I don't think the market's gone THIS crazy

40 Pecksland Road closed at $2.125 on July 30 of this year. The buyer tarted it up a little and has put it back on the market for $3.250.

Well, okay … I won’t say it’s impossible to perform $1.1 million in renovations in two months, just that it’s unlikely.

Here’s the original listing from July. You can decide for yourself.

This is craycray

A July contract, but still. 318 Stanwich Road was listed at $1.495 million, had a contract in 25 days, and closed today for $1.575. It’s a decent house, right on Frye Pond, but is waaay down from Stanwich Road, and heated driveway or not, I wouldn’t want to navigate it during the winter. That, and the fact that water runs downhill would dissuade me from this property, but obviously at least two buyers weren’t bothered by such quibbles. I think bidding wars are a fool’s game, but who knows? Maybe this is the start of something good.

Here's a curiosity

458 days after it was put up for sale, 21 Vineyard Lane, priced at $7.975 million, has sold for $10.4 million. Was a Rembrandt thrown into the deal? Did some sort of crazy-ass bidding war break out? I don’t know, but it must have been an all-cash deal, since there was only a week between contract and closing.

AMENDMENT. Reader DMH wrote, and then listing agent Chris Finlay called and confirmed, that the buyer here also bought its neighbor, 27 Vineyard Lane and combined its 2.75 acres with 21’s, for a really nice 5.5-acre parcel. 27 Vineyard Lane’s listing is here. Chris tells me, and its photos confirm, that the owner of 27 completely restored and renovated it and put in a beautiful formal garden, so the complete package looks pretty special, and now comes with a rather spectacular guest house.

After 15 years, a contract

100 Cat Rock Road, asking $2.175 million, is reported as under contract. I first saw this house in 2005; it had potential, but at $2.750 it struck me and, more importantly, the buying public, as overpriced. Since then it’s been on the market at least part of every year, except for a brief period when it was rented out. The owner added on and renovated it over those years and started off this time in 2018 at $3.143 (?why?), and dropped slowly to its current price.

You can never tell, but I think it might have sold back in 2005 had it been priced at $2.175, before the expense of an addition and renovation was incurred. Regardless, it’s a nice house, set high on a hill at the intersection of Bible and Cat Rock, so easy access. Considering the improvements made in the past few years, I think the buyers are doing well here.

Yup

And from Stephen Green’s Insanity Wrap at PJ Media

Wikipedia’s current entry for Hunter Biden contains this gem in the third sentence: “He and his father have been the subjects of debunked right-wing conspiracy theories pushed by Donald Trump and his allies.”

By whom? When? And why hasn’t Joe Biden or anyone in his campaign disputed the evidence?

Whatever else you do this year, don’t give money to Wikipedia.

Huh — I guess the panic buying's still going on

34 Copper Beech Road, asking $3.2 million, is under contract 24 days after being listed. I have not seen it in its present iteration, so anything’s possible, but judging from its pictures, I don’t see a million-dollars of improvements since it sold for $2.2 in August 2010.

But again, I haven’t seen it, so maybe there are gold fixtures in the redone baths, or something.

"Who was that woman I saw you with last night?" "That was no woman, that's my brother-in-law, and we're all just sick about it!"

Married father of three wears girly-girly clothes to work “because I can”. There’s an old saying, often expressed in the legal world, that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

The habit began in college with an old flame — the two would practice dancing together, both in high heels. Then it quickly became normal for him.

(Tulip Rover’s not the only person who can troll on this site)

UPDATE — Another old joke one can longer tell:

Two friends, changing in their golf club’s locker room

(Glancing over) “Gee, Freddie, how long have you been wearing pantyhose?”

“Ever since my wife found a pair in the glovebox”.

It's a petty dictator's prerogative to change his mind

“Ha! Fooled you, didn’t I, chumps!”

Mark Zuckerberg: “People should decide what’s credible, not Tech companies”

Well, that’s what he said a year ago October, but circumstances have changed. Here’s Facebook’s Policy and Communications chief Andy Stone this October 14th:

(“Stone is a former staffer for multiple Democratic PACs, a senator, and a congressman”)

About what I've said, but this is better argued

We will print no news before (we decide) it’s time

Removing liability protections from social media is the wrong answer

… As much as we all like the idea of these unaccountable tyrants being brought up short by Congress, or by regulators now under our control, we should proceed with caution, especially when it comes to making Facebook, Twitter, or any of the other platforms liable for user content on their sites, which seems to be the direction the president and a few of his Republican congressional wingmen appear to be moving.

This would be a huge mistake. One more time…This would be a huge mistake. If we make the platforms responsible for user content, we will have just handed these Cyber CEO’s a more powerful weapon; a cudgel now backed up by an official regulation or statute handed down from Olympus/The Federal government.

We will have given them the best excuse possible to block whatever content they wish…Out of an abundance of caution and in willing compliance with what we believe is the government’s intent, we have blocked this content/account. Of course, once you’ve jumped through whatever hoops to get your content or account restored, no easy task for someone without the public notoriety of the president, its timeliness is long expired. Just what they want. We are 14 days from Election Day. A review process, especially if there is a backlog, can easily take 14 days. Like justice, truth delayed is truth denied.

Instead of abridging the Section 230 protections of the CDA, we should reaffirm them, however with an addition. We should say that because these platforms are indeed platforms, they are not responsible for the content their users post. However, the flip side of that is, because they have no liability for the content, they are forbidden from restricting content based on their assessment of its accuracy. It’s not their job to be fact-checkers. They need to get out of that business. This simple change would accomplish that.

They have another option. If they don’t like the one I proposed, we can break them up, just like we did with The Phone Company. President Trump and his regulators in the FCC need to keep this simple. We don’t need to make the problem worse. Leave the Cyber CEO protections in place, but get them out of  the fact-checking business.

Done.

UPDATE: Example 4,367. Twitter censors White House COVID expert because it disagrees with Dr. Scott Atlas’s face mask policy.

The Federalist reports that Atlas’s tweet offended the sensibilities of Twitter executives and “not only had his tweets removed, he was banned from tweeting until he deleted the tweets that Twitter for unclear reasons objects to.”

Here’s what he said on Twitter in two tweets. Behold the “treachery.”

Masks work? NO. LA, Miami, Hawaii, Alabama, France, Philippnes [sic], UK, Spain, Israel. WHO: “widesprd use use not supported.” + many harms; Henegen, Oxf, CEBM,” despite decades consider…

That means the real policy is @realdonaldtrump guideline: use masks for their intended purpose – when close to others, especially hi risk. Otherwise social distance. No widespread mandates. #CommonSense

So we’ve got 22-year-old liberal arts majors determining what’s “scientific” enough to release to the public.

Leave it to a New Yorker to be disturbed by this

Run away!

Greenwich Time columnist upset by fake sheep in a field

There is something very disturbing going on in backcountry Greenwich. Someone appears to have put fake sheep out in a field.

At first this may seem trivial, given recent world events, but stick with me here. These sheep have caused me to nearly crash my car three times and counting, as I pass by trying to figure out what is going on. What’s more, these “sheep” raise larger questions about the nature of truth that have me spinning — not just because of the sheep themselves, but because of the craziness that is our world today.

Are these sheep telling us something bigger?

….

I no longer stop when I see the sheep. Nor do I get out of the car, wave my hands frantically while shouting, hoping they will move. I have evolved, but only slightly.

Because here’s the thing: it does matter. If those sheep are fake, which given the fact they have not moved in an entire week is highly likely, my view of reality has been altered, as has my carefully chosen drive … as has my sense of what is real.

…

But here’s the thing: fake or real, those undulating hills and wide-open vistas on my cherished drive have now taken a turn for the sinister. There is confusion where there should be calm; there are unclear sheep.

And although my whimsical encounter with sheep lacks any real implications in our world, I am reminded of a chilling quote from “The Social Dilemma” that does. As Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist and co-founder of the Center for Humane Society, put it:

“Until we agree on what is true or that there is such a thing as truth, we’re toast. … This is the problem beneath other problems because if we can’t agree on what's true then we can't navigate out of any of our problems.”

Sheep in a field, fake or real, so surprises this transplant that she stops her car and flails her arms at them? And finds them “sinister”? And draws a life lesson from them? Yes, the lady admits that she’s being “whimsical”, but not, it seems, unalarmed by the sight of a farm animal in the backcountry. In the unlikely event she ever sums up her courage to travel into the heart of darkness, imagine her horror to discover there are chickens in Riverside.

Oh, dear.

UPDATE: The columnist is not the only one worried about social media altering reality; Sean Ono Lennon is too, though not in the same sense that she is.