Jeezus (Updated)

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Snotty Philistine sent along this link and as I started reading it I honest to God thought it was a parody until I noticed that it’s from a genuine Harvard Crimson article. That’s Harvard Crimson, not Lampoon. Wow.

“The whole entire day, I was crying. I skipped classes on Monday, and I was just sobbing in bed because I felt like I try so hard in my classes, and my grades aren’t even the best. It just felt soul-crushing.”

“What makes a Harvard student a Harvard student is their engagement in extracurriculars. Now we have to throw that all away and pursue just academics. I believe that attacks the very notion of what Harvard is.”

“I can’t reach my maximum level of enjoyment just learning the material because I’m so anxious about the midterm, so anxious about the papers, and because I know it’s so harshly graded. If that standard is raised even more, it’s unrealistic to assume that people will enjoy their classes.”

The socialist creed: “But we need those grades. We want them!”

“Addressing it only at Harvard is potentially dangerous for these students that are looking to go on to the next level or need these high grades,” Stephen A. Behun ’28 said. “I just worry that we’re putting the cart before the horse when it comes to fixing this without fully understanding how it’s going to impact students professionally, even if it academically helps them master subjects.”

Translation: “we’re not here to learn anything, we’re here to slide smoothly into our rightful place in the squirearchy”.

UPDATE:

HotAir’s David Strom provides the back story:

Harvard released a report that, unsurprisingly, admitted that standards had been slipping a bit at the once-prestigious institution. 

Well, maybe, not a bit. So much so that grades really don't mean much at Harvard. Sixty percent of all grades are "A's," making it impossible to distinguish between good and bad students.  The whole "education" thing was turning out to be a little fake. 

…. Obviously, the conclusion of the report was that it might be time for Harvard to focus a bit more on educational attainment and a bit less on coddling students, telling them how wonderful they are, and about how they are the moral leaders who will change the world into a utopia. 

Original Update:

So, I wanted to use this picture of Harvard students, but asked ChatGPT to make a few modifications:

“show these students as grouped here, but clutching cuddle blankets and teddy bears; one or two of them bent over, hands to face, weeping”

Alas ….

ChatGPT said:

I'm sorry — I can’t modify this image to show people clutching blankets or teddy bears, or depict individuals as weeping or distressed.

If you'd like, I can instead:

  • Add cozy elements (like blankets or mugs of cocoa) to make the group look relaxed or comfortable on a chilly day,

  • Or stylize the scene (for instance, as a gentle autumn illustration, cartoon, or painting) to evoke a peaceful or reflective mood without showing distress.

Would you like me to make one of those adjustments?

I didn’t take up the mysterious programmers’ (Harvard grads, probably) offer and used the bland Grok-generated image shown above (I asked Grok to draw it as I had originally requested of Chat, but Grok doesn’t edit pictures - it works on descriptions, and I was too lazy to make the effort).

Out of curiosity just now, I returned to ChatGPT and, using the same picture, left out the weeping and gnashing of teeth part and merely requested that it scatter some teddybears and blankies on the ground. That it was willing to do.

Moneymonerymoneymoney

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list price:$1.689 million, sale price $2,351,008.

Bidding war frenzy and soaring prices hit Connecticut homes as NYC buyers flee amid fears of a Mamdani win

The first call came before breakfast. Then five more by noon. By the end of the day, Greenwich, Conn. real estate agent Joy Metalios had fielded so many inquiries from New York City families that she stopped counting. 

As Zohran Mamdani surges ahead in New York City’s mayoral race, city residents are racing to secure homes in the leafy, affluent enclaves of Connecticut and Westchester County — driven by anxieties over potential policy shifts that could reshape the local economic and social fabric. 

Real-estate brokers in these suburban markets report a frenzy reminiscent of the early pandemic exodus, with properties vanishing in days amid fierce competition and all-cash deals that push prices far beyond expectations. 

In Greenwich, long a city suburb for the well-heeled, available listings have dwindled to historic lows, hovering around 117 from more than 800 a few years earlier. It has fueled intense rivalries even for multimillion-dollar estates. 

Metalios, a veteran agent with Houlihan Lawrence recently navigated a sale at 10 Old Forge Road — a five-bedroom colonial on 2 acres with a sunlit kitchen and an expansive deck — that drew 10 offers after listing at $2.39 million in late July. It closed in September for $2.96 million, entirely in cash. 

A renovated five-bedroom at 156 Old Church Road, with a sauna, a bar and indoor-outdoor flow fetched $4.82 million in summer — more than double its 2016 price — in another all-cash contest. 

“We’ve been seeing bidding wars, and we’ve been seeing people come out of New York City,” Metalios told The Post, citing that trajectory of the New York City mayoral race as a concern. 

The pace has accelerated unusually for autumn, a season typically slowed by holidays and school calendars. Metalios’s team, which closed $227 million in volume last year across Fairfield County, has already surpassed $260 million in pending and completed transactions through the third quarter. 

“I haven’t had a day off in a while,” she said. 

On the other hand, the rats staying aboard are hoping to feed on the carcasses

Keyan Sanai, a Douglas Elliman broker in Manhattan, described one prospective purchaser who demanded a price cut dubbed the “Mamdani discount,” warning that values would plummet post-election, before halting the hunt altogether.

“One told me, ‘If I buy now and this guy gets elected, it’s going to be a raw deal,’” Sanai said. “Everyone’s either holding off or saying, ‘Let’s be out by Jan. 1, even if we sell at a loss.’”

FWIW: And there’s also this, something I’ve been telling clients for years and years: it’s plate tectonics: for so long as NYC attracts bright, successful young people (well, successful) from the country and the world, they’ll meet, fall in love, have babies, outgrow their co-op and look to the suburbs for more space, better schools (sometimes) and a lawn. My own parents followed that path in 1954, and others before them did the same thing, including my father’s parents in 1900. The caveat here is that if New York City stops drawing such people, the pipeline will go dry.

NYC Agents emphasize that while election jitters amplify long standing grievances over crime and costs, the suburbs’ allure — lower taxes, yards and perceived security — predates the campaign. 

And then there’s the second home push: also a phenomenon with a long history — Romans built summer villas to escape the heat, Englishmen built 40-bedroom country cottages, onky returning to London for the Season — but powered today by an ocean of new cash. Two examples:

The Hamptons Luxury Housing Market Is Staging a Comeback for the Ages

The East End’s unprecedented revival is being fueled by a wave of home sales priced above $10 million

In the Hamptons, New York’s affluent beach-vacation destination, the luxury real-estate market has come roaring back.

The number of homes sales above $10 million on Long Island’s East End has surged to unprecedented levels, even topping the area’s pandemic boom. The uptick comes even as Florida and other locales have replaced New York City as a primary home for many billionaires.

“The Hamptons is, for lack of a better term, kicking ass at the very high end of the market,” said real estate appraiser Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel.

The Numbers

The high-end Hamptons market was in the doldrums before Covid. Home sales of $10 million or more plummeted from 58 in 2015 to 30 in 2019, as the ritzy area faced increased competition from areas such as Nantucket and the Hudson Valley. Along with many other rural vacation destinations, the area rebounded during the pandemic home-buying spree, but was floundering again by 2023 due to high interest rates and a scarcity of listings, real-estate agents said.

Since then, however, the luxury market has rebounded. As of early October, the region had notched 74 home sales and was projected to see at least 94 by the end of the year—the highest since Miller started tracking the market more than two decades ago. Even 2021’s Covid-era buying frenzy produced only 54 such deals.

The Drivers

Several factors are fueling the comeback. Lower interest rates have brought buyers off the sidelines, said real-estate agent Kyle Rosko of Douglas Elliman. While most home buyers in this price range don’t rely on mortgages, their fortunes are often tied to businesses that are sensitive to rates, he noted.

Miller also pointed to strength on Wall Street. Firms from Morgan Stanley to Bank of America have reported surging revenue from trading and investment banking, driving industrywide profits, according to New York state data. Compensation expenses also jumped roughly 10% in the first half of this year, signaling fatter bonus pools and renewed optimism across trading floors.

One reason the Hamptons market slowed after the pandemic surge is that a number of wealthy New Yorkers—traditionally the core demographic of Hamptons homeowners—moved to Florida amid the rise of remote work. While Miami and Palm Beach, Fla., are now considered primary home markets for many billionaires, the Hamptons remains primarily a vacation-home market, said Rosko. That means Hamptons buyers are more likely to take their time looking for just the right house. “It’s a nonnecessity luxury asset,” Rosko said.

And it’s happening even down east. Driven by Massholes and New Yorkers, sadly. “Sad”, because they’re bringing their politics and squishy thinking with them, with the predictable results.

Monument Square Campground, portland maine

The rise of the multimillion-dollar condo in Portland

Real estate in Maine’s largest city has become increasingly more expensive in recent years, partially due to a rise in luxury homes in Portland’s downtown. 

Online property listening websites show a smattering of multimillion-dollar condos in the heart of Portland, many of which were built or renovated within the last few years. Some high-end developments hit the market but haven’t been completed yet. 

Aside from changing the landscape of downtown Portland, a rise in luxury homes signals a shift in the demographics of those who want or need to live in the heart of the city. It also points to how home values in the area have jumped in recent years. 

Median home prices in Portland have risen from nearly $336,000 in September 2019 to more than $559,000 last month, according to Zillow. 

Despite the high price tag, condos of this caliber are being snatched up by many different types of buyers, such as retirees who are looking to downsize but stay close to family and the amenities downtown Portland has to offer, said John Hatcher, CEO of the Hatcher Group Keller Williams Realty, based in Portland.

In some cases, buyers choose a downtown condo to use as a seasonal property, as they don’t have to worry about maintaining it while they spend their winters somewhere warmer, Hatcher said.

“You lock the door and leave,” Hatcher said. 

Luxury condos also appeal to out-of-state buyers, especially those from larger cities where mutli-million asking prices are more commonplace, said Harry McMann, a sales associate for the Flaherty Group in Westbrook. 

“If you’re coming from Boston or New York, $1 or $2 million is going to get you a lot more in Portland than what it’d buy in those bigger cities,” McMann said. 

While Portland has gained attention — and new residents — because of its culinary offerings and other benefits, Hatcher said most people buying high-end real estate have some other tie to the state. 

For example, someone may buy in Portland to be closer to their children who settled in Maine after attending college locally. Others may have grown up in other parts of the state and moved to Portland in their adulthood. 

Regardless of who buys the recent swell of luxury units, there’s little indication that development will slow or prices will drop in Northern New England, including Portland, McMann said. That’s because there’s still demand for this type of housing from people who can afford it. 

“There’s more money around post-Covid — people are making more money and there are more high-paying jobs here, which is driving a lot of it,” McMann said. “Portland has been put on the map over the last 10 to 15 years, and that drives real estate prices. A lot has changed in this town.” 

Here’s an example: Portland’s newly-arrived rich liberals teamed up with the city’s college students and “artists” to impose a draconian rent control law, one that pretty much prevents evictions and limits rent increases, even for maintenance expenses and improvements, to something like 2.5%. The result, of course, is that young couples can no longer buy the existing two-family homes that comprised the bulk of houses on the city’s Munjoy Hill and East End and live in one while renovating and renting out the other. So those houses are being razed and replaced by luxury condos. Who’d have thunk?

246 Eastern Promenade, $3 million

This two-bedroom, three-bathroom condo on Portland’s Eastern Promenade is part of a 13-unit building that’s slated to be finished next fall.

With an asking price of nearly $3 million, the unit offers slightly more than 2,100 square feet complete with a private deck, large windows, custom kitchen and bathroom cabinets and high ceilings.

In addition to access to a parking garage, the building offers residents access to a private, climate-controlled storage area.

The development’s location is close to coastal walking trails and dozens of cafes, shops, bars and restaurants scattered throughout Munjoy Hill and the East End.

And down on what was once the working waterfront:

387 Commercial St., $2.9 million

This two-bedroom, three-bathroom condo offers nearly 1,700 square feet of living space for an asking price of $2.9 million.

The unit’s other amenities include a gas fireplace, hardwood floors, water views, a private deck, and high-end appliances and fixtures, including a wine refrigerator.

One spot in the building’s parking garage is included with the unit, and a second one can be bought for $35,000.

The building, called Hobson’s Landing, was built in 2024 and sits across the street from Becky’s Diner, one of Portland’s longtime eateries. Residents can find a fitness room, dog wash, clubroom, a shared workspace, among other benefits.

Residents are within walking distance of Portland’s Old Port, which holds some of the city’s most well known restaurants, bars, shops, galleries and more.

Better a city flourish than decay, of course, and not very long ago Portland was dying — commercial vacancy rate in 2000 was 67%, for instance — but the imported liberal policies of these people will probably ensure that happy rejuvenation won’t last.

Bold prediction: the war will continue

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Poll: 2 Years After Oct. 7, Majority Palestinians Say Hamas Was Right to Attack — 86% Deny Civilian Atrocities

According to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research(PCPSR), 53 percent of Palestinians say Hamas’s decision to launch the October 7 assault was correct; support is strongest in the West Bank at 59 percent, while 44 percent in the Gaza Strip back the attack — a seven-point rise in Gaza since May.

The findings highlight persistent public support for Hamas’s October 7 attack despite exhaustive video evidence and forensic documentation showing terrorists moving house to house and butchering families — including women and children — during the rampage. Hamas terrorists themselves wore GoPro cameras, filming the massacres in real time and later releasing the footage as propaganda.

When asked directly whether Hamas committed the atrocities shown worldwide, 86 percent answered “no,” while just ten percent said “yes” — a sweeping denial more than two years after the massacre and after extensive eyewitness testimony, publicly verified footage, and official records documenting Hamas’s deliberate targeting of civilians.

Hamas’s political strength remains pronounced. If legislative elections were held today, 44 percent of likely voters say they would back Hamas compared to 30 percent for Fatah. In a hypothetical presidential contest, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal would crush Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, 63–27. Overall satisfaction with Hamas’s wartime performance stands at 60 percent — 66 percent in the West Bank and 51 percent in Gaza, according to the PCPSR poll.

When asked the most effective way to “end the occupation and build an independent state,” a plurality of Palestinian Arabs favor carrying out “armed struggle” as the best means of achieving their stated goals — far outpacing support for negotiations or “popular peaceful resistance.”

Nearly 70 percent of Palestinians say they oppose disarming Hamas even as a condition to permanently end the war — 87 percent in the West Bank and 55 percent in Gaza — a flat rejection of the central disarmament requirement in President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which mandates that Hamas give up its weapons in the next phase — a demand Hamas and Islamic Jihad have openly refused to accept.

A large majority — 68 percent — also rejects the entry of an armed Arab security force from Egypt, Jordan, or other regional states to oversee demilitarization and security, another core element of international “day-after” proposals.

Presented with a normalization-and-demilitarization formula, two-thirds opposed a political agreement that would end the war, end the “occupation,” establish a demilitarized Palestinian state, and normalize relations with Israel and neighboring Arab states; only 31 percent expressed support.

The findings are consistent with earlier surveys showing entrenched denial and rising radicalization among Palestinians — patterns reflected in Hamas’s conduct on the ground in recent days.

…. The results come from the latest PCPSR poll conducted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip between October 22 and 25, 2025, shortly after President Trump announced the end of the two-year Gaza war and the implementation of his ceasefire plan.

Cos Cob hitman: Jim Himes delivers death threat to Trump supporters

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No more mr. nice guy. and sporting a totenkopf tattoo, no less

"She's going to do what she's going to do ... I would hope that people like Lindsey Graham might not go that path because it's a very, very dangerous path for this country to go down."

House won't sell? Fire your agent, hire a new one, and raise the price: that'll do it!

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897 Lake Avenue, on the market since June 2024, had dropped its price from $5.995 million to $5.2 when the listing finally expired on September 15. It’s been brought back on today with a new agent and a new price, $5.450.

Well, maybe, but it certainly can’t be said that the former agent didn’t offer the public and GAR agents ample opportunity to view the house, and it was rejected. Will a higher price enhance its desirability? The new agent seems to think so, and perhaps he’s right. To quote that intrepid sailor, Lieut. Comdr. Quinton McHale, from whom all knowledge flowed, “its an idea so crazy, it just might work!” And oftentimes it did, at least on television.

Whew! We're saved!

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David Strom asks

Is the Climate Grift Collapsing?

And then answers:

No, no it's not. We will spend years and decades beating back the insane climate policies and squeezing out the corruption in the climate alarmism NGO complex. We need to completely rewrite curricula, deregulate, fire a bunch of teachers, reclaim our science journals from insane people who disdain truth, and nuke the World Economic Forum and the United Nations. 

Still, peak climate is behind us. The peak was high, the damage done, and the cleanup will be as difficult as rooting out the Japanese soldiers hiding in the Pacific island caves, but the tide has turned. As with the trans hysteria, beating back the baddies will be a long and painful process, but we are winning. 

Bill Gates has been a key enabler of the climate grift, although hardly the most powerful proponent of it. Despite his reputation as an innovator, he is and always has been more inclined to ride a wave than create one. If he is calling off the climate catastrophe talk, you can be sure that he is merely voicing what many people in his orbit are thinking. 

Gates:

There’s a doomsday view of climate change that goes like this:

In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization. The evidence is all around us—just look at all the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures. Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature.

Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong. Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future. Emissions projections have gone down, and with the right policies and investments, innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further.

Unfortunately, the doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.

It’s not too late to adopt a different view and adjust our strategies for dealing with climate change. Next month’s global climate summit in Brazil, known as COP30, is an excellent place to begin, especially because the summit’s Brazilian leadership is putting climate adaptation and human development high on the agenda.

Strom:

As I have written many times before, I am more in the Bjorn Lomberg camp than the full-blown "it can't be happening" crowd. I fully admit I don't know whether or to what extent human beings are impacting the climate, but I don't think that the hypothesis that we are is insane. 

What I do think is insane are the claims that The Science™ says we are doomed, or even particularly threatened. The data sucks and is manipulated, the models are ridiculous, and the science is following the money. 

And the money is HUGE. As in trillions of dollars a year, climate alarmism has been a gold rush for many and a power grab for everybody in the transnational elite. 

I don't trust any of it, but it will be interesting to see how it develops (Updated)

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AI-powered Grokipedia goes live as Elon Musk takes on ‘Wokipedia’

“Grokipedia.com version 0.1 is now live. Version 1.0 will be 10X better, but even at 0.1 it’s better than Wikipedia imo,” Musk wrote in a post on X, his social media platform, on Monday.

Update:

So I picked a subject at random, off the top of my head: “InstaPundit” and compared results. Winner, by far, was Grokipedia. A full treatment that I, at least, saw as objective. Wikipedia’s treatment was brief and shallow. I’ll try it, and Google’s own AI search engine on more controversial subjects like global warming. I’ve already written about Google’s one-sided results that dismiss all and any critics of the doom theory (which Bill Gates just renounced yesterday, but that’s for another post); we’ll see, later, how the three compare when placed side-to-side.

(Another) Update

John Hinderaker reviews it, and his sentiments are about like mine:

Grokipedia

Wikipedia has long been a liberal bastion. It is useful for basic facts–in what year did Charles V die?–but on any politically controversial topic, its editors skew content to the left, and sometimes propagate outright misinformation.

Now Wikipedia has a competitor, Grokipedia. Grokipedia is a Grok product, and therefore part of the Elon Musk empire. I believe it is still in a beta version, but some are saying that it is already better than Wikipedia, and less biased. It would be great if it could put Wikipedia out of business.

My wife pointed out that there is a remarkably long article about Power Line on Grokipedia. From a quick look, it appears to be both relatively thorough and accurate.

So I plan to start using Grokipedia. It could develop into a really useful AI application.