New York Magazine September 26-October 9 , 2022

1 For New York’s latest cover story, Andrew Rice and Olivia Nuzzi investigated the origins of a certain MacBook (“What the Right Found on Hunter Biden’s Laptop,” September 12–25). Megyn Kelly Show executive producer Steve Krakauer called it “meticulous, comprehensive, and insanely interesting.” The New York Times’ Kenneth P. Vogel wrote that the story “raised tricky questions about social media suppression, digital custody chains, disinformation claims & the press’s handling of the above. But it also shows just how thoroughly one person’s life can be exposed by their data.” For Fox News, Brian Flood noted that “New York Magazine is the latest mainstream media outlet to take Hunter Biden’s scandalous laptop seriously” after the device’s contents were initially “dismissed as unreliable and even Russian disinformation by mainstream print and television…

INSIDE: A worker-owned wine store / The season of the lanternfly / Selling weed on the gray market ONE WAY TO understand the past five years of social media is as a race to see who can copy TikTok the fastest and with the least dignity. Instagram (Reels), YouTube (Shorts), and most recently Facebook (Suggested for You) have all undergone covetous and occasionally disastrous renovations inspired by the video-sharing service. It was notable, then, when TikTok announced a copycat of its own on September 15, “a daily prompt to capture a ten-second video or a static photo to easily share what you’re up to.” This, the company says, is a way to share “your most authentic moments with the people who matter the most.” Users of BeReal, the French photo-sharing…

THE LAST TIME Astor Wines & Spirits appeared in the news came during the early weeks of the pandemic, when the beloved store tweeted images of a business transformed: boxes of wine piled on the floor, snaking shopping carts full of booze, all waiting to be shipped to customers who suddenly found themselves trapped in their apartments. Astor became a pillar of its Noho community, a rare vestige of the old world. Astor underwent another transformation this past summer, announcing on September 12 that its owners, brothers Andy and Rob Fisher, had completed a sale of the company—not to another set of owners but to their employees. “It was utter shock,” Lorena Ascencios, Astor’s wine buyer, said. The Fishers, whose father, Edwin, purchased the shop in 1968, said in a…

OFFICE-BOUND, I had company. In the humid wedge of a revolving door, a guest had pushed in with me. He (I think “he,” though I didn’t turn him over to check for the female’s telltale red valvifers at the distal end of the abdomen) froze when he sensed I saw him, playing dead. It was an uncomfortable moment. Was the security guard staring? My passenger, all one inch of him, was a Lycorma delicatula, a spotted lanternfly. If you’ve spent any time at ground level, you know the type. We’re crawling with them. They are new(ish) New Yorkers, your flighty, frustrating neighbors. Like novices, out-of-towners, they go slowly, clogging the pavement. You roll your eyes, tap a foot to clear a path—nothing. You could kill them. The City of New…

IN MAY, A BUSINESS ENTITY called Convenience in Central Park Corporation registered an address in the ground-floor retail space at 200 Central Park South. Signage appeared to indicate the business would be selling tobacco, but the co-op board became convinced that at least one of the conveniences on offer would be weed. According to a lawsuit the board filed in August, such an enterprise, on the leafy stretch between the Plaza and Columbus Circle, would “detract from the dignity” of the address and violate zoning that bars any business “not in character with the district.” If even Billionaires’ Row is fending off gray-market cannabis retailers, the city is truly experiencing a wave. In the year since recreational-marijuana possession and use were decriminalized in New York, it has started to feel…

ON a bleak St. Patrick’s Day in 2020, with holiday festivities canceled as COVID19 swept across the U.S., Lawrence Abrams sent messages to ten of the largest ransomware gangs in the world. Stop attacking hospitals and other medical facilities for the duration of the pandemic, he pleaded. Too many lives were at stake. As the founder and owner of the most influential news website dedicated to ransomware, Abrams was one of the few people with the connections and credibility to make such a request. His site, Bleeping-Computer, was one part demilitarized zone, one part neighborhood pub: a place where victims, media, law enforcement, cybersecurity buffs, and criminals all mixed. Ransomware is one of the most pervasive and fastest-growing cybercrimes. Typically, the attackers capitalize on a cybersecurity flaw or get an…