"Jay-Z is pushing to get it. Nas wants a piece. The owner of the Mets is spending a fortune to win. A subsidiary of the Yankees is trying, too. Manhattan’s biggest commercial landlord is all-in. The Hudson Yards crew wants it, and so does the man behind Coney Island. A former police commissioner is wrapped up in this. And a former governor. And Eric Adams’s closest confidant. And the guy who owns Donald Trump’s old golf course. And the head of a private intelligence firm." What's the big prize everyone seems to want a piece of? A casino in NYC, or what one insider describes as "a license to print money, literally." It's the city that never sleeps which provides 24 hours a day for customers to drop their money into slot machines. Yes, terrestrial casinos are still a goldmine even though we're all carrying casinos around in our pockets. Noah Shachtman in NYMag: New Jackpot City. Eleven rivals. Countless billions. One prize: the right to build a casino in the heart of New York. How big is the opportunity? Consider what the bidders are offering in return for the license. "New Yorkers may be used to grandiosity, to shrugging at a new skyscraper like it’s another foothill in a mountain chain. The casino deal is different. The opportunity is so gargantuan that the bidders are promising, almost as add-ons, to spend billions to solve some of the city’s most challenging engineering feats and to build concert halls, apartment towers, science centers, public schools, parks, even a museum of democracy. These are projects that would ordinarily merit headlines all on their own. In this contest, they’re mere loss leaders." The only thing bigger than the Big Apple is three cherries in a row on a slot machine. 2Best ActorMaybe the only quicker way to make money than running a casino is running a ponzi scheme. In The New Yorker, the always-excellent Evan Osnos provides the details on one such effort performed by a struggling actor. Master of Make-Believe. "Zach Horwitz was charged with thirteen counts of fraud, in the service of what prosecutors called an 'intricate illusion'—the largest Ponzi scheme in Hollywood history. He had raised more than six hundred and ninety million dollars by deceiving hundreds of investors, beginning with his closest friends. A woeful actor onscreen turned out to have been an astonishingly convincing performer in life." Ironically, this story reads like the treatment for a movie or limited series. Maybe they should make it into one and give a piece of the action to all the folks that got ripped off by Zach Horowitz. 3Moth Gall"These moths belong to a group of insects—Lepidoptera, the order that includes butterflies and moths—that’s been around for hundreds of millions of years, well predating us, much less our taste for luxe outerwear. What the larvae are after, though, is not sweater-specific; they’re hungry for keratin, a hardy protein found in fur, feathers, horns, claws, hooves, and other animal adornments." Moths have become so well-adapted to your closet that, "they don’t really live outside anymore." Your home is their home and they're tough to get rid of. The Atlantic (Gift Article): Sweater-Eating Moths Are an Unbeatable Enemy. 4Distressed OutDemocracy dies in darkness... And in bad editorial choices? A couple weeks ago, we learned the very disturbing news that an upside down flag had been flown outside of Samuel Alito's house. But the story itself wasn't new. It was just unreported. Three years ago, WaPo investigated the same flag story and opted not to publish it. Did they make the right choice? "The wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a Washington Post reporter in January 2021 that an upside-down American flag recently flown on their flagpole was 'an international signal of distress' and indicated that it had been raised in response to a neighborhood dispute." WaPo (Gift Article): Wife of Justice Alito called upside-down flag signal of distress. (Housewives of SCOTUS is gonna be Bravo’s biggest show.) 5Extra, ExtraYou Talking to Me? Both sides are completing closing arguments in the NYC Trump trial. And outside the courtroom, Robert De Niro clashed with Trump supporters. Strange days indeed. Here's the latest from CNN and NBC. Meanwhile, the more important cases continue to be delayed and otherwise saddled. Judge Cannon denies special counsel request to bar Trump from making statements about law enforcement. 6Bottom of the News"The town is home to Europe’s biggest swinger community. Tens of thousands of couples head to the town from across Europe every year to swap partners. But right now, the town is reeling from an entirely new scandal which has the rest of France shaking its head in collective bemusement and amusement." One assumes the mayor and his fortune teller, both currently in jail, are neither bemused nor amused. French town reels from fortune teller scandal.
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