The odds of winning the grand prize for Powerball are one in 195 million, and a group of Costco employees on Long Island have handily beaten those odds, winning a $201.9 million jackpot. (It has a lump-sum value of $106 million.) The winners' workplace—but not their identities—was revealed today, and a Costco employee who was not a member of the Costco "lottery club" tells Newsday one of the winners insists "she is going to keep working. Everything is still the same." But not everyone who won is completely insane; the man credited with founding the lottery club, who works at Costco as a greeter, is said to have already quit his job. more ›

Meet state worker Michael Kosko (not the winner pictured here). As you can see from this photo in the NY Post, Mike's a Yankees fan. But after losing out on a $319 million lotto jackpot because he didn't have the $2 to join the office pool, he should probably retire that cap and come on over to the Mets. (As Hunter S. Thompson once said of Las Vegas: "Learn to enjoy losing!") Yesterday Kosko, who works in the IT department of the Homes and Community Renewal agency in Albany, talked to the press about losing the lottery. And by golly, he's determined not to let it ruin his life! more ›

Yesterday's $355 million Mega Millions jackpot fostered many dreams, most of which are dead today. Psychics and spiritualists believed that the winner would be a woman (probably a Gemini) from New York... but the two lucky ticket holders are out-of-towners, from Idaho and Washington to be exact. According to CNN, their odds were one in 176 million! And the psychics weren't totally wrong, there were eleven $250,000 Mega Millions Winners from New York. more ›

You are a worthless P.O.S. if you don't hire a bartender for your house party, say people who own catering companies and two random douchebags. This is a certified trend, according to the Times Thursday Style section, which, ahem, reports that "a growing crowd of 30-something New Yorkers who wish to signal they’ve graduated from post-collegiate squalor to young professional coming of age... won’t invite friends over for cocktails without the assistance of a bartender — eve [sic] if there’s barely room for the bartender to stand." Interviews with caterers and people who've hired bartenders confirm it, and here are the three most infuriating quotes from this most infuriating of articles: more ›

The winners have been announced for the 16th annual Greenest Block contest run by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Drum roll please: the Greenest Blocks in Brooklyn this year are in Flatbush and Boerum Hill! The residential first-place winner went to Vanderveer Place between Flatbush Avenue and East 23rd Street in Flatbush; the 2010 commercial first-place winner was declared Hoyt Street between State Street and Atlantic Avenue in Boerum Hill. The winners were announced at a press conference this morning held at Vanderveer Place, where those who received top place in the other categories were also on hand. more ›

Last year the city’s Economic Development Corporation announced their NYC BigApps competition, which invited anyone to develop an application using 170 sets of municipal data made available by 30 different agencies. Throughout the process, we've seen apps like Taxihack and NYC Broken Meters (aka free parking!) pop up, and last night the winners were officially announced. more ›

You'll recall that last week Transportation Alternatives held their Biking Rules PSA Festival at BAM, featuring 40 PSAs created to promote bike safety and responsible cycling (i.e., not pedaling fiendishly down the sidewalk and running over pedestrians, etc.). The videos competed in two main categories, "Why Biking Rules" and "Street Code." Here's one of the winners in the shorter "Street Code" category, which will be broadcast on local TV, at outdoor summer films, and at cultural venues like BAM. Winners Aldo Arias and Pam Tietze also got a cool two grand, which will buy a lot of magical bike lights. more ›

Dispersing two winning lotto tickets in eight weeks is pretty good PR for your store. The NY Times reports that is exactly what has happened at Shiv Convenience Store in Jamaica, Queens. You may recall that one local won the $133 million jackpot there in July, and this past Sunday another man took home $66,053; both times the machine chose the numbers. Lottery HQ in Schenectady told the paper, "We have 16,000 retailers. When I saw the Shiv Convenience Store, I was like, ‘get out of here.’” In 2007 a similar streak happened at a store in Astoria (but three times in a row). Owner of Shiv, Bharat Patel, says he doesn't buy tickets at his own store because he doesn't want customers to think it's rigged, but he is very enthusiastic when a customer wins. When he discovered this week's winner, he lifted the man (a Popeye's employee who played frequently) off the floor, and screamed, "You won! You won!” Meanwhile, the Lotto is getting a makeover. more ›

The 2009 Pulitzer Prizes were announced today, and the NY Times nabbed five, the second-most in its history, according to the Times. The paper of record won awards for breaking news reporting on Governor Eliot Spitzer’s hooker scandal, for investigative reporting into the Pentagon's use of retired generals to sell the Iraq invasion, for reporting on America's military and political challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for Holland Cotter's art criticism, and Damon Winter's photographs of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. more ›

Garrison Spik, the winner of this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest, hails from Washington State, but chose New York for a starring role in his parody. The competition, in which contestants endeavor to pen the most cringe-worthy opening sentence to a non-existent novel, is named for Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, the 19th-century English writer whose novel Paul Clifford opens with the sentence: “It was a dark and stormy night.” more ›

The New Yorker has finally announced the winning entries in their Eustace Tilley contest. The winning dandies will appear in the February 11th-18th issue of the magazine, their 83rd anniversary issue. The magazine’s art editor, Françoise Mouly, talked with Matt Dellinger about the nearly three hundred submissions they received, as well as the history of Tilley -- listen here. more ›