The Most Active Threads Since My Last Post

After taking a week off, I was not sure how to get back to blogging today. One option was to just ignore the last week and start with a discussion of the most active threads over the weekend. The other choice was to look at the most active threads during the entire time I was off. For better or worse, I have chosen the second option. The most active thread during that time was the one that I have already discussed about the murder of the UnitedHealthCare CEO. After that was a thread titled, "Why is Blake Lively so overrated?" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. Let me preface this discussion by admitting that I am probably the least qualified person imaginable to discuss this topic. Frankly, I have no idea who Blake Lively is and could not pick her out of a police lineup if my life depended upon it. I understand that she is an actress, but I am not aware of any role that she has played. I may very well have seen her in a movie or show, but if so, I don't remember it. In fact, were it not for this thread, I am not sure that I could correctly identify her gender given that "Blake" can be a male name. What I can say is that this thread was started in September of 2018 by a poster who believed that Lively has "a weird looking face" and is a bad actress. After three pages, the thread died and sank into obscurity until it was revived just over two years later by a poster who claimed that Lively's biggest accomplishments were getting married and having children. After five posts, the thread returned to obscurity. Then, two months later, it was resuscitated by a poster complaining that Lively's "eyes are small". The thread then returned to hibernation for over a year, being awakened in March 2022 and then taking another year and change off. It was not heard from again until May 2023, at which time it received only a few posts. It was then zombied in August 2024. When the thread was revived in August, it was 8 pages long. Today, it is 95 pages. I understand that most of the new interest is the result of a lawsuit that Lively filed against Justin Baldoni, accusing him of sexual harassment. However, that lawsuit was not mentioned until page 28, so there were 20 pages of fairly recent discussion even before that occurred. Threads like this that are nearly 100 pages in length present a particular challenge to me. I wouldn't read a thread of this length even if the topic interested me, and this topic doesn't. As a result, if there were a lot of complaints about it, I would probably just lock it rather than devote the effort necessary to moderate it. But, as it happens, there have not been a lot of complaints about this thread. Instead, there was a thread started in the Website Feedback forum suggesting that the entire thread consisted of nothing but "PR bot vs PR bot spam". Apparently, "bot" is used in a rather unorthodox sense to refer to people rather than automated posts. At any rate, I noticed one anti-Lively poster who posted 27 times, another poster who posted 26 times, and a pro-Lively poster who posted a whopping 87 times. I suspect that these are actual humans with too much time on their hands rather than paid public relations professionals. I must admit, however, that the suggestion that Hollywood public relations firms would find DCUM discussions worth influencing is rather flattering, if somewhat unrealistic.

The next two most active threads during my time off were ones that I had previously discussed. After those was a thread posted in the "Political Discussion" forum and titled, "Biden commutes all but 3 federal death sentences". As is clear from the title, this thread was created after President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 men on federal death row. This was all but three of those sentenced to die on federal charges. Announcing his action, Biden explicitly said that he was acting to prevent President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump from putting the men to death. The three exceptions that Biden made were for Robert Bowers who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue, Dylann Roof who killed 9 members of a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who carried out the Boston Marathon bombing. This is a 26-page thread that seems to have ended three days ago. While it was active, posters mostly responded according to their preexisting feelings about the death penalty. Posters who support the death penalty were upset by Biden's action, which they consider another indication that Democrats are soft on crime. Posters who oppose the death penalty praised the commutations, though some were bothered that he made the three exceptions. To be clear, the men still face life in prison without the possibility of parole. As posters in the thread point out, the government is far from perfect and it cannot be certain that all of those sentenced to death are truly guilty. There have been plenty of individuals executed who were later found to have been innocent. It is somewhat ironic that those who call for limited government and sometimes even dispute its right to levy taxes are willing to allow that same government to take lives. This is especially true when they proclaim themselves to be "pro-life". Biden has dug himself a big hole with his clemency actions. During his administration, he had been extremely stingy about using those powers. Then, going against his announced intention, he pardoned his son, Hunter. There was no way for Biden to avoid accusations that he had given his son special treatment. Perhaps to demonstrate otherwise, Biden then offered across-the-board clemency to convicts who had been sentenced to home confinement during the COVID pandemic. This included some rather unsavory characters, provoking criticism of Biden's action and suggesting that he might have wanted to be more selective. In this case, Biden seems to have been selective, making the three exceptions. For many, that was the wrong move here. Either the death penalty is morally repugnant or it isn't. This shouldn't be a case-by-case determination. It is a bit off-topic, but the early Biden administration was a finely tuned machine, passing historic legislation and rescuing our economy from the combined effects of the pandemic and Trump's policies. But in more recent years, the administration has stumbled from one self-inflicted wound to the next. In Gaza, the administration has funded and supported a full-fledged genocide, all the while making ineffectual calls for a ceasefire that still has not occurred. Biden established "red lines" around cities that now lie in smoldering ruins. The bungling clemency actions suggest that the short-term, inept, strategizing seems to affect more than just foreign policy. We seem to be led at the moment by a group of professional foot-shooters.

Next was a thread titled, "What happened to W&M, Brandeis, Tulane, Pepperdine and others..from historically T50 to outside looking in?" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster says that the schools listed in the title were perennially ranked among the top 50 colleges and now have dropped below that level. The original poster admits to not having been paying attention to this recently and wants to know the reasons for their drop in rankings. Posters assume that the original poster is using US News & World Report rankings to arrive at her conclusion and they explain that the publication changed the metrics that it uses for rankings. As a result, some universities reached levels significantly above those they had in the past, while others dropped. The changes made to the US News criteria have been the subject of many threads, some of which I have discussed in this blog. Greater emphasis was given to outcomes in terms of employment and the social mobility of students. Since this is a 26-page thread, I can't summarize it all. But, as I mentioned, I've dealt with this topic several times in the past. Fundamental to the discussion is the fact that all rankings are contrived. As one poster says, "The rankings aren’t real. Never have been. There was no magical point in history where the rankings reflected the ‘truth’." There are no agreed-upon criteria for ranking colleges because there is no agreed role that colleges should perform. For many, the goal of a college education should be good employment and high salaries. I have often criticized this approach as viewing universities as little more than vocational schools on steroids. For others, education is an end in itself. Universities should impart knowledge and produce well-rounded students. These two views are inherently in conflict. One poster linked to an article about the US News ranking changes in which an expert was quoted as saying that one problem with the rankings is that that they try to "sell colleges as products, defined either by prestige or employment returns, rather than as intellectually fortifying experiences." But what metrics can be used to evaluate an "intellectually fortifying experience"? Many posters prefer data-driven results that can be produced by looking at acceptance rates, average test scores, graduation rates, etc. These metrics also have limitations. Acceptance rates demonstrate interest in the college and are a measure of prestige, but don't really say anything about the academic excellence of the school. The advent of test-optional admissions has made average test scores less meaningful. The result is that posters have a tendency to pick and choose which metrics appeal to them and, therefore, come to their own conclusions about a college's ranking. For their own purposes, this is probably a good outcome, but when they try to convince others to accept their own rankings, it can be problematic. In the case of this thread, it was sidetracked by a debate between fans of the University of Virginia and supporters of the College of William & Mary. Using different metrics, both groups were able to present strong arguments in favor of their preferred institution.

The final thread that I will discuss today was another one posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "WSJ Report: Biden out of it from day one", the original poster asks others what they think about a Wall Street Journal article reporting that officials in President Joe Biden's administration had been hiding his mental decline from the very beginning of his term. This thread reached 32 pages before I locked it. I have not read the entire thread, but have read quite a few posts in it. For many posters, the Journal article provided confirmation for what they have always believed. Republicans had long made Biden's mental state central to their criticisms of him. This issue came to a head at the presidential debate between Biden and President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. Biden's mental ability appeared so limited that he was forced to withdraw from the presidential race. But other posters are not so eager to accept the Journal's version of reality. Posters pointed out that the Rupert Murdoch-owned Journal was politically predisposed to attack Biden and that the story had appeared at a time when Trump had just sabotaged a bipartisan deal on a continuing resolution, potentially triggering a government shutdown. As such, these posters argued that the article was an attempt to divert attention from the Trump-inflicted problems on Capitol Hill. Other posters compared Biden to former President Ronald Reagan, who suffered from significant mental decline during his second term. This sort of "whataboutism" is not particularly helpful. Presumably, the posters making such comparisons were not thrilled that Reagan was not mentally astute at the time he was president. Therefore, they shouldn't be happy about Biden being in a similar situation. As threads in the political forum tend to do, this thread quickly devolved into disputes of a host of often unrelated topics. I've only read parts of the Wall Street Journal article, but as I understand it, the story says that all U.S. Presidents have surrounded themselves with a close group of aids and built walls between themselves and the outside. This is understandable in that the demands on a president are almost unlimited. A president's job involves considerable delegating. The issue is less that the president has gatekeepers and more about who is controlling the gatekeepers. Are they working for the president or are they working in place of the president? The Journal argues more toward the latter situation. One poster argued that he didn't care about Biden's mental state as long as those working for him were doing a good job. Such an administration would be far better than one led by Trump (whose mental state is often subject to criticism). I agree with this to an extent, but there is a serious problem if the President has hired people who are not performing adequately and he is incapable of realizing it. I think there were noticeable differences between the Ron Klain-led first half of Biden's term and the Jeff Zients-led second two years. In my opinion, the Zients years were significantly worse. How much of this is attributable to Zients and how much to Biden and his mental state is debatable, but in my mind, the failures during this period were fundamental to the current sorry state of Democratic fortunes.