Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
Brains of the outfit
So I was on Amazon, looking for something to feed my resident chipmunks, and came across this product question:
(Not that it’s particularly important, but chipmunks have a life expectancy of 2 years)
Psaking back: (EOS, I feed them because they’re pleasing company, and unlike any girls I know, I can persuade them to eat out of the palm of my hand)
literally hitler
I like what I’ve seen of Florida’s governor, but this clinches it: “DeSantis Worse than Trump”
18 Hilton Heath (off lower Cat Rock), $2.250 million, 36 DOM.
Hey — it’s clean, up-to-date, and on a nice little quiet dead end. Not surprising that it’s found a buyer and in this market, the price seems appropriate.
21st Century man
PETA wins round one: Canada Goose succumbs to the Wokes, and will stop using coyote fur trim.
In a Thursday statement, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said it will suspend its international campaigns against Canada Goose over its use of fur — but signaled it isn’t through with the company yet.
“After years of eye-catching protests, hard-hitting exposés, celebrity actions, and legal battles, as the company has finally conceded and will stop using fur – sparing sensitive, intelligent, coyotes from being caught and killed in barbaric steel traps,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said in a statement.
“PETA will now re-engage the company to push for an end to its use of feathers, which geese and ducks continue to suffer for,” she added.
PETA and its sheeple are also against wool, leather and silk, and is succeeding in pressuring companies to stop selling them.
It also wants to ban meat, egg, and dairy products, which is where those synthetic — don’ wanna hurt no real bugs — locusts come in.
Okay, no feathers, no wool, no fur, what can we use to protect us from nature’s insults? Not petroleum products, according to the mother of all green outdoor clothing retailers, Patagonia, though even it admits that — ahem — they’re still working on finding something to replace it.
It is remarkably hard to reduce the environmental impact associated with our technical gear, especially our shells. Unlike other products we make, a shell is a lifesaving piece of equipment that absolutely must perform in the world’s worst weather. Unfortunately, to meet that standard of functionality we rely on fossil fuels. While Patagonia continually searches for alternative materials and processes, our environmental ambitions still outstrip current shell technology.
Not to be outdone, that urban fashion house that masquerades as an outdoor company, North Face, is pushing to end the fossil fuel industry while peddling a product line that’s entirely dependent on the same stuff. It even won an award for its consumption!
Do these horrible misanthropes really want us all shivering in the dark? We report, you decide. There’s a national movement afoot to ban the use of natural gas for heating homes and businesses. Bans have already been enacted in WA, CA, and NYC, and the Green New Eel folx have bills pending in Congress to impose that ban nationwide. No natural gas, no propane, no heating oil, no coal, no wood. Fortunately, we’ll still have plenty of hot air and unicorn farts to sustain us.
UPDATE — Related?
Angry parents contacted the school’s administrators after 8th-grade children brought home the graphic flyer from science class. The flyer also informed students that they could get an abortion at any age without parent consent.
The handout listed other items that children did not need parental consent for such as birth control, as well as HIV and STD testing. The flyer encouraged sexting and advertised that condoms and emergency contraception could be obtained at any age.
The school’s principal apologized, but I suspect his real regret is allowing the flyer to escape from school and letting parents know what’s going on in their children’s classrooms.
Sort of like those Zoom classes that allowed parents to observe the indoctrination sessions — oops!
now you see ‘em …
now you don’t
The Taliban comes to Hartford
A normally placid panel that oversees the State Capitol complex erupted in opposition Thursday to a plan to remove the marble statue of an early English settler who led the massacre of hundreds of Native Americans in the 1637 Battle of Mystic.
The State Capitol Preservation & Restoration Commission bristled at plans by legislative leaders to take down the stone likeness of John Mason from the north exterior of the Capitol, charging that by keeping the statue in its third-floor niche overlooking Bushnell Park, the figure can become a learning tool, whether or not it offends people.
Commission members warned that if Mason is removed from the high-profile perch above the Capitol’s north steps, other statues of early settlers, including slave owners, could be next. “It’s not going to stop at one thing,” warned Mary Finnegan, a commission member who worked in the General Assembly for nearly 38 years.
But right after the hour-and-20-minute-long commission meeting, state Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, the powerful co-chairwoman of the legislative Appropriations Committee, said her plans to remove the statue indeed remain in the state budget that starts July 1.
Mason’s colonial troops joined with allies from the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes to the battle against the Eastern Pequot tribe in May of 1637, killing about 500 Native Americans. The massacre, which is also the subject of another commemoration on the Capitol, is an affront to Native Americans, said Osten, whose district includes the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribal nations.
Osten said that those women, children and older Native Americans who were not killed in the massacre were tortured and became slaves. She said that the statue could be sent to the Old State House for permanent exhibition rather than taking a honored location at the Capitol.
But …
Walter Woodward, an associate professor of history at UConn who serves on the commission and is an expert in early Connecticut history, joined in the defense of the keeping the statute in public view on the exterior of the 1878 Capitol.
“One of the things that I know is that John Mason certainly, in that Pequot fort on that morning, did something that was horrendous to save his and his men’s lives,” said Woodward, who is also the Connecticut state historian, during the virtual commission meeting. “The massacre at Mystic, as it is called now, was a desperate act by someone in desperate trouble, by someone trying to survive. And at that moment he and his men were fighting to save the colony of Connecticut as well. The reason the state of Connecticut honored him through those centuries, is because at a moment of great peril for this fledgling colony that was facing starvation and surrounded by enemies, he was the great risk-taker.”
Statues, books, ideas: all can raise ideas, stir discussion, and keep history alive. Which is why the new totalitarians are so desperate to erase them. They want, as they say, to create “a new consciousness”, a new class that will replace the lumpenproletariat that’s unable to recognize the superiority of communism with a new, more malleable generation. To do that, they can’t have people like Professor Woodward around, and they can’t have anything in the new world order that might stimulate discussion or, god forbid, independent thought and departure from the party line..
293 Riversville Road, $1.895 million, contract in 20 days. The sellers paid $1.630 for it in February 2020 (listing says a job transfer is the moving force here), so that’s a good indication of what’s been going on with prices.
This was a very nice 1774 house when I saw it back in 2013 or ao, but it needed a lot of work. That work seems to have been done.
As an aside, you should know that I’m not deliberately skimping on real estate news these days, it’s just that activity has slowed. I’m guessing that this season’s buyers have sorted out the best of the inventory and made their choices. If so, we may see a return to the normal summer doldrums, with activity picking up again as September approaches.
But there’s been nothing normal about the past 12 months’ market, so this may just be a slight breather; who knows?
Labeling the Bee’s content as “misinformation” got Facebook sued, so now it has created a separate category for satire and placed it in it “hate speech” folder.
(UPDATE: MailChimp just “accidentally” canceled the Bee’s account. Now, back to Facebook):
PJ Media: “Last week, Facebook announced that it would clarify the “satire exception” to its “Hate Speech Community Standard.” While this is welcome news for the expansion of content on Facebook, the platform also suggested it would act as a kind of satire police, ruling out certain kinds of satire that “punch down” or communicates “hateful ideas.” Almost as if on cue, Slate published an article on Tuesday attacking The Babylon Bee for — you guessed it — ‘punching down.’
…
Facebook pledged to implement “a new satire framework, which our teams will use for evaluating potential satire exceptions. Regional teams will be able to provide satire assessments.”
Facebook previously began to develop a framework for humor and satire, including “over 20 engagements with academic experts, journalists, comedians, representatives of satirical publications, and advocates for freedom of expression.”
The discussion of “punching down” came in this context:
Stakeholders noted that humor and satire are highly subjective across people and cultures, underscoring the importance of human review by individuals with cultural context. Stakeholders also told us that “intent is key,” though it can be tough to assess. Further, true satire does not “punch down”: the target of humorous or satirical content is often an indicator of intent. And if content is simply derogatory, not layered, complex, or subversive, it is not satire. Indeed, humor can be an effective mode of communicating hateful ideas. (emphasis added)
Facebook made this announcement last Thursday. This Tuesday, Slate published an article seemingly encouraging Facebook to go after The Babylon Bee. Slate’s Parker J. Bach rightly explained that the Bee’s satire is not “misinformation,” the reporter claimed that conservatives are more vulnerable to misinformation and conspiracy theories because they see the legacy media as untrustworthy.
….
[Slate’s] Bach also suggested that the Bee uses the wrong kind of satire:
The site has a nasty tendency to punch down with humor parts of its audience finds “refreshingly politically incorrect.” The site is often “ironically” misogynistic, as when it “defended” the place of women soldiers in the American military by reporting how “they don’t throw grenades well, so the enemy will never know what to expect” and how “you can pay them way less, which gives you more money for weapons and ammo.” The site is also frequently antagonistic toward the LGBTQIA+ community, with quizzes like “What Gender Are You” (Spoiler alert: the only possible answers are “man” and “woman,” with the outcome solely determined by the question “What chromosomes do you have?”) and countless “identifies as” jokes—for example, “Man Identifies as Woman Just Long Enough to Voice Valid Opinion on Abortion.”
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