What once passed for institutions of learning continue to prove they no longer are, if they ever were

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Harvard Hires Drag Queen Named ‘LaWhore Vagistan’ as Visiting Gender Studies Professor

Kareem Khubchandani, an associate professor of Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora Studies at Tufts University, has been hired as a visiting professor of gender and sexuality studies at Harvard University.

Aside from teaching the trifecta of liberal bête noires, Professor Khubchandani's side gig is perfectly suited to his new responsibilities — teaching young people everything they need to know about sex but are afraid to ask.

He's a drag queen who goes by the stage name “LaWhore Vagistan.”

I don’t know which is more pathetic: Harvard having a gender studies department in the first place, or its students having to be taught about sex because their will to explore and discover is completely erased by time they graduate high school.

One bright spot: every Harvard student receives an A in every course, so these timid souls will at least have a suitable-for-framing certificate attesting to their knowledge of applying pantyhose and lipstick.

Yet another price cut for this house on Richmond Hill

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79 Richmond Hill Road, first listed back in April for $7.195 million has been marked down today to $5.795 — given its time on the market, even this new price is probably negotiable.

I liked the house in its previous, unrenovated version back in 2004 when it sold after 144 days on the market for $2,555,500; nice house, good siting, my client liked it too but he didn’t buy it — as it turns out, he was a delightful gentleman, but after looking at houses with him for 18 months without success, a friend/fellow agent alerted me that she’d worked him for over a year before they’d parted ways; she agreed with me that he was a great guy and well able to buy anything he wanted, “but I think he may have a screw loose in his head — he looks, he likes, he won’t commit”. Such is the life of a real estate agent, especially one new to the business and who hasn’t learned to spot and weed out the “looky-looks”.

(In my defense, I’ll point out that I wasn’t a complete, nieve moron back then — after all, I’d already spent many years practicing the lawyer scam — but this non-buyer was intelligent, well-read, and fun to be with, so I went on house tours with him long past the time I knew I was wasting my time. In fact, I never had the heart to fire him as a client, so I was relieved when he finally pulled up stakes and moved to California, where no doubt he drove agents in the Golden State crazy — my gain was their loss.)

Reluctant buyers aside, Richmond Hill Road has always been a tough sell, as several spec-builders have learned to their sorrow. Spec-builders, and those who bought from them at the height of the boom twenty year ago.

Oopsy daisy

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welcome to historic cos cob harbor, where you’ll see the work of such prominent artists as childe hassam, john henry twachtman and j.alden weir delightfully displayed in a glorious setting

Vacationers that let AI plan their trip discover many of their destinations don’t actually exist

Imagine paying good money to see a gorgeous geographic marvel in the mountains of Peru, only to get there and find it was an AI hallucination, leaving you stuck in the middle of nowhere at 13,000 feet with no beautiful vista, no oxygen, and no cellphone signal.

According to the BBC, that's exactly what one couple was on their way to do if not for local guide Miguel Angel Gongora Meza, who overheard their enthusiastic plans of hiking into the Andes unaccompanied to see the fabled "Sacred Canyon of Humantay."

‘They [showed] me the screenshot, confidently written and full of vivid adjectives, [but] it was not true. There is no Sacred Canyon of Humantay!' said Gongora Meza. ‘The name is a combination of two places that have no relation to the description. The tourist paid nearly $160 in order to get to a rural road in the environs of Mollepata without a guide or [a destination].

‘This sort of misinformation is perilous in Peru.'

They're not alone.

According to one survey, 30% of travelers use AI tools and AI travel sites to plan their trips.

But it's not just fake places that are a problem when using AI to plan trips and excursions.

Dana Yao and her husband recently used ChatGPT to plan a sunset viewing trip on Mount Misen.

They set off at 15:00 to hike to the mountain's summit in time for sunset, exactly as ChatGPT had instructed them.

‘That's when the problem showed up,' said Yao, a creator who runs a blog about traveling in Japan, ‘[when] we were ready to descend [the mountain via] the ropeway station. ChatGPT said the last ropeway down was at 17:30, but in reality, the ropeway had already closed. So, we were stuck at the mountain top.'

Another couple went to see [a] scenic cable-car attraction in Malaysia, only to find the place was made by AI. Neither the location or the cable cars are real.

The couple tried to sue the journalist in the video for misleading them, only to learn that she too was completely AI generated.

"His motive is still unclear" Update: No tears, please, we’re British

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The BBC decided to play stupid, and speculated that perhaps the terrorist was a “neo-Nazi.” That got debunked rather speedily – and the media has yet to figure out how they will spin this one.

it’s a mystery!

Manchester Synagogue Attack Suspect’s Name Is Literally Jihad

Summary

  • Assailant drives car into pedestrians, stabs security guard near synagogue in Manchester

  • Suspect shot dead by police who rushed to scene after witness report of attack on holiest day of Jewish calendar

  • Police say attacker was a British citizen of Syrian descent

Authorities identified the suspect in a Thursday attack on a Manchester, England, synagogue as Jihad al Shamie, Sky News reported.

Al-Shamie allegedly rammed his car into the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue and began stabbing people, killing two men Thursday morning before being shot dead by police, according to Sky News. Police were reportedly seeking to determine a motive for the attack.

“We are now able to confirm that, although formal identification is yet to take place, we believe the person responsible for today’s attacks is 35-year-old Jihad Al-Shamie. He is a British citizen of Syrian descent,” the Greater Manchester Police said in a statement. “A suspicious device worn by the attacker during the incident has been assessed and was deemed not to be viable.”

The police also stated they had taken three people into custody on charges related to the attack but did not identify them.

“We can confirm that three suspects are currently in custody and have been arrested on suspicion of commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism,” the Greater Manchester Police said in their statement. “They are two men in their 30s and a woman in her 60s.”

…. “We are working to understand the motivation behind the attack as the investigation continues,” the Greater Manchester Police said in their Thursday evening statement.

UPDATE: … Ms Fiona Smith said said: “I don’t give a f*** about the Jewish community right now. I thought about it and I’m sorry about what happened, but the whole story and why we’re here is because of what happened yesterday [with the flotilla].”

Britain Is Lost: Pro-Hamas Protests After Yom Kippur Terror Attack

Great Britain is no longer great. It has fallen into a cowardly shadow of its former self, run by those who live in fear of radical Islam.

We have watched Great Britain disintegrate over the course of decades at this point, and snivel and cowerin the face of immigrant Islamic men who have used and abused British women with little more than a mild squeak of protest from those in power. Today’s events are simply the natural conclusion of what happens when a country no longer believes in anything, not even its own laws – they have fallen.

This morning, on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, a terror attack took place at a synagogue in Manchester. And yes, this was a deliberate and planned attack.

The assailant, who appeared to be wearing a bomb-loaded belt, was shot dead by cops as he tried to get inside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Manchester as scores of people were worshipping inside, police said.

“Based on what we know, counterterrorism policing has declared this is a terrorist incident,” the UK’s head of counter-terrorism policing, Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, said in the wake of the attack.

The savage rampage unfolded just after 9:30 a.m. when witnesses reported seeing the car crash into members of the public outside the synagogue before a man was stabbed and left lying in a pool of blood.

“The second he got out of the car, he started stabbing anyone near him. He went for the security guard and tried to break into the synagogue,” one eyewitness told the Sun.

“The guy had a knife, and he was just stabbing the window trying to get in,” another onlooker said.

Shocking video showed a cop frantically yelling at horrified onlookers to “go away” because the deranged suspect “has a bomb.”

Authorities later confirmed the feared explosives that were strapped to his belt were “not viable.”

The suspect was shot dead minutes later by cops before he could enter the synagogue, police said.

Two victims, who were both Jewish, were confirmed dead. Three others were in serious condition in the hospital following the attack.

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“Your eyes do not deceive you. The pro-Hamas protesters are out in force, both in London and in Manchester, where this terror attack happened. Allegedly, the protests were pre-planned over the Gaza flotilla (starring Greta Thunberg and her merry jihad band of misfits) being intercepted by Israel, and those in attendance didn’t give a shit about the optics.”

Fiona Smith, 42, was one of those in attendance at the demonstration in Westminster where people gathered outside the gates of Downing Street just hours after two Jewish worshippers were killed in a car and knife attack..

She was responding to an earlier call to protest against the detention of Greta Thunberg, with activists urged to “block the tracks” at major railway stations across the UK, including Manchester Piccadilly.

Ms Smith said said: “I don’t give a f*** about the Jewish community right now. I thought about it and I’m sorry about what happened, but the whole story and why we’re here is because of what happened yesterday [with the flotilla].”

Her friend Sibilla Todaro, 39, who lives in London, said: “None of us are against the Jewish community – we’re against Zionism. There’s a lot of Jewish people here with us protesting, which clearly means they condemn what happened today as well as they support this. They’re not mutually exclusive.

Posters shared on social media urged pro-Palestine activists to converge on 19 locations around the UK between 5.30pm and 6pm on Thursday. Most of them were major railway stations in towns and cities.

Officers decided to allow the protest to go ahead at Manchester’s main railway station but a spokesman for the British Transport Police (BTP) said they would intervene if demonstrators tried to enter the station.

Among the locations where protesters were urged to gather included Parliament Square in London, Cardiff Central, Sheffield railway station, Farnborough station in Surrey, Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime Street.

“So much for basic common decency. Great Britain is lost. A once-great nation is now a collapsing black hole of radicalism and identity politics. Perhaps some of this might get addressed in the next election (where Starmer and the Labour Party are almost certain to lose), but at this point, the former British Empire has allowed itself to be slowly conquered over many years. A single election is not going to instantly undo years of undermining and damage. You had a good run, Britain. But at this rate, you won’t be around much longer.”

I await the grand reopening with trepidation, as the Trustees promise exhibits showing “the actual, broader scope of liberty and what it means to Greenwich”

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Coming this spring: a mock slave auction on the balcony?

Bush-Holley House closes until April for renovations

Nothing wrong with performing maintenance on a 1728 house, of course, and good on the Trustees for attending to it. I just worry about what they’re planning when it reopens: shades of the Smithsonian, I fear, with a dash of Monticello thrown in.

Some of the programming the house will put on when it reopens include lecture series in the spring and fall. The spring series focuses on important documents in United States history such as the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Constitution.  

“We will be reviewing our history through documents in town over the course of life since and the impact that the Declaration of Independence and the war had on our community,” Niklaus said. 

“The group will also put on tours and exhibits that “focuses more on the actual broader scope of liberty” and what it means to Greenwich.”

Here’s the new look down at Monticello:

Defund universities? Hell, don't stop there, continue all the way down to pre-K.

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Just to remind you of what we’re dealing with here, this is an actual comment to Turley’s post:

A word of warning who think their own children will be safe at elite private schools: the teachers and administrators at those sanctuaries of learning (sic) come from the same institutions that spawned the current crop of gormless public school pedagogues.

Fire three-quarters of all college professors, eliminate 56.79% of all departments, expel 78.7% of all students, and the country might stand a chance of surviving

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If that’s too drastic, just eliminate all state and federaal funding for universities and tax their endowment funds at the highest tax brackets.

Physical design of universities alienates marginalized students: study

The design aesthetics of American institutions of higher education often make students from lower-socioeconomic and racially minoritized backgrounds feel like outsiders on their own campuses, claimed a group of scholars in a recent article published in the Educational Psychology Review.

“Many institutions of higher education were created by and for wealthy White men, to educate ‘young men of good hope’ for careers in law, medicine, and other high-status professions,” the scholars wrote.

“Today, intentionally or not, American institutions of higher education continue to serve the interests of wealthy White people and they have done little to dismantle socioeconomic and racial inequity.”

Together, they argued, these feelings of being an outsider are downstream of the “exclusionary function” of public spaces like parks and libraries on college campuses.

American universities are designed as “defensible spaces” that “undermine inclusion and perpetuate inequities” through territoriality, surveillance, and symbolism, the scholars noted.

The scholars responsible for the August 2025 article include Diane-Jo Bart-Plange from the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College, Kyshia Henderson from the University of Chicago Department of Psychology, and Kelly Hoffman and Sophie Trawalter, both of whom have listed affiliations with the University of Virginia, Charlottesville and JP Morgan Chase.

….

Campus surveillance programs, according to the article’s authors, disproportionately impact students from lower-socioeconomic status and racially minoritized backgrounds. 

Symbols such as university logos and mascots, the authors argued, serve to “reaffirm wealthy and White students’ belonging,” while Antebellum architecture, “markings of exclusive groups,” Confederate monuments, and statues of figures such as Thomas Jefferson, can “signal to racially minoritized and lower-SES students that they do not belong.”

Other exclusionary symbols noted by the authors include the Greek organizations, Star Trek posters and soda can pyramids in computer science buildings, ornate plaques near gates,

“ and anything celebrating individual self-expression or independent thinking.”

….

…. For statistical reasons, the authors noted, they were unable to assess the behavior of racially minoritized students in a similar manner. Therefore, it remains unknown where racially minoritized students feel comfortable kissing and walking barefoot.

Suggested ways of doing this included more land acknowledgments, the abolition of campus police forces, erecting multicultural centers, and renaming or removing buildings and statues honoring the Confederacy. 

Someone’s tax dollars are paying these geniuses’ salaries, and that’s a pity.