May

The two most active threads yesterday — the Fairfax County Public Schools boundary changes thread and the Jennifer Lopez thread — were ones that I've already discussed and will, therefore, skip today. The next most active thread was titled, "Cuts" and posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum. This thread was started five days ago by a poster complaining that Montgomery County Public Schools had conducted a "midnight massacre" and cut about 100 teaching positions. The poster warned others to get ready for bigger classes and asked why this is not a bigger story. The first issue with this thread is that there was no source provided for the original poster's allegation. This led some posters to doubt that it was real. Other posters accepted it as fact, but attempted to justify the cuts. One argument was that while positions were being cut, many of them were currently unfilled. If there is a current teacher in the position, that teacher will be offered an opportunity to transfer to another school. As such, these are not job losses. Contrary to this, some posters said that actual layoffs are in the works in some cases. Another argument was that in a school system of 14,000 teachers, 100 teachers being forced to transfer to different positions is not really that significant. Soon enough reports of positions being cut at posters' schools arrived and provided some evidence of the veracity of the original poster's claim. Discussion then turned to what might be cut other than teaching positions. The main target was the MCPS central office which poster after poster criticized as bloated and filled with high-earning staffers that either do little or lack competence. Two days ago, the Board of Education held a meeting to discuss the school system's budget. According to posts in the thread, teachers were barred from entering the meeting. When a small group managed to push their way in and attempted to start a protest, the meeting was recessed and after the break teachers were again prevented from attending. Based on teacher reactions in the thread, these cuts — whether of positions or employees — are one more factor contributing to already high levels of frustration among teachers. There are many warnings that more teachers will leave rather than put up with increasingly difficult work circumstances. As one poster wrote, "MCPS trying this after arguably the worst year most of us have ever had… is just laughable." The poster then went on to say, "This is going to be the straw that broke the camels back for A LOT of teachers in the county … good luck next year when there’s no one there to staff their huge classes."

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Rant: ‘you look amazing’" and posted in the "Expectant and Postpartum Moms" forum. The original poster is a new mother and, as such, is "exhausted and struggling". Nevertheless, "at least 10 times" other people have told her that she "looks amazing" or something similar. Because this compliment does not match how she is feeling, it is awkward for her and she is annoyed by it. She ends her post by saying, "Don’t comment on anyone’s body ever, but especially a hormonal new mom." This is a 12 page thread and I don't have time to read the entire thing. But, obviously a thread of this length is going to contain a lot of different opinions. The first thing that I will note is that the original poster does not seem to have returned to the thread after the first post. However, another poster who feels very much the same way as the original poster took over and posted nearly 30 times. So the original poster's viewpoint was very well represented even if she herself was not. The basic argument of the original poster and the poster who agreed with her is that by focusing on a women's appearance, her friends and acquaintances were missing the physical stress and emotional challenges the she was undergoing. Because they looked good, people assumed that they must feel good and that simply was not the case. Moreover, they don't even agree that they actually looked amazing. They concede that they lost weight and they attribute the compliments to that and nothing more. In their opinion, others are focusing exclusively on weight and missing the signs that they are somewhat in distress. Some posters are concerned that the original poster may be suffering from postpartum depression and urge her to talk to her doctor about it. Others explain that people are simply trying to be nice. Moreover, they say, some women appreciate the compliments. But a number of posters support the other two women in arguing that comments about people's bodies just shouldn't be made. I suspect that there is somewhat of a generational divide on this issue with younger people generally being more sensitive about comments about appearances. This is reflected in one post in which the poster stated that only "old women" think that others appreciate being told that they look amazing. My thinking is that a lot of people are more or less on autopilot when it comes to informal conversations. It might be common to ask another person how they are doing, but only in unusual circumstances does anyone really want to hear a litany of things bothering the other person. Telling a new mother that she looks amazing is a simple way of offering reassurance and support. Almost no one is going to tell a woman that she looks stressed and haggard. The bigger problem is not listening. Several of the posters describe replying to compliments by explaining the struggles they are encountering and having that shrugged off. In many cases, people simply might not want to deal with it or may not know how to react to it. But, that, more than the compliment, is where the focus on improvement should probably be.

Yesterday most active thread was a thread that I've already discussed about the Montgomery County Board of Education elections. The primary was held yesterday, creating a lot of interest in that thread. The most active thread after that one was a bit surprising. Titled, "Why is Indian food always expensive?" and posted in the "Food, Cooking, and Restaurants" forum, this is not a topic that I would expect to be more active than Taylor Swift, the Gaza war, and bike lanes. Yet, here we are. The original poster started the thread by, as the title indicates, asking why Indian food is so expensive. According to the original poster, naan is always $5 a piece and palak paneer costs $22. Moreover, the original poster claims, this is true of every city, not just Washington, DC. The first four responses were all from posters in California who claimed that Indian food tends to be cheaper out there. Other posters also suggested cheaper options. Many posters responded saying that the relatively high cost of Indian food is due to the large number of ingredients and its labor intensive nature. As labor costs have risen, prices have followed. Some posters suggested that small family-owned restaurants are often able to rely on family members for staff and reduce their cost of labor. I am far from an expert on India, but I've always heard about its many languages and many different cultural groups. Given its diversity, it is no surprise that generalizing about the country's cuisine is not easy or even possible. I think that this explains much of the debate in this thread. Whereas some posters insist that expensive ingredients and labor-intensive preparation are required, others argue that neither of those are true and that, in fact, Indian food can be prepared at home cheaply and easily. It appears that both sides in this argument are correct. It simply depends on what specific Indian food you are discussing. Moreover, it also depends on how true you want to remain to the traditional recipe. One poster pointed out that butter chicken traditionally should rely on leftover tandoori chicken and therefore the first step is to make tandoori chicken. But another poster praised instant pot butter chicken. There are obvious differences in ease of cooking between these two styles. One of the more absurd aspects of this thread was a huge several-page debate about the cost of naan. A poster disputed the original poster's claim that it costs $5 a piece. However, several posters described recently paying close to that, if not more. Then a poster, relying on Google, took it upon himself to dispute their first-hand experience. As a result of this thread, I am probably going to be ordering Indian food for lunch. For the record, I will be paying less than the original poster claims to pay. I've always seen naan as the item on which Indian restaurants make their money and reluctantly pay more than I think it is worth. But even so, it will only be $4. Moreover, that is for garlic naan. Plain naan is only $2.50.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Sheryl Sandberg Releases Screams Before Silence, A Free Documentary About the Sexual Violence on October 7" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The war in Gaza and the resulting college campus protests have spurred an endless series of threads, many of which have been among the most active topics that I've discussed in this blog. This thread is one more of the genre. As the title makes clear, this thread is about the documentary "Screams Before Silence" which was led by Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook/Meta fame. The film is about sexual violence allegedly used by Hamas during and after its October 7 attack on Israel. My use of the word "alleged" will likely be controversial because a significant number of DCUM users do not think that there is anything "alleged" about this and that Hamas' sexual violence is beyond question. To be clear, I abhor sexual violence whoever it is committed by. Those who commit such crimes should be exposed and punished. Unfortunately, like so much else involved with the the Israel-Gaza war, sexual violence has been caught in the fog of war and the endless propaganda surrounding events. It is undeniable that in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack, Israel and some of its supporters engaged in spreading manufactured accounts of atrocities. Many of these accounts made it into the Western media and become accepted as fact. Chief among these stories was the allegation of 40 beheaded Israeli babies, something that proved to be completely untrue. A number of other high-profile incidents similarly turned out not to have occurred. Just as these stories of Hamas violence were initially widely believed, allegations of sexual violence committed by Hamas has been accepted as fact among much of the public. A highly-publicized article by the New York Times initially seemed very persuasive in documenting widespread sexual violence. However, that article soon proved to be very problematic and has been shown to have relied on several discredited sources. Chief among these was ZAKA, an Israeli volunteer group that responds to emergencies to recover bodies. Israeli newspapers have documented that many of the stores of atrocities on October 7 that were later shown to be false originated with ZAKA. ZAKA's leader has attributed this to mistakes resulting from the difficult circumstances following the attack. Either because of intention or error, ZAKA's allegations must be approached skeptically. Like the New York Times, Sandberg's film relies heavily on ZAKA. As a result, critics of the documentary argue that its allegations are not to be believed. Defenders of the film point to a report by the United Nations that found "reasonable grounds to believe" that sexual violence occurred during the Hamas attack. While the report did find evidence to believe such attacks occurred, it did not find anything near the scale that is commonly claimed. Moreover, the report explicitly found that some well-publicized allegations were unfounded. All of this is to say that while there is evidence that some sexual violence did occur during Hamas' October 7 attack and has probably occurred afterward involving the Israelis being held hostage, the allegations of widespread and systemic sexual violence have not held up to scrutiny. This has provided justifiable grounds for critics to challenge portrayals such as that in this film. Unfortunately, as demonstrated in this thread, posters are less interested in separating fact from fiction than they are in utilizing the topic for their own partisan benefit. I eventually locked the thread when it devolved in simply another debate about all aspects of the conflict without specific relevance to the initial topic.

The most active thread over the weekend was the one asking why people are Republicans which I have already discussed. That thread had twice as many posts as the next most active thread which was titled, "‘Don't Text Me So Early!’" and was posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster explains that she texted her sister-in-law at 6:51 AM Saturday morning to invite her to the original poster's son's high school graduation party. The original poster's sister-in-law responded by telling her not to text so early. The original poster doesn't think there should be times when you shouldn't text and asks if she is correct in this regard. I am not sure why the original poster chose this forum rather than the "Family Relationships" forum. For that matter, to the extent this thread deals with relationships, it is more about relationships with technology. So maybe the "Electronics and Technology" forum would have been better. Those responding were split between posters who agreed with the original poster that texts can be sent at all hours and it is up to the recipients to turn off notifications or silence their phones and those who believe sending texts deserves some consideration and that texts shouldn't be sent before 8 AM. In other words, the division is between those who see this as a technical issue and those who see it as a matter of good manners. The technologists argue that it is easy to turn off notifications. The manners folks claim that they have reasons for keeping notifications on such as teens out late at night while parents want to sleep. The technologists respond saying that phones have settings to allow the kids' numbers through and there are ways to block text notifications but still allow phone calls. The manners posters identify other reasons that they can't block notifications for unknown numbers. What is clear is that this is an area in which social norms have not been established and, therefore, posters have much different ideas about what is acceptable. The responses also demonstrate posters' different perceptions of texts. For many, and I probably fall into this group, different forms of communications have different priorities. Email is generally the least time sensitive and phone calls are the most urgent. Texts fall somewhere in the middle. But for some posters, texts seem to be treated with the same importance as phone calls. This is understandable, I guess, when you realize that for some young folks, the idea of using a phone as a phone is almost incomprehensible. They don't expect audio unless it is accompanied by video. Therefore, while some posters can't imagine a text being sent in a true emergency rather than a phone call, for others this is a perfectly normal expectation. This highlights another factor that eventually came to dominate the thread. Many of these divisions are broken down by age. Those who are comfortable setting intricate settings on their devices slag off those who don't want to or are not capable of delving into all the features of their phones as being "old". So a fair number of age-based epithets were slung back and forth. What is clear is that this is uneven terrain and that individuals should, as one poster put it, "know their audience" in order to avoid giving offense.

Yesterday's two most active threads were ones that I've already discussed so I will start with the third most active thread which was titled, "Are there really men whose dream it is to have their wife not need to work?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that in a podcast episode the female host's husband joined and revealed that it had been his dream that his wife would not have to work but could if that were her choice. The original poster is very impressed by this attitude and asks where she can find a man like this one. Those responding take different approaches to this topic. Some posters take the original poster's question at face value and provide advice about how she can find this sort of guy. Others discuss the desirability, or lack thereof, of becoming a stay-at-home wife. With regard to the first, posters generally emphasize that it is important to find such men when they are young. Guys who are desirable and have the financial wherewithal to support a stay at home wife will either be taken quickly or be players who are not interested in commitment. One poster claims that the best place to meet them is graduate school. While at its heart this thread is a really a discussion of stay-at-home-moms versus work-out-of-the-house-moms, the thread has a much different flavor than most of this genre. The thread has a higher level of discourse than would normally be expected of the topic. Many of the responses are by posters recounting their own personal experiences. A significant number of those posters describe being heavily influenced by their own parents' situations. A factor of importance to the original poster that was overlooked in many responses was that the relationship she admires provides the woman the choice to work. Several of those responding agreed that this was key to such relationships. Some posters expressed concern about relationships in which a husband opposed his wife getting a job, considering it his duty to provide for his family. Posters warned that such men often enjoyed the power and control this provides them. Similarly, several posters expressed concerns that a woman who does not work can be left in difficult circumstances in the case of divorce or if her husband is unable to work due to health or accident. But posters frequently saw many benefits to having a stay at home parent which, several posters mentioned, could be a father as well as a mother. Several described this arrangement making their lives considerably easier and much less stressful. One poster argued that interdependence in which each spouse is dependent on the other leads to stronger relationships than independence of each spouse. He didn't view his stay-at-home wife as being dependent upon him anymore than he is dependent on her. But some others weren't necessarily buying this with one arguing that his wife would be homeless without his income.

Seven of yesterday's top 10 threads, including the top three were ones that I've already discussed and will skip today. That means that I will start with the fourth most active thread yesterday which was titled, "Off the waitlist at Duke - unsure what to do" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster says that her son who had previously committed to attend the University of Pennsylvania was just accepted off the waitlist by Duke University. She says that he will study math and statistics and asks if anyone has experience with the two schools. The number one thing that those responding emphasize is that the schools have very different atmospheres. The campuses and surrounding areas are very different from one another and, as a result, it is important to determine which is more appealing to her son. Many posters stress the importance of finding the right fit. In terms of academics, posters didn't  think that there was much to distinguish one school from the other. A poster who has a child at each school agreed that there is not much difference. Another poster similarly argued that little separates the two schools academically, but that same was true of most of the top 20 schools. As such, everything kept coming back to whether the original poster's son would prefer a large campus to a compact one,  an urban location to an isolated one, or a northern climate to a southern one. One problem with threads such as this in the college forum is that so many posters respond who might not have firsthand experience with either school, let alone both. Their responses tend to reflect their personal biases and priorities. For instance, many posters suggest Duke between the two universities simply because they prefer warm weather. Others are angry about Penn because of the recent demonstrations against Israel's war in Gaza. Several posters appear to base their judgement entirely on their opinion for or against the Ivy League. Over the years DCUM has managed to attract a large collection of strange posters. If nothing else, running this site has taught me that there is no limit to idiosyncrasies. One example was represented in this thread by a poster who wrote, "Duke. Many people confuse Penn with Penn State." This probably would not be notable, but therex is a poster who posts this in almost every thread dealing with Penn (I can't confirm that is this poster, but it is probable). To make things worse, multiple posters thought this was a legitimate point. I loved the response though, "Many confuse Duke with dukes of hazard." There is also always a poster who shows up to comment on the physical appearance of female students and has a strong personal preference for southern women. In this thread, such a poster, probably the same one as always, opined, "Duke has prettier women by some margin". Several posters claimed that despite the differences in atmosphere, Penn and Duke attract very similar students and more than one poster said that they knew of multiple couples made up of alumns from each school. So based on the logic of this thread, the original poster's son should go to Penn with the expectation that he will eventually marry a more attractive Duke graduate.

Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "Are Any Fellow Jews Thinking of Changing Their Voting", and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster says that she is a lifelong Democrat but that she is very angry about the college protests and is considering not voting for Democrats and possibly even voting for former President and current cult leader Donald Trump. While the original poster perceives significant and obvious anti-Semitism among the protesters, she is dismayed that many liberal groups that she has supported don't seem supportive of her at this time and she is upset by non-Jews who deny the anti-Semitism that she observes. This thread is sort of ironic in view of the thread I discussed yesterday that suggested that Biden is intentionally trying to lose the election by alienating young, Arab, and Muslim voters due to his statement that appeared to oppose the college protests. Biden is literally being criticized from both sides. Just as I said when reviewing the thread yesterday, this is really a problem of differing perceptions that is probably going to be impossible to resolve. The history of anti-Semitism has understandably made many Jews especially sensitive to perceiving anti-Semitism. In addition, there are politically-motivated groups and individuals who have an interest in increasing the perception of anti-Semitism. Moreover, anti-Semitism very much tends to be in the eye of the beholder. There is not even universal agreement on a definition of anti-Semitism. Combine this with the relationship between Israel and Jews and things get even more complicated. I will hasten to add that there have been clear and indisputable incidences of anti-Semitism among protesters, so I am not suggesting that the original poster's observations and unfounded. But, the result is that the original poster and someone like me might witness the exact same event and perceive it entirely differently. Where I might see a group standing against the killing of Palestinian civilians and the destruction of their towns and cities, the original poster can — with equal legitimacy — see a mob threatening Jews. There is enough objective evidence to support either perception. In an ideal world, those holding these differing views might be able to come to some amount of reconciliation through communication and understanding. But today's political environment, and particularly a DCUM discussion thread, doesn't really provide for that opportunity. Instead there is more interest in exploiting these divisions for political gain. As such, those with conservative and Republican tendencies are more than willing to welcome those such as the original poster, never mind the Republicans' own struggles with anti-Semitism. In contrast, Democrats in the thread reacted much as they have to the voters who have threatened not to support Biden because he is too pro-Israel. They warned the original poster against throwing out the baby with the bathwater, saying that Trump would be worse on host of other issues and not necessarily better regarding Israel and anti-Semitism. Trump associates with actual Nazis and personally has made a number of statements that could be considered anti-Semitic. While many believe that he would be more pro-Israel than Biden, Trump seems to have personal animosity for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has strong business and financial ties to Saudi Arabia. Therefore, Trump's support for Israel might not be as ironclad as many believe. Biden, on the other hand, has done almost everything possible to support Israel.

The two most active threads yesterday were ones that I've already discussed and, therefore, will start today with the third most active thread. That thread was titled, "Why pay all of kids' college?" and posted in the "Money and Finances" forum. The original poster says that she does not understand the expectation that the average middle class person should save to pay for 100 percent of their kid's college. She says that everyone she knew growing up had college loans and they were fine. She has decided that she will pay for two years at a public university for her kids and the rest is up to them. Reading the responses, it is clear that posters approach this topic from very personal angles. Those for whom college loan debt was a burden tend to believe very strongly in paying for their children's college. One poster compared this to passing on generational wealth. These posters often stress the significant impact of large debt that forces young people to delay many other aspects of their lives. As one poster put it, "If they are saddled with loans, they will never own a home". In contrast, those like the original poster who didn't have personal experience with significant debt see less importance in saving for college and are more likely to expect their children to take out loans. Some posters contend that kids should have "skin in the game", meaning that they be responsible for paying for at least part of their education so that they will value it. Otherwise, these posters suggest, the kids might see college as a four-year long party at their parent's expense. Many posters see attitudes about paying for college as having regional or social class divisions. One suggests that DC-area families are more likely to pay for college than those in her home state of Pennsylvania. Others argue that upper middle class families are more likely than middle class to save for college, though this may simply be an issue of means. Some posters think that unless saving for college would cause significant financial problems, it is selfish not to save for your kids' college. A number of posters point out that young people just starting college often are naive and uninformed about the ramifications of debt. They don't have a proper understanding of how much a burden paying off loans can be or they wrongly believe that loans are easily forgiven. Therefore, many posters feel they have an obligation to pay for college to prevent these kids from making mistakes. There was quite a bit of discussion of the Public Service Loan forgiveness (PSLF) program that forgives loans of those who choose specific professions. However, this forgiveness only occurs after 10 years of making payments. For some posters, struggling with debt for even that long is unreasonable if parents could prevent it. For many, this is a question of priorities. Whereas some posters see giving a debt-free education to their children as way to give them a leg up and a good start to their lives, others have different priorities. As one poster put it, "I want to retire and enjoy what is left of my life. I can afford to retire while I'm young and do the things on my bucket [list]". This poster was specifically discussing paying for graduate school, but the sentiment was representative of some posters' attitudes about paying for college in general.

Yesterday's most active thread was again the college protests thread which, again, had several times the number of posts of the next most active thread. But, since I've already discussed that thread I'll skip it today and move to the next most active thread which was titled, "NYT: ‘Peak College Admissions Insanity’" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster linked to a New York Times article with the same title as the thread. The author of the article, a former official in the US Department of Education, describes a number of developments that led to admissions for the 2023-2024 school year at selective universities becoming a chaotic and unpredictable experience. As the author wrote, "even the gatekeepers seemed not to know what the new rules were." I was about halfway through this article when I decided that it was clearly written for the express purpose of trolling DCUM. The article hit on all of the hot button DCUM college forum topics including the obvious ones such test optional admissions, early decision, and financial aid. But it also hit some of the deep cuts such as when the author name-checked Northeastern University. When he brought up "yield protection", I imagined the forum's yield protection obsessives setting off fireworks in celebration. In many ways, the article is the culmination and distillation of all of the most active college forum topics that I have discussed in this blog. The article emphasizes the impact of early decision applications and how they have changed the admissions calendar. It discusses the importance of colleges making standardized tests optional and the huge growth in the number of applications the top universities receive. The decision by the US Supreme Court prohibiting the use of race in college admissions received only a cursory mention, putting the article somewhat at odds with DCUM's college forum where the topic is heavily discussed. DCUM posters quickly caught on to an error in the author's understanding of when applicants accepted in the early decision round must pull applications from other colleges. However, financial aid decisions this year were delayed due to changes in the FAFSA application that postponed its availability. So for this year, the author may have been correct. In addition, posters pointed out additional factors that the author did not appear to consider. Generally, however, posters agree that the current college admissions process is filled with unknowns and that there appear to be few rules. As one poster summarized things, "High school seniors think this is checkers, but the schools know it’s chess. This has all become frankly terrifying for students, who are first-time players in a game their opponents invented."