Shooting at Blackstone, NFL, KPMG Building
Plus: Wildfires alter air quality across the Northeast, fertility crisis narratives, and more...
Past security: A gunman walked into a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan yesterday evening and began shooting, killing four people and injuring a fifth. Three of the people were killed in the building's lobby, including a New York City Police Department officer, 36-year-old Didarul Islam. The fourth person was killed on the 33rd floor. Among the dead are one Blackstone executive and one NFL employee, though names have not yet been released.
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The shooter has been identified as 27-year-old Nevada man Shane Devon Tamura. Tamura killed himself soon after shooting his final victim. Law enforcement says he has a "documented mental health history" but gave no details as to what that entails. His firearm appears to have been legally obtained.
Tamura's suicide note alleged that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a brain disease linked to head trauma, according to a source. "In the note, he asked that his brain be studied and wrote: 'You can't go against the NFL, they'll squash you,'" per CNN. "Multiple sources told CNN Tamura was a competitive football player in his youth. CTE is commonly associated with football players, and studies show that repetitive hits to the head can result in the disease. The NFL offices are on the fifth floor of the office tower that Tamura attacked."
The site of the shooting, 345 Park Avenue, is an office building that houses consulting firm KPMG, investment firm Blackstone, and corporate offices for the NFL. It's in Midtown Manhattan—designated a gun-free zone several years ago, which clearly has not worked.
What we know about those who were killed: The NYPD officer, Didarul Islam, leaves behind an eight-months-pregnant wife and two children. An immigrant from Bangladesh, he had reportedly been on the force since December 2021, per The New York Post, working out of a precinct in the Bronx. On Monday, he was off duty working as building security but in his NYPD uniform. God rest his soul.
We don't know much about the motivations of the shooter, but many have started speculating:
i swear if this dude has a manifesto on blackstone buying the SFRs and rose twitter turns him into the next luigi
— nic carter (@nic__carter) July 29, 2025
Based on what we know so far, that does not seem right. This does not appear to be similar to the December shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione, which was more explicitly politically motivated.
Scenes from New York: With over 550 blazes currently raging in the province of Manitoba, 15 million acres have already been burned across Canada. So why should I have to care about their nonsense and issues with poor wildfire management? Because it's screwing up New York City's air quality, making it so nobody with sensitive lungs (babies, small children, asthmatics, elderly people) can go outside for much time at all.
"While it may improve a little bit later on today or tonight, I think the air quality could go back down again beginning Tuesday and perhaps into Wednesday," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Tom Kines told the New York Post. It was palpably bad, and super hazy, all weekend; people who spent time outside reported developing nasty headaches and feeling dizzy.
Unfortunately, this has become standard in recent years. Back in the summer of 2023, the sky over New York turned orange for a day. Canadian wildfire data predict this summer to be the second-worst on record for wildfires for them. But what exactly are they doing to manage it, and is there a way to hold them accountable?
QUICK HITS
- I think this is totally correct:
The dominant narrative is that the fertility crisis is an economic problem, which yes, on many levels it is. But the problem with the theory on the micro level (explained below with the elite graduate sample) or the macro level (rich countries with free healthcare, ie… https://t.co/dh85BC1TZ7
— Katherine Boyle (@KTmBoyle) July 28, 2025
- "The lock screen on her phone is a headshot of herself." Many other glorious nuggets contained within this Atlantic profile of Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat.
- Joe Rogan's "defenders often describe him as a kind of roving intellect—curious, flexible, ideologically unmoored. He's just a guy asking questions, they say, a guy willing to talk to anyone, a guy who refuses to color inside the lines," writes Freddie deBoer on Substack. "And to be fair, that perception isn't entirely false. Rogan has, on occasion, platformed voices from across the political spectrum, from Bernie Sanders to Alex Jones, from Cornel West to Ben Shapiro. That's more range than you'll find on most cable news networks. But there's always a gap between what someone says they're open to and the actual structure of the world they've built around themselves. And once you start looking closely at who gets invited onto The Joe Rogan Experience—and just as importantly, who doesn't—the show's reputation for open-mindedness starts to look a lot like brand management." I don't know if I agree with the critique all that much, but I think it's the best encapsulation of the more thoughtful leftist take against Rogan.
- "You couldn't have frequent flyer miles before deregulation," writes Gary Leff for Reason. "The federal government set domestic airfares, and the airline industry received antitrust immunity to fix the prices of international trips. Discounts, such as frequent flyer miles, were largely illegal until the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978."