Thursday's Most Active Threads

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.

The second most active thread yesterday was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Another in what seems to be a never-ending series of threads resulting from the US News & World Report rankings of national universities, the thread was titled, "Are US News rankings making DC rethink college list?" The original poster asks whether anyone's children have changed their college application plans in response to the new rankings. To reiterate what has been repeatedly cited in other threads since the rankings were released, the publication changed its criteria for ranking schools. Nothing about the schools has changed, but rather just for what they were being evaluated. I would find it hard to believe that a school that was appealing when it was 15th on the list is no longer of interest because it is now 18th, but then I am not an avid participant in our college forum. There are indeed posters who claim that their kids' have changed their plans as a result of the new rankings. As I've written before, the college forum has a number of posters who obsess over school rankings the way that sports fan fixate on statistics. Instead of runs batted in, it is the acceptance percentage, etc. Like sports fans, they get into heated disputes about the numbers. Some posters argued against relying on the rankings and, instead, concentrating on schools that are a good "fit" for specific kids. Another poster claimed that "fit" is "a BS term just like 'thriving' is a BS term". Soon enough personal insults were flying and a number of posts were reported to me as being inappropriate. After spending entirely too much time removing childish posts, I locked the thread.

Third was a thread titled, "Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas headed to divorce" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. This thread was started almost three weeks ago with a link to TMZ article, but little more. The thread has now reached 35 pages, 8 of which were added yesterday. It appears that what ignited the thread yesterday was a report that Turner is suing Jonas to allow their children to move to the United Kingdom. I am not interested in either of these people or their divorce and I am certainly not reading 35 pages of posts about them. I am not even going to read the most recent 8 pages. The only thing I'll say is that I noticed that Taylor Swift somehow got dragged into this. Therefore, the thread will probably be 50 pages by tomorrow.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum and titled, "‘First come, first serve’ household?". The original poster says that her husband doesn't believe in saving things for others. For instance, if one of their kids is not around to eat when food is available, he won't bother saving any for them. The original poster was raised in a different environment and expects that the last piece of pizza, for instance, would be left for someone who hasn't had any. She wants to know into which of these two camps others fall. This thread is 10 pages long and I don't have time to read all of it. But, from what I can tell, the thread gets bogged down in the examples that various posters provide. The situations described appear to be very context dependent. For instance, one example is stopping at McDonalds and a dispute about whether food should be purchased for all family members or only those who are present at the moment? There is not a one-size-fits-all answer. Posters point out that it depends on how long the meals would sit around before the non-present members would eat them, what other alternative food options are available, and other factors. Posters respond differently in the case of leftovers, where many posters are strongly opposed to throwing food away. But that is not really the issue. Rather, its a question of who gets to eat leftovers that are in the refrigerator? Is it open season or are they reserved in some manner (perhaps for a family member who missed the meal)? Another example involved ordering take out. A poster said that if she and her husband ordered different takeout items and then had extra, her husband would eat both his and her leftovers. Most posters felt that her husband should leave her leftovers alone unless he received permission to eat them. At any rate, there are a number of scenarios described about which posters propose different approaches. Who knew there were so many ways to divide a pizza?