Pending on Edgewood after 5 days

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36 Edgewood Drive, $3.975 million and, presumably, going for more.

An interesting price history here: the 1.43-acre lot with a teardown was purchased for $2.350 in March of 2006, resold that July for $2.5 milion, and this house was built. I’m surprised, I guess, that even at 2007 prices, a house this large at this construction level — slate roofs have never been cheap, for instance — could be profitably sold for $4 million when the land it was built on cost $2.5.

But I guess it can.

Mallard Drive

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47 Mallard Drive reports a contract; 11 days on market. A pretty-much-untouched 1960 original, with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and 1,865 sq. ft.

Even back then, Greenwich homes were larger than the US average; they still are, of course.

Average Size of US Homes, Decade by Decade

It's nearly tripled since 1950

24/7 Wall St has a list that shows how the typical American home has changed from 1920 to 2014. And that mainly means the homes have gotten way bigger. The list tracks various stats year by year, including average square feet. Here's a sample, with the figure referring to the average floor area of a new single-family home:

  • 1920: 1,048 square feet

  • 1930: 1,129

  • 1940: 1,177

  • 1950: 983

  • 1960: 1,289

  • 1970: 1,500

  • 1980: 1,740

  • 1990: 2,080

  • 2000: 2,266

  • 2010: 2,392

  • 2014: 2,657

Click for the full list. (More homes stories.)

It was a nothing burger of a story, quickly fading, but here's an interesting explanation of what happened

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How Goldberg Got Added to the Signal Chat

According to three people briefed on the internal investigation, Goldberg had emailed the campaign about a story that criticized Trump for his attitude towards wounded service members. To push back against the story, the campaign enlisted the help of Waltz, their national security surrogate.

Goldberg’s email was forwarded to then Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who then copied and pasted the content of the email – including the signature block with Goldberg’s phone number – into a text message that he sent to Waltz, so that he could be briefed on the forthcoming story.

Waltz did not ultimately call Goldberg, the people said, but in an extraordinary twist, inadvertently ended up saving Goldberg’s number in his iPhone – under the contact card for Hughes, now the spokesperson for the national security council.

According to the White House, the number was erroneously saved during a “contact suggestion update” by Waltz’s iPhone, which one person described as the function where an iPhone algorithm adds a previously unknown number to an existing contact that it detects may be related.

The mistake went unnoticed until last month when Waltz sought to add Hughes to the Signal group chat – but ended up adding Goldberg’s number to the 13 March message chain named “Houthi PC small group”, where several top US officials discussed plans for strikes against the Houthis.

Waltz said in the immediate aftermath of the incident that he had never met or communicated with Goldberg. He also suggested on Fox News that Goldberg’s number had been “sucked” into his phone, seemingly in reference to how his iPhone had saved Goldberg’s number.

….

Waltz also appears to have also engendered some sympathy from inside Trump’s orbit over the group chat because the White House had authorized the use of Signal, largely because there is no alternative platform to text in real time across different agencies, two people familiar with the matter said.

Previous administrations, including the Biden White House, did not develop an alternative platform to Signal, one of the people said. As a temporary solution, the Trump White House told officials to use Signal as they had done during the transition instead of regular text-message chains.

Results (Updated)

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Iranian Military Fleeing Yemen, Abandoning Houthi Allies in Anticipation of U.S. Attack

The Iranian military has been ordered home from Yemen by the government in the wake of massive U.S. attacks on the Houthi terrorist group.

Since March 15, the U.S. bombing campaign has destroyed Houthi infrastructure and crippled its ability to carry out attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Iranian military personnel, including members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have been recalled in anticipation of an expected military confrontation with the United States. 

He’s having the same effect on Democrats and their media wing:

A senior Iranian official told The Telegraph that the move was made to avoid a direct confrontation with the U.S. if an Iranian soldier was killed. The source said Tehran's main concern was “Trump and how to deal with him."

“Every meeting is dominated by discussions about him, and none of the regional groups we previously supported are being discussed,” the source said.

UPDATE:

Iran-backed militias in Iraq are ready to disarm following Trump’s threats

Several of the Iran-backed militia groups operating in Iraq are set to demilitarize for the first time to avoid conflict with the US following President Trump’s threats to Tehran’s proxies, senior Baghdad officials said.

Ten senior commanders and Iraqi officials urged the capital to begin the process of disarming and disbanding the militias operating in Iraq to avoid the worst-case scenario with the US.

“Trump is ready to take the war with us to worse levels, we know that, and we want to avoid such a bad scenario,” a commander of Kataeb Hezbollah, the most powerful Shiite militia operating in Iraq, told Reuters.

The commander, along with leaders of the al-Nujaba, Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada and Ansar Allah al-Awfiya groups, have all been meeting with each other and officials in Baghdad to discuss the demilitarization efforts.

Izzat al-Shahbandar, a senior Shiite Muslim politician close to Iraq’s governing alliance, confirmed the meetings between the militia chiefs and Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, describing the talks as “very advanced.”

“The factions are not acting stubbornly or insisting on continuing in their current form,” he noted, adding that the militants were “fully aware” they could be targeted by US airstrikes like their fellow Iran-backed militants in Yemen.

The militia leaders said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has given them their blessing to make whatever decision needs to be made to avoid conflict with the US.Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has been in talks with militia leaders and is seeking for all militants in the nation to step down.AP

There are some 50,000 militants operating in Iraq under the umbrella of the Islamic Resistance.REUTERS

Along with overseeing the militias’ demilitarization, Sudani is also allegedly calling on all the estimated 50,000 militants across the Islamic Resistance in Iraq to put down their weapons and surrender their arsenals, which include long-range missiles and anti-aircraft weapons, according to two security officials who monitor militias’ activities.

The US State Department touted Iraq’s proactive approach as it reins in the militias, calling Baghdad to absorb the forces and keep Tehran’s influence out.

These forces must respond to Iraq’s commander-in-chief and not to Iran,” the department said in a statement.

The demilitarization efforts come as the US seeks to further isolate Iran and it’s so-called “Axis of Resistance,” which has seen major blows following Israel’s destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah’s leadership in Gaza and Lebanon.

…. Ibrahim al-Sumaidaie, a former political adviser to Sudani, told Iraqi state TV that the US has ramped up its warning since Trump’s return to the White House, warning Baghdad to take the threats seriously.

“If we do not voluntarily comply, it may be forced upon us from the outside, and by force,” he said.

Triumph of the Superior Sex

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YOU GO, GIRL!

Literally: go!

 Joan of Arc was non-binary, schoolchildren taught.

Joan of Arc was non-binary, secondary school pupils are being taught.

Lesson plans produced for English language students aged between 11 and 14 include the claim about the medieval figure, who is the patron saint of France and fought against the English during the Hundred Years’ War.

In the Who We Are anthology published by Collins, which is made up of “representative and inclusive contemporary texts”, a lesson plan includes a biography that reads: “Joan of Arc (1412-31) is today considered by some to have been non-binary.”

The knight cropped her hair in the male fashion and wore men’s clothes, which formed part of the heresy case against her for which she was burned at the stake in 1431.

But she never claimed not to be female and also did not adopt the non-binary gender identity, which only emerged in the late 20th century.

Robert Tombs, professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge, branded the claim “insulting”.

“Joan of Arc fought as a woman and died as a woman,” he told The Telegraph. “To call her something else is insulting to her and indirectly to all women who are brave enough to risk their lives for their beliefs – as if women are incapable of heroism.”

Carolyn Brown, a retired psychologist now working with the Women’s Rights Network, said: “This is yet another ridiculous example of attempting to rewrite history and erase strong, rebellious female characters from our past.

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Holy s... I take back what I said earlier about these people knowing, even vaguely, what they’re yelling about

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Yes, but EOS is right: many of these sheeple actually believe what they're shrieking

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The “grassroots” demonstration yesterday was, we’re told by Greenwich Free Press “organized by Indivisible Greenwich and was one of over 1000 “Hands Off” events held nationwide, with the anchor event held in Washington DC, organized and promoted by over 100 organizations, including Indivisible.org, MoveOn, 5051, the League of Women Voters, and the Women’s March.” These groups and other 501(c) dark money coordinate and fund the various “spontaneous” protests we’ve seen increasingly during the past decade, but talk to one of the disciples; I have, and find them universally to be hateful, self-righteous, smug individuals convinced, as EOS says, they are right. Whether it’s locking the unvaccinated away and seizing their children, or forcing apartment towers into residential neighborhoods, or burning Tesla dealerships and attacking their owners, to cheering on murderers and rapists — the list is endless, and all-encompassing — they are not only convinced that they are right but also that anyone who disagrees with them is evil. Not misinformed, or simply wrong, as I believe most conservatives considered liberals to be until recently, but evil, and thus worthy objects of hate.

This underlying hysteria makes them easy people to be whipped into a frenzy by their masters.

Nearly half of Dems say fines, prison time appropriate for questioning vaccines, poll says

by ZACHARY ROGERS | The National Desk

Mon, January 17th 2022 at 2:17 PM

So I believe these posts by Musk and “Western Lensman”, while partially accurate, underestimate the depth of the loyalists.

This was probably ... ill-advised

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congratulations, and goodbye

Her boast caught the eye of White House Communications Director Steven Cheung:

And the Rapid Response Team has responded:

The Trump War Room (who knew there was such a thing?) cc’d Tom Homan — that can’t be good