this year.

Happy Thursday in New York City, where after a brief sabbatical in the appeals court system, the term “pied-á-terre” is officially back in the public lexicon. Oh, how we missed you.

A quick recap: Back in May, Governor Hochul’s (with Mayor Mamdani’s strong backing) signed a bill passed by the State Legislature authorizing an annual surcharge on expensive second homes in New York City, known as pieds-á-terre. The tax was heralded as a win for Mayor Mamdani's progressive agenda, and his administration quickly went about implementing it, sending notices to roughly 17,000 property owners warning that they could owe an additional surcharge. But many of those owners said they were wrongly flagged and sued to stop the rollout, prompting a Staten Island judge to invalidate the notices in September.

Yesterday, an appeals court reversed that judge’s ruling, and the pied-á-terre tax is officially back on. There are still separate legal challenges ongoing, but the court ruling clears the way for the Mamdani administration to move forward with what has become a signature initiative, which he says will bring in $500 million a year in additional revenue for the city. “The pied-a-terre surcharge asks those who can afford luxury second homes to contribute toward the safer streets, cleaner parks and essential public services that every New Yorker deserves,” Mamdani said in a statement.

Consider it another droplet added to the blue tsunami.

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In 1913, a news reporter asked Thomas Edison what American schools would look like in 10 years. Edison was selling a projector, so he was not a disinterested party.

“Books,” he predicted, “will soon be obsolete in the public schools.” Students “will be instructed through the eye.” By that, he meant watching. Film would “supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.” He promised it would happen “inside of ten years.”

Well, Edison wasn’t wrong about the eye. It’s called YouTube, but he was wrong that it would replace the classroom.

We are making this mistake again, only louder.

Read on to learn more.

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