of a kind

While there are some fully off-grid dwellers, ranging from high-end desert oases and North Coast communes to the famous counterculture settlement of Imperial County’s “Slab City,” an off-grid suburb is one of a kind.

The “one of a kind” estate in Cornelius, N.C., has just sped onto the market for $3.4 million, 25 years after it last changed hands.

The Babushnikovs were in the grip of a kind of faulty logic that psychologists nowadays call “confirmation bias,” but that the rest of us might simply think of as being Babushkinov, through and through: when new facts threatened to upend their opinions, they simply chose to believe what they wished was true, and ignored all evidence to the contrary.

“I learned a thing or two about bluffing, believe you me. Edward Ashton’s got a full house, perhaps—we’ll call it a house full of Ashtons! But you’ve got four of a kind.”

“Exotic creatures are my specialty, governess. I’ve traveled the globe in search of the rare, the fascinating, the one of a kind. Or, in this case, three of a kind.”