July

Yesterday's most active threads were again dominated by political topics which filled three of the top four places. The first of those was titled, "Biden’s ‘Big Boy’ press conference" and, obviously, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster started this thread in anticipation of a press conference that would be held yesterday evening by President Joe Biden following the conclusion of the NATO summit held in Washington, DC. Following Biden's poor performance in the presidential debate with former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump, he has been under tremendous pressure to participate in unscripted events that would allow the President to demonstrate his cognitive fitness. This press conference was such an opportunity. For reasons that I cannot begin to understand, the White House itself chose to refer to the event as the "Big Boy Press Conference". As has been the case in all recent Biden public events, this thread immediately started off with conspiracy theories. Posters predicted that Biden would be given the questions in advance, that everything would be rehearsed, and that Biden would be drugged to perform better. These same claims had been made prior to the debate and, obviously, did not turn out to be true. But a track record of being wrong has never stopped these posters. Many posters had very low expectations for Biden, assuming that the debate performance was an accurate indicator of his neurological state. The President did little to convince them otherwise when earlier in the day he introduced Ukrainian President Zelenskyy as "President Putin". Biden started the press conference off strongly with a prepared statement that was obviously read from a teleprompter. But, whatever hopes Biden might have had of changing minds about his fitness were almost immediately shattered when he referred to "Vice President Trump" when he obviously meant Vice President Kamala Harris. Of course posters in the thread immediately jumped on both of these gaffes which almost completely set the tone for the rest of the press conference. It cannot be denied that Biden is no longer a very good communicator. He has a stutter which causes him to speak slowly in order to avoid. His voice is gravely and he has a tendency to stumble over words. But as he showed throughout the rest of the press conference, he has a solid grasp of details of complex topics and can understand and explain the nuances of complicated issues. When it comes to being able to understand and articulate policies, Biden is far more able than Trump. Many posters in the thread recognized this, but others either could not or would not get past the gaffes. These misstatements are unfortunate, but which of us parents has not called our own children by the wrong name on occasion? That doesn't mean that we don't know who our children are or that we are suffering from dementia. But, in Biden's case, it reinforces a concerning perception that he has lost his mental sharpness. Biden's performance was almost the worst cases scenario. Had Biden entered the room unable to remember what day it was and promptly provided a recipe for banana bread in response to a question about his plans for the Middle East, the decision to replace him would have been easy. Alternatively, had he put in an error-free performance that included Obama-level oration skills, he probably would have quelled most of the criticism. However, he did neither. This press conference was neither fish nor fowl. As such, the fight over the Democratic presidential nominee will go on.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "pit bull on a plane" and posted in the "Pets" forum. The original poster says that as she was debarking from a regional airplane, she noticed that a pit bull had been in the seat behind her. This caused her to wonder what would happen if the dog had "snapped" in the confines of a small airplane. She asked for advice about what to do if that happened again in the future. This thread was reported a number of times with the accusation that the original poster is a troll. So, let me commment on that first. I can't say whether the poster is a troll or not. What I can say is that she has been creating a large number of threads, mostly on fairly mundane topics. She was also the author of the thread that I discussed yesterday about hiding a trip from a friend. Whether the poster is a troll or just has a knack for provoking engagement I can't say. While I have not read every post in this thread, I am fairly comfortable saying that it is unlikely that the original poster received any useful advice about what to do about a pit bull that suddenly goes bersek in an airplane. The most common reaction was to ask the original poster why she was concerned about a dog that she hadn't even noticed during the flight. In the original poster's defense, she was asking about what to do on future flights, not the one that she had just completed. The second most common reaction was to argue about put bulls. In the pets forum there are two topics that are guaranteed to launch flame wars. The first is whether pets should be adopted from shelters or purchased from breeders. Posters will fight like cats and dogs over that topic. The second is pit bulls,. There are posters who detest pit bulls, considering them to be unreasonably dangerous. In fact, one of the main arguments against adopting from a shelter is that many of the dogs are at least part pit bull. There was actually a thread in which a poster attempted to document attacks by pit bulls. The thread reached 23 pages before I locked it. I locked it because a pro-pit bull poster kept posting off-topic posts which the anti-pit bull poster would report. There was a constant cycle of anti-put bull post, off-topic post, and then a report to me resulting in my removing the post. This went on long enough that I got tired of it. In the case of this thread, posters on both sides of the pit bull debate showed up. The anti-pit bull position is, of course, that the dogs are dangerous and should be banned. None of these posters would want to be on an airplane with a pit bull and they don't think pit bulls should be allowed on airplanes. They would ask to move or leave the plane if they were seated near one. The pro-pit bull position is that it is not the dogs but the owners who are the problem. In the case of this dog — which most of the pro-pit bull posters don't believe even existed because they consider the original poster to be a troll — the dog was very well behaved and not a threat to anyone. The dog obviously had a good owner. Any behavioral issues with a pit bull are the fault of the owner rather than the breed, these posters say. In any case, they argue, dogs from other breeds also attack people. Personally, I believe that if you are on an airplane and suddenly attacked by a pit bull you should do exactly the same thing that you would do if you were attacked by a poodle or a great dane. I am not sure what that is, but I don't think that air travellers need to learn specific anti-pit bull defense responses.

Unlike the past two days, the most active threads yesterday were not all political topics, though half of them still were. The most active thread, however, was not political at all, unless you include family politics. Titled, "Napping on vacation when you have kids?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum, the original poster is upset about her husband's nap routine. On days off, weekends, and vacations, the original poster's husband expects to have a two-hour nap each day beginning at 4:00 p.m. The original poster is especially frustrated by this with regard to vacations. This forces the family, which includes their two tween/teen children, to return to the hotel each day for nap time, depriving them of two hours a day that could be spent on other activities. Moreover, since the original poster doesn't feel the children are old enough to explore strange cities on their own and the hotel pool does not allow the children to swim without supervision, the original poster doesn't get to enjoy downtime herself during her husband's nap because she has take care of the kids. The original poster thinks that her husband is being unreasonable and wants to know if she is wrong. There is a surprising amount of interest in this topic which produced 21 pages of responses in less than a day. For her part, it seems that the original poster bowed out after the second page, perhaps not wanting to waste vacation time on DCUM. Also surprising was the amount of support shown for the original poster's husband. DCUM, at least as represented by this thread, is apparently very pro-nap. A fairly common type of response was for a poster to explain that they make a bazillion dollars a year and normally work 25 hour days, but on vacation they like to take a nap. In fact, very few posters seem to take issue with the original poster's husband's nap habit. Rather, they provided ideas for the original poster to accomodate it. Many posters thought that the children were old enough to do activities on their own, despite the original poster's reservations in that regard. Even if the kids weren't able to go to the pool or venture out into the city, they could at least read or have screen time while their father napped. Several posters argued that the issue wasn't the two-hour nap, but rather the inflexibility of its timing. Not all activities lend themselves to being back at the hotel at 4, they suggested and they didn't like the idea of being forced to plan around a daily nap at that time every day. Other posters said that they intentionally plan in such a manner so that they can have their daily naps. A number of posters advised the original poster to simply plan their day and go about their activities, allowing her husband to depart for his nap and catch up with the family later. That way, only his day would be interrupted. A considerable number of posters worried that the nap requirement was caused by a medical condition such as sleep apnea. But this idea was scoffed at by posters who consider daily naps to be completely normal.