yonderbarn

Dubbed the “Sderot cinema” by Israelis online, watching Israel’s bombardment has become a popular pastime; people take turns looking through tower viewers. Some bring popcorn and snacks, and some snap selfies as the thud of airstrikes echo in the distance.

“When I look at Gaza from here and see buildings still standing, it makes me upset. … I want Israel to continue until it’s all flattened,” Rafael Hemo, an onlooker told CNN.

Hemo said he doesn’t want any Arabs living next to Israel any longer, and laments the world’s sympathy for Gaza after what happened on October 7.

“After what we’ve gone through, they need to be gone. No more Gaza.”

Lots of interesting behind the scenes info on the campaign. For example, apparently things got a bit messy with Brad Lander:

Mamdani’s relationship with Brad Lander, the city comptroller who in the final weeks of the Democratic primary essentially turned his own mayoral campaign into another leg of Mamdani support, is still recovering from a rocky patch over the summer, according to four people familiar with the matter.

Lander told a variety of leaders that he was interested in a top position like first deputy mayor in the administration, in what a range of anxious New York leaders saw as an implicit promise that an experienced hand would help professionalize Mamdani’s City Hall. That did not go over well when word got back to Mamdani’s orbit.

After nearly a month when they did not speak, by Labor Day, Lander was telling people maybe he would not be joining the administration after all.

The two have talked through this recently, and while no job offer was made, Lander has renewed his help for Mamdani in the campaign.

-1:10:36 of interview is where she admits this.

Mamdani also has built a substantial war chest – with $4.4 million cash on hand

In all, more than 8,000 people contributed to Mamdani in roughly five weeks. And about half of his money came from donors who live outside the city

When Taylor Swift’s releases her new album, “Life of a Showgirl,” in October, it can be heard on the usual places, including streaming, vinyl and…cassette tape?

The cassette tape was once one of the most common ways to listen to music, overtaking vinyl in the 1980s before being surpassed by CDs. But the physical audio format has become an artifact of a bygone era, giving way to the convenience of streaming.

Or, that’s what many thought.

In 2023, 436,400 cassettes were sold in the United States, according to the most recent data available from Luminate, an entertainment data firm. Although that’s a far cry from the 440 million cassettes sold in the 1980s, it’s a sharp increase from the 80,720 cassettes sold in 2015 and a notable revival for a format that had been all but written off.

Cassettes might not be experiencing the resurgence of vinyls or even CDs, but they are making a bit of a comeback, spurred by fans wanting an intimate experience with music and nostalgia, said Charlie Kaplan, owner of online store Tapehead City.

“People just like having something you can hold and keep, especially now when everything’s just a rented file on your phone,” Kaplan told CNN.

“Tapes provide a different type of listening experience — not perfect, but that’s part of it. Flip it over, look at the art and listen all the way through. You connect with the music with more of your senses,” he said.

Completely disingenuous article claiming at first that Mamdani is unpopular outside of NYC followed by stats that show that many Americans don't even have an opinion on him.

Guess what?! Not many people in Missouri or California are going to give a damn about a local election in another state!

For starters, Mamdani is clearly not popular outside of New York City.

A Siena College poll this week showed statewide New York voters disliked him 37%-28% – and that’s in a left-leaning state.

A recent Yahoo News-YouGov poll, meanwhile, showed a relatively similar verdict among Americans nationwide: 31%-22% negative.

While those aren’t good numbers, they don’t exactly suggest he’s a pariah who could be used effectively as a bogeyman on the national stage – at least yet. In the national survey, 46% didn’t even have an opinion of the Democratic mayoral nominee, underscoring the room that exists for him to define himself — or be defined by others. (Even in New York, 34% of voters didn’t have an opinion about him.)