Latest news with #DreamHotel
New York Post
4 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Remembering my friend Bernard Kerik — NYC's top cop
Kerik was friend to the end Eternity is breaking up that old gang of mine. In his good years, Bernie Kerik was good. Very good. Nobody gooder. I was often at his New Jersey home. Dinners. Parties. Crowded? You couldn't throw a summons without hitting a VIP. Son Joe a detective. Himself a former NYC cop. As top cop, one Christmas card pictured his favorite one-namers — Donald, Geraldo and me. Advertisement I've kept letters he sent me from prison. Talk was maybe a movie being written about him. He wanted Tom Cruise to star. Yeah, he went bad. In politics it's catching. It's in the walls. Like the virus. USA — greatest piece of Earth God ever created — and Mrs. ventriloquist Biden getting hairs bleached a swab away from the nuclear codes? Before Bernie went to jail we talked. Just us. Blotting tears he said: 'Not easy to take. My brother said he didn't know I was this tough. I don't read newspapers, don't watch TV. Seeing, hearing it yourself is awful. Advertisement 'Friends fell to three types. Those who fled, those who stayed as support, and those I'll have to try to forget. 'Happened was I got involved in my own celebrity. It's arrogance. You think you're above the law. I made mistakes. I'm paying the price for it. People have said I had no right to have reached that high because I'm a nothing who came from nothing . . . so what do I know . . . I don't know.' Down 50 pounds, NYC's once-heralded former police commissioner — who now spoke very quietly — 'Even at this stage I'm getting offers. Stuff like international security. Israel, Jordan, Middle East. Consulting on counterterrorism. Advertisement 'And you don't know your friends until trouble hits. I've been ignored by them all. Close ones stick. Some show up to see — or help. Then there's the so-called ones you thought you always had. They disappeared.' Ciao to Chow's And from life's other side: another deeply appreciated Philippe Chow Chinese restaurant's opening. His East 60th branch — after 20 years — is closing. His new East Side location's opening September. Advertisement Why's he moving? Because Extell Development Co. founder Gary Barnett has building plans. Philippe Chow Downtown inside West 16th's Dream Hotel is already getting jazzy queries. The clientele included Mariah Carey, Cardi B, Kendrick Lamar. Need a table? The GM at the new place is Kostas Paterakis. Doc is music to his ears Sting and Trudie Styler's kid Jake Sumner doing a doc about famed NYC concert promoter Ron Delsener — he brought Simon and Garfunkel back together for their 1981 reunion in Central Park. Paying tribute in the flick, Jon Bon Jovi says: 'His name even came before the band.' Paul Simon: 'New York was his town.' Delsener, for some reason, eats a sandwich during the piece. Sandwich, OK. But if it's ribs — better he should ship them to my house. Advertisement And be it known the previous government was desperately trying to help small businesses. We should be grateful a little fellow once made the rounds with a hand organ and a monkey. Biden gave him a loan. Now he flounces around with a steam calliope and a gorilla. Only in Washington, kids, only in Washington.
The Age
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
In The Dream Hotel, even thinking about murder is enough to send you to jail
FICTION The Dream Hotel Laila Lalami Bloomsbury, $26.69 Prison is a place beyond shame, writes Laila Lalami in her gripping new novel, The Dream Hotel. Lalami's main character, Sara Hussein, is imprisoned yet has not committed any crime; she is being detained because she dreams of murder. And every murder starts with a fantasy, officials say. The Dream Hotel is set in a future when people's thoughts, actions and dreams are monitored, monetised and weaponised by tech companies and authorities in the name of convenience and public safety. Each person has a risk score, based on hundreds of data sources including their family, spending, health, education, criminal history and reputation. Hussein, an archivist and mother of baby twins, is detained at Los Angeles Airport after flying home from a conference in London. First, she is annoyed by the delay; then she is mystified as there'd been no major change in her life since the last time she'd seen her risk report. 'She didn't lose her job, didn't get evicted, didn't default on a loan, didn't receive public assistance, didn't owe child support, didn't abuse drugs, didn't suffer a mental health crisis, any of which might have ticked up her score,' writes Lalami. 'And she didn't have a criminal record – wasn't that the biggest factor in calculating the likelihood of a future crime?' But Hussein had chosen to install an implant in her brain to improve her sleep quality. The product manufacturer had then harvested that data and trained artificial intelligence to look for patterns and make predictions. The device revealed that Hussein had dreamed of killing her husband, with whom she was juggling the care of young children. 'The algorithm knows what you're thinking of doing, before even you know it,' a warden explains. Labelled a 'questionable person', Hussein is sent to a women's 'retention' centre for an observation period of 21 days. But three weeks come and go: Hussein can only leave when her risk score falls below the legal limit. Prisoners are told if they are compliant and work hard – doing mind-numbing jobs to boost income for the prison's sharemarket-listed owner – they will eventually be released. But the prison's rules are capricious, and Hussein struggles with compliance. Readers are left wondering whether Hussein will ever escape. The Dream Hotel contemplates the nature of freedom for people who have never lived without internet surveillance, and bear the brunt of its most brutal applications. The novel's imagined crime-prevention prison program is popular among the broader population.
Sydney Morning Herald
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The dystopian novel that might make you consider the current reality
FICTION The Dream Hotel Laila Lalami Bloomsbury, $26.69 Prison is a place beyond shame, writes Laila Lalami in her gripping new novel, The Dream Hotel. Lalami's main character, Sara Hussein, is imprisoned yet has not committed any crime; she is being detained because she dreams of murder. And every murder starts with a fantasy, officials say. The Dream Hotel is set in a future when people's thoughts, actions and dreams are monitored, monetised and weaponised by tech companies and authorities in the name of convenience and public safety. Each person has a risk score, based on hundreds of data sources including their family, spending, health, education, criminal history and reputation. Hussein, an archivist and mother of baby twins, is detained at Los Angeles Airport after flying home from a conference in London. First, she is annoyed by the delay; then she is mystified as there'd been no major change in her life since the last time she'd seen her risk report. 'She didn't lose her job, didn't get evicted, didn't default on a loan, didn't receive public assistance, didn't owe child support, didn't abuse drugs, didn't suffer a mental health crisis, any of which might have ticked up her score,' writes Lalami. 'And she didn't have a criminal record – wasn't that the biggest factor in calculating the likelihood of a future crime?' But Hussein had chosen to install an implant in her brain to improve her sleep quality. The product manufacturer had then harvested that data and trained artificial intelligence to look for patterns and make predictions. The device revealed that Hussein had dreamed of killing her husband, with whom she was juggling the care of young children. 'The algorithm knows what you're thinking of doing, before even you know it,' a warden explains. Labelled a 'questionable person', Hussein is sent to a women's 'retention' centre for an observation period of 21 days. But three weeks come and go: Hussein can only leave when her risk score falls below the legal limit. Prisoners are told if they are compliant and work hard - doing mind-numbing jobs to boost income for the prison's sharemarket-listed owner - they will eventually be released. But the prison's rules are capricious, and Hussein struggles with compliance. Readers are left wondering whether Hussein will ever escape. The Dream Hotel contemplates the nature of freedom for people who have never lived without internet surveillance, and bear the brunt of its most brutal applications. The novel's imagined crime-prevention prison program is popular among the broader population. But how can anyone survive imprisonment when they are judged not by their actions, but by their darkest thoughts and uncontrollable dreams? And when prisoners make money for their jailers, do they stand a fair chance of being released?
The Age
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
The dystopian novel that might make you consider the current reality
FICTION The Dream Hotel Laila Lalami Bloomsbury, $26.69 Prison is a place beyond shame, writes Laila Lalami in her gripping new novel, The Dream Hotel. Lalami's main character, Sara Hussein, is imprisoned yet has not committed any crime; she is being detained because she dreams of murder. And every murder starts with a fantasy, officials say. The Dream Hotel is set in a future when people's thoughts, actions and dreams are monitored, monetised and weaponised by tech companies and authorities in the name of convenience and public safety. Each person has a risk score, based on hundreds of data sources including their family, spending, health, education, criminal history and reputation. Hussein, an archivist and mother of baby twins, is detained at Los Angeles Airport after flying home from a conference in London. First, she is annoyed by the delay; then she is mystified as there'd been no major change in her life since the last time she'd seen her risk report. 'She didn't lose her job, didn't get evicted, didn't default on a loan, didn't receive public assistance, didn't owe child support, didn't abuse drugs, didn't suffer a mental health crisis, any of which might have ticked up her score,' writes Lalami. 'And she didn't have a criminal record – wasn't that the biggest factor in calculating the likelihood of a future crime?' But Hussein had chosen to install an implant in her brain to improve her sleep quality. The product manufacturer had then harvested that data and trained artificial intelligence to look for patterns and make predictions. The device revealed that Hussein had dreamed of killing her husband, with whom she was juggling the care of young children. 'The algorithm knows what you're thinking of doing, before even you know it,' a warden explains. Labelled a 'questionable person', Hussein is sent to a women's 'retention' centre for an observation period of 21 days. But three weeks come and go: Hussein can only leave when her risk score falls below the legal limit. Prisoners are told if they are compliant and work hard - doing mind-numbing jobs to boost income for the prison's sharemarket-listed owner - they will eventually be released. But the prison's rules are capricious, and Hussein struggles with compliance. Readers are left wondering whether Hussein will ever escape. The Dream Hotel contemplates the nature of freedom for people who have never lived without internet surveillance, and bear the brunt of its most brutal applications. The novel's imagined crime-prevention prison program is popular among the broader population. But how can anyone survive imprisonment when they are judged not by their actions, but by their darkest thoughts and uncontrollable dreams? And when prisoners make money for their jailers, do they stand a fair chance of being released?
