🔥My Mayor Still Muslim, My Bagel still Jewish, Workers should thrive, Knicks in five.

The Internet is Cooked: June 12, 2026

Goooood afternoon and happy Friday! Here's your dispatch from the corners of the internet still fighting slop: the Knicks are one win from history while Trump naps and Dolan tantrums, Mamdani's making the World Cup actually belong to New Yorkers and dropping $50 Brooklyn-made jerseys today, NYC opens its first city-run trans clinic but the fight isn't over, a New Yorker short story for your weekend, and Slow Pulp returns.

It's been a week or so, because we have been a bit engrossed in the Knicks. Yes, we are from Toronto but we also are New Yorkers with familial roots and having lived there for formative years. A warning ahead, this week's write-up is New York heavy, but it's required for anyone reading this to stay culturally relevant. 

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The Knicks are one win away from glory. The city is in love. Dolan is in his feelings. After 53 years of waiting, the New York Knicks are one win from their first NBA championship. Wednesday's Game 4 was the largest halftime comeback in NBA playoff history: down 29 at the break, back to win 107-106. Game 5 is tomorrow night in San Antonio. Mamdani called it after the comeback: "SPEECHLESS. LFGK." Knicks in five. Even god is a Knicks fan now.

The cultural moment is bigger than the basketball. Knicks fan MD Ahnaf Hossain, from Jamaica, Queens, freestyled a chant to a sideline interviewer after Game 1: "My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish, my Christian Dior, Knicks in four!" The chant detonated. The Forward called it an emblem of NYC's multicultural soul. The city hasn't felt like this in a generation. Now we are here to say: my mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish, Workers deserve to thrive, Knicks in five!

Then there were the villains. President Trump attended Game 3 on Monday and ruined everything, as he tends to. His motorcade shut down Midtown, fans waited two-plus hours in security lines, he got booed at the national anthem, and then fell asleep at the game. The Knicks lost 115-111, ending a 13-game winning streak. Correlation? Causation? You decide.

This might be the tweet of the year from AOC.

Game 4 brought a different villain. MSG itself applied for a permit for a 500-999 person outdoor watch party. Mamdani's office approved the max — 999. Dolan then went on to blame Mamdani, complaining "you have an easier chance of getting into Area 51 today than into Madison Square Garden." Mamdani responded: MSG asked for 999, we gave them 999, Dolan cancelled it himself. Mamdani then he worked with the NBA to put Game 4 on LinkNYC kiosks across all five boroughs, and filmed himself watching the livestream on a kiosk on a public street. "When James Dolan cancels the watch party outside MSG, we bring the watch party to you." Poetic justice.

Which brings us to the elephant in the Garden. E. A. Halevi, this week in Jacobin: "Everyone Loves the Knicks. Everyone Hates James Dolan." The argument: "The awful billionaire James Dolan's stranglehold on one of sports' greatest franchises is holding the New York Knicks back. The solution? Yes, that's right: public ownership of the Knicks." Green Bay does it, the Packers are owned by their fans. Madison Square Garden sits on top of Penn Station, public transit infrastructure subsidizing a billionaire who acts like a monarch. The case is making itself in real time.

Mamdani's World Cup belongs to New Yorkers. The 2026 FIFA World Cup opens today across North America, and the mayor is putting on a clinic in how to host without selling out. Back in September, as a candidate, he launched "Game Over Greed", demanding FIFA drop dynamic pricing (a final ticket could hit $6,730) and reserve 15% of tickets for locals at a discount. As mayor, he delivered: 1,000 affordable World Cup tickets at $50 for New Yorkers with free bus to MetLife, free fan zones in all five boroughs, a free Central Park watch party for the final (50,000+ expected), "Soccer Streets" turning 50 NYC blocks into daylong pitches, 4,000 extra hours of evening field lighting across 50+ play locations, and a "Yellow Card / Red Card Rights" campaign giving workers, immigrants, and consumers Know Your Rights cards in soccer-card form.

And today, Mamdani is releasing 1,500 Brooklyn-made $50 jerseys at the NYC City Store. Designed by Arsh Raziuddin, handmade in three colorways by Brooklyn's family-owned Mazzi Sports. NYC pigeon and a soccer ball on the front. Affordable, local, beautiful, by the city for the city.

NYC's first city-run trans clinic is coming. But trans youth are being left behind. This is a complicated one. The genuine win: NYC Health Department is opening its first-ever direct-care clinic for transgender, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary New Yorkers, at the Corona Sexual Health Clinic in Queens. Hormone therapy at no to low cost, regardless of immigration status. Commissioner Alister Martin: "One of the first times that the public health department has ever taken that step." That's real, and it matters.

The catch is real too. The clinic will only treat adults 19 and over — adopting the exact age cutoff Trump used in his anti-trans executive orders. Martin's stated reason: the city doesn't want to "expose ourselves to clawbacks from the federal government." Mamdani had pledged $65 million for gender-affirming care during the campaign ($57M for public providers, $8M for telehealth) — the current budget delivers far less. Trans advocates have noticed. Civil rights attorney Alejandra Caraballo on Bluesky: "Really damn tired of our 'allies' abandoning trans youth and then turning around saying 'we see you, we hear you, we support you as long as you're over the age of 19 to align with Trump's policies!'"

Weekly read: Taiye Selasi's “Firstborn Immigrant Daughter" in the New Yorker”. The July 8 issue carries a new short story from Selasi, whose debut novel Ghana Must Go (2013) was a NYT bestseller and got her named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. Save it for the long weekend, or the World Cup halftime. Take your time with it.

Soundtrack: Slow Pulp, "Better Man." Chicago-via-Madison indie band Slow Pulp announced their third album Melodie this week — out September 18 on ANTI- (real indie, no major-label silent partner) — and dropped the lead single "Better Man" with a video. Henry Stoehr on the song: "I realised that I had let go of the controls of my own life and instead was fully prioritising what I thought people around me wanted from me." Warm, knowing, the kind of indie rock you put on for the kitchen and let play. Stoehr is letting go. Mamdani is bringing the city back. Maybe we let go of trying to please the billionaires too.

Solidarity forever,

The internet is cooked.