The Tappan Zee will meet its maker on Saturday as New York state contractors plan to blow up what's left of the 63-year-old bridge. Replaced by the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge in 2017, the iconic Tappan Zee will be loaded up with explosives and sent to a watery grave in the Hudson River. The steel will be recovered by a marine salvage team. Restaurants and businesses in the area are planning watch parties for Saturday morning, including the “Dim-Sum-struction of the Tappan Zee Bridge," and "The Big Bang Brunch." Several New York news outlets plan to carry the detonation live.

Lyndhurst, local restaurants host Tappan Zee Bridge farewell, specials on Saturday (lohud.com) (Photo: Brett Weinstein/Wikimedia Commons) Read the rest

In October 2017, Syracuse cops arrested Torrence Jackson with a small amount of marijuana and accused him of hiding drugs in his rectum (the officers say they saw him shift in his seat and concluded that he'd put drugs up his butt). They took him to St Joseph's Hospital where he was nonconsensually X-rayed; when that revealed no drugs, officers told doctors to force sedation on Jackson and then put a tube and camera up his rectum. Read the rest

Charter-Spectrum has settled a lawsuit brought by the New York Attorney General that accused the company of defrauding New Yorkers through false advertising about the data-speeds they could expect from their plans (among other things, the AG accused Charter of supplying customers with modems that were too slow to attain the speeds they'd paid for). Read the rest

New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood has concluded that seven New York hospitals illegally billed rape survivors for their rape kits, at least 200 times, for sums ranging from $46 to $3,000, and then sent collections agents after survivors who could not pay. Read the rest

New York City's "marshal" service is a throwback to the Dutch colonial days; the 35 marshals are appointed by the mayor, draw no salary, and earn their livings by skimming a percentage off of the debts they collect, operating with impunity and reaching around the world. Read the rest

Amazon's new headquarters will be split between northern Virginia and parts of Queens, New York, and will net the company billions in corporate welfare, branded as "incentives." Read the rest

Amazon has selected New York City and Northern Virginia for new headquarters. They're re-branding the area of Crystal City in Arlington, VA as "National Landing." Read the rest

I had no idea there was such a long and complicated debate over who owns Liberty Island and its crown jewel, the Statue of Liberty. Thank goodness CGP Grey is here to explain it all to us! Get a beverage and have a seat, it's quite a story. Read the rest

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS STORY, AND WILL BE UPDATED. Authorities in New York are holding a press conference on 7 or more suspicious packages, some of which contained pipe bombs, sent to political targets, mostly in New York state. On the face of it, the coordinated attack appears to be an attempt to assassinate up to 7 different perceived political enemies of President Donald Trump. Read the rest

The FCC justified its Net Neutrality-killing order by claiming that comments it received showed strong public support for dismantling the rules that stop your ISP from deciding which parts of the internet you get to use; but it was widely reported that the comments in the Net Neutrality docket were flooded by bots that opposed Net Neutrality, using names and personal information from stolen identities of dead people, sitting US senators, journalists and millions of others. Read the rest

New York is a great city that has been hollowed out by real-estate speculation, where the conversion of housing to safe-deposit boxes in the sky has pushed out the city's people and the city's businesses, who can't compete with financiers and oligarchs who value property as an investment, rather than as part of the fabric of a city. Read the rest

This summer, Charter Communications was ordered to leave New York State, reversing its acquisition of Time Warner Cable and selling off the assets; the move came after the cable company broke its promises to expand broadband access in the state to less-profitable markets and then repeatedly lied to state authorities about. Read the rest

"Today is kind of a sucky day," Village Voice owner Peter Barbey told newspaper staff in a phone call Friday. "Due to, basically, business realities, we're going to stop publishing Village Voice new material.” Read the rest

There is no Santa Claus, Lassie was played by nine different dogs over the years and, according to a recent lawsuit filed in New York, there isn’t any ginger in Canada Dry Ginger Ale.

From USA Today:

In the federal lawsuit filed July 10 in Buffalo, Julie Fletcher contends that Canada Dry and its parent company, Dr. Pepper Snapple Group Inc. are misleading customers. "In truth, DPSG’s soft drink is not made from real ginger," reads the lawsuit filed by Fletcher, who lives in Bolivar, Allegany County.

"Instead, Canada Dry Ginger Ale is made from carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, preservatives and 'natural flavors,' i.e., a flavor compound comprised predominately of flavor extracts not derived from ginger, and a minuscule amount of a ginger flavor extract."

Nothing is sacred.

Apparently, Fletcher’s beef with the beverage is that she’d been buying it for her kids to drink whenever they got sick, assuming that the ginger in the drink’s name meant there was ginger in its bottle. The vendetta she swore against Dr. Pepper Snapple Group Inc began when she learned that “…he products that she purchased were not made from real ginger, but were instead made from a minuscule amount of a ginger flavor extract, which does not contain any of the health benefits of real ginger."

Oh, the rage.

Look, Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine and 7-Up came spiked with lithium citrate up until 1948 (it was originally called Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda. They, along with ginger ales, were served up as tonics at the soda shops baked into pharmacies back in the late 19th and early 20th century. Read the rest

After NYPD Sgt. Richard Blake shot Thavone Santana in the face during a confrontation, we were told a terrifying story of being threatened and mugged early Thursday on the mean streets of Brooklyn. Unfortunately for Blake, a nearby video camera captured him drawing his gun, shooting someone who was trying to move away from him, then dropping a knife near his unconscious body.

Blake paces back and forth, then appears to pat down Santana’s pockets. He then appears to take a sheathed knife from his own back pocket, the New York Times reported, slides it from its sheath and drops it next to Santana’s crumpled body. He then pauses for a moment and retrieves the knife, the video shows.

The New York Police Department said Thursday that Santana was in stable condition.

“The video captures actions that raise serious questions and require further investigation,” Detective Sophia Mason, a department spokeswoman, told The Washington Post in a statement. Blake was placed on administrative duty, the department said. The Times reported that he was stripped of his badge and service weapon.

Santana is in intensive care. Locals say the men were in an ongoing dispute over a woman. Blake, the New York Daily News reports, was recently suspended from the force after "punching his girlfriend in the face." What a charmer. Read the rest

Zephyr Teachout (previously) isn't just an expert on antitrust law and corruption, and isn't merely a netroots pioneer who has been on the right side of every technology policy fight since the Gore years -- she's also running to be the Attorney General of the State of New York, from which position she plans on gutting Trump on his corrupt business practices, targeting him using the dread emoluments clause. Read the rest

Spoiler alert: to steal from prisoners and their families. Read the rest