This is a spotted lanternfly. It's kind of beautiful and very dangerous to the environment. New Yorkers have been instructed to kill them on site since they are an invasive species. I saw this guy from the other side of a window at UN headquarters. Maybe it thought the premises of the UN  - famous for advocating turning swords into plough shares - would provide it with some sort of immunity. Presumably, the bugs aren't aware of their role in destroying agriculture and are just going about their evolutionary business, oblivious to whether they are in Viet Nam or Pennsylvania. Later I saw a woman on First Avenue point to one on the sidewalk and make a face. But she didn't kill it as the city had instructed her to. Killing living being is counterintuitive no matter how high or low they sit in the food chain. I remember hearing that people of the Bahai faith respect life so much they are careful not to step on even the tiniest insect when they walk along the ground. I don't think this is quite true but it made me think that the Bahai are ok in my book and that maybe an extreme position like that, while unrealistic, could balance the callous attitude most of the world has to killing living beings. With the exception of maybe cockroaches (which make my skin crawl) I try to avoid killing even the tiniest little creatures. If an an ant crawls across my arm and gets lost in the foliage of my arm hair I try to gently guide it to the ground. (Yet when an infestation of ants infiltrated my kitchen I set out a series of traps so I guess I'm a hypocrite.) I let spiders be and try not to disturb their beautifully-constructed webs. Sometimes I find impossibly tiny little insects running along the pages of a book I'm reading and do all I can to guide it to the temporary safety of nature, feeling vaguely ridiculous in the process, aware that most people would swat it away without a second thought. I can't understand people who hunt for sport and marvel that people with sensibilities so different from mine are part of the same grouping of species. Yet I eat meat with only the hollowest sense of guilt. Like most of us, I contain multitudes, I guess.