Latest news with #HellGate
Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Climate
- Boston Globe
Rain again this weekend. Is Boston in a toxic relationship with the weather?
IT'S ALL SO TOTALLY UNFAIR!!! 'It should be a Saturday,' said Jennifer Hatch, a public sector worker on her lunch break, 'but it's Tuesday.' She enjoyed the last of her slushie, and then it was time to head back to — where else — work. Another glorious day mediated through an office window. Advertisement Why are we being taunted by basically everything? Our Get Love Letters: The Newsletter A weekly dispatch with all the best relationship content and commentary – plus exclusive content for fans of Love Letters, Dinner With Cupid, weddings, therapy talk, and more. Enter Email Sign Up And making it all worse: the weekend washouts. Since mid March Advertisement On Wednesday, aka a WORK day, the sky hosted a hazy sun and the weather apps on our phones showed rain on Friday and Saturday and clouds for Sunday. 'Is this city gaslighting us?' asked a downtown employee. Are the conspiracy warriors on Reddit right? Are we There are different ways to answer the question. Just to get this out of the way, first let's hear from actual scientists. The weekend rain is due to a 'variable weather pattern,' Globe lead meteorologist Ken Mahan told my colleague Ava Berger. In 2023, when weekend rains were plaguing the East Coast, the New York City publication Hell Gate investigated. ' The take-away: The truth, as with the Karen Read case, depends on which expert you believe. 'A 1998 BUT: In 2007, Pink sticky notes form a message in a window of a sun-dappled office building on Congress Street. These days it seems like the work week is sunny and the weekends are rainy. Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff Which leaves us with alternative explanations: Maybe this is payback because our winter wasn't horrible, as NBC Boston meteorologist Advertisement Or perhaps it's Trump! Not content to whack Harvard, now he's coming for our weddings, our golf games, our barbecues. How long until he appoints a telegenic TV meteorologist to head a Department of Ha Ha No Fun on Weekends? Whatever the reason for this terrible weather pattern, there are only two ways out: Either Josh Kraft needs to vow that if we declare him mayor right now he'll reveal why it was all Mayor Wu's fault, and fix this immediately. Or: anyone lucky enough to have a desk job will no longer even need to explain why they're wearing a bathing suit on the Zoom call. In fact, hooky may already be on the rise. On Tuesday, as she lolled on a beach towel in the Public Garden, a Northeastern student confessed that she had called out sick from her job as a certified nursing assistant at a local hospital. 'The UV right now is like a 9 or 10,' she said by way of excuse. Beth Teitell can be reached at
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
First Kehlani's, Now Noname's SummerStage Show Is Canceled
One week after the organizers of New York City's annual SummerStage concert series canceled R&B singer Kehlani's Pride show set for the end of June, it appears Chicago rapper Noname's show celebrating Juneteenth has been canceled as well. Local publication Hell Gate first reported that Noname's show had been canceled after finding that the Ticketmaster site promoting the show announced a cancellation by the organizers. The cause is unclear. Previously, City Parks Foundation, the nonprofit that puts on SummerStage, announced that they had decided to cancel Kehlani's performance after Mayor Eric Adam's office warned them of 'safety concerns' regarding an earlier decision by Cornell University to bar Kehlani as well. University president Michael I. Kotlikoff accused Kehlani of having 'espoused antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments in performances, videos, and on social media.' Kehlani, who has supported Palestinians as Israel's war against Hamas causes mass casualties and starvation, responded to the accusations, saying 'I am not antisemitic nor am I anti-Jew,' and 'I am anti-genocide, I am anti the actions of the Israeli government, I am anti an extermination of an entire people, I'm anti the bombing of innocent children, men women… that's what I'm anti.' More from Rolling Stone Vic Mensa Commends Kehlani's 'Humanity and Courage' for Publicly Supporting Palestine New York's SummerStage Cancels Kehlani Concert Amid 'Concerns' From Mayor Adams' Office Kehlani Responds to Cornell Concert Cancellation: 'I Am Anti-Genocide' The description of Israel's reprisals in Gaza after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, as genocide has been highly contentious. Humanitarian groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have used that term, as have many others; former president Joseph R. Biden and the American Jewish Committee, among other groups that support Israel, have strongly objected to this framing. In addition to citing the 'controversy' at Cornell, the Mayor's office cited 'the security precautions needed for an event like this in Central Park, and the security demands throughout the City for other Pride events during this same period of time.' Mayor Adams himself said 'antisemitism' was an issue when asked about the cancellation in a press conference on May 6. 'Well, listen, everyone knows my feeling about the increase in antisemitism throughout the country and if not throughout the globe,' he said. However, in the case of Noname's show, the Mayor's Office told Hell Gate that it didn't have a hand in the cancellation, and referred the publication to Live Nation, who did not respond to their request for comment. Reps for Live Nation, Ticketmaster, City Parks Foundation, Noname, and Kehlani did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone's requests for comment. Noname has been outspoken about her socialist-leaning politics, telling Rolling Stone, 'I could be a better organizer. I could be more anti-capitalist, more anti-imperialist, I could be more active politically in my community. It's probably impostor syndrome, it's probably a lot of things, but I just feel like with the state of the world, we all should be doing more.' She runs Noname Book Club and the Radical Hood Library in Los Angeles, both promoting community service, anti-carcerality, and justice-oriented literature by authors of color. The Book Club's monthly picks have included Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferfuson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Davis, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi and Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd's Rifqa on his family's history of displacement by Israeli forces. Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Called Out for AI Slop, Andrew Cuomo Blames One-Armed Man
Looking for a patsy, ex-New York governor and current NYC mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo found one: a one-armed man. As the New York Times reports, the aide in question, longtime Cuomo adviser Paul Francis, admitted to using ChatGPT to craft the disgraced former governor's new, typo-riddled housing policy plan. "It's very hard to type with one hand," Francis, who had his left arm amputated in 2012 following a sudden illness, told the NYT. "So I dictate, and what happens when you dictate is that sometimes things get garbled. And try as I might to see them when I proofread, sometimes they get by me." The "things" that "got by" the career wonk include, but are not limited to, a headline with the term "objectively" misspelled as "Bbjectively," the mask-off claim that rent control is "symbolic," and a link to a 2024 Gothamist article that cited ChatGPT as the sourced used to pull it up. Though the 29-page policy document has since been updated to remove its more glaring mistakes, an archived version of the original thing shows the embarrassing errors in all their glory. The excuse also doesn't quite add up. There's nothing wrong with using dictation software, but why would that cause blatant spelling errors or a reference to ChatGPT? And why wasn't someone else reviewing the document before pushing it out? All told, it sounds a lot like a fictional explanation crafted by a political campaign to deter critics by throwing a man with a disability under the bus. Prior to Francis' admission in the NYT, the Cuomo campaign went back and forth with local news website Hell Gate as to whether ChatGPT was used to write the document. After an initial non-denial from spokesperson Rich Azzopardi that thanked the outlet for "pointing out the grammar" errors, followed up with a longer explanation about the use of voice recognition software, and then claimed that the person who wrote the policy paper insisted they didn't use AI to write it. In a statement to Hell Gate, housing advocate Cea Weaver used the ChatGPT-generated errors to clown on the scandalous ex-governor. "[Cuomo's] campaign is so out of touch that he is outsourcing housing policy to a robot," Weaver, the director of the New York State Tenant Bloc, told the site. "But New Yorkers don't need ChatGPT to tell us that we need a rent freeze — it's 'bbjective.'" Obviously, this is far from the first time a politician has been caught using AI — and with the way things are going, it certainly won't be the last. More on inapproprite AI uses: Judge Goes Ballistic When Man Shows AI-Generated Video in Court
New York Times
14-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Cuomo Announces New Housing Plan, With a Hint of ChatGPT
For former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the release of his housing plan on Sunday was to be a major policy moment in his campaign to become mayor of New York City, which is facing its worst housing crunch in more than 50 years. He spoke about it at a Sunday morning church service; promised to build and preserve 500,000 units of housing, most of them 'affordable'; and prominently noted his years working as housing secretary for the Clinton administration. But the impact of his plan was diluted by a distinctly 21st-century imbroglio, one involving artificial intelligence, voice-to-text software and questionable proofreading skills. The 29-page housing plan included incoherent babble and a ChatGPT-derived hyperlink to a news article, as was first reported by Hell Gate, a local news site. The episode, in its apparent carelessness, fueled criticism of Mr. Cuomo, who, despite having quickly accumulated more than $1.5 million in fund-raising dollars, has limited his media availability and allowed his campaign to rest heavily on name recognition. 'I did the hard work to pass city laws that will create 120,000 new housing units,' Adrienne Adams, the New York City Council speaker who is among eight prominent Democrats challenging Mr. Cuomo in the mayoral primary, wrote on social media. 'Andrew Cuomo asked ChatGPT what his housing policy should be. Guess someone does need on-the-job training.' The Cuomo campaign said the policy paper was written by Paul Francis, a policy adviser who previously served as budget director for Gov. Eliot Spitzer, director of state operations for Gov. David Paterson and director of agency redesign and efficiency for Mr. Cuomo. Mr. Francis had his left arm amputated in 2012, and in an interview on Monday said that he relied on voice recognition software. That, he said, explains the several instances of incoherent language in the policy brief. 'It's very hard to type with one hand,' he said. 'So I dictate, and what happens when you dictate is that sometimes things get garbled. And try as I might to see them when I proofread, sometimes they get by me.' Mr. Francis acknowledged using ChatGPT to do research, much as people use Google, he said. The fact that the 'ChatGPT' reference in the paper is contained in a link to an article by Gothamist merely demonstrates that he would never use artificial intelligence for research without checking the citations, he said. 'It clearly was not a writing tool; it was a research tool,' Mr. Francis said. Among the virtually incomprehensible passages was this one: 'Nevertheless, several candidates for mayor this year have either called directly for a rent increase or for other measures that would tilt the scale toward lower rent increases. This is a politically convenient posture, but to be in. Victory if landlords — small landlords in particular — are simply unable to maintain their buildings.' By Monday morning, that paragraph and two others had been edited, but the hyperlink containing the ChatGPT reference remained. Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for the Cuomo campaign, argued that the instances of muddled language indicate that the paper was not, in fact, written by artificial intelligence. 'If it was written by ChatGPT, we wouldn't have had the errors,' Mr. Azzopardi said. Housing is one of the primary issues animating the mayor's race as New York City faces its worst housing crisis in more than half a century. In January, more than 120,000 New Yorkers slept in shelters, including more than 40,000 children, according to a tracker maintained by Coalition for the Homeless. Fully employed adults live in homeless shelters because they are unable to afford rent. Lotteries for the subsidized units that do get built attract thousands of applicants. Mr. Cuomo's housing strategy was of particular interest because of his background. While Mr. Cuomo presided as governor over the tightening of the housing market, he also created an organization to serve the homeless and chaired a mayoral commission on homelessness during David N. Dinkins's administration. Mr. Cuomo's plan, called 'Addressing New York's Housing Crisis,' calls for building and preserving 500,000 units of housing over 10 years — a strategy similar to that proposed by the current mayor, Eric Adams, in 2022. Mr. Cuomo said he would lean hard on tax incentives for developers, commit more funding to subsidize affordable housing, and invest pension funds into housing development.
Yahoo
04-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
New York State AG Letitia James Tells Hospitals to Continue Providing Gender-Affirming Care
Them' New York Attorney General Letitia James has informed hospitals that they would be violating state anti-discrimination laws if they stopped offering gender-affirming care to patients under the age of 19 following a recent executive order from Donald Trump targeting trans healthcare. 'Regardless of the availability of federal funding, we write to further remind you of your obligation to comply with New York state laws,' James wrote in a letter to New York healthcare providers. '[...] Electing to refuse service to a class of individuals based on their protected status, such as withholding the availability of services from transgender individuals based on their gender identity or their diagnosis of gender dysphoria, while offering such services to cisgender individuals, is discrimination under New York law.' On January 28, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to restrict gender-affirming care by removing coverage for gender-affirming care from federal health insurance policies, modifying requirements under the Affordable Care Act, and prohibiting hospitals or other medical providers who receive federal funding or accept Medicare or Medicaid from providing gender-affirming care to people under 19. Since taking office on January 20, Trump has targeted trans Americans through a flurry of other executive orders, including one paving the way to ban trans people from military service, and another stating that the federal government only recognizes two sexes: male or female as assigned at birth. 'President Trump on his own did not change the law,' Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU's LGBTQ & HIV Project, said during a February 4 interview with independent journalist Chris Geidner's Law Dork. 'It did not become illegal to treat transgender people under the age of 19 when he signed that order on January 28… these are directives to federal agencies that in no way change people's legal obligations.' However, in the aftermath of the issuance of Trump's executive order targeting healthcare for trans youth, some hospitals in states where such care is still legal have preemptively stopped treating young trans patients anyway. Last week, New York City-based outlet Hell Gate reported that the hospital system NYU Langone had stopped providing gender-affirming care to patients under 19. One family told Hell Gate that a surgery scheduled for last week was canceled because they were told that the hospital was no longer offering treatment to new patients under 19. Another family, who told the outlet that their child was scheduled for an appointment to receive puberty blockers, received the same explanation. A 2022 Williams Institute report found that an estimated 3% of teens between the ages of 13 and 17 who identify as transgender live in New York, meaning that the state has the highest population of trans youth in the country. On February 3, hundreds of protestors gathered in the streets of Manhattan to protest NYU Langone's decision to preemptively stop providing gender-affirming healthcare to trans youth. 'If NYU, as a hospital, is going to roll back care for patients based on the stroke of a pen, from an illegal executive order from a president, that is an attack on every single patient in the hospital,' Manhattan resident MJ Okma told local outlet NY 1 Spectrum News during the protest. NYU Langone wasn't the only healthcare provider that unnecessarily restricted gender-affirming healthcare services. Hundreds protested outside Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C. on February 2 after the hospital announced that it had paused some of its young trans patients' care, per The New Republic. In 2022, Children's National medical providers were inundated with threatening emails and phone calls after the hospital was targeted by right-wing X account Libs of TikTok, which falsely and dangerously asserted that providing gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth is 'mutilation.' Trump Directs Federal Government To Restrict Access to Gender-Affirming Care for Youth The executive order, titled 'Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation', is likely to be challenged in court. On January 30, Virginia Commonwealth University Health and Children's Hospital of Richmond announced in a statement that they had suspended gender-affirming medication and surgeries for patients under 19. That same day, Denver Health in Colorado told the Associated Press that it has stopped providing gender-affirming surgeries for patients under 19, although the publication notes that it's unclear whether the hospital will stop providing other gender-affirming healthcare to trans youth. Meanwhile, Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago told the Associated Press that hospital officials were reviewing the executive order and 'assessing any potential impact to the clinical services we offer to our patient families.' Per the Movement Advancement Project, both Virginia and Illinois have 'shield laws' protecting access to gender-affirming healthcare. The City reports that, as of February 3, New York City's largest hospital, New York-Presbyterian, has removed references to gender-affirming care for trans youth from its website and won't answer questions about these services despite James' warning. Get the best of what's queer. Sign up for Them's weekly newsletter here. 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