March

The most active thread yesterday was one that was started back on March 17 titled, "Indictment Monday?". Posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the original poster optimistically cited reports that former President Donald Trump might be indicted the following Monday. Of course, that didn't happen but for the next few days discussion in this thread would seesaw as the chances of a Trump indictment seemed to rise and fall. The thread started off very slow yesterday with a self-described Democrat expressing hope that Trump was not indicted in this instance, another poster sarcastically predicting an indictment "any week now", and a third poster claiming to have heard an indictment might come next week. But, at 5:30 pm, the thread went crazy, adding eleven pages of posts since that time. Most of the posts expressed jubilation about the news but a few posters cautioned that the indictment would strengthen Trump. Debates broke out over whether the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had acted in a politically partisan manner or was simply following the rule of law. Some posters viewed the indictment in nearly apocalyptic terms with one predicting that it would lead to a "right wing dictatorship" when Republicans inevitably retaliated, things escalated, and civil war resulted. While this case did not involve the January 6 insurrection, many posters referred to that event as justification for holding Trump legally accountable. Many posters seemed to experience considerable schadenfreude that Trump supporters who once yelled "Lock her up!" were now disparing that Trump was facing legal consequences. Some of the Republican posters questioned whether Trump could get a fair trial in heavily-Democratic New York. Others warned that red states would now start indicting Democratic politicians. If grand juries in conservative states are able to find evidence of wrong-doing by Democrats, more power to them I say.

Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "Are top private colleges mainly for poor people now?" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. I have repeatedly pointed out that thread after thread in the college forum is based on the premise that the college application process is unfair — it's always biased against whomever is authoring the post. A corollary to this argument is that financial aid is also unfair. The conventional wisdom routinely stated in the forum is that the very wealthy can afford to pay full price for colleges and the very poor receive generous financial aid, but those in the middle neither get aid nor can afford the costs. The original poster takes this a step further and asserts that only the poor are able to attend top private schools. She presents some data without providing a source and the data is later disputed by another poster, who also failed to provide a source. But, I believe the flaws in the original poster's argument are clear even without disputing her numbers. Based on her data, the cutoff for need-based financial aid is $200,000 annual income. Families in this income range are generally not seen as poor, especially outside expensive urban areas. She also ignores the fact that many middle class families amass significant college savings and, therefore, don't require as much financial aid. Also, merit aid may, in many cases, also help close financial gaps. Basically, the original poster proves something that I have noticed to be true for a long time. The best way to create a lengthy thread is not by posting a brilliant post which cannot be disputed in the slightest, but rather to compose a post full of obvious holes and shortcomings. Posters will eagerly respond to the second type in order to address its flaws. In this case, the original poster has provoked 17 pages of posts mostly disagreeing with one or more of her contentions.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Dating a conservative" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster states that she is a woman who "is pretty progressive and liberal and works in gender equity" but has been dating a conservative man and wonders if there would be any long term issues with this relationship. The phrase "gender equity" in this post was a big red flag to me. Therefore I made a quick search for additional posts by the original poster in the thread and didn't find any. That was a second red flag. So I looked at the original poster's other threads. I am reasonably certain that the original poster is actually a man. Moreover, I think the poster has a habit of posting from the point of view of women with whom he is in a relationship. He seems to be struggling with dating and this may be an effort to better understand a woman's point of view. I haven't read much of this 14 page thread, but what I have read probably was disappointing to him if he was hoping for reassurance that a liberal woman might be happy dating a conservative man. I won't bother deleting or locking this thread at this point because, while it was probably started as a bit of a troll thread, the original poster has checked out. Whatever discussion is going on now is entirely between other posters.

Today's post will be a bit briefer than normal because I have another commitment to which I must attend. The two most active threads yesterday were both covered in yesterday's blog post. So, I will skip them today and move on to the next most active thread which was titled, "Youngkin is a book banner" and posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics" forum. The original poster of the thread embedded a tweet describing Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin's appearance on a CNN town hall. According to the tweet, Youngkin said that he would have signed HB 1448 had the VA Senate not blocked the bill. Also according to the tweet, that bill would have allowed Youngkin to ban books that he deemed offensive. Hence, the original poster's description of Youngkin as a book banner. I Googled "HB 1448" myself to see what the bill is all about. It is only one short paragraph in length and calls for the creation model policies dealing with the selection and removal of books from public school libraries. That is a few steps removed from giving Youngkin the power to ban books, so the tweet clearly overstates things. This highlights an ongoing trend in the local politics forum in which a left-leaning poster constantly posts anti-Youngkin posts, often engaging in extreme exaggeration if not outright misinformation. The poster's style mimics much of that to which we have become accustomed to seeing from right-wingers. Personally, I think Youngkin's actions lend themselves to significant justifiable criticism, leaving no need for hyperbole or misstatements and I wish this poster would rein himself in a bit.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "What’s a parenting choice you just cannot understand" and posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. I am really baffled by the constant threads about things people don't like, don't understand, are tired of, etc. These threads are just excuses to criticize others who then get offended and start arguments. To her credit, the original poster acknowledges that some of her own choices might end up on other's lists. But, in my opinon, she still fails when it comes to empathy. Her example of a parenting choice she doesn't understand is not prioritizing getting a baby or young child enough sleep. Where are the parents who don't want their child to sleep and actually prefer to have a tired baby screaming all the time? They don't exist. For new parents, a child's time asleep is a refuge, it is a welcomed break. Nobody wants less of it. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like this is all an effort by the original poster to pat herself on the back for what was apparently a successful effort at sleep training her own child. If this is the case, the original poster's gripe is not that parents don't prioritize sleep, but that they don't address it exactly as she did. In other words, her real complaint is that some parents don't sleep train. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I am pretty sure that if the original poster took time to ask others to explain their choices, they wouldn't be so difficult to understand. In a follow-up post, the original poster stresses that she does understand that some parents don't have choices. For instance, some parents might need to wake a baby at 5 am because of day care or their job and the original poster emphasizes that she is not criticizing this. I'm willing to bet that similar explanations would also satisfy the original poster in 99.9% of the cases. I'm a fan of the adage of not criticizing others if you have not spent time walking in their shoes. As such, I find threads such as this very non-productive. But, I am apparently in a distinct minority since the thread has already reached 36 pages. Since I stopped reading after the third post, I have no idea what the other 35 pages say.

Because I didn't write blog posts over the weekend, today I'll look at the most popular threads over the past three days. The most active thread during that time was titled, "SVB failure" and posted in the "Money and Finances" forum. As anyone with even marginal awareness of current events can guess, this thread is about the failure of the Silicon Valley Bank. The story, as I understand it, is that this bank is popular with venture capitalists who invest in tech startup businesses. These investors require the companies in which they invest to keep their funds in SVB. Apparently during the closed economy of the pandemic, SVB accumulated money that could not otherwise be invested. SVB used that money to purchase bonds and securities which, due to the low interest rates at the time, had low yields. With the rise in interest rates, SVB faced the predicament of either selling the bonds at a loss or sitting on them until maturity, creating a liquidity crisis. According to a Twitter thread by on of the venture capitalist involved, a chat group involving 250 some investors discussed this problem, leading to several of the investors advising their companies to withdrawal their funds from SVB. This provoked a bank run which resulted in the FDIC taking over the bank. Lead-ing venture capitalists took to Twitter to demand that the government protect their deposits. and many companies who lost access to their funds worried about how to pay their bills. I haven't read the entire 27-page thread, but from what I have read, the discussion mirrors much of the general discourse on this topic. Some posters see the sky as falling and stress the dangers of SVB's collapse. Others take a "let it fail" approach and express fatigue with government bailouts. Eventually, discussion turned toward possible solutions and then analysis of the government's statement that it will safeguard deposits through measures that will not require taxpayer funds. Not every poster is necessarily onboard with this solution, but there seems to be a general understanding that the government would be forced to do something.

The most active thread yesterday, by some measure, was titled, "Why do donut hole families" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. This thread, which garnered and amazing 21 pages of responses in just one day, discusses the families whose finances fall in the "donut hole" between those wealthy enough to easily afford college and those poor enough to qualify for need-based financial assistance. The original poster claims that there are plenty of in-state options, lower-tier private colleges, and even some out of state public universities that are affordable if families are not fixated on out-of-reach Ivy League schools. I don't have time to read much of this thread but from what I can tell, many posters are resentful to have found themselves in the donut hole. Some posters explain that having grown up in less financially well off families, they were forced to take out loans for college. They then got good jobs and worked hard to climb the corporate ladder which puts them outside the bracket that is eligible for need-based aid. However, the burden of paying off their own loans meant they could not save for their own children's college. Now they are too wealthy for aid and too poor to afford top colleges. Other posters argue that the term "donut hole" is misleading because it understates the realities of being poor. Being poor does not mean that college affordability issues suddenly disappear and that poor families struggle just as much, and in most cases even more, than so-called donut hole families. A few posters have little sympathy for families in this situation, describing this as a failure to save and misplaced priorities. Quite a few posters do circle back to the original poster's point that many affordable options do exist if people would choose to pursue them. As one posters writes, "Why isn’t in-state good enough for people? Stop going after prestige and prestigious institutions."

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "The Tucker Carlson videos are dropping" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. As you can guess from the subject line, this thread was about video footage of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. Speaker of the House Keven McCarthy gave Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to the footage and Carlson has been presenting select portions of it to his audience. The discussion in this thread is divided between those who believe that it completely exonerates the January 6 insurrectionists and those who argue that it is deceptively edited and that the facts of January 6 are well-known and indisputable. The thread is 21 pages long so I can't summarize much of it, but it looks like many of the posts consist simply of embedded tweets that support the poster's viewpoint. Many of the pro-Trump posters argue that the videos show that the public has been mislead by Democrats and believe that those convicted of January 6 offenses deserve new trials. Posters with opposing viewpoints insist that the lawyers of those convicted had access to the video and could have used it as part of the defense had they so chosen. The January 6 Congressional Committee was also the target of considerable criticism, particularly from posters who seemed to confuse its role with that of the Justice Department and the Courts. It is notable that Carlson's presentation has not only been criticized by Democrats, but also by leading Republicans including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. As is so often the case these days, discussions like this one do little to inform or educate, but instead are simply venues for amplifying previously held viewpoints.

The most active thread yesterday is one that I won't name because I immediately identified the poster as a troll and deleted the thread. The next most active thread was one that I've already covered. So that brings me to the third most active which was titled, "This is really bothering me- always being ‘on’ as the parent" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that her husband is an involved father who generally pulls his weight around the house. However, he travels for work frequently, recently has had to work late for several nights, and some times behaves in an inconsiderate manner in which he takes the original poster for granted. The couple has toddler and preschool-aged kids and the original poster is, as the title says, bothered that she always is the default parent who is always expected to be responsible for the children. She asks how others have handled such situations. I've only read the first page of this nine page thread, but I suspect responses didn't change much. There was fairly unanimous agreement in the responses that I did read. Posters described this scenario as very common and, in fact, most of those responding were themselves experiencing it or had experienced it. Most of the posters also agreed that the original poster's husband likely had no clue about what the original poster was experiencing because he had never acted as the primary parent. As such, posters advised talking to him about her the situation, standing up for herself more and not just willing accepting that she would automatically be the parent who had to be "on", or taking a lengthy trip and leaving her husband alone so that he would experience what she goes through. A male poster weighed in to second the idea of a trip, saying that his wife had done that and it had multiple benefits. However another male poster responded that he was actually the default parent in his relationship, showing that this phenomenon is not strictly gender-based.