Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
195 Shore Road has sold for $8.5 million. Non-MLS this time around, but two agents and two brokerage offices, Daphne Lamsvelt-Pol and Jennifer Leahy Sotheby’s and Compass, respectively, negotiated the deal, so it was an arms-length transaction; that’s always wise, in my opinion, for both buyer and seller.
Despite a jury (I’d say “inexplicably” but this is New York) acquitting the defendant of murder, the presiding judge still managed to put hin away for life on the manslaughter conviction.
Queens Supreme Court Justice Michael Aloise said the hefty prison term was an easy decision — sentencing the cop-killer to 115 years to life in prison.
“Mr. Rivera, it took me five minutes to calculate these numbers,” he said. “It will take you a lifetime to calculate the grief you have caused these people.
“And to the family,” the judge added, “I know the defendant killed your loved one, and nothing can take away that loss, not even the knowledge that the defendant will die in a prison cell, which I promise you he will.”
,….Rivera shot and killed Diller during a scuffle with police in Far Rockaway on March 25, 2024, with the fatal encounter caught on chilling bodycam.
Dozens of NYPD officers packed the courtroom during the thug’s trial, providing support for the fallen cop’s widow, who broke down on April 1 when the jury acquitted Rivera of the top murder charge.
Rivera was instead convicted of manslaughter, of the attempted murder of NYPD Sgt. Sasha Rosen and of illegal weapons charges.
The career criminal faced a sentence of 90 years to life behind bars, but Aloise tacked on another 25 years, as allowed under state law for “persistent predicate felons,” due to his lengthy rap sheet.
Rivera, who was dressed in all black, opted not to address the court during the sentencing hearing — while his lawyer griped that he did not get a fair trial and harped on the murder charge acquittal.
“Under the law, he is not a murderer because he never intended to murder Jonathan Diller,” defense attorney Jamall Johnson told the judge. “Mr. Rivera did not receive a fair trial. The jury did not have all of the evidence.”
Johnson said he would appeal the verdict — but the judge had his own reprimand for the lawyer.
“There was one argument you made to this jury that really hit home,” Aloise said, referring to Johnson’s claims at trial that his client had just made a bad decision.
“I wasn’t mad at you for doing it. I was saddened at the reality of how low we’ve sunk, morally, as a society,” Aloise told the lawyer Monday.
“When you equate a persistent felon walking these streets with a loaded weapon with one bad decision, it’s sad,” he said. “And it’s just the reality of where we are now, and that mindset, I think that is what empowers a guy like this.”
who delivered powerful testimony during Rivera’s trial, also slammed him for leaving her young son without a father.
“There is a silence in our house where there should be his voice. The person who lost the most is our son Ryan,” she said.
…. “Your honor, I have watched the defendant in court over the last two years. I have never seen any remorse, only concern for himself,” she said.
“He didn’t just take our loved one, he took our whole world,” the grieving woman continued. “My son deserves justice.”
Reader CT Tempest writes:
BSD often provides AI's take on a subject so here's one more from Claude AI:
>>>>
Query:
What about the argument that "levelized cost" of solar energy isn't comparable to fossil fuel cost because of intermitancy and the requirement of fossil fuel plants to provide backup?Claude:
Where the critics have a point
This is a real issue. The concept that captures it better is sometimes called "LCOS" (levelized cost of storage) or "system LCOE" or "firm power cost" — basically, what does it cost to deliver dispatchable, on-demand electricity from solar? Once you add 4–8 hours of battery storage, the cost goes up meaningfully. It's still trending down fast, but it's not the $0.03 headline number anymore.Where the critics overstate it
That said, this argument gets stretched too far in a few ways. First, battery costs have dropped roughly 90% since 2010, and solar-plus-storage is already winning contracts against new gas plants in places like the U.S. Southwest and Australia. The "backup" cost is real but shrinking fast. Second, fossil fuel LCOE has its own hidden costs that don't show up in the number — carbon externalities, air pollution health costs, fuel price volatility, and geopolitical risk. If you're going to add system costs to solar, intellectual honesty requires adding externalities to fossil fuels too.The honest bottom line
The pure LCOE comparison oversells solar's advantage — that's fair. But even when you account for integration and storage costs, solar-plus-batteries is increasingly competitive with new fossil fuel generation in most markets, and the cost trajectory is clearly in solar's favor. The "solar is cheap but you need gas backup" argument was very strong 10 years ago. It's getting weaker every year as storage costs plummet, but it hasn't fully gone away yet — especially for the last 10-20% of grid reliability (the "long duration storage" problem for multi-day cloudy stretches or seasonal variation).So both sides are partially right, basically. The headline LCOE numbers are a bit misleading, but the broader trend of solar driving costs down is real even after you adjust for intermittency.
>>>>I'm still betting on solar. Stay tuned.
And here’s what GROK has to say on the subject:
Q: In the debate over the true cost of solar and wind) emergy, I often hear that batteries can supply the necessary energy storage for times when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine (nightime isn't good for solar generation, for instance). How practical is battery storeage for a large city, for instance, and how much would it cost. How many hours of electricity provide for that city using present day technology? Hurs, days, weeks? What would it cost?
https://x.com/i/grok/share/d4927204e5f24da1aa7dd85d2560c7e4
Battery storage using current (2025) lithium-ion technology is practical for short durations like 4–8 hours of a large city’s electricity needs, but becomes extremely expensive and logistically challenging for days, and effectively impractical for weeks.
ember-energy.org
For illustration, consider New York City (a typical large U.S. city example, with Con Edison serving NYC and parts of Westchester). NYC’s annual electricity consumption is roughly 50–55 TWh (about 50,000–55,700 GWh).
nyc.gov
This equates to:
Daily energy use: ~137–153 GWh per day.
Average power demand: ~5.7–6.4 GW.
Peak power demand: ~12–13 GW (summer records around 12.6–13.3 GW).
coned.com
Battery storage must be sized for both power (GW, to meet peak demand instantly) and energy (GWh, to sustain output over time). Present-day grid-scale batteries are overwhelmingly lithium-ion (mostly LFP chemistry for cost and safety). Typical utility-scale systems today are designed for 4–8 hours of duration at full power.
eia.gov
How Many Hours/Days/Weeks of Storage?Storage capacity needed (in GWh) ≈ city’s daily energy use × number of days (or hours/24). This assumes the batteries supply the city’s full demand during low/no renewable generation (e.g., calm nights or multi-day lulls). Real-world systems add ~10–15% buffer for ~85–90% round-trip efficiency.
4–8 hours (common today): ~23–51 GWh (roughly 1/6 to 1/3 of one day’s use). This covers daily solar “duck curve” shifting or short wind lulls. Feasible and increasingly deployed.
24 hours (1 full day): ~137–153 GWh. This would fully bridge one full day/night cycle without renewables.
2–3 days: ~274–459 GWh.
1 week (7 days): ~960–1,070 GWh.
2+ weeks: 2,000+ GWh (multiple terawatt-hours).
Current largest individual battery projects are in the 10–12 GWh range (with some planned larger), and total U.S. utility-scale battery capacity is only ~137 GWh as of end-2025.
seia.org
One day of NYC storage would require roughly the entire current U.S. fleet; a week would require 7–8× that.What Would It Cost?2025 all-in installed costs for utility-scale lithium-ion battery energy storage systems (BESS, including batteries, inverters, installation, and grid connection) have fallen sharply to roughly $120–150/kWh of energy capacity in many global markets (pack prices alone ~$108/kWh). U.S. figures can be higher depending on project specifics, but the trend is strongly downward.
energy-storage.news +1
Approximate capital costs for NYC-scale storage (using ~$150/kWh mid-range; does not include land, ongoing O&M, degradation, or replacement every 10–15 years/3,000–5,000 cycles):
4 hours: ~$3.5–7.5 billion.
24 hours (1 day): ~$20–23 billion.
1 week: ~$144–160 billion.
These are upfront capital costs only. Batteries also incur replacement costs over time (they degrade), and you still need excess renewable generation (or other charging sources) to fill them. Levelized cost of storage is dropping (recent estimates ~$65/MWh in some analyses), but long-duration use makes it far more expensive per kWh delivered.
energy-storage.news
Practicality with Present-Day Technology
Hours (4–8 h): Highly practical and already happening. Batteries excel at short-term arbitrage, frequency regulation, and smoothing daily solar/wind variability. Costs have plummeted ~80–90% in the last decade, and deployments are surging (U.S. added a record ~58 GWh in 2025 alone).
seia.org
Days: Marginally practical but very expensive. A few large projects approach multi-day scale in aggregate, but no single city has built anything close. Material demands (lithium, etc.), land use, and fire-safety/permitting become real constraints at this scale.
Weeks: Not practical today with lithium-ion. Costs balloon into the hundreds of billions, the physical footprint would be enormous (even at high energy density), supply-chain limits would be strained, and batteries are not optimized for infrequent, long-duration discharge (they’re better for daily cycling). For seasonal or multi-week lulls common in wind/solar-heavy grids, alternatives like pumped hydro, compressed air, or hydrogen are more suitable (though also limited geographically or by efficiency).
In the broader solar/wind cost debate: batteries handle intra-day and short-term intermittency well and are getting cheaper fast, but they are not a complete, low-cost solution for prolonged low-generation periods. High renewable penetration typically requires a mix of overbuilding renewables + transmission, short-duration batteries, longer-duration storage, and/or firm backup (e.g., gas with CCS, nuclear, or demand response). Pure battery reliance for multi-day/week coverage would dramatically raise the “true cost” of a renewables-heavy grid for a large city. Costs continue to fall, and emerging chemistries (e.g., sodium-ion, flow batteries) may help for longer durations, but as of 2025–2026, lithium-ion remains dominant for grid-scale use under ~12 hours.
As his fifth labor, Hercules cleaned the incredibly filthy Augean stables—which held3,000 cattle and hadn't been cleaned in 30 years—in a single day. He accomplished this seemingly impossible task not by shovel, but by diverting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus to flow through the stables, washing away the waste.
With an annual budget of about $9.9 billion (fiscal year 2023), the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities. In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics, and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing.
(In other words, they control a very large portion of the loot passed from the government to various NGOs and universities.)
Robert Zimmerman:
“In a move that should surprise no one at this point in Trump’s second term, yesterday President Trump informed all 24 members of the National Science Board, the committee that runs the National Science Foundation (NSF), that they have been fired.”
“On behalf of President Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately,” reads a 24 April email from Mary Sprowls of the presidential personnel office to each NSB member. “Thank you for your service.”
The article at the link, from the journal Science, takes the typical one-sided propaganda press anti-Trump view, interviewing only those who oppose Trump and spending most of its time screaming “He’s destroying science!”
A wider view would ask this: Is there a reason that the president of the United States, elected by the American people, might have reasons to question the management of this board? At the moment the federal government is running a deficit that is back-breaking, and this board publicly criticized Trump’s effort to rein in spending when he proposed a 55% cut in NSF’s budget. If they are not going to cooperate with their boss, then maybe they should leave, and not let the door hit them as they head out.
The Science article also included this howler: “the mass firing is the latest indication that the White House is ignoring the board’s authority and dictating policies at NSF.” Um, who elected them? No one. In fact, they were appointed by the president himself, and he is the only one with the constitutional authority to decide these matters.
Expect court suits of course, with some lower level unelected judge somewhere attempting to take over running the executive branch by demanding these board members remain in power, defying the elected president of the U.S.
From the comments:
Richard M
There are multiple ways in which a scientific organization can be corrupted. Becoming the plaything of an autocrat is one of them, and we have, alas, plenty of examples of that in the history of the Second and Third World nations over the last century.
But it turns out that the First World has found its own way of corrupting its elite science institutions, too. Consider this example, uncovered by Christopher Rufo last year: “The National Science Foundation is spending $1.5 million on “Black Feminist Epistemologies: Building a Sisterhood in Computing.” That went to Florida State University and it’s still active. It also seems to be impossible to determine how any of that grant is being spent. And if you think this grant was the only such thing of this sort that the NSF has been handing out, well……
Is the NSF yet another elite credentialed institution that’s been hollowed out, ideologically colonized and worn like a skinsuit? Well, I think it might be telling to look not just at the kinds of things it funds, but who runs it. The majority of the 24 NSF members are administrators or emeritus faculty. (This includes the vice provost of the university I graduated from and worked for, by the way — he is cited making an angry denunciation of this move in the article.) How many are currently doing hard, meaningful science research right now? It was not always so.
I have my doubts that the Trump Administration can remake the NSF into an institution capable of fulfilling its original charter once again. What I doubt even more is that the leadership just sacked had any chance of doing so.
Mark Tapscott:
Hardly a day goes by without luminaries of the left like Vermont's Independent Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders pumping half-truths, undocumented claims, and outright lies about the evils of fossil fuels versus the saintly characteristics of renewables like solar and wind power.
Here's a typical example of the routine sort of cant Sanders deals on energy issues: "At a time when solar and wind are the cheapest forms of new energy in the world, Trump wants to open a BILLION acres of US water to oil drilling. Why? To line the pockets of his fossil fuel billionaire friends. The rest of the world moves forward, we get left behind."
Thanks to the sharp-eyed researchers working for James Agresti's Just Facts (based in Conroe, Texas), exposing the fallacies and fables in Sanders' energy claims is no more difficult than a mouse click and a few minutes of illuminating reading. Apparently it's not easy enough for editors and reporters at major mainstream media outlets to check out claims like those peddled by Sanders before publishing them as reliable.
Consider these 14 points from a Just Facts evaluation of the Sanders tweet quoted above:
The assertion that solar and wind are “cheap” is based on a metric called “levelized costs,” which fails to account for the fact that wind and solar don’t produce energy when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. Thus, they must be backed up by expensive energy storage systems or technologies that generate electricity on demand, like natural gas.
Due to the unreliability of solar and wind, the U.S. Energy Information Administration warns that its levelized costs for solar and wind “are not directly comparable to those for other technologies,” a vital fact that proponents of wind and solar often ignore.
After 40+ years of the U.S. government aggressively subsidizing solar and wind while discouraging the use of fossil fuels through taxes and regulations, solar and wind provided only 6.6% of all U.S. energy in 2024.
In addition to the federal government, some states have subsidized solar and wind so heavily that the New York Times reported in 2024 that “thousands” of “renewable energy” companies “are reeling” from a reduction in only one California solar subsidy, causing a “sharp decline” in rooftop solar installations.
Per a 2024 report by the International Energy Agency, “Although renewable energy technologies are becoming more cost-competitive,” “roughly 87% of global renewable utility-scale capacity growth in 2023–2028 is expected to be stimulated by policy schemes” in which “government policy is the primary driver for the investment decision.”
Despite claims from politicians like Gavin Newsom that solar is the “cheapest form of energy,” his state of California — which gets more of its electricity from solar than any other state — has the highest electricity prices in the continental U.S., or more than twice the national average. This elevated rate doesn’t even account for all of the government spending on solar that is borne by taxpayers instead of consumers.
In Germany, which is a “global leader in sustainable energy production,” the average price of household electricity is 3.5 times that of the United States.
A diverse array of scholarly publications document that affordable energy is “essential for public health and economic prosperity,” while high energy prices drive up hunger, drive down wages, stoke unemployment, and harm people in a wide variety of other ways.
While admitting that “past economic growth and poverty reduction have been associated with high GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions,” a 2024 World Bank report calls for “trade-offs” because “ending poverty for the 3 billion people who struggle on less than $6.85 a day would come at a high cost to the environment.”
Contrary to claims that green energy subsidies create “good paying” jobs, they actually enrich selected investors while neglecting workers. As explained in scholarly publications like the encyclopedia Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, the financial benefits of renewable energy subsidies “largely accrue to the owners of capital” because “energy development” is “capital-intensive,” and growth in “the green jobs sector does not necessarily imply net job creation” since it reduces the jobs “that would have been produced from fossil fuels,” and thus, “net job creation may be zero (or negative).”
Western Europe’s abandonment of fossil fuel production and nuclear energy has left it heavily dependent on Russia for energy.
A shell company in Bermuda with deep ties to Vladimir Putin and Russian oil companies has donated tens of millions of dollars to the Sierra Club and other environmental groups that oppose fracking.
A 2021 Bloomberg report documents that Communist China dominates global supply chains for key components of the solar industry, including 78% of the world’s supply of solar cells.
A 2025 report by the International Energy Agency states that the “battery supply chain” for electric vehicles has become “increasingly geographically concentrated” in China, which was “responsible for 80% of global battery cell production in 2024.” The report also states that “China has also established a near monopoly on battery components production.”
More at the link. Meanwhile, here’s another post on the same subject:
The signals in Europe are crystal clear. Energy prices are structurally higher than in the United States; the electricity grid is grinding to a halt; industry is leaving Europe; and dependence on imports is growing. These are not isolated incidents. This is how the system works. And yet, one message is echoing from Brussels and The Hague: let’s accelerate the process.
In recent years, Europe has deliberately chosen to:
• Close nuclear power plants
• Phase out domestic gas production
• Replace reliable energy sources with weather-dependent alternatives
This is not a technical development, but a political choice. The choice is based on the assumption that there is a climate crisis requiring rapid and drastic measures. But that assumption is by no means certain — and is rarely seriously questioned. Our World Climate Declaration (WCD) — now signed by 2,062 experts — states explicitly that there is no climate crisis that justifies this policy. And so the need for a hasty energy transition disappears.
Within Europe, the evidence is clear. France opted for nuclear energy, with the following consequences: approximately 70% of electricity is generated by nuclear power plants; there is a stable, predictable system, and there are low CO2 emissions per kWh.
Germany, on the other hand, chose the Energiewende, in which nuclear power plants have been closed, hundreds of billions have been invested in wind and solar, energy prices are higher than in France, and, ironically, CO2 emissions are higher than in France.
Even within the logic of climate policy, the conclusion is inconvenient: Germany is performing worse than France, at much higher costs. This is not a subtle difference. It’s a fundamental failure of policy.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/04/24/washington-dc-now-has-the-highest-unemployment-rate-in-the-country-at-6-9-percent/
Yesterday, I read a New York Times column describing how the professional political employees and their families have been impacted by President Trump and the downsizing of the federal workforce.
Amid the tear-filled typeset meant to generate sympathy this part jumped out at me: “The District of Columbia currently has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, at 6.7 percent, in large part because of major reductions in the federal work force, including U.S.A.I.D., and cuts to government grants and contracts.”
Almost all of the $35 billion spent by USAID in 2024 went to Washington-based contractors, not to people in need overseas. Eliminating USAID has now created an unemployment problem for all of those DC-based federal contractors, NGOs and USAID employees. The NYT article gives examples of the terrible state of affairs.
This is one:
Ms. Cowan (pictured above) was making $23,000/month working for a nonprofit funded by USAID. $23,000 a month!
[…] Sheryl Cowan, 57, was making $272,000 a year as a senior vice president at a U.S.A.I.D.-funded nonprofit when she was let go at the end of March 2025. Last month she had an online interview for a $19-an-hour job managing a Penzeys Spices store near her home in Falls Church, Va.Her take-home pay would not cover her mortgage but said she was eager to do something other than spending down her savings and has applied for 60 jobs. She has since been called back for an in-person interview. “Aside from the salary, it would be fun,” she said. “I could do it for a little while.” (more)
I also saw one of the best responses to this situation outlined by a user on the Twitter:
[…] “The framing wants you to feel outrage at the cruelty of the cuts.
But the actual data point buried in the story is devastating to the narrative it’s trying to build.
272k for a senior VP at a USAID-funded nonprofit is not a real salary. It’s a subsidy. That job existed inside a closed loop: taxpayer money flows to USAID, USAID funds NGOs, NGOs hire professionals at inflated rates, those professionals build lives around compensation that was never stress-tested against the open market.
The entire salary was a function of proximity to the spigot. Not output. Not value creation. Not demand for her specific skills.
The $19/hour number isn’t the system being cruel. It’s the system being honest for the first time. The market is saying: without the government funding stream, your skills at 57 command 39k. That’s the real price. The 272k was the fiction.
And here’s what nobody in that thread will say: there are tens of thousands of people in the DC metro area alone sitting in exactly this position right now. Government-adjacent professionals whose entire compensation structure was built on a funding model that is being unwound. Not by AI, not by automation, but by simple political reallocation. And the market is going to reprice every single one of them.
The deeper pattern is that an entire class of professional jobs in America were never real market jobs. They were artifacts of institutional spending that created its own employment ecosystem. Government, corporate middle management, DEI departments, compliance layers, consulting firms that exist to service other consulting firms. The whole structure was a series of jobs that existed because the money existed, not because the work needed doing at that price.
That structure is now being compressed from multiple directions simultaneously. AI from one side. Spending cuts from another. Corporate efficiency mandates from a third.
And the professional class that built its identity, its mortgages, its kids’ tuitions, its retirement plans around those salaries is about to discover what the open market actually thinks they’re worth.
That’s the repricing.
Programs sold as compassion function as taxpayer‑funded lifelines for the very political machine that hollowed the state out in the first place.
Plenty of examples in the linked-to article, but this concluding episode is typical:
…. Meanwhile, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton and his CAL DOGE watchdog group say California’s Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing program is a taxpayer disaster.
The program, funded by about one billion dollars from cap‑and‑trade proceeds, gas taxes, and utility bill surcharges, was supposed to put solar panels on low‑income apartment buildings to cut tenants’ power bills.
According to their review, only 72 million dollars has been paid for actual solar projects on 269 buildings, while roughly 928 million dollars was routed to administration, outreach, and Democrat‑aligned nonprofits involved in voter registration and activism.
Funded by gas taxes, utility bills “cap and trade auctions proceeds,”the program has completed only 269 projects worth $72 million since 2015, raising questions about the missing funds, the California Post reported.
Notably, allocated within the bill was “Ongoing costs of $558,000 from the Public Utilities Reimbursement Account (special fund) for CPUC to oversee the contract to administer the program and to annually assess the success of the program,” according to Assembly Floor Analysis.
So the California Public Utilities Commission was supposed to be overseeing the program. Instead, according to CAL DOGE, the program has received roughly $1 billion, “and according to SOMAH’s own reporting, just $72 million as of 2024 had gone to actual solar installations.
That leaves $928 million unaccounted for, and no accountability to ensure those dollars aren’t flowing into a progressive voter mobilization machine. The evidence suggests they are.”
Clearly, this is another instance of a government program allowing NGOs to siphon off more of our money to fund themselves and their Democratic Party supporters.
California didn’t go from gold and oil to bureaucrats and bad ideas by accident. The common thread is programs sold as compassion that really function as taxpayer‑funded lifelines for the very political machine that hollowed the state out in the first place.
Bonus material, from another post:
14 Pond Place, $2.650 million, 9 days.
New listing at 524 Lake Avenue this morning, $12.1 million guide price. Built in 1988, it once sold for $5.7 million in 1999, but these owners paid just $5.837 million for it in 2007, two years after it had been placed on the market at $7.750. It’s sure to fare better this time.
(Not as impressive in daylight)
A friend sent this along. It’s very funny, and revealing. “Are you an ICE agent?” “I don’t have any ice.”
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