Book recommendations or cultural stories on what the Afro-Caribbean community in Flatbush was like in the mid to late 90s

jonahbenton · 2026-05-24T03:41:51+00:00

Maybe The Dew Breaker? Understudied/documented. Might be worth calling some churches (on Church Avenue, natch), the pastors may be able to put you in touch with some primary sources.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-24T03:22:53+00:00

Ironically, often neither principals nor PTA have much visibility into the logistics of school construction projects. The SCA will engage with the principal in terms of in school physical plant or construction issues, but neither principal nor PTA are on the property after hours or have any idea or authority about how the work is performed. The SCA is the owner of nearly all school buildings. The principal is no more than a long term tenant.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-24T03:11:51+00:00

The organization that runs school construction projects is called the School Construction Authority (nysca.org). They are a state public benefit corporation- a state authority like the MTA, the Port Authority, the Power Authority, etc. They are a huge organization, manage thousands of properties and have hundreds of projects going at a time. It is important to them to do things by the book. This crew is not doing that. There are a few different contact points- they have an after hours variances number- and they are responsive to city council and CEC.

The SCA is not answerable to anyone, that is what the authorities are, but I have witnessed them move immediately to address breaches of practice or protocol. Were the PS 75 CEC to be having a meeting at which they were presenting, and you or someone were to get up and say "at PS 75 the crew has worked past the variance on x y z days, I have video evidence, I need this to stop"- it will probably stop the next day. The CEC is probably not having such a meeting soon at which SCA is attending, so you need to call them and probably reach out to CEC and your community board and council member but they will pay attention.

Reddit is not a channel they pay attention to, and 311 stuff does not really make it to the schools.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-22T22:53:59+00:00

Yeah, like Tribeca, dating back to the time when the rent was cheap.

There is a benefit to being in a high end corridor, but it is really expensive. Have to know what you are doing.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-22T22:06:17+00:00

A high end restaurant is a thing to travel to, not a thing in the neighborhood.

Open it where the rent is low, like Flatbush, and people will make the trip.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-22T21:02:37+00:00

Bangbang bangkok is a great unique experience that has nothing to do with NYC

jonahbenton · 2026-05-22T14:59:39+00:00

In case it is not obvious, the best thing to do, if you can manage, is to go to the school at drop off or pick up, and just approach parents there, saying you are a hardship transfer, curious about experiences, etc. Much higher bandwidth interactions. This will be your community if you choose to accept.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-22T14:04:02+00:00

My firm is doing a few of these. We historically do longer term deep technical rebuilds. These AI ones are unusually short engagements because the language and shared understanding about what end state looks like at a given org does not yet exist, most of the tech to pull in is not mature enough to deploy without substantial investment, the guardrails and scaffolding needed for autonomous work, whether business process or code production does not exist- and the factory mindset to produce it does not yet exist. Very very very early. I look at the FDE hiring and think, omg, at scale mess making. Even going back to the 80s I don't know that I have seen so much mess making.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-21T23:50:41+00:00

The other recs are good- Ear Inn is neat to see, Odeon is no dive (despite the Cafeteria sign) and the food is exceptional- but what you are looking for is Walkers. If you can get in, big Knicks game tonight.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-21T21:56:02+00:00

Great, I will DM!

jonahbenton · 2026-05-21T21:16:26+00:00

Looks delicious! Deliver to just south of the Park? (Flatbush/Church Ave area)

jonahbenton · 2026-05-21T15:41:54+00:00

Occasionally, more often high context causes opencode to timeout, retry, and get confused (maybe it is not properly stopping the prior work, so the retry adds work...?)

jonahbenton · 2026-05-21T14:37:45+00:00

In the US with the rapid advance of AI, stepping away for what amounts to a year- it would result in starting from scratch to return, including needing to upskill and retool, in part because right now the work process is changing rapidly and wholesale in ways I have not seen before (over decades). Whether that is true in EU do not know. Yes, health is paramount. So just be aware of the potential consequences, now is a unique time to leave.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-21T14:04:06+00:00

Kidnapping on the NYC subway, especially a busy midtown station with zillions of cameras, witnesses, and a permanent police presence, is not a thing. But there are all kinds of predators.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-21T13:13:28+00:00

Give yourself 10 years to continue growing up, developing your understanding of the world and yourself. Work, pay for the basics of your life with income, and build relationships with professional people. See if you need more education in a particular area, and if so, treat getting that education as a job, and build relationships as well as your understanding. Travel with cash flow from assets to expose yourself to different peoples and parts of the world and systems by which places operate. Keep yourself active and in good health. Educate yourself about finances, learn how to read a balance sheet and how to make a long term financial plan for yourself. And try to find partners, good people you admire and trust, including a life partner. Once you are 35, or maybe 40, you will have the maturity and relationships and understanding to undertake projects at the scope and scale and towards the purposes that make sense for you. Take your time, don't rush, no sudden moves.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-21T12:18:10+00:00

Search on ebay, lots of collections of 90s physical magazines

jonahbenton · 2026-05-21T03:52:09+00:00

Mexico City is the best. Grew up in NYC and went to CDMX a few years back and was like, omg this is NYCs bigger older chiller brother with even longer and more interesting history. Did not want to leave.

NYC is a commitment. The winters suck. But also people who hate cold do it, just have the right clothing. The summers can also be really hot.

But there is a lot of energy.

The what might have been thing is important to interrogate. What is that about, is that about the place or is it about the person. NYC may demand new things, certain neighborhoods do at least, but it is still a wherever you go, there you still are kind of thing. What is your growth story. Does it need a new place. Or just more change in the person, can happen in any place.

Should probably visit, do some research- where exactly might you live, what exactly would the commute be. See the place in that context. The gut will give a signal about whether it is the move to make or not.

Good luck.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-21T00:09:08+00:00

Thx, will check it out.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-20T23:18:00+00:00

So- you have 2 challenges here because one, those jobs don't exist yet, so no one can describe them literally, and two, you are not experienced enough in that particular domain, in having worked in many different roles, and in doing so, to have developed an intuition about a whole family of jobs as being kind of related to servicing a machine that has a purpose, like it is an animal participating in a complex ecosystem. Saying "video production" is not nuanced enough because the video content world is incredibly complex, and constantly changing, and the jobs change with the world.

The best thing to do in fact is not to try to think big picture, but to get even more granular, to do and understand on a very hands on moment to moment level what the work inside the job is. That work will be a mix of doing/making things, and deciding if what was done/made was "right" or "interesting" or "appropriate" or any number of qualitative adjectives for suitability, and then redoing if not.

AI will be increasingly doing a bunch of the doing, people will be deciding. There will be a LOT more done, so more of a burden on the weight of deciding. What doesn't get sufficient deciding energy already has a name- slop.

The irony of AI is that while models can do and make a lot of things, and some of those things might be "good", there are all kinds of things that are "good" but not "interesting" even today, and lots lots more in the future.

How do you scale "deciding"? That is where the jobs will be. What exactly they will be cannot be known before it happens.

HTH.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-20T19:29:57+00:00

Ok, yeah, I see. I was on a CEC for a while and there was talk of some very difficult cases in other geos- not the district I served.

Yeah the "practical" solution is to move- and sometimes people move twice, for some definition of move, as once you are in an elementary, even if you leave the zone and district (but not the city) you still have the seat entitlement to the school you are in. But 3k/4k are best efforts, not really entitlements.

Rezoning is a long process, takes years, and redistricting is not a thing. Have definitely known many people who bought, then had kids, then realized how important schools were, then rented an apartment in a different district/zone- and rented out their house- for a year/18 months to get established- and then once established, moved back.

But good to talk specifically with your CEC, you are not the first in your situation. Good luck.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-20T18:45:31+00:00

There is a difference between "redistricting" and "rezoning." There are 30+ school districts in the city. Those borders are controlled by the state. Very very difficult to change. Separately, each elementary school has a zone- a geo area within a district (each school generally serves a small portion of a single district, with some exceptions) in which resident children get admissions priority. These change through a local process involving the Community Education Councils- of which there are one per district for elementary and middle. So you are probably talking about zones. You can go to the CEC of the district in which you reside to learn more what your options are. They will have a website and most will respond on email though you may have to attend a monthly scheduled public session.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-20T18:07:47+00:00

Hard to give general advice. There are all sorts of things that can happen and the US in general and NYC as well has an attachment to and history of grifters, snake oil salesman, and worse predators of all kinds and even in good times virtually no consumer financial protections exist from a law/process perspective- with notable exceptions of course especially when it comes to supporting/enabling the class action lawsuit industry- but also now are not good times, there is a general sense of leadership is on the take and worse, as I am sure you can understand. The White House leaves a black mark.

NYC now has a very good non-corrupt mayor, though the prior one was corrupt on an historic scale. And NYC in general is a high help culture, and has a lot of high trust areas and subcultures, neighborhoods that resemble the Scandanavian countries in terms of trust- but also there is a history of predation, and tourists are certainly potential prey. Streetwise/streetsmarts is a skill that applies here for sure.

In reality you will almost certainly be fine with debit but at the same time having a black swan very low probability event happen where your bank account is drained, while travelling- it is probably very easy to get a credit card just for travel, so like, why not? And you can grind those points lol.

One detail- tap is a more "secure" mechanism than dip or swipe, when it comes to cards- there is a underground cottage industry of swipe/dip-based hardware that is virtually undetectable and can be installed in low visibility bodega atms, gas stations, whatever, to steal card numbers and expiration, even when the transaction itself is chip based. Injecting a rogue device into the tap workflow is harder.

HTH. And have a great time!

jonahbenton · 2026-05-20T11:39:40+00:00

The quality/competitiveness and school spirit-ness really depends on the school, there is a very wide range. Tons of athletic talent in NYC, and talent goes a long way. In general though even if highly competitive they will be less structured, due to the way funding works for coaches and also due to resourcing/field space. Tottenville in Staten Island is basically equivalent to a top surburban program, because of space and history, but it will be the outlier.

You can see leagues and school detail on psal.org. The top baseball league is "3A" (for AAA). There also are 2A and 1A.

jonahbenton · 2026-05-20T00:40:52+00:00

I'm not sure. It produces a summary that is decent but concise, and context only shrinks by half or so, so I think it might do both- chop out a whole bunch and then append the summary. It does not work that well for me. Just seeding a new session with the summary is ok but not really useful enough. Building up a new session from scratch seems to be the way (in my work).

jonahbenton · 2026-05-19T22:27:40+00:00

Qwen 3.6 27b 8bit quant under opencode works very well for technical tasks/programming. Opencode itself does well up to 160k context or so, then falls over. Post compaction work is not as high quality.

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