Friday's Most Active Posts

The thread with both the most replies and the most views yesterday was titled, "Jackson-Reed Lockdown today" and posted in the "DC Public and Public Charter Schools" forum. The thread discussed Jackson-Reed High School, which was previously named Woodrow Wilson High School, being locked down due to gunshots fired on the edge of the school's campus. This hit pretty close to home for me because I have a son who is a student at the school. Ironically, the students had just had an active shooter drill the previous day. As my wife commented, it is sad that American children routinely undergo such training and even sadder when they are forced to put the training to use. The thread started with just simple requests for more information as initial facts were sketchy. Once it was clear that the incident didn't involve students and that the shooters had fled the area, the discussion turned towards the response of area schools. While near by Alice Deal Middle School and Georgetown Day School had both locked down, Janney Elementary School which is only a few blocks away, did not. In contrast, Lafayette Elementary School which is some distance from the incident apparently locked down. Posters were distressed in both cases, but particularly in the case of Janney where the time and place of the students is being analyzed step by step and the school's communications are being dissected word by word.

Second in number of views and third in number of replies was a thread titled, "Help with Ivy fascinated kid" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster describes her daughter as a high-performing student at a top priviate school who has decided to apply exclusively to Ivy League colleges. The thread is very obviously a troll thread and while a few responders identified it as such, a great many more posters happily took the bait. This thread is clearly mocking the college forum's infatuation with top colleges, especially Ivy League schools. Clues that the poster is trolling lie in how she describes her child — no mention of a long list of extracurricular activities or possible hooks. But, the most apparent give away was the original poster's slagging off of two forum favorites as safety or target schools. As expected, that riled up a few posters. Congratulations to the poster on page 5 who wrote, "5 pages for an obvious troll", but next time please use the "report" button. That could have prevented another page of posts and possibly this entry in today's post.

A thread in the "Political Discussion" forum titled, "Jack Smith — Special Counsel for Jan 6 and Mar-a-Lago inquiries" was second in number of replies and fourth in number of views yesterday. This thread is about the special counsel being appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee criminal investigations of former President Donald Trump. I haven't read this thread beyond a few posts here and there. From that vantage point, it appears the thread is mostly a debate about whether Trump has committed any crimes with a lot of related discussion of the January 6 investigations. Trump defenders are convinced the investigations are purely politically motivated and are eager for Republicans to launch investigations into Democrats. Democrats seem to believe that many crimes are quite obvious and, in many cases, are frustrated by what they see as a move that will delay a much-wanted indictment of the former President. There is quite a bit of back and forth debate about the documents seized from Trump's Mar-a-Lago home by the FBI. Some posters gleefully relay reports saying that Trump didn't plan to sell the documents while others suggest that truth of that is not yet clear. Both sides can save their efforts because simply possessing the documents is a crime. The motive is not really important.

Third in number of replies and fifth in number of views was a thread titled, "Daydreaming of leaving the rat race/moving to Europe" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster describes a desire to leave behind the "the competitiveness and one-upmanship" encountered in American and move to a mid-sized city in Europe where, according to the original poster, a comfortable life is much more affordable. Several of those who responded commiserated with the original poster, but others push back. Many of the arguments against the original poster's dream discuss the difficulties of living as a foreigner. The original poster is not dissuaded because she says she feels like an outsider where she lives now (Florida). Many posters dispute the original poster's view of Europe, suggesting she is naive and uninformed. After the original poster revealed that her dream country is Germany, many posters weighed in with first hand experiences living in Germany and suggested that life there might not live up the original poster's expectations. Even Germans joined the conversation to offer such opinions, though I felt that even their efforts to downplay the country made it sound pretty good.