Meh — give him an Israeli pager and set him loose; won’t take long

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Judge axes Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confession in long-delayed 9/11 terror case — in major blow to feds

That’s not too surprising, given our interrogation techniques used in the early days after 9/11. Have I mentioned that I still use my license plate frame that proclaims “I’d Rather Be Waterboarding”? Years ago, my son John pointed out that “Dad, probably just 10% of the people who read that will get it”. “But those are precisely the people I want to annoy”, I told him. He paused, then said, admiringly, “that’s so efficient”.

As the years have passed, I suspect that fewer and fewer people will remember and be annoyed by my plate, but perhaps a discussion of Mr. Mohammed’s treatment back then will revive memories of the term, and I can be flashed with single fingers again.

Diversity is our strength

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“Whip me, beat me, o my master — throw me to the floor and ravish me at and for your pleasure”.

What, another Murphy post? Well, he keeps providing new material.

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Scumbag Dem. Who Left His Wife and Kids for Younger Woman Calls Trump Voters 'Spiritually Adrift'

Sen. Chris Murphy wants you to know America is spiritually adrift — which is rich coming from a guy who split from his wife of 17 years, parked the kids primarily with mom, and was soon out cuddling a progressive media strategist while the divorce paperwork was still a future problem. 

Ahem.

In a CT Mirror sit-down this week, Murphy recast Trump’s win as proof the country is lonely, empty, and missing its moral compass, as if voters didn’t reject his party on purpose and as if the nation’s soul is the one that needed a lecture.

This is your city on socialism

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Los Angeles Socialist Nithya Raman Brags About Getting Crosswalk Done, There's Just ONE Big Problem

We're not sure which is more embarrassing here, that it took almost a year to put in a crosswalk OR that she thinks painting a bunch of yellow lines across a cracked street is something to brag about.

What we do know is socialism sucks and Nithya Raman's posts prove it more and more, every day.

Horse dung or kale, who cares? Compost is compost.

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Once, asked by a girlfriend what his father was like, John paused and, I’m told, replied “he thinks quinoa is a government conspiracy”. Boy, did he nail it.

But right up there, or down there, with quinoa is kale: horrible stuff, and PJMedia’s Stephen Green captures the fraud that it is in a short essay. I’ve excerpted it here, but treat yourself and read the whole thing; far, far tastier than a wadded clump of green poison.

The Horrible Truth About the World's Worst Vegetable

If you've never tried kale, imagine large crinkly leaves of lettuce that somehow retain a texture that is at once rubbery yet unpleasantly crunchy, no matter how long you boil it, broil it, fry it, sauté it, or whatever the hell else my lovely bride has done to make Hell Lettuce almost-but-never-quite palatable. 

Torn into manageable smaller-than-bite-size pieces in an Italian soup loaded up with so much parm that you have to wonder about any remaining health benefits was the one and only way Melissa reliably got me to ingest it. 

Today, however, is Liberation Day. Today I learned that everything you thought you knew about kale is a lie.

…. Thanks to professional carnivore Sama Hoole, I just learned that kale only "became a superfood because a publicist in New York invented a trade association that did not exist."

"Before all that," Hoole continued, "the biggest kale buyer in America was Pizza Hut. Not for the menu. They bought it by the ton, fourteen thousand pounds of it in 2012, and laid it round the salad bar to hide the ice."

Kale, in short, was the stuff they put food on.

"Nobody was meant to eat it. It was the doily."

I did a little digging, and Hoole might have actually undersold the mostly imaginary American Kale Association's origins and effort. On the nutrition side, Hoole is on shakier ground — but maybe not by much, if you're getting older and what you need is more protein and iron.

"You could eat a kilo of the stuff, which would take you most of an afternoon and do something permanent to your jaw, and still not catch up with two eggs [worth of digestible protein]. The iron is the non-haem sort your gut mostly turns away at the door."

Devoid of the iron and protein Melissa thought we were getting and with all the chewability of a truck tire, kale is just celery for masochists. As soon as this column goes live, I'll forward it to my lovely bride with the note: "Never again."

So it's OK. You don't have to pretend to like kale any longer.

None of us do.

Reminder: our power grid, our automobiles, air traffic control, satellites, and so on, are all vulnerable to cyberattacks

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Medical device maker Boston Scientific says a cyberattack is causing a ‘global disruption’ to its operations. “Boston Scientific said the cyberattack has affected its ability to ship and process orders, but has not said whether the disruption extends to customers with medical devices and implants.”

A cyberattack on U.S. medical device maker Boston Scientific is causing an ongoing “global disruption” to its operations, according to a federal regulatory filing on Wednesday. This is the latest health tech giant to face a cyberattack in recent weeks.

The Massachusetts-based company, which makes medically implanted devices like pacemakers and defibrillators, confirmed in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that on Tuesday it began experiencing “disruptions and limitations of access” to its IT systems and business applications critical for its operations.

Boston Scientific said the cyberattack has affected its ability to ship and process orders, but has not said whether the disruption extends to customers with medical devices and implants.

When asked by TechCrunch, Boston Scientific spokesperson Chanel Hastings shared the company’s public statement but would not comment on whether patients are affected by the cyberattack, say what steps patients should take, or answer questions about the nature of the incident.

Boston Scientific treats around 48 million patients a year, according to its website.

The company’s public statement said that its investigation is ongoing and that a timeline for its restoring its systems is not yet known.

It’s not clear what caused the cyberattack at Boston Scientific. …. [It] is the latest health technology company to have been hacked this year, including medical device makers Abbott Laboratories and Medtronic. Earlier this year, Iranian-backed hackers were blamed for a cyberattack on U.S. medical device maker Stryker, which allowed the hackers to remotely wipe tens of thousands of employee devices across its Windows network by abusing a centralized device management portal provided by Microsoft.

According to public internet records, Boston Scientific relies largely on Microsoft and Amazon Web Services for its corporate infrastructure.

Selling like hotcakes: 40+ already under contract

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Even as the legal battle between developer and the Greenwich P&Z drags on in court, construction has started at 275 Mason Street Chilston Court, estimated completion date 2028, and another unit, 275 No. 41, priced at $7.995 million, is reported under contract.*

As a condition for its approval of this project, the P&Z has required that 24 of the 74 units be set aside for “moderate income” buyers, and those units must be essentially the same size, with the same finishes, access to all building amenities, and share a common entrance with their multi-million dollar neighbors. I think I understand the dynamics here: the P&Z is pretty much powerless to block an 8-30g project, brought to us by Hartford Democrats, and has essentially said to the developer, “okay, if you’re going to cram a seven-story, over-sized monstrosity on us, you’ll have to jack up the price of the full-priced units to subsidize the cheap ones”.

That’s not a problem for the developer, because the people who comprise the intended market for these things don’t concern themselves with petty cash, and if they have to pay $10 million instead of, say, $7 million, well, O death, where is thy sting? Proof of this price indifference is shown by the fact that the project is already 40% sold, even as the jackhammers and bulldozers are still digging holes in the ground.

I’ll lose no sleep over the plight of these buyers, and wish them well; I do wonder at the fairness, however, of essentially passing out free luxury condominiums to 24 lucky people while others in their same income range must content themselves with much smaller, much more spartan quarters in Old Greenwich Commons or Windy Knolls and pay far more for the privilege. How does that make sense?

He’s building $10 million [and $19.99] condos in Greenwich. Even he didn’t expect this response.

GREENWICH — The record price for a condominium sale in Greenwich stands at $6.7 million, paid for a residence at the Modern on Field Point in central Greenwich.

That record appears likely to be broken — perhaps many times over — as a new luxury condominium development takes shape on lower Mason Street.

Prospective buyers have been putting down deposits for homes at Chilston Court, where developer Joshua Caspi said many units are priced at $10 million or more.

“We have more than a dozen units in that range, $10 [million] plus,” said Caspi, who is developing 78 units now under construction at 275 and 290 Mason St.

The response has exceeded his expectations.

“I didn’t expect the strong response," Caspi said at the project's sales office. "We're getting close to selling almost half the project," he said, with 40 percent of the units under contract.

*

275 Mason Street Unit 41