Pending in Cos Cob after 8 days

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7 Meadow Drive, priced at but going for more than $1.9 million. This was a rehab/rebuild job a few years ago: the original house, built in 1915 and very much showing its age, was put up for sale in January 2021, for $665,000 sold via bidding war for $685,877 to the eponymous Flippin Ct LLC, who expanded it from its original 1,118 sq. ft. to 3,024 and resold it in October 2023 for $1.825 million. Is six months the new normal for home ownership in town? It’s beginning to seem that way.

Original

I think their troubles really began in 1964, when they erected the Boy Scout statue on the D.C. Ellipse

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at the very least, it sent the wrong signal to aspiring scoutmasters

(or, “hey, little boy, wanna see the puppy i’ve got under my tent?”)

Perhaps we should just say that its erection came prematurely,

The organization began allowing gay youth in 2013 and ended a blanket ban on gay adult leaders in 2015. In 2017, it made the historic announcement that girls would be accepted as Cub Scouts as of 2018 and into the flagship Boy Scout program — renamed Scouts BSA — in 2019.

This could be fun, once I learn how to use it

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John Tierney posted this on Instapundit yesterday:

FOLLOW THE MONEY: Brown, Harvard, and Indiana University of Pa. Received Gifts from the “State of Palestine.”  The grants were spotted by the watchdogs at OpenThe Books, which has also just launched a free tool for members of the public to do their own searches of how money is being spent by governments at the local, state and federal levels. It’s called Benjamin the Chatbot (in honor of Benjamin Franklin.)

I went to the site and looked up “Greenwich” — I supplied my email address and within seconds I was sent a summary showing a list or recipients of money paid by the state to Greenwich entities, ranging from Garden Catering to the YMCA. Can I narrow that further, to see payments made directly by town of Greenwich? I think so, but haven’t yet experimented.

(The links are active in the email ; those in the pictures below are not)

The first picture below is a sample of the overall payment list, the second shows the results of clicking on a particular payees’ highlighted link. Only the dollar amount is shown, not the specific purpose for the payment — for instance, we can probably presume that Garden Catering was paid for, duh, catering a town event — but the tool should be useful for seeing where are tax dollars: federal; state; and local are being spent, and thus opening an avenue for further inquiry.

It may take a couple of months before anyone notices your plight, honey

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pray for the tigresses

Princeton University Hunger Striker for Hamas Is 'Literally Shaking'

Apparently feeling they weren't getting enough attention, a group of Princeton student protesters for Hamas announced a hunger strike, but it sounds like it's been rough. They said it was "shameful and cruel" that Princeton wouldn't let them set up tents, leaving them "vulnerable and unsafe." Now they're complaining that the school administration isn't monitoring their vitals. "They are not at all taking care of us," they said.

This plus-size participant read her list of demands off of her iPhone a few days ago.

Now the hunger strikers are "literally shaking," which has us literally shaking.

This strategy often doesn't work out, but it did here

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Back in September, 16 Hedgerow Lane was put up for sale at $5.650 million, and the market’s response (and, probably, comments from colleagues of the listing agent) must have been overwhelmingly negative, because it was yanked two weeks later. Builders were called in, repairs made, and it was put back on the market in late March at $6.750 million, with this notation on the listing:

Extensively renovated 2024 (new roof, new floors, new kitchen, new boilers, new bluestone front and rear, updated exterior, systems, electrics, plumbing etc.)

That did the trick — it was under contract a month later, and now it’s pending. In my experience, an owner is usually better off lowering the pie-in-the-sky price of a house that won’t sell, rather than gambling that expensive repairs and improvements can be recouped with an even higher price, but this time that gamble paid off.

So, good for the seller, but I still wouldn’t advise it in the usual case, where owners simply want to sell their house and move on — better to leave the renovations to the next owner.

A fish rots from the head down

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Columbia Faculty Members Strike in Solidarity With Arrested Anti-Israel Students

“We will not return to a campus that is extremely dangerous for Black, Palestinian, Middle Eastern, Latinx, South Asian, Arab, Muslim, trans, queer, and other communities who are disproportionately profiled by police”

There’s probably nothing more easily replaceable than a university professor or TA, and Columbia’s administration could fire these people today and be fully restocked tomorrow. Could, but won’t.

Any cop would have told her that when someone offers you money, take it, put it in your pocket, and continue on your beat

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“The suspect was boarding a DASH bus, which offers free service, and tried to pay a dollar to the driver, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) told KABC-TV. When the driver declined to take the woman’s money, the suspect began attacking the driver.”

We’re living in the end stage.