Spaghetti faucets: I've yet to hear a good answer to why anyone would want one

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I notice that the execrable new construction at 25 Dialstone Lane has one of those spaghetti faucets installed above the range. The purpose for these, I’m told, is to spare the happy chef the onerous task of filling up a large pot of cold water at the sink and lugging it over to the cooktop. Swell, but that’s cold water the cook would have been lugging; these faucets never have a drain nearby, so she’s still faced with the task of returning that same pot of water to the sink, only now it will be filled with boiling liquid, not cold. What’s been gained at the expense of running a waterline here and adding an expensive fixture?

According to Better Homes and Garden, this is a “must-have” feature, but I remain unconvinced:

What Is a Pot Filler? Why It's a Must-Have Upgrade

A pot filler will transform your kitchen with its convenience and impressive design.

Really? How?

And we have an answer in just 14 days

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I posted on 11 Round Hill Club Road when it was listed at $19.9 million this past May 19th, pointing out that the owners had purchased it for just $8.325 million in 2019 from a spec builder who’d started at $17.950 way back in 2015, and asked, “how much of a bargain was that 2019 buy? We’ll find out”. And we have: it’s reported under contract today.

“Sometimes AI has a mind of its own,” Pouliot said. “You have to be careful about it. It might move windows or distort a room.”

Who ya gonna believe, me, or your own lying eyes?

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“And of course, as you can see, the manhattan skyline is simply breathtaking”

I’ve posted on this topic several times over the past year or so, and offered some examples of how AI can generate real estate descriptions for listings, as well as showing how one can improve existing listing photographs by inserting missing, essential items like The Zebra, the Orange, and the Tipi, so the article below isn’t news, but it’s still interesting (to me, at least). And of course, if you’ve checked out the pictures in almost any of the Greenwich listings posted here or elsewhere online you’ll know that our local realtors have been doctoring dollying up their own photos for quite some time.

Will this development put the stagers and their warehouses stuffed with furniture and animal skins out of business? My first thought was no, because most buyers are still stubbornly demanding that they actually see a property before purchasing it, but then I remembered Apple Vision goggles, like those being deployed by the savvy agent above. I believe the goggles have been temporarily pulled from the market while they’re being improved, but with AI’S capabilities expanding exponentially every few weeks, I’m sure the goggles will be back soon, better than ever.

How AI is transforming Maine real estate listings

If you’ve perused Maine real estate listings in the last few months, you might notice that photos often show bright homes with light emanating from windows against a vivid sky.

It may not be real. That’s because more and more Maine real estate agents are using artificial intelligence to market their properties, having it enhance photos, write property descriptions and even virtually stage empty rooms in homes.

National organizations and lawyers have been raising ethical concerns about the use of this technology in real estate for years. Its use has become common in Maine in recent months. Some agents recoil at the idea of using it at all, even though the technology has the potential to substantially lower the costs of staging and listing property.

“This is more of a productivity tool,” Susan Dube, an Auburn-based agent with The Masiello Group, said. “I want to focus on the money-making things like meeting clients, showing properties … and have something else working in the background to help promote me and my business.”

For the past three months, Dube has used AI for writing property descriptions, advertising, staging and sharing market updates with clients. It’s the work an assistant would typically do, but for a lot less money. Dube said she always reviews and edits all AI-generated content herself and is taking a year-long course in the subject to shore up her skills.

She’s not alone. A lot of Maine real estate agents are using these tools, Jannika Bragg of Cates Real Estate said. So are the real estate photographers they contract with. It’s easy to tell who is and who isn’t just by looking through photos and reading property descriptions, she said. 

Bragg uses AI to give her feedback on emails she writes or to occasionally stage rooms, but like Dube said she never wants to lose that “human touch” and isn’t overly reliant on it.

“I like to still be authentic,” she said. “There definitely are some properties that do call for on-site staging. But virtual staging is a lot of times more efficient, a lot more cost-effective.”

Staging a home the old-fashioned way can cost up to $5,000 for a 1,500-square-foot home, said Heather Pouliot, who stages homes as president of Pouliot Real Estate in Augusta. It costs as little as $25 per photo to virtually stage the same room, she said. Pouliot has used AI in the past, but she prefers hiring a company that will take a photo and edit virtual furniture in by hand.

“Sometimes AI has a mind of its own,” Pouliot said. “You have to be careful about it. It might move windows or distort a room.”

Using virtual tools to edit photos or stage rooms isn’t new in real estate. Houlton-area agent Andy Mooers edits the listing photos he takes by resizing or adding color to them. He takes issue with generative content, saying it often lacks personality and is used as a crutch.

It’s clear to him when an area realtor has used AI to generate listing information because it won’t actually capture the town’s essence and adds contrived details that make the place sound more like Alaska than Houlton, he said.

Others take issue with enhanced photos for being deceptive. While editing tawny grass to look green has long been something real estate agents do, Pouliot does not like when agents virtually enhance a sky or brighten a home. 

“I just feel like it can show a home in a different way than it is, it makes it look a lot nicer than it is,” she said, adding that it can spell disappointment when clients show up to view a home.

The law on this area is emergent. Automation in real estate risks data privacy breaches, inaccuracy, algorithmic discrimination, intellectual property infringements and might impact labor laws, too, according to a Maryland-based law blog. The National Association of Realtors advises members to disclose the use of AI in photos, as Dube and many other agents do.

What’s clear is that AI is not going anywhere, and most Maine agents are embracing its presence in the industry.

“Some people have never used it, and they’re terrified of it,” Mooers said. “It’s not evil, but it could be lazy.”

AI boot camp for realtors.

*(For my older readers whose memory may be a bit fuzzy these days, here’s Chico pretending to be Groucho)

Modern Journalism; and modern medicine

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“Health equity reporter”.

From CTInsider, the Hearst publication that -provides 95% of the Greenwich Time’s content:

Temperatures are at an all-time high in Connecticut. It has health experts worried

Wow, scary — can we have a couple of examples? Sure! let’s get some from a disinterested expert, like “Kirsten Ek, assistant professor of medicine at UConn Health and a steering committee member for the Connecticut Coalition for Climate Action and  Connecticut Health Professionals for Climate Action.:”

As she explains it, It rains, see, and you house has poor drainage, so the water comes in, mold grows, you go down there to clean it up and end up with mold in your lungs, so yeah, that’s Global Warming!

[R]ising temperatures can also lead to [to what?]other unexpected ways. Ek said one patient at UConn recently came into the hospital with mold in his lungs. She said the patient had been trying to clean out his basement after extreme weather events caused by rising global temperatures kept flooding it, helping mold grow, since paying for a cleaning crew was getting too expensive. 

That not enough for you? Okay, try this: you go swimming, ‘cause it’s summertime, but the water’s warm, see, ‘cause it’s summertime, like I told you, and these like, bugs are all like living in it, which, like, they wouldn’t be doing if that water was ice, you know what I mean? But anyway, it’s not ice, its like all yucky stuff, and these bugs what I told you about crawl up your legs and then you die. But at least your state attorney general will sue Exxon for you and your cat will get a nice chunk of cash to make her feel all better.

Another patient, Ek said, came into the hospital with a "rapidly ascending infection going up both legs" and high fevers not too long after cooling off in brackish, shallow water at the beach. She explained that a bacteria that thrives in warm water entered his body through small wounds on his feet caused by diabetes. 

Ek said both patients ultimately survived their infections after lengthy hospital stays, but she anticipates seeing more of these infections in the future. 

Wow, how come we hadn’t heard about this before CT Insider disclosed it? Must be some kind of conspiracy going on, am I right? Am I right? Aha! I knew it!

"For neither of these people did their discharge summaries from the hospital make that connection to extreme weather and to a heating planet at all. It's silent," she said.