May

Memorial Day is a traditionally slow day on DCUM but, perhaps due to yesterday's bad weather in the DC area, traffic was a bit higher than might have been expected. How did DCUMers spend the holiday? Mostly talking about the Max (nee HBO Max, nee HBO) series "Succession". That thread received over three times the number of posts as the next most active thread. But, since I've already discussed that thread, I'll start with the runner up. That thread was titled, "Most beautiful place on earth you've seen, if you're a regular person?" and posted in the "Travel Discussion" forum. The original poster asks what is the most beautiful thing others have seen while traveling as a "normal person", by which she means those not being sent as part of a job and not "professional" adventurers. I always struggle to summarize threads of this sort that consist mostly of one or more suggestions per post. Without going through and making a tally of the locations, I'm not sure that I can draw many conclusions. But, nominations ranged from Burke Lake to Phuket, Thailand and the Fjords of Norway. I did notice that one of my personal favorites, Lake Louise, was repeatedly mentioned. Bodies of water in general were popular. Some posters appear to have had trouble narrowing it down and provided fairly long lists. One wonders if there wasn't a bit of bragging going on. One poster proposed Nelson Mandala’s prison cell on Robben Island. I can imagine that being interesting, historic, and perhaps even moving, but I have a hard time thinking of it as "beautiful". This would be a good thread for those seeking inspiration for a future trip and is also good for provoking memories of places you've been fortunate enough to visit.

I take the weekend off from this blog and wavered over whether to take today off as well since it is a holiday. I've decided to go ahead but looking at the the threads I will have to cover, I'm already regretting the decision. As such, I'll keep things short today. Many of the most active threads over the past three days have already been covered and, therefore, I'll skip them. That is sort of leaving me with the junior varsity threads. The first of those was titled, "People you know that died in a freak accident. What happened?" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster doesn't offer much information about what she wants from this thread other than fuel for her "existential anxiety". The thread is 19 pages long so I am not going to read the whole thing. From what I can tell, however, posters have listed several usual deaths. In many cases, those deaths involved people the posters knew, others they had simply heard about second or third-hand. I see a number of clearly made-up posts with some describing scenes from movies or TV shows. This is really not my type of thread so that's all I'll say about it.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Homeless Man Killed by Fellow Passenger on NYC Subway" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The thread is about the killing of Jordan Neely, an unhoused individual who suffered severe distress while on a New York City subway train. According to witness reports, Neely was shouting that he had no food or water and that he was willing to go to jail to obtain them. A passenger on the train, identified in some press reports as former marine Daniel Penny, placed Neely in a chokehold and held him until Neely died. The New York City medical examiner has ruled the death a homicide. Penny was taken into custody by the police and then released without charges. The original poster of the thread is understandably appalled by this killing of a man who does not appear to have been presenting a danger to anyone. But, if there is one thing that I have learned from DCUM, it is that there is virtually no killing of a black man that some posters will not rush to justify. As such, posters were quick to defend Neely's killing. Indeed the very first response claimed, with no evidence, that "he was dangerous and needed to be subdued" and "Why wouldn't someone understand that?" To be clear, there are both posters like the original poster who do not think that the killing was justified and posters who are fully behind it, like the first poster to respond. From reading the posts, I see the merging of two separate trends in our society. On one hand, the theory of "stand your ground" has morphed from what I believe was its original intent of being the right to defend yourself from a clear and present danger to a justification to kill basically anyone who you perceive as a threat. So, essentially, "I felt threatened" has become a justification for murder even if a realistic threat did not exist. On the other hand, unhoused individuals have become increasingly visible, especially in cities, since the COVID pandemic. Many of these individuals suffer from mental health problems and, occasionally, some of them are violent. The result seems to be in the public's mind that unhoused people are ipso facto a threat. The convergence of these ideas is that many DCUM posters — and indeed many members of the public at large — seem to believe that it is perfectly okay to kill an unhoused individual who is simply being a nuisance.