July

The most active thread over the weekend was titled, "President Biden acknowledged 4 year old granddaughter" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. This thread was started after President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden provided a statement to People Magazine discussing the daughter of Hunter Biden and Lunden Roberts about whom the Bidens had previously been silent. The child has been the subject of considerable legal contention between Hunter Biden and Roberts and Republicans have been vociferous in their criticism of President Biden for not having previously acknowledged the girl. As could be expected in today's political environment, the statement did nothing to stem the flood of Republican attacks on Biden. Indeed, even the original poster claimed, "The statement today seems politically motivated". In addition, Republicans simply moved the goalposts. When a Biden-supporter pointed out that Republicans had complained that Biden had not acknowledged the child and were now complaining that he had discussed her, a Biden-critic replied saying, "Biden hasn’t laid out plans to welcome her to either the [White House] or the Biden family home". As anti-Biden posters sought to portray the controversy surrounding the child as a significant moral failure by President Biden, pro-Biden posters suggested that the moral outrage was selective given the moral shortcomings evidenced by former President Donald Trump. For instance, Trump reportedly urged his former wife Marla Maples to get an abortion when she was pregnant with Tiffany and Trump has often given significantly less attention to Tiffany than his other children. Similarly, Biden supporters reminded Republicans of the support demonstrated for Herschel Walker even after all of his paternity issues were revealed. In a classic case of hair-splitting, a Biden-critic responded asking, "Was he running for president?" The more relavent question would have been, "is he a Democrat?" given that Republican morality concerns tend to be entirely partisan in nature. On the other hand, a small number of Democrats in the thread expressed discomfort with the way the Bidens have handled this issue. But, one poster in the thread described themselves as "a person born to an unwed mother" and expressed considerable understanding for Joe and Jill Biden. In this poster's view, it was entirely appropriate for the President and Fist Lady to remain aloof from the conflict between Hunter and Roberts. As the poster explained, "if Hunter has no relationship with the child then the Bidens can't either."

Last Friday a thread about swim teams was among the most active threads that I discussed. I believe that was the first time that a swimming thread made this blog. But, not only has a swim team thread made the most active list again, this time it leads the list as yesterday's most active thread. This one was titled, "Swim Team Drama" and was posted in the "Sports General Discussion" forum. Since I have never been involved with swim teams, I don't understand much of what posters are talking about, including the original poster. The drama cited by that poster involved parents being upset about the times used for divisional lineups. Whatever this was, it stirred up drama in the thread itself as parents debated the rules back and forth. Other drama discussed often involved coaches, especially younger ones who seemed to disappear when needed. But, other than these examples, most of the dramas mentioned involved parents. Parents trash talking, parents arguing with each other, parents having issues with coaches, and even parents suing their pools. There also seemed to be a lot of drama surrounding team lineups. A number of posters reported drama-free seasons. Several others said the only drama on their teams was of the competitive type involving close races or slower swimmers improving and over-performing in the heat of a match. Based on this thread, I would guess that the bulk of the drama is caused by parents not understanding the rules, or — more likely — thinking they understand the rules when they don't. The original poster's example of drama was still being discussed 17 pages later, but apparently much of this is due to differences between leagues. There is also ongoing discussion about how to dress for the team banquet. I'm not sure if that actually counts as "drama", but plenty of posters have something to say about it.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "dont be in the 60th to 99th percentile in income" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster linked to an article in the New York Times that discussed an analysis of college admissions data. According to that analysis, the wealthiest top 0.1% of applicants had a huge admissions advantage, the poorest applicants had a slight advantage, while those in the middle had a disadvantage. The article actually paints a somewhat more complex picture. As one poster, quoting the article, explained, "colleges gave preference to the children of alumni and to recruited athletes, and gave children from private schools higher nonacademic ratings". While the article mostly focuses on how this system perpetuates the "intergenerational transfer of wealth and opportunity", posters in the thread were more concerned by the disadvantages suffered by those in the middle that the article illustrated. As the original poster noted, that is where most DCUM posters are represented. Most of the college forum posters have always seemed to believe that college admissions were unfair and that they are particularly unfair when it comes to the forum's posters. So, for many posters, this article simply justifies what they already believed. Some posters ignored the advantages enjoyed by the wealthy and, instead, focused on the slight advantages received by the poorest applicants. As one poster explicitly put it, "there is a clear bias towards the lower half of the income bracket and again sthe upper half (half, not the 0.1%)" But, as another poster pointed out, unlike other groups, poor students are not overrepresented in student bodies. My understanding after reading the article is that there just are not that many poor applicants who meet the admissions requirements. Those that do have a great chance of admission, but there still simply aren't many of them. Ironically, that was almost exactly the same argument made by one of the apologists for the ultra-wealthy who wrote, "who really cares about the very small number of ultra rich?" Like the original poster, most of those participating in this thread are most interested in discussing the disadvantages suffered by those with middle incomes. Some posters even parse the data to show that differences even among varying strata of the middle income segment. But, basically, this is the other side of the coin used to explain the poor and ultra-wealthy advantages. While there are few members of those categories, there are a lot of applicants in the middle and, as such, the competition is fierce. The bottom line described in the article is that there is an entire system of "affirmative action for the wealthy" that includes legacy admissions, admissions of friends and family of large donors, athletic admissions, and advantages provided to private school students that give the ultra wealthy an extreme advantage. As illustrated, an applicant in the 99.9th income percentile would have a roughly 3 times more likelihood of being accepted by an elite college as a student in the 90th percentile.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Being denied my earned leave because I’m covering due to maternity leave" and posted in the "Jobs and Careers" forum. When I read this title, I wondered what would cause a thread on this topic to become the most active of the day. Once I read it, I understood. The original poster is complaining that she has accrued vacation leave that she will lose if she doesn't use. She applied for vacation time off for later in the year, but was denied because she is scheduled to cover for someone who will be out on maternity leave. But, rather than simply stopping at this point, the original poster claimed that she was being punished due to not having children and asks why people without kids are being punished like this. Turning this issue into a fight between parents and non-parents is a sure way to stir controversy on a parenting website. Hence, ten pages of responses. The original poster's claim that she is being punished for not having children gets plenty of pushback as would be expected. Posters point out that the original poster would have been denied leave even if the other employee was childless and simply on vacation. Similarly, the original poster would be denied leave even if she had children. Someone has to be there to cover. The most common response was to tell the original poster that she had submitted her leave request too late and that she should request time off before the other employee begins maternity leave. As one poster writes, "She can take leave, she just can't take it when she wants." The original poster seems to go out of her way to alienate just about everyone. She accuses other posters for being in favor of compensation theft, ignores any helpful advice, and attacks her employer for being "cheap". One poster responded by saying "+1 you sound like a very nasty person." The original poster is likely trolling because some of her responses are just too obtuse to be real. For instance, at one point she writes, "Maybe the person who got pregnant did it too early to allow me my leave." By the end of the thread, the original poster has provoked such a negative response that the response itself leads to a backlash as new posters wonder why nobody has sympathy for the original poster. That is explained by one poster who says, "This is a solvable problem but OP doesn't want to solve it. She just wants to melt down." The problem may not actually be solvable to the original poster's satisfaction, but it definitely won't be solved by throwing a temper tantrum on DCUM.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Is it true that 90% of women aim for the top 5% of men?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that he has heard the claim made in the title from his adult daughter and her friends. However, in a subsequent post, the original poster claims to be a 31 year old who is wildly successful at dating women a decade younger than himself. Doing the math, he would have been a minor when his adult daughter was born and is claiming to date women her age or below. In other threads, the poster has discussed his wife. Call me cynical, but I'm not buying any of this. Moreover, I have questions about the type of guy who would be obsessing about this sort of thing. As for the topic itself, it combines many themes from other discussions such as women primarily being interested in tall, educated, financially successful men. The number of posters claiming to have statistics about such things provoked enough eye-rolling that I was concerned about potential damage to my eye muscles. This thread was particularly obnoxious in the frequency of posters using terms such as "high-value men" or "high-value women" and talking about the "market value" of individuals. I've never been the world's biggest romantic, but if this is how you are approaching dating, no wonder things are not working out. A significant number of posters in this thread claim to be very knowledgeable about the desires of members of the opposite sex. Women know what men want and men know what women want and both think the other gender is misguided. Multiple posters claim to be among the top 1% of this and top 10% of that and to be dating nothing but others like them. Call me a cynic for the second time but I really doubt that folks with all of that going for them are spending their free time posting in DCUM's relationship forum. I'm fairly convinced that most of this thread consists of trolls trying to troll each other and none of them realizing that they are being trolled themselves. Maybe I should start a new website for trolls to date each other? All the guys can claim to be 6'5", earn 900k annually, and to have been a star lacrosse player at Harvard. All the women can claim to be supermodels with PhDs in early childhood education. Since none of them likely ever leave their houses, they probably won't ever learn the truth.

The most active thread yesterday, unfortunately, appears to be the creation of a troll. Titled, "Was I wrong in telling my girlfriend she has no say when my kids come over?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum, the original poster describes a conflict he is having with his girlfriend about his adult children's habit of coming and going from his house at will. Reading the post triggered my troll-dar and I immediately checked to see what other threads this poster had started. This thread is at least the second by this poster to be included among the most active. In this thread, the poster, who appears to be male, is divorced but has had a girlfriend for about three years. Based on other threads, since the beginning of this year the poster has also been married for six months, has been unmarried with a boyfriend, and had a girlfriend for about six months. While this poster may not be consistent in his relationship situation, he does appear to have established a pattern when posting. His posts are lengthy, generally laden with an abundance of background information, and focused on a problem which is actually fairly minor but has caused him to consider somewhat drastic action (in this case breaking up with his girlfriend of three years because she wants his kids to stop unannounced visits). In a previous thread, he broke up with his girlfriend of six months because she asked him to help with home repairs. Personally, I find these posts to be too long, too boring, and not the sort of thing that I would want to read. But, the formula does seem to work with many of our readers given the length of the threads. This is not a case of the poster sock puppetting or otherwise trying to keep the thread alive through artificial means. The poster only responded once in this thread and only once as well in the home repair thread. He just seems to have a knack for getting posters to engage.

Yesterday might be described as the coming of the second wave of Supreme Court-related threads because the first two threads I will discuss are both related to recent Supreme Court cases, but were started after the threads on those topics that have dominated the site for several days. The first thread was titled, "Will Admissions Officers pick up on clues in application regarding URM?" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster asks whether college admissions officers will be able to pick up clues in applications in order to identify underrepresented minorities and suggests that colleges might want to "lock in" the stronger URM applicants in order to maintain diversity on their campuses. Many of those responding agree that applications will provide plenty of clues about URM status and several suggest that admissions officers probably already have plans prepared to maintain diversity. One poster pointed out that the Supreme Court has not invalidated the First Amendment and that applicants don't have to hint, they can freely disclose their URM status. Some posters insist that regardless of whether URM status is determined through hints or through explicit declaration, it can't be used as a factor in the application process. One thing that is very clear from the responses is that those opposed to affirmative action see the courts as their weapon of choice and repeatedly threaten legal action in response to unwelcomed admissions decisions. It is obvious from discussions such as this one that hopes for Asian and White applicants have been massively raised and it is likely that a bunch of folks who never stood a chance of being accepted by Harvard are going to be very disappointed to learn that they still have no chance of being accepted by Harvard. These folks will still insist that their place was unfairly taken by URMs who did not deserve to be admitted. Whereas affirmative action was once blamed for this unfairness, now conspiracies and unfounded allegations will be used to explain why an URM candidate was accepted. A common argument against affirmative action in the past was that it unfairly gave the impression that all URMs on campus had received a boost rather than earning their place and that eliminating affirmative action would remove that taint. Threads such as this show that this is simply not the case. URMs will still be considered by many to be unworthy of admission to a top college, though their explanation of why will be somewhat less coherent.

Since yesterday was a national holiday, usage of the site was lower than normal and many of the most active threads were threads that I've already covered. So, some of the "most active" threads that I'll cover today weren't actually all that active. The first one that I'll discuss was titled, "Complaint ag Harvard Re Legacy Admissions" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster linked to articles describing a civil rights complaint filed against Harvard University arguing that the University's legacy and donor admissions preferences violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Several posters supported ending these admissions preferences, which strongly favor White applicants. Others argued that such preferences are different than affirmative action and should be continued. I was only able to read the first few pages of this thread before I became ashamed to be associated with the low level of discourse occurring and had to stop reading. A significant number of the posts that I read consisted of some of the most poorly-informed posters I've ever encountered calling each other "dumb". For example, one message said, "You’re so dumb you don’t know how legacy admits work. It is NOT just ‘oh legacy, he’s in’ you moron." Much of the discussion dealt with athletic preferences which are not a subject of the complaint. Nevertheless, a considerable number of the posts are arguing who is favored by such preferences. All of these discussions related to admissions preferences have been inundated by racist posts. I removed a few from this thread this morning, but it would require more time and effort than I have available to clean up the entire thread. Based on many of the posts in threads such as this one, if a significant number of Black students are still admitted to top schools next year, there is going to be a mass explosion of heads. While Asians are often the target of racist posts, a considerable number of posters who either identify themselves as Asian or appear to be Asian post very racist things about Black people. Of course, non-Asians also post similar messages. Between the racism, name-calling, and the general lack of substance in the posts in this thread, I really found it unbearable to read.

The most active thread yesterday "Wedding Gifts for future daughter in law" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster requested suggestions for a wedding gift for her future daughter-in-law who does not wear jewelry. She immediately received a number of suggestions for art, gardening-related items, and a watch. A watch was ruled out because the original poster has just helped her son pick out for for his future bride. Many posters weigh in against art or paintings because they are too personal and there is a good chance the daughter-in-law might not like what is chosen. Nobody really specifically objects to the gardening implement suggestions, but there is no indication that the young couple will have a yard that will allow gardening. Other suggestions include a vase, a quilt, or a classic Chanel purse. Several posters ridicule all of the suggestions as reflecting the interests of "boomers" that will likely not be appreciated by a young woman. When asked for their own suggestions, however, the younger posters don't really offer any ideas. Despite a watch being ruled out, discussion repeatedly returns to suggestions of watches. Some posters say that they no longer wear watches and give reasons why watches are no longer necessary. For instance, one poster says that ovens have clocks so women don't need watches. This provokes a poster to respond saying that, in this case, the original poster should buy her future daughter-in-law an oven. Throughout the thread posters emphasize that the gift should reflect the future daughter-in-law's interests and not the original poster's. The best way to ensure this, posters advise, is to ask the woman what she would like. However, several posters note that it can be uncomfortable asking for gifts. Almost as controversial as watches were the suggestions for a quilt. This was considered by some to be an old fashioned idea that might be more appropriate for rural backwoods regions. But, other posters were big fan of quilts. A few posters suggested forgoing material items and, instead, offering an experience such as a spa day. Many posters said that they were very appreciative of high-quality cookware that they had received as wedding gifts. I don't think any gift suggestion escaped criticism and all of the ideas had their detractors. The thread is actually pretty funny at times and is worth reading merely for the entertainment value. For instance, when a poster's suggestions of a gardening bench or a quilt were ridiculed as coming from a boomer, she responded by confessing to being a boomer, having two cats, and promising to log off DCUM and return to her crochet project. She said that she would leave this thread to the "young whipper snappers".

The most active thread since I last posted was the thread about the Supreme Court's affirmative action decision which I've already covered. But, only a few posts short of that one was a thread titled, "APS Closing Nottingham" and posted in the "VA Public Schools other than FCPS" forum. "APS" refers to Arlington Public Schools and "Nottingham" is an elementary school in north Arlington. Apparently, the APS school board recently announced a proposal to send current Nottingham students to other nearby schools and use Nottingham as a swing space for schools that are being renovated. Changes of school assignments are always controversial and the length of this thread at 37 pages shows that this case is not an exception. However, the initial reaction from Nottingham parents in the thread was surprisingly subdued. They were far from thrilled with the proposal, but indicated that they could live with it. There was far more outrage from parents associated with the schools to which Nottingham students would move with near apocalyptic predictions regarding the extra traffic it would cause. But, it appears that the conventional wisdom expected Nottingham families to react with outrage and entitlement. When a few posters responded in ways that fulfilled that stereotype, they become the face of Nottingham parents. Frankly, I think it is an unfair portrayal, but posters complaining that they were being victimized because they are white and wealthy and that some would even be killed because of this decision made easy targets. Many of the pro-Nottingham responses were justifiably lampoonable. One poster was inspired to create a sarcastic version of Martin Niemöller's famous quotation, "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out...", paraphrasing it to say, "First they overcrowded Glebe And I did not speak out..." While Nottingham parents threatened everything from moving out of Arlington to legal action, they didn't quite reach the point of comparing the closing of their school to the Holocaust. Though in the case of some posters, that may only be a matter of time. Still, and I am adamant about this, many of the Nottingham posters were level-headed and entirely reasonable in their responses. They just didn't get much attention. Nobody is likely to be thrilled with the closing of their much-loved school and their children's future schooling that had appeared to be settled suddenly being thrown into question. On the other hand, some of the posters with ties to other schools seem to be taking an inordinate amount of joy from this proposal. For instance, one poster wrote, "Hahahaha. Yes. Karma for Nottingham who was oh so obnoxious in the 2018 go round." This was a less respectful version of a point made by several other posters. According to them, past efforts by Nottingham families to successfully oppose proposals that would have added additional students to the school left Nottingham under-enrolled and vulnerable to this sort of development. A final decision on the proposal to convert Nottingham into a swing space is apparently not due for almost a year. So, this is not likely the last we've seen of this thread.