Related?
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Greenwich here we come
Greenwich December stats are out. Single family homes:
Median Price up 30.34%, $2.9 million vs $2.225 December ‘23
Days on Market down 32.8%, 51 days vs 76
New to the market, up 33.333%, 16 vs 12
Inventory still dropping, down 21.6%, 98 vs 125.
And then this:
NYC sees ‘staggering’ 146.5% spike in felony assaults by repeat offenders as top cops blame ‘broken system’
The best idea I've seen is that we let just Alberta in, and only on a trial basis at that
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Tu es hors d'ici, espèce de raquette inutile! (Rough translation, “you’re out of here, you useless snowshoe!)
Who wants the socialist/commie Quebeckers?
Trump renews his offer of making Canada 51st state of U.S. after Trudeau resigns
Riverside sale
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19 Coventry Lane, under contract since October, has closed at $1.780 million on an $1.8 million ask. Built for a different price level in 1967, I’m guessing that this structure has reached its useful life and will be replaced by a far more expensive one.
There goes the neighborhood
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New construction priced at $4.825 million at 30 Benenson Drive, Cos Cob, is reported pending today. Up to now, Benenson was a pleasant enough street of modest homes, but that has changed, just as other moderately priced neighborhoods have. That’s not to criticize, merely to observe.
This Sunday at Noon, in Bedford
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Sun, Jan 12
Director: King Vidor Run Time: 151 min. Rating: Not Rated Release Year: 1925
Starring: Claire Adams, Claire McDowell, Hobart Bosworth, John Gilbert, Renée Adorée
One of the greatest silent films ever produced and regarded as one of the greatest films made about World War I, The Big Parade has influenced several subsequent war films and been praised for its realistic depiction of warfare.
The idle son of a rich businessman joins the Army when the U.S.A. enters The Great War. He is sent to France, where he becomes friends with two working-class soldiers and falls in love with a Frenchwoman he must leave to move to the frontline.
Starring John Gilbert, “The Great Lover” of the silent era rivaled in popularity only by Rudolph Valentino. The film will be introduced by Mr. Gilbert’s grandson, Gideon Fountain.
Maybe we should have a FWIW meet-up?
Elon Musk notches another victory — leave it to an immigrant to understand the value of free speech
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thank you for showing me the true path, obi-wan
Meta ends fact-checking program as Zuckerberg vows to restore free expression on Facebook, Instagram
Meta is ending its fact-checking program and lifting restrictions on speech to "restore free expression" across Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms, admitting its current content moderation practices have "gone too far."
"We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video posted Tuesday morning. "More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S."
Meta’s third-party fact-checking program was put in place after the 2016 election and had been used to "manage content" and misinformation on its platforms, largely due to "political pressure," executives said, but admitted the system has "gone too far."
"We went to independent, third-party fact-checkers," [Meta’s chief global affairs officer] Joel Kaplan,Kaplan told Fox News Digital in an interview. "It has become clear there is too much political bias in what they choose to fact-check because, basically, they get to fact-check whatever they see on the platform."
Kaplan told Fox News Digital that Meta is "ending that completely" and will replace it with a "Community Notes" model similar to the one used on X, formerly Twitter.
"Instead of going to some so-called expert, it instead relies on the community and the people on the platform to provide their own commentary to something that they’ve read," Kaplan explained, noting that if a note gets support from "the broadest cross-section of users," that note can be attached to the content for others to see.
"We think that’s a much better approach rather than relying on so-called experts who bring their own biases into the program," Kaplan said.
Kaplan also told Fox News Digital that Meta is changing some of its own content moderation rules, especially those that they feel are "too restrictive and not allowing enough discourse around sensitive topics like immigration, trans issues and gender."
"We want to make sure that discourse can happen freely on the platform without fear of censorship," Kaplan told Fox News Digital. "We have the power to change the rules and make them more supportive of free expression. And we’re not just changing the rules, we are actually changing how we enforce the rules."
Kaplan said Meta currently uses automated systems, which he said make "too many mistakes" and removes content "that doesn’t even violate our standards."
Remember when the Left was screaming about the threat Trump posed to democracy? (You should, it was only yesterday — in fact, they’re still screaming today). What a difference an administration makes:
"We have a new administration coming in that is far from pressuring companies to censor and [is more] a huge supporter of free expression," Kaplan said, referring to the incoming Trump administration. "It gets us back to the values that Mark founded the company on." [Uh huh; sure, Joel]
Last year, Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee in which he admitted that he felt pressure from the Biden administration, particularly with regard to COVID content, and even items like satire and humor.
"The thing is, as American companies, when other governments around the world that don’t have our tradition or our First Amendment, when they see the United States government pressuring U.S. companies to take down content, it is just open season then for those governments to put more pressure [on their companies]," Kaplan explained. "We do think it is a real opportunity to work with the Trump administration and to work on free expression at home."
A rose by any other name ....
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Split-level raised ranch
There’s been some discussion in the comments over the proper terminology for house designs. This link may be of interest for some, so here it is:
House Style Guide to the American Home
Watch for Columbia to host a class by Charles Murray on race and intelligence this fall; not.
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“Columbia University is committed to free expression and the open exchange of viewpoints and perspectives."
'A Bogus Claim': Columbia Professor Who Praised Oct. 7 Says Jews Not Descendants of Ancient Hebrews
The professor, Joseph Massad, is set to teach an upcoming course on Zionism at the Ivy League school
Columbia University professor Joseph Massad, who is slated to teach a course on Zionism, accused Jews of engaging in a "Hitlerian project" for claiming descent from ancient Hebrews during an appearance on a podcast hosted by a professor at Pakistan's University of Lahore.
Massad said the idea that Jews are descended from ancient Hebrews is a "bogus claim" and called them a "strange European group" during a March 25 episode of InFocus with Ejaz Haider titled "Busting Zionist Myths." Both Massad and the host, Ejaz Haider, a senior resident fellow at the University of Lahore's Center for Security, Strategy, and Policy Research, have praised Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack. The podcast is hosted on a platform sponsored by the university, which itself endorsed "the Palestinians' fight for freedom" in a statement issued one month after the attack.
"The idea that European Jews are somehow direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews is, of course, a bogus claim," Massad said. "Even if Jews believed somehow [they had] some lineage, at least a religious or spiritual lineage [to ancient Hebrews], by the 17th and 18th centuries, this idea amongst European Christians would become important, especially to estrange European Jews from Europe, and they begin to cast them as ‘Asiatics’—people who have come from Asia originally."
"What is special here about Zionism is not only the invention of ancient Israel and the invention of Jews as descendants of the ancient Hebrews, it’s almost like a Hitlerian project to speak of Jews genetically in this fashion," Massad added. "And it only becomes fashionable, of course, in the 19th century, with the rise of racial science and the biological sciences."
Massad also said ancient Israel was an invention of archaeology, a field he tied to colonialism.
"Of course, the mythology also includes aspects of the invention of ancient Israel," he said. "This is all a game of archaeology, and we know archaeology, of course, is part of colonialism. This is a science that begins in the late 18th century and early 19th century as part of the colonial venture."
… A day after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Massad called the assault "incredible" and "awesome" in an Electronic Intifada op-ed titled "Just another battle or the Palestinian war of liberation?" He’s also set to teach a spring course covering the "History of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala) in 19th century Europe and the development of Zionism through the current peace process between the state of Israel and the Arab states and the Palestinian national movement," according to a description on Columbia’s website. The course aims to provide "a historical overview of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict to familiarize undergraduates with the background of the current situation."
Lawrence Rosenblatt, an adjunct professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, resigned in protest of the university’s decision to offer the course. Columbia defended its position, arguing that it was committed to "free expression and the open exchange of viewpoints and perspectives."
Haider, meanwhile, has repeatedly justified Hamas’s terrorist attacks. Two days after the assault that claimed the lives of over 1,200 Israelis, Haider argued that "Hamas’ offensive [was] taken out of context." On Oct. 12, 2023, he posted on X that "Hamas is justified in doing what it did on the basis of the slow, structural violence Israel has perpetrated against the Palestinians since the nakba."
Haider also compared Zionists to Nazis in a Sept. 17, 2024, X post, writing, "while I despise the Zionazis, to know the enemy it’s imp[ortant] to know his capabilities." In May, he celebrated the death of Israel Defense Forces troops.
On Jan. 9, 2024, he argued that Israel, and not Hamas, was the real terrorist group.
"Hamas is NOT a terrorist group; it is a resistance group. Israel is a terrorist, genocidal, apartheid state. no conscientious human being would disagree with that. we must fight against this narrative. there are UNGA resolutions on occupation & armed resistance & they are clear," Haider wrote.
