Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
Alluh Akbar, baby
Suicide bomber manages to blow himself up in NYC
UPDATE: The terrorist is an immigrant from Bangladesh, yet has told the police, "They have been bombing my country, and I wanted to do damage here". It seems the idiot is as ignorant of geography and current events as he is of proper bomb-making techniques.
Gothenburg. Sweden: muslim mob firebombs bar mitzvah celebration.
Amerika, oppressor of the Bangladeshi:
What do you mean, you want me to leave?
And the remaining 73% haven't dated yet.
Ten things every intersectional feminist should ask on a first date.
Yes? Wonderful. Let’s start here. There are three categories that are non-negotiables for me: an understanding of race, class, and gender....
Beyond Misogyny 101, does the person you are with understand rape culture, systemic sexism, and misogynoir? Are they willing to learn if they don’t? Misogyny is more than the pay gap. Walk away from anyone who believes that “boys will be boys” and that women are supposed to be mothers because we’re nothing but ambulatory incubators.
You may scratch your head at this one, but much like racism and misogynoir, being pro-sex worker is a necessary pillar of dismantling the patriarchy. I don’t mean pro-sex worker in the sense where non-sex workers write op-eds and think pieces about how sex work is amazing and feminist.
Your date thinks Native Americans are tropes or relics of the past? NO THANKS. A key part of intersectionality is having a complete understanding of how historical and current policies endangered the lives of millions of people, simply because of white supremacy and the colonialist entitlement to finite resources and land.
Anti-capitalism, especially in the U.S., is imperative if you have an understanding of systemic racism, the prison industrial complex, the 13th Amendment, and exploitation. Capitalism, for one, teaches us that we are only valuable if we produce capital. That means that if you aren’t contributing to the system with your labor, your life means almost nothing.
White Americans stole this land, colonized this land, created so many borders, pushed out, killed and enslaved people of color and somehow they have the audacity to claim that this land is theirs and that black and brown immigrants are stealing their jobs, land, and homes? Miss me with that bullshit.
Don’t waste your time and energy on dating someone who thinks that Islam is inherently violent [Muslim mob firebombs Gothenburg synagogue] or misogynistic. Instead, read some Huda Sha’arawi or Mona Eltahawy to educate yourself further on Muslim feminism.
On a date with someone who uses ableist slurs? Walk away.
Picked the wrong lunch counter (Credit for a great caption goes to this group of tweeters:https://twitter.com/jtLOL/status/939816764317323264)
Fordham University campus coffee shop ejects students for wearing "Make America Great Again" hats.
Members of the Fordham University College Republicans were asked to leave an on-campus coffee shop because their MAGA hats apparently violated the shop’s “safe space policy.”
In a video obtained by Campus Reform, the self-identified president of Rodrigue’s Coffee House, a coffee shop run by a student club, is seen telling the College Republicans they have five minutes to get out of the coffee shop.
"This is a community standard—you are wearing hats that completely violate safe space policy. You have to take it off or you have to go."
“I am protecting my customers,” the president said.
“We are your customers, we bought something,” a CR member replied.
“I don’t want people like you supporting this club… no one here wants people like you supporting our club,” the president retorted. “I am giving you five minutes.”
A student then asked for a refund, to which the president responded, “[y]ou had some coffee… do not try to outsmart me.”
[RELATED: Rutgers students ‘don’t need no facts’ to heckle speaker]
“You are threatening the integrity of our club. This is a community standard—you are wearing hats that completely violate safe space policy,” she said. “You have to take it off or you have to go.”
One of the students then asked the president to explain what she thinks the MAGA hat stands for, to which she replied, shouting: “Fascism, Nazis! You have three minutes.”
Former Obama National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes on how they pushed the IraNIan nuke-deal narrative on the great unwashed: "The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
National Geographic reporter Sarah Gibben, a 24-year old "reporter", repeats a completely false story about a polar bear supposedly starving due to global warming.
This entire story line has been thoroughly debunked again and again over the years since Al Gore first pitched his emotional appeal back in the early 2000s — even NPR, of all organizations, broadcast "The Inconvenient Truth About Polar Bears" back in 2013 — but the story keeps bobbing up as each new generation of gullible, ignorant young reporters replace their former, better-paid, predecessors and hit the circuit.
The "heart-wrenching video" that captured the global warming faithful's compassion last week was in fact just another bit of propaganda, known by its perpetrators to be false, foisted on the ignorant. I keep asking, if global warming is real, why do its proponents keep lying about it? If there is factual evidence to support the claim, why supplement it with bullshit like doctored temperature records, re-jiggered graphs, phony "irreversible tipping-point deadlines" (pushed forward, just like doomsday preachers' deadlines", every time the deadline comes and goes), and, as here, the perpetual and repeating polar bear fraud?
This year, biologist Paul Nicklen published a video online of an emaciated polar bear on Baffin Island rummaging through trash cans, looking for food. The polar bear was likely at death’s door when Nicklen captured the footage in late summer.
Nicklen, who founded the environmental group Sea Legacy, said he wanted to highlight the future polar bears face because of global warming. It worked, and the video has gone viral, sparking media coverage about a polar bear that’s a victim of a warming world.
“We stood there crying—filming with tears rolling down our cheeks,” Nicklen said, National Geographic reported.
“When scientists say bears are going extinct, I want people to realize what it looks like. Bears are going to starve to death,” said Nicklen. “This is what a starving bear looks like.”
It’s certainly a sad sight, but it’s not evidence global warming drove that specific bear to starvation. In fact, experts noted that if starvation in the area was global warming-driven, carcasses would be strewn throughout the landscape.
Interestingly enough, Sea Legacy co-founder Cristina Mittermeier admitted the actual cause of death was “irrelevant” — the point of all of this, like past starving polar bear videos, is to sound the alarm on global warming.
“It is impossible to tell why he was in this state. Maybe it could’ve been because of an injury or disease,” Mittermeier told CBC News.
“The point is that it was starving,” she said, “as we lose sea ice in the Arctic, polar bears will starve.”
Polar bear experts, however, have cautioned that such photos don’t constitute evidence of global warming-induced starvation.
“In August, this bear would have been only recently off the sea ice: since most bears are at their fattest at this time of year, something unusual had to have affected his ability to hunt or feed on the kills he made when other bears around him did not starve and die,” Zoologist Susan Crockford wrote on her blog.
“It could have been something as simple as being out-competed for food in the spring by older animals,” Crockford wrote. “But if sea ice loss due to man-made global warming had been the culprit, this bear would not have been the only one starving: the landscape would have been littered with carcasses.”
Hillary Clinton Christmas Tree star.
Sadly, you probably missed your window to order. Shipping to the U.S. takes 5-7 days, the company says, and you have to have your order in several days before that because each tree-topper is custom made. A window of 15 days is necessary for the total arc, but at this point, because so many people have demanded a Clinton angel, they can't guarantee a two week turnaround.
Maybe they'll be discounted on Boxing Day.
Sad
I'm surprised our local editors would be so callous, especially in light of a recent study showing that youngsters feel that being labelled "snowflakes" damages their mental health.
With nothing better to do ...
Byram reading group polishes off Proust's " In Search of Lost Time, after seven years.
(To be fair, I never made it past the first ten pages, so reading all 4,000 is some sort of testament to perseverance in a lost cause, but it does remind me of the jigsaw puzzle joke).
Never been better!
It's simply a matter of adjusting "aspirational prices", say Ogilvy and his peers.
The latest example is last month’s sale of Greenwich’s largest estate in the backcountry gated community of Conyers Farm. Originally listed in 2015 for $65 million, the price was reduced several times until it finally closed more than two years later for $21 million. The seller, billionaire Thomas Peterffy, had paid $45 million for it in 2004.
Those steep discounts don’t necessarily mean the properties lost value, according to Jonathan Miller, a real estate appraiser and consultant who provides Greenwich market analysis for Douglas Elliman.
“The pricing of a lot of these properties reflects a different time. It’s not reflecting the current market,” he said. “The discounts are very large because they’re discounts from prices that were never close to what the market conditions actually were.”
Between the housing bubble and changing trends in real estate, many Greenwich homeowners haven’t been pricing their homes according to how the real estate market currently works, said Miller, who calls the tendency “aspirational pricing.” With so many overpricing their homes, sellers’ expectations can become skewed.
Where I come from— Riverside — paying $45 million for a property and dumping an additional $20 million into renovations, then selling it for $21 million, total, adds up to a $44 million loss, minus transaction costs. That may not mean the property lost value in proper Greenwich real estate circles, but for those of us snickering on the fringe, it does suggest something close to that conclusion.
Better than shooting oneself in the foot
Best "cease and desist" letter, ever.
A small brewery has been peddling "Dilly Dilly" brew, and that naturally brought in Budweiser's corporate lawyers, because if you don't protect a trademark, you lose it (think band-aid). The usual approach to this sort of thing is the one my own former firm employed: "reach out and crush someone" — but someone in corporate had the good sense to recognize that a WW III attack on a tiny company, just to protect a nonsensical phrase, would badly backfire. So they did an amazingly smart thing: came in funny, even generous (proffered Super Bowl tickets to the Minneapolis brewery's two best employees), and ended up with great publicity and the desired effect: the offending brewer is changing the beer's name to "coat tails".
Someone deserves a Christmas bonus.
The (wonderful) family meet up in Black Hawk, CO this Thanksgiving was slightly marred by the failure of an internet connection at our rented lodging, and then followed by the catastrophic failure of my own computer upon my return. $1,600 poorer, I'm now the new owner of another Mac, and seem to be back, ready to resume blogging.
Technology's great, until it isn't.
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