DCUM Weblog

Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "Congressman carjacked at gunpoint in Washington DC" and posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics" forum. The Congressman in question, Democrat Henry Cuellar of Texas, was approached by at least three men, of whom two were obviously armed with guns, as he existed his car near the building in which he and several other Members of Congress live. Cuellar handed over his keys and his car was stolen with his phone, iPad, and the sushi he planned to eat for dinner still inside. The car, phone, iPad, and sushi were recovered a couple of hours later. Cuellar was not harmed during the altercation. The District has been undergoing a torrent of armed carjackings in recent months, which along with other crime has left residents frustrated and angry. Historically, concerns about security have been one of the best ways to encourage people to embrace undemocratic methods of governance. Many posters immediately jumped into this thread to advocate for exactly such measures. The fourth poster to respond called for deploying the National Guard and before the first page was complete, another poster demanded a new control board similar to the Financial Control Board created in 1995 to oversee the District's finances. I have a number of issues with these calls for federal control of the District. First, one of the most important functions of public safety — prosecution of adult crime — is already in federal hands in the form of the US Attorney's office. Last year, that office declined to prosecute 67% of the cases of those arrested. This track record does not present a good argument for the performance of unelected federal officials. Second, a control board similar to the previous one would require a act of Congress. I am really not interested in having the likes of James Comer — Chairman of the House committee that oversees DC affairs — increasing their involvement in our local affairs. For those who are unaware, Comer is currently leading the impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden and investigating Biden's son Hunter. He is a MAGA Republican with a proclivity toward conspiracy theories. Moreover, House Republicans, who some posters apparently want to make responsible for governing DC, just removed their own Speaker — a historical first. These folks can't even govern themselves responsibly. This thread contains repeated claims about Council actions that have "handcuffed" the police. Council reforms have included things like prohibiting chokeholds, requiring body-worn cameras, prohibiting vehicular pursuits, and changes to the collective bargaining process. It is hard to believe that any of these changes are resulting in increased carjacking. The additional argument that the officers' feelings have been hurt and, therefore, they aren't doing their job suggests an issue with the officers rather than the Council. The Council may have its faults, but the Mayor, police force, and USAO are also at fault, if not more so, for crime in DC. Statistics clearly show that crime is increasing in DC, something about which none of us can be happy. But, the solution is not to reject our limited Democratic freedoms in favor of unelected authorities with no accountability to the District's residents. Rather, our own elected leaders need to stop passing blame and work together to do their jobs.

I'm going to be a bit briefer today because I am running behind and, frankly, none of the most active threads are particularly interesting to me and I am not very enthusiastic about writing about them. The most active thread, by a significant measure, was titled, "Charlotte Sena - Missing NY 9YO" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. This thread is, as the title says, about nine-year-old Charlotte Sena who went missing while riding her bicycle in a state park in upstate New York. When I first noticed this thread, my immediate reaction — even before seeing a picture of the victim — was that this would be another case of "missing white girl syndrome", which is what it turned out to be. I don't begrudge posters from being interested in the fate of young white girls, but I wouldn't expect a case in upstate New York to be the leading topic on our DC-focused forum. From what I understand, the girl was kidnapped and was safely rescued after police were able to trace fingerprints on a ransom note. I think it is worth considering why and how cases such as this attract so much attention while so many other cases are virtually ignored.

The most active thread over the weekend was titled, "I'm a DC resident, applied for my CCW, and I'm now carrying concealed". Posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics", the original poster says that he is a Democrat who believes in sensible gun control but because of increased crime in Washington, DC he has now obtained a firearm with which to defend himself. Crime and guns are two topics that can always be guaranteed to generate a lot of traffic and this thread combines both So, there is no surprise that it was the most active thread. While rates of violent crime in DC are up and far too high, they are considerably lower than at other times during my nearly 40 years of living in DC. I've been wondering why feelings such as the original poster expresses seem much more common now than in the past. The original poster says that he has "never before experienced so much random, reckless, and violent crime". I wonder if this is a literal statement in that the original poster himself has been a victim of such crimes or that by "experience" the original poster means that he knows about such crimes. As far as I can tell, that point was never clarified in the thread. I think that the most obvious instigator of fear of crime is being a victim of crime or having acquaintances, relatives, or neighbors who are victims. But, almost as important, I suspect, is simply knowing about crime in relatively close vicinity to you, even if you don't have any personal connections to it. I've written before how violent crime in DC today seems a lot more geographically distributed than in the past. So, while murder rates were higher when I first arrived in DC, they were concentrated in a few areas and most DC residents simply ignored the violence. Now, murders occur throughout the city which naturally spreads concern and fear much wider. But, another element I think adds to heightened fear of crime is social media and the rise of social media crime reporters. The DC area has a number of individuals who follow police scanners and other information sources and immediately post about violent crime on social media. Those posts get reposted elsewhere and spread by others, often being the basis of DCUM threads. This spreads knowledge of crime beyond what it was in the past. There is the old expression that "ignorance is bliss" and this is one case in which I think that increased knowledge — in addition to having positive effects — can also have negative outcomes. In this case, it might have the impact of creating fear that is not necessarily supported by reality. Others can obviously argue that increased knowledge of local crime actually leads to a more rational risk analysis. I can see both arguments. The bottom line is whether people "feel" unsafe is more important for their individual actions than whether they actually "are" unsafe. I frequently feel that social media crime reports contribute to making us feel less safe while, in actuality, whether we really do face more of a threat may not have changed. It would be interesting to know whether this poster was drive to purchase a gun by an actual or perceived threat of violent crime.

Several of the most active threads yesterday were ones that I've already discussed. However, that was not the case with the most active thread of the day which easily led engagement for the day. That thread was titled, "Share something that should be general knowledge, but isn't" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. As the title says, the original poster asks for suggestions of things that most people should know but they often don't. Her own example is the fact that "antibiotics only work on bacteria, not on viruses." This type of thread is difficult to summarize because they tend to simply be suggestion after suggestion, often with no real unifying theme. Moroever, this thread managed to grow to 20 pages in just a day. So, I don't have time to read it all. But, among the first suggestions were some good ones such as how tax brackets work and what the First Amendment actually protects. I assumed that in order to reach 20 pages, this thread would have to include some facts that could not realistically be expected to be common knowledge. Skimming the thread, I did come across such examples. For instance, one poster laments that more people are not aware that "acetaminophen" is called "paracetamol" in Europe. I had to Google to discover that "acetaminophen" is what I would normally call "Tylenol". I clearly fall woefully short of that poster's expectations. There were some suggestions in which I sort of feel like the common person is not being given a fair shake. For instance, posters suggested that it is not common knowledge that Europe and Africa consist of more than one country. I would argue that almost everyone is aware of this, but the issue is one of generalizing and lazy speech rather than ignorance. Saying, "I visited Europe last summer" is simply easier than saying "Last summer I visited France, Germany, Poland, and Lithuania." Some of the suggestions were not only not common knowledge, they might not have even have been true. For instance, posters could not agree whether "rounding up" a bill or adding a donation to support charity when checking out at a retail business actually results in more profit for the business. One poster argued that it does and wishes that more people were aware of this while another poster provided a link saying that if these businesses are following the law, this is not true.

Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "Second 2024 Republican Primary Debate Thread" and was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. That this thread was the most active yesterday is a little surprising given that it was only created at 8:30 pm. It managed 11 pages of posts in just a few hours. I didn't watch the debate and don't have it in me to read all of the posts in this thread. If what I see on the first page is any indication, the thread is probably not worth my time, or anybody else's for that matter. The first thing I noticed was a Nikki Haley shill. The poster authored one of the first responses saying that Haley had done a great job. Two posts later, the same poster wrote to say that he was 69 years old and had never seen a candidate as strong as Haley. In the very next post, the poster responded to his own post to say that he is 49 years old and agrees. From this we can conclude that Haley is winning the vote of sock puppets between the ages of 49 and 69. I'll leave the question of whether that is a key demographic to others. It also looks like the moderators got more attention from posters than most of the candidates. The very first post of the thread pointed out that collectively the candidates participating in the debate represent only 36 percent of the polling average. If they were a single person, former President Donald Trump would be beating them in polling by 20 percentage points. As a result, it is not clear what these candidates are hoping to achieve. They may be running for second place or hoping to be chosen as Trump's running mate. But, in some cases, both of those goals seem pretty unobtainable. For instance, I don't think Chris Christie has much chance of either. One issue that seems to get a lot of attention in the thread is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' position regarding Mexico. Apparently he wants to send US armed forces into Mexico, a position about which posters were divided. Some posters were actually supportive of the idea of going to war with our southern neighbor. This highlights a big difference between the dynamics of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Among Democrats, pressure is always placed on candidates to show that they are moderate and willing to compromise with their opponents. In the Republican Party, candidates are incentivized to out extreme each other.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Disappointed with Georgetown" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster, in a fairly lengthy post, describes his visit to Georgetown University with his son who is conducting a number of college visits. The original poster applied to and was accepted by Georgetown 30 years ago. However, presented with a better financial aid package by an unidentified liberal arts college, the original poster chose the other school instead. The original poster says that he felt "a sense of longing" as they approached the Georgetown campus, but was almost immediately let down. He was not impressed with the campus, bothered by the noise of airplanes, and intimidated by the competitiveness of admissions. Similarly, his son ended the tour with little enthusiasm for the university, saying that if he could be accepted by Georgetown, he could probably be accepted by somewhere better as well. The original poster then provided his own opinions about Georgetown which boil down to what the school has to offer not justifying its cost and the competitiveness of its admissions. Among those who responded are posters who had similar reactions to the university. On the other hand are posters who attended the school and who suggest that the original poster doesn't understand the strengths that Georgetown offers. Nearly every aspect of the original poster's opinion of Georgetown is disputed. That includes the airplane noise which several posters denied is a problem. This thread reached 18 pages in less than 24 hours so clearly posters have strong feelings about the school. But, I don't have time to read that many posts so this is as much of a summary as I can provide.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Does this Taylor Swift fling with the NFL football brute seem super fake?" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. Like the countless British Royal Family threads, Taylor Swift threads could easily take over the entertainment forum. Unlike the BRF threads, however, Taylor Swift threads rarely result in waves of inappropriate posts that require constant intervention. Indeed, about the only complaint I ever get about Taylor Swift threads is that there are too many of them. The posters themselves seem to be extremely well-behaved. Plus, they can take a joke. This particular thread is about Swift's apparent relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Posters are convinced that the relationship is contrived and not authentic. The reasoning, as best I can tell, is that Kelce does not fit the image that fans have for a Swift boyfriend. Some posters argue that this is a means for Swift to bolster her popularity with "flyover country". I know very little about Taylor Swift, but even so I am fairly certain that popularity is the least of Swift's concerns. As posters point out, she is able to fill a stadium within in minutes of ticket sales opening. Some posters see Kelce as little more than a dumb jock who is far from suitable for Swift. Others rush to Kelce's defense and point out a number of factors that could make him appealing to Swift. I simply had to marvel at some of the motivations posters ascribed to Swift. My favorite was a poster who argued that by dating Kelce, Swift is hoping to appeal to the "Tens of millions of men" who have fantasy football teams and convince them that it is okay to listen to Taylor Swift records. But, the goal is not to simply to sell music, but to swing general elections. Unbeknownst to me, listening to Taylor Swift apparently makes you vote a certain way. I am a bit surprised about how even Swift's most loyal fans seem to view her as manipulative and conniving, with her every move being planned out for public relations purposes. The most charitable among them are convinced that she is simply gathering material for future songs.

The most active thread since my last post on Friday was titled, "Buyers can't have it both ways" and posted in the "Real Estate" forum. The original poster notes that in her neighborhood houses are "selling like hotcakes". The houses are all the same age and have been slightly updated or staged. However, one house that has had nothing done to it has been sitting on the market. The original poster blames the lack of interest on the fact that it would require updating after purchase. This leads the original poster to accuse buyers of trying to "have it both ways". On one hand they complain that no houses are on the market and on the other refuse to consider houses that have not been updated. Several posters provide an explanation for why houses in need of updating are avoided by new buyers. After having put nearly every cent of their savings into a down payment and closing costs, new buyers don't have cash for a renovation. If they buy an already updated house, the cost of the renovation is rolled into their mortgage. Several posters see the advantages of buying a house in need of updating. For instance, several would rather do a renovation themselves rather than accept a cheap job done only to enhance a sale and there are the obvious financial advantages. But, if they don't have the money, they can't take advantage of those benefits. A second reason cited for avoiding homes in need of updating is the disruption that comes with renovations. With months long waits for appliances or cabinets, many posters say they would just rather avoid the headaches. However, the length of this thread is a result of one of my most hated phenomenons: a fight between generations. In this case, the battle is between millennials and baby boomers. As I have repeatedly written, I don't like generational labels which I find to be of little value. I especially dislike when posters divide each other with these labels and get into arguments. In this case, millennials are accused of being lazy and too incompetent to paint their own houses while boomers are said to be overly attached to their outdated homes for which they are expecting to get far too much money. The lack of utility of generational divisions is quickly displayed by posts from millennials who not only can paint a room, but apparently have built their entire homes from the ground up with little more than a hammer and screwdriver. Similarly, plenty of boomers claim to be quite happy to spend $40k updating their home in order to charge $80k more for it. 

Again, I'll start with a reminder of our new "Contribute" page for those of you who may want to help keep video ads off of the website.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Our garbage gym Lifetime Centreville is ripping out the indoor basketball courts and replacing it with all pickleball" and posted in the "Sports General Discussion" forum. As the title says, the gym at which the original poster's family has a membership has converted its two basketball courts to pickleball courts. In addition, the gym removed a rock climbing wall and cancelled birthday parties and summer camps. Clearly, the gym is moving away from family-oriented programs to appeal to the older pickleball crowd. The original poster asks for suggestions for gyms convenient to her that still have basketball courts. Some time ago there were threads similar to this in which posters complained that pickleball was taking over outdoor courts. Now that process has moved indoors. Pickleball proponents make no apologies. They see the gym as simply making decisions that make financial sense and meeting the needs of a fast-growing sport (though some posters dispute whether pickleball can be legitimately called a "sport"). Their only quibble is about being described as "old". Pickleball supporters are adamant that young people also play the sport and, regardless of their own age, they are not "old" and anyone calling them old is ageist. But, at the same time, they are eager to emphasize that older folks buying individual memberships are a more lucrative market than families paying for discounted family memberships. The pickleball fans ask why the basketball players can't play outside and the basketball fans ask the same of the pickleball players. Basketball supporters ask why the courts can't be shared while pickleball supporters argue that basketball players should assimilate and accept that pickleball is the future. The bottom line is that, at least in the original poster's neck of the woods, basketball players are out of luck. There don't seem to be any viable options for them.

I want start with another reminder of our new "Contribute" page for those of you who may want to help keep video ads off of the website. The response so far has been very gratifying and we are very thankful for those who who have supported us.

Today marks one year since I started writing the "most active threads" series. So, I thought that I would take a moment to revisit the origin of these blog posts. Back in 2007 when we moved to this website platform after two years of using another, my vision of the home page blog was that it would be a place for DCUM users who have an interest in writing to contribute blog posts. A communal blog for DCUM posters, if you will. That worked okay for a while with a small group of writers offering regular articles that kept the content fresh and interesting. But, slowly, those authors moved on to other endeavors. That left me as the primary contributor and I was often pressed for time or, more often, simply out of ideas. As a result, the home page content grew stale. Often it was little more than republished press releases. A year ago, the most recent post on this blog was nearly 10 months old. Moreover, we were at the beginning of what would be a seemingly non-stop decline in advertising revenue. Among the advice I received from advertising partners was to keep content fresh. "Surely, that is not a problem for DCUM", I thought. "Our content changes every few minutes if not more often." But, that was the forum content, not the home page. So, I stretched my imagination to its limits — obviously a very short horizon — and came up with the idea of writing about active topics on the website. If popular threads would provide writing prompts, I could write about anything, I believed. My goal was not to attract readers — indeed I couldn't imagine why anyone would read such posts — but only to appease Google's search engine and algorithm. The result was my first post in this series. Originally I also posted on the weekend but eventually stopped that in order to give myself a break. But, outside of weekends I am pretty sure that I have posted every day except the day of my brother's funeral and the day we drove our younger son to college.