Ah, the magic of the right price in the right market
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21 Linwood Avenue, Riverside, hit the market in August at $1 million. A “highest and best offer’ duel broke out, and it closed yesterday at $1.136 million.
All good things come to those who wait. And drop their price.
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979 Lake Avenue (Merry Lane, actually, way up north), asking $1.099 million, has a contract, a year-plus after being listed at $1.450.
It’s a nice house, but needs work. I was asked for a price opinion back before this was listed and I suggested a price just below a million; the owners opted to go with an agent who advised a higher price. That happens frequently in this business, so no hard feelings, but ultimately, a house will sell for what it’s worth, not what some agent promises you it’s worth.
Wokeness over education
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Grosse Point Kindergartener is shown the light
Public and private schools across America embark on anti-whiteness, anti-America campaigns
In dramatic, urgent language, K-12 schools across the country – both public and private – professed solidarity with Black Lives Matter and vowed to dismantle white supremacy, as they scrambled to introduce anti-racist courses and remake themselves into racism-free zones.
The president of the Lower Merion School Board on Philadelphia’s affluent Main Line declared to families: “We need to eradicate white supremacy and heteropatriarchy in all of our institutions.”
In Maine, a coastal public school district where 3.7% of the 2,100students are African American or Hispanic, the superintendent declared war on “the intentional barriers white people have built to harm Black people.” The top administrator added: “We grieve for all of the Black lives taken by white supremacy.”
Educators at the prestigious Brentwood College School in Los Angeles, have made more changes to the curriculum this year than any other in the private school’s nearly five decade history. Teachers are introducing critical race theory, which views U.S. history through the prism of racial conflict, and assigning readings from Ibram X. Kendi, the academic and author who contends race-neutral policies are the bulwark of the “White ethnostate.”
As part of the makeover, Brentwood School leaders have rolled out a fresh theme this year for fifth graders: “Identity and Power.”
“While some view these recent shifts as indoctrination, we see them as opportunities for engagement,” Brentwood’s head of school, Mike Riera, wrote to families this fall.
White kids from stable homes might be able to escape this abandonment of curriculums that were once intended to teach basic fundamentals, but pity the poor slum children:
Buffalo Public Schools, where whites account for 22% of enrolled students, this fall adopted Black Lives Matter-themed lessons plans that ask students in grades 2-4 if there are any similarities between the coronavirus epidemic today and the supposedly intentional spread of smallpox to the Native Americans, described as an 18th-century form of “biological warfare.” Middle and high schoolers are taught to think of Western justice as “punitive” and the justice meted out in traditional societies as “restorative/empathetic.” One of the included documents for instructors states: “All white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism.”
How’s Buffalo doing with preparing its students to cope in the world? Not so well.
Des[ite a student-to-teacher ratio of 12:1, Buffalo schools rank 757th lowest out of 787 New York State schools; 70% of their high school graduates are functional illiterates.
But they’ll have memories of all those picture books on slavery and an inculcated sense of victimhood to entertain themselves with as they loiter on the sidewalk.
OFFICIAL SEAL OF NAR DISAPPROVAL
The weaker sex mews again
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Duke sorority council bans all events with males
The Panhellenic Council at Duke University voted to ban chapters of member sororities from hosting “mixers” with all-male organizations, vowing to place chapters that violate the rule on social probation.
The Duke Panhellenic Association “unites women across 10 chapters” of various sororities and is the “largest unified body of undergraduate women at Duke University.”
According to a post on the Duke Panhellenic Association’s Instagram page, the Panhellenic Council voted to ban mixers with all-male organizations to focus on women’s empowerment. The post states that all-male organizations cause concern amongst other groups due to gender dynamics and the objectification of women.
Hey, Republicans! You should have figured this out two decades ago
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Brian Fallon, former Press Secretary for Clinton , current “Democratic Activist” lets slip the dogs of war
“A bygone era of civility and decorum” indeed.
As free speech dies
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Sheryll Attkisson: The New Woke Times
The latest developments remove any lingering doubt as to how the Times sees its modern mission: serving and pleasing the left-wing activists on its staff and the liberal activists who dominate on the news and social media. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger’s dictum when he fired the newspaper’s public editor in May 2017 had come to pass in a terrible way. Recall that, at the time, he declared that the Times’ followers on social media would “collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be.”
snip
Make no mistake: other media outlets are taking note. In this way, they are motivated to self-censor news and information, lest they draw the wrath of the mobs. One editorial figure at a major international publication who did not want to be identified recounted numerous pieces he has recently killed for fear of the organized backlash.
“They can bankrupt me,” he tells me. “Facebook, Twitter, Google— they can ruin you in a matter of hours. For somebody like us, they can destroy you. So what do we do? We pull our punches. To raise certain issues is to cut your own throat.” He continues, “The newsman in me says, ‘Tell the truth,’ and that sounds great. But if I do that and destroy [my publication] in the process, what kind of pyrrhic victory is that?”
The information landscape becomes ever narrower, squashing diversity of thought and facts. Pretty soon, we won’t know what we don’t know. And that will be that.
(This post has not been approved by the National Association of Realtors)
They report this as though it's a good thing
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The fools thought they could rid of us!
Biden is reassembling the Obama team.
The six picks announced on Monday, almost all of them alumni of the Obama administration, represent a fundamental shift away from President Trump’s policies and personnel selections. They also mark a return to a more traditional approach to America’s relations with the rest of the world and reflect Biden’s campaign promises to have his Cabinet reflect the diversity of the American population.
In choosing foreign policy veterans, Biden is seeking to upend Trump’s war on the so-called “deep state” that saw an exodus of career officials from government [emphasis added]. He will nominate his longtime adviser Antony Blinken to be secretary of state [the man who slammed Trump’s “America First” policy as “Nationalistic Xenophobia”], lawyer Alejandro Mayorkas to be homeland security secretary, Linda Thomas-Greenfield to be ambassador to the United Nations, Jake Sullivan to be his national security adviser, and former Secretary of State John Kerry to be his climate change envoy.
But wait, there’s more! Obama staffers who’ve been hiding at NBC, MSNBC, CNN, etc. are flocking back to the White House.
Meet the new boss,
Same as the old boss
Because you never stop doing or requiring anything useless, you just add on
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Hygiene Theatre
NYT: The coronavirus is airborne indoors. Why are we still scrubbing surfaces?
All over the world, workers are soaping, wiping and fumigating surfaces with an urgent sense of purpose: to fight the coronavirus. But scientists increasingly say that there is little to no evidence that contaminated surfaces can spread the virus. In crowded indoor spaces like airports, they say, the virus that is exhaled by infected people and that lingers in the air is a much greater threat.
Hand washing with soap and water for 20 seconds — or sanitizer in the absence of soap — is still encouraged to stop the virus’s spread. But scrubbing surfaces does little to mitigate the virus threat indoors, experts say, and health officials are being urged to focus instead on improving ventilation and filtration of indoor air.
“In my opinion, a lot of time, energy and money is being wasted on surface disinfection and, more importantly, diverting attention and resources away from preventing airborne transmission,” said Dr. Kevin P. Fennelly, a respiratory infection specialist with the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
A false sense of security
Some experts suggest that Hong Kong, a crowded city of 7.5 million residents and a long history of infectious disease outbreaks, is a case study for the kind of operatic surface cleaning that gives ordinary people a false sense of security about the coronavirus.
The Hong Kong Airport Authority has used a phone-booth-like “full-body disinfection channel” to spritz airport staff members in quarantine areas. The booth — which the airport says is the first in the world and is being used in trials only on its staff — is part of an all-out effort to make the facility a “safe environment for all users.”
Such displays can be comforting to the public because they seem to show that local officials are taking the fight to Covid-19. But Shelly Miller, an expert on aerosols at the University of Colorado Boulder, said that the booth made no practical sense from an infection-control standpoint.
Viruses are emitted through activities that spray respiratory droplets — talking, breathing, yelling, coughing, singing and sneezing. And disinfecting sprays are often made from toxic chemicals that can significantly affect indoor air quality and human health, Miller said.
Well, this should make for some busy days and battles ahead
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OFF TO THE OPEN HOUSE TOUR!
National Association of Realtors bans “hate speech”, even off the job.
Earlier this month, the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) Board of Directors approved a measure banning hate speech and discrimination — not just in an agent’s real estate practice but also in his or her personal conduct, including non-professional social media accounts.
“REALTORS® who engage in hate speech or discriminatory conduct even outside of their real estate practice could face disciplinary action under the Code of Ethics,” REALTOR® Magazinereported. “The National Association of REALTORS®’ Board of Directors … approved a proposal intended to hold members to a higher standard of ethics in everything they do.”
NAR President Vince Malta called the move “a monumental moment for NAR” in reaffirming its commitment to fair housing.
The NAR answered a member’s question:
Doesn’t this mean that if I post my opinion online and someone doesn’t agree with it, that I can lose my membership and be forced out of the business?
As with any alleged Code violation, ethics complaints alleging a violation of Article 10 as interpreted by Standard of Practice 10-5 will be processed consistent with the local or state association’s professional standards enforcement process, which affords all parties a full and fair opportunity to present their case, defend themselves, provide evidence and witnesses, and be represented by counsel.
Uh-huh. Everything not approved by the properly-woke Left is hate speech today, just as all whites are racists and Nazis so, without inflating my self-importance too much, I expect to see a barrage of complaints filed against me in the future; if so, I’ll be there with camera rolling. This blog may be about to get more interesting.
Just to get things rolling, here’s some ammunition: Gender dysphoria is a mental disease, not a normal expression of the 57-varieties of sex, and boys shouldn’t be allowed in girl’s locker rooms.
Roll that up and smoke it.
UPDATE: This coming battle isn’t about one silly real estate blog, of course; they’re after 70 million people who voted the wrong way in the election. The calls for enemy lists, “re-education and deprogramming” and employment termination that have been sweeping the airwaves these past two weeks are very, very real.
Ah, those pesky preppies are home for Thanksgiving
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Manners Makyth the Man
Friday night fire destroys Belle Haven home under construction. Cause under investigation, neighborhood rumor says neighborhood teens.
I’d go with that one as a good starting point.