Thursday's Most Active Threads

The Gaza war thread returned as the most active thread yesterday. But, with fewer than 350 posts, the thread is a shadow of what it once was. The most active thread after that was titled, "FBI HQ in PG!" and posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics" forum. The original poster appears to be very happy that the General Services Administration, the government's landlord, announced that a site in Greenbelt, Maryland had been selected to be the location of a new Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters. A new headquarters is necessary because the Hoover Building in downtown Washington, DC is literally crumbling and falling apart. The search for a new location has been long and arduous. The quest had already lasted a decade when the search was cancelled in 2017. At that time Congress showed little interest in funding a new headquarters and then president Donald Trump was opposed to moving the headquarters due to fear that its current site might be taken over by a luxury hotel that could compete with his own near by hotel. The search was revived after Trump left office. The selection of Greenbelt met with immediate controversy, as reflected in posts in the thread. Greenbelt is located in Maryland's Prince George's County, an area with a large Black population that has a reputation for high crime rates. Some of the opposition to Greenbelt was explicitly racist. One poster wrote, "Feel bad for the largely white FBI that won't be living in PG County". But fans of Prince George's fought back, arguing that the county didn't deserve it poor reputation and that it is actually a nice place to live. Many Maryland residents immediately began speculating about the impact on property values. Further controversy erupted when news arrived that FBI Director Christopher Wray had notified FBI staff about his own concerns with the location choice. According to Wray, a three-person panel charged with selecting a location had picked a site in Sterling, Virginia. This decision had been over-ruled by a single GSA official who had been given that authority. The Greenbelt property is currently owned by WMATA and that official had previously worked for WMATA. Therefore, Wray suggested, there was an inappropriate conflict of interest. This caused posters to immediately begin trumpeting the specter of Congressional investigations and maybe even the official's arrest. In response, Greenbelt proponents noted that the Sterling location, which is currently full of GSA warehouses that would have to be relocated and then demolished, would increase the price of the project by a billion dollars. With controversy aplenty, it looks like this saga if far from over.

The next most active thread was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Titled, "Why have people given up on looking attractive when they go out?", the original poster says that she was looking at old photos and noticed that in earlier time periods people were dressed up when they went out. Today people are prone to going out in leggings or sweat pants and don't appear to be concerned with their appearance. The original poster continues to say that she has recently put more effort into her appearance and is surprised about how much better she feels. Some posters agree with the original poster, suggesting that in the past people had more pride in themselves. Other posters argued that this is not a question of pride, but pragmatism. They say that they dress up or put on makeup when the occasion calls for it, such as going to the office or a work function, but don't when it is not necessary, such as going to the grocery store. Several posters blamed working from home that became common during the covid pandemic. They contend that people got used to dressing comfortably and are not going back. Some posters analyzed the topic from a psychological angle, suggesting that there are people who care more about how they are viewed by others and those that don't care. The first group is motivated to dress up in order to look good to others. The second group has no interest in what others think and, therefore, has no need to dress up. The big division in this thread seems to be over whether one's appearance reflects larger issues. For instance, some posters assume that someone who neglects their appearance may similarly not be taking care of their health and is probably lazy about work. As one poster says about the casual trend, "We are degenerating as a society". Others disagree with this attitude, suggesting that as long as someone has good hygiene and clean clothes, it doesn't matter if they are wearing makeup or how casually they are dressed. One thing that I found amusing, and this is not the first thread in which this has occurred, is how many posters consider wearing jeans to be dressing up. I am probably getting to the older end of DCUM's age range at this point, but I was always told that jeans are casual and not proper for occasions when dressing up is required. After the recent thread about sweat pants in which I was introduced to the category of athleisure clothing, I was looking forward to it being promoted. But, instead it got blamed by a poster who wrote, "Blame the rise and acceptance of Athleisure...".

The third thread I'll discuss was titled, "The Golden Bachelor" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. I am fairly certain that I have never heard of what I understand is a television series until just now. I don't watch much network TV and, if I did, it would not be this type of show. As such, I know nothing about it. I started reading the thread from the beginning and then realized that it had been started back at the end of August. The thread is currently 55 pages long with 6 of those pages being added yesterday. Back at the beginning of the thread, posters were looking forward to the upcoming season in which all the contestants are over 60 years of age. The posters were impressed with the women's appearances, particularly because they seemed mostly natural and not the result of significant plastic surgery or so on. Once I realized that I was reading 2 month or older posts, I jumped to yesterday's additions. At that point it appears that a few episodes must have been aired and posters are commenting on developments. There is lots of speculation about which woman the bachelor will choose and how he and the winner might spend their futures together. The posters really seem to be enjoying this show and it certainly seems like a harmless pursuit. So, I don't really want to rain on their parade. Still, talk about fillers and botox is about the least interesting thing that I can imagine. At the beginning of the thread, posters seem to be very impressed with the bachelor, but by the end several seem to have soured on him. It turns out that he is not very wealthy and one poster sniffed at his mere $1.5 million net worth. But, others give him credit for emotional maturity.

The final thread at which I'll look was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Titled, "Peripatetic- do you know what this word means?", the original poster recounts using the word "peripatetic" in an email to a relative to describe a period of her life. The relative seems to have understood the word to mean "pathetic" and appears to believe that was an unhappy time in the original poster's life. It was actually an enjoyable time in her life and the original poster doesn't want to leave the wrong impression. Therefore she wants to know whether she should have avoided using "peripatetic" and if there is a way to correct her relative's impression of that period of her life. Just to be clear, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, "peripatetic" means "of, relating to, or given to walking" or "moving or traveling from place to place". I thought that I knew the definition but, while I was close, I was wrong. Several posters in the thread say that they know the meaning of and frequently use "peripatetic" both when writing and when speaking. Others list impressive academic credentials, but admit to not having known the meaning of the word. Several posters provide graceful ways of correcting the relative's understanding. Others ignore that aspect of the post and, instead, provide opinions about the wisdom of using "peripatetic" in the first place. In contrast, some posters love expansive vocabularies and love when they encounter unknown words which they can then use. This is a 10 page thread and I gave up reading after 5 pages. I don't know if these points were made in the remaining pages, but the electronic communications that most of us use these days make looking up the definition of a word extremely easy. But, autocorrect make typos even easier which is why I believe it should be called auto-mistype. So, it is entirely possible that this was less an issue of misunderstanding a word and more a case of the relative thinking this was an autocorrect error. Early in the thread a poster mentioned that she knew the meaning of "peripatetic" in both English and her native language and that the meanings were quite different. I wondered what her native language was but she didn't say. Later in the thread, another poster wrote that "peripatetica" means "prostitute" in Italian, so maybe the earlier poster's native language was Italian. But, this raises the possibility that the original poster's relative thought that the original poster had said that she had been a prostitute earlier in her life.