Tech on Deck: Don’t race the machine. Drive it
In Adam L. Penenberg’s latest “Tech on Deck,” he argues journalists should embrace AI as a tool to transform their work rather than fight a shift they cannot stop. Image generated using Nano Banana.
Happy Friday in NYC, where opposing camps in the fight over Central Park’s carriage horses continue to jockey for position.
On one side, you’ve got the Central Park Conservancy and animal rights groups arguing that the time has come to move on from the antiquated practice. Their cause gained a flurry of support, including from Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin, after a pair of accidents last month that saw the deaths of 18-year-old tourist Romanch Mahajan and 16-year-old horse Deniz.
The Conservancy released a poll this week showing that 68% of New Yorkers support banning horse-drawn carriages, 20% want them to remain and 12% are undecided.
On the other side you’ve got the Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents the carriage drivers, 95% of whom are immigrants. Local 100 argues that the carriage industry supports hundreds of blue-collar families that would otherwise face financial ruin. What’s more, they argue, the industry protects horses from worse fates, including slaughter, and any incidents of mistreatment circulated by the press are anomalies and violations of the rules.
“We believe most New Yorkers… don’t want to see immigrant carriage drivers, owners and their families economically wiped out,” Alexander Kemp, administrative vice president of Local 100, told Gothamist. “They don’t want to see carriage horses forced into unpredictable and dangerous futures. They know that some would very likely end up at slaughter auctions or be euthanized.”
The City Council will hold a hearing on legislation to ban the practice on July 15.
What do you think? Are the carriages a charming tradition that supports hundreds of immigrant drivers and keeps the horses safe from slaughter, or an anachronistic hazard that imperils the horses and the people who ride them? Perhaps both? Let us know at [email protected]!
The Fun and Dumb Improv Festival takes over Brooklyn this weekend, with four days of comedic performances, workshops and more hosted by the Brooklyn Comedy Collective.
The Andrew Carnegie Foundation has awarded the Brooklyn Public Library a two-year grant of $1 million.
The NYC Economic Development Corporation is hosting a virtual information session on Tuesday to share site plan updates for the Brooklyn Marine Terminal project.
Eco-friendly tech startups in Downtown Brooklyn will benefit from $40,000 in grants provided by National Grid.
The MTA has added to its Automatic Camera Enforcement program two more Brooklyn bus routes that originate along the downtown corridors.
Reconstruction of ballfields at Commodore Barry Park begins on Monday.
A man was stabbed in the back at the Sutter Avenue-Rutland Road train station on Wednesday night.
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Our World In Photos
Photo: Sakchai Lalit/AP
THAILAND — Nature’s delight: Moo Deng the hippo, right, who turned two years old on Friday, eats fruit presented during her birthday celebration with mother Jona at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chonburi province, Thailand, Friday, July 10, 2026.
For more pictures like this, see Our World in Photos.
Beyond birds and mice, free‑ranging cats eat a surprising number of insects
Photo: Gibbs Augustus
It’s pretty commonly known, and not very startling, that free-ranging cats eat birds and small rodents. But the degree to which they eat insects might surprise you.
We are biologists who for many years have been trying to figure out what feral or outdoor-roaming pet cats eat outside.
When domesticated cats – Felis catus – live freely in the wild or are allowed to hunt outside the homes where their owners live, they are an invasive species, which live in every ecosystem of the world except the continent of Antarctica. We wanted to know all of the species they eat – and to what degree free-ranging cats are eating endangered or threatened species.
The PREMIUM tag indicates articles that come with extra photographs or special coverage. Thinking of a subscription? Try us out with a day pass for just 99 cents. No long-term commitment for a subscription.
The Mini
Cartoon Sketchbook
By Harley Schwadron
For the Road
Happy Birthday “I Wanna Love You Forever” singer Jessica Simpson!
On this day in 1932, the Eagle reported, “Activity will continue this Summer on the carving of Mount Rushmore into a national memorial. This is where Gutzon Borglum is carving the heads of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt in solid granite so that it may stand as a lasting memorial in time to come.”
Got a tip? Send it in to [email protected].