They aren't even trying to pretend anymore

burn it down

Paper uses breached data to dox police to innocent colleague targeted by BLM; Twitter ten promotes it

British news outlet The Guardian published an article Friday, based on information from a group that specializes in trafficking hacked materials, listing the names of low-level police employees who anonymously donated to funds supporting the due process rights of colleagues who have garnered the ire of Black Lives Matter.

Twitter then put it atop its “trending” section, which is manually curated by the site – after it silenced all references to an election-eve New York Post story that was damaging to the Joe Biden campaign, claiming it violated a policy that Twitter will not promote hacked materials. There is no evidence the Hunter Biden laptop featured in the story was hacked.

Two $20 donations to Sheskey’s fund were associated with email addresses of a pair of lieutenants in Green Bay, Wisconsin’s police department. One, given under the name, “GBPD Officer”, was tied to an address associated with [name redacted by The Daily Wire], a training lieutenant in the department; another anonymous donation was associated with [name redacted by The Daily Wire], who is listed as a school resources officer lieutenant.

On April 9, Twitter locked the account of a commentator who shared a story about Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Cullors, a self-described “trained Marxist,” buying a $1.4 million home.

Columnist Jason Whitlock said: “They said my account was locked because I revealed personal information about someone. They said I needed to remove the tweet that linked the dirt.com story about Cullors buying a house in Topanga.”

No specific address was given, just the town, but that was too much for Twitter, because BLM!

Jacob Wells, a cofounder of GiveSendGo, told The Daily Wire, “When we started GiveSendGo, we let people give anonymously because people had such a big heart they didn’t want credit. Now where we’re at in this country, they have to give anonymously because we’ve seen what happens when their name gets out there. It makes me sick to my stomach… The point of this was to weaponize this information against the individuals who gave. There’s no other value other than to make them fearful.”

And here’s a nice touch:

Heather Wilson, another GiveSendGo cofounder, told The Daily Wire: “… We posted something on Twitter very simple like ‘thank you for using our service’ and people said underneath it things like ‘go to hell.’ And then at the bottom it says ‘hidden due to content.’ I said ‘oh gosh, how horrible is this one going to be?'”

“I clicked ‘show sensitive content’ and it said ‘God bless you.'”

God, I hate these spurious "word origins"

The latest, in honor, I suppose, of the newfound discovery by white youngsters that they’re the product of a systemically racist society, is the “true origin” of the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain. Of course I know that’s not true, but I’m not a 21-year-old product of modern education. For those who are, Snopes explains:

What's True

The origins of the pejorative term "cracker" can be traced in part back to the shortening of the term "whip-cracker." 

What's False

However, the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain takes its name from the literal barrel of crackers — not whips — that were prevalent at storefronts in the late 1800s.

Origin

In February 2021, an interesting “fact” about the U.S. restaurant chain Cracker Barrel started to circulate on social media. The viral post claimed that “cracker” was a slang term for whip and that the phrase “cracker barrel” originally referred to a barrel of whips that were sold at country stores:

There is a grain of truth to the claims made in this meme. The pejorative term “cracker” can be traced back in part to a shortening of the term “whip-cracker.” However, “cracker barrel” does not refer to a barrel of whips. Rather, this is a very literal term that refers to actual barrels of crackers that were common at stores in the late 1800s. 

Here’s how Lexico.com explained the origins of “cracker barrel”:

“Late 19th century with reference to the barrels of soda crackers once found in country stores, around which informal discussions would take place between customers.”

We scanned old newspaper articles from the late 1800s and early 1900s and foundseveral references to stores selling or purchasing soda crackers by the barrel. Here’s an advertisement from 1913 for “Sunshine L-W Soda Crackers” that told customers to pass on by the “dusty, handled” crackers in the store’s barrel and purchase a box of fresh crackers:

In addition to holding crackers, these barrels also served as a place for casual conversation, somewhat akin to a modern water cooler. Merriam-Webster mentioned this in their discussion of the origins of the term “cracker barrel,” writing: “From the cracker barrel in country stores around which customers lounged for informal conversation.”

We found quite a few interesting old newspaper clippings that show the cracker barrel as a place for philosophical musings. In 1891, for instance, the Somerset Herald started to publish various opinions that had been expressed by people gathered “around the store stoves.”

And so on and so on; in fact, this is one of the longest Snopes debunking I’ve seen. I suppose the morons think the phrase, “cracker barrel philosopher”, if they’ve heard of it at all, refers to some hooded klansman whupping colored folks over the whip barrel — someone should have applied the lash to these idiots in their teen years, and forced them to learn something.

And on’t get me going on “rule of thumb” and its connection to wife beating.

Dublin Hill Contract

31 Dublin Hill Drive, asking $6.450 million, reports a contract. The owners paid $6,438,680 for it in 1999, so no home run (ignoring the pleasure of living here for 31 years), but that reflects the limited market today for older homes — this one was built in 1941 — no matter how gracious.

Listed by John McAtee, of New England Land Company. John is not only an excellent agent and an incredibly nice person, he loves and understands old homes and conveys that enthusiasm during his showings. I spent a couple of hours with him some years ago when I had a client interested in one of his listings. I won’t say he was in tears, but he did bemoan that, with a lot split available, and the main house in need of major renovation, the likelihood was that the house was doomed. It was.

John’s latest listing is 78 Mayo Avenue, in Belle Have, $15.9 million. Originally built in 1886, it was spectacularly rebuilt a few years ago in a 3-year project. Everything was redone and brought up to date, from roof to mechanicals to new windows exactly like the originals, but double-paned. Even the foundation is new, and the new owners took advantage of that part of the project to shift the house’s angle so that it now looks directly south, for a better view.

Okay, enough on McAtee — I just really appreciate his devotion to old homes, and his efforts to keep them standing.

78 Mayo

Back for more

58 Sherwood Place came back on the market today, this time priced at $2 595 million, which is a considerable improvement from its original 2016 ask of $4.2, and its final price at the time the listing expired in 2018 of $3.750.

There are no interior photos posted yet, so I’m putting up some from that original listing. They certainly don’t appear to support a $4.2 price and in fact, unless further improvements have been made since, and the listing indicates it was last touched in 2012, I’m not sure they’ll support $2.595.

The town assesses it (100%) at $867,100, which I’m sure is too low, so don’t count on that $7,000 tax bill lasting for long.

Price cut in Riverside — that's a bit unusual

15 Palmer Lane, from $3.290 to $3.2 (2.7%). Built in 1987 and still very representative of that era’s style, the current owner paid $2.2 for it in 2001. The majority of the pictures show its water view — which is very nice — but I suspect that’s because its interior isn’t its strong point.

The town assesses it (100%) at $2.4, and that seems to me to be closer to the mark. A similar house at 17 Willowmere Circle sold for $2.5 a year ago June, and that’s a far better street, even if it’s just around the corner from this one. It also had a pool, and a dock directly on Ole’s Creek.

Mind you, that house went to contract April 9, just as the COVID lockdown had begun and slowed the market considerably, and it took a month or so before the market got back on its feet and roared upward. Several higher offers were proffered to the sellers during the period between contract and sale; in fact, the buyers were offered $100,000 by a builder if they’d assign the contract to him, but they turned it down.

But if 17 Willowmere Circle sold for $2.5, I wouldn’t think that prices have gone up enough to raise 15 Palmer to $3 million. Then again, who knows, these days?

17 Willowmere Circle (left)

Words to remember when dealing with the Left

This popped up randomly in my inbox just now, and it seems apt for our current state of cancel culture and censorship (even though I doubt it was intended that way)

Yes, it's a hot market

like a house afire

The Mickster sends along this link to “The Real Deal: Sales in Greenwich double in this quarter vs last year’s

For single-family homes in Greenwich, 200 transactions closed in the first quarter of 2021 — a 94 percent increase from 103 during the same period in 2020.

Still, the market is showing indications of slowing. Sales decreased 29 percent from 2020’s fourth quarter, which saw 282 transactions.

In part, that’s because listings in Greenwich have fallen as homes have been scooped up. Inventory was down 44 percent from the first quarter of last year.

Strong demand and a lack of available homes have led to bidding wars, pushing home prices up. The average sale price in Greenwich hit $2.97 million, a 4 percent increase from the prior quarter and a 39 percent jump from the prior year.

In Fairfield County, which includes Greenwich, the average sale price increased 35 percent from a year ago to $811,000, the third-highest level on record.

The statistics come from Douglas Elliman, and jibe with my general sense of what I’m observing: quick sales, higher prices, and disappearing inventory. But note, our average sales price this past quarter is “the third-highest level on record”. We’re not back to 2007 yet.

They're after full, total control

Facebook won’t allow sharing NY Post article on BLM

I'm so old, I remember when it was called "global warming"

Then again, I’m also so old that I remember when Scientific American was a legitimate publication.

Scientific American colludes with other media to switch from “climate change” to “climate emergency”

Scientific American, a previously venerated scientific publication, has decided it will magnify the “climate emergency” message that the politicos in Washington want to spread.  Out of the nearly 7 million scientists in the United States, it cherry-picked 13,000 to assert that they all agree: “We Are Living in a Climate Emergency, and We’re Going to Say So::

Scientific American has agreed with major news outlets worldwide to start using the term “climate emergency” in its coverage of climate change. 

— snip —

“The media’s response to COVID-19 provides a useful model.” Guided by science, journalists have described the pandemic as an emergency, chronicled its devasting impacts, called out disinformation and told audiences how to protect themselves (with masks and social distancing, for example).

The central control had to abandon global warming when pesky things like snowfalls kept occurring in England and the arctic ocean stayed stubbornly iced over, so they moved to “climate change”. That was a wonderfully flexible term because they could put all weather events — cold snaps, heat waves, droughts, torrential rains, etc. into it and say it all proved the need for increased state power over the lumpen proletariat.

But even that wasn’t enough — they wanted more control, faster, so they’ve upped the ante.

Worst listing effort ever?

58 Riverside Avenue, $1.2 million. I understand that there’s a tenant in place, but to take no effort whatsoever makes me wonder whether the agent (who’s related to the owner) has any desire to sell this place.

Pro tip: close the toilet lid

Ok, he got the lid down, but maybe he shoudn’’t have included the peeling ceiling in this angle

the “fully redone in 2020” kitchen

in move-out condition!

And you won’t want to miss the listing’s prose:

Remarks: Tucked away invisibly off busy Riverside ave, yet easily walk-able to the train, Riverside Elementary, Eastern Middle, amenities and restaurants you'll find this TLC house down a sloping drive, completely hidden from view. Couldn't be more centrally located with I95, Greenwich Ave, Todd's Point and Stamford minutes away. Remark at the awe inspiring 18 foot ceiling great room which serves as living & dining room perfect for entertaining, then relax in your private upstairs suite with a full bath and nursery or possible walk-in closet. The den/4th BR has a working fireplace, just off the marble entrance. Two downstairs bedrooms and a play area complete the space. Kitchen was fully redone in 2020, but there's work left for the inventive owner who gets location location location