Thursday's Most Active Threads

Political topics again dominated the list of yesterday's most active threads. The most active thread overall yesterday was titled, "Do MAGA not realize that cancelling DEI will greatly affect women’s careers?", and was posted in the "Jobs and Careers" forum. The original poster linked to a story about Google dropping its diversity hiring program. This move is consistent with cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump's efforts to stop measures promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) within the federal government. The original poster argues that this will have a very negative effect on women's careers and wonders whether Trump supporters don't understand that or if they do understand it and simply want women to return to traditional roles. Many of those responding agree with the original poster that dropping DEI will negatively impact women. A number of those, perhaps most, even contend that ridding the workplace of women — at least in higher positions — is a goal of scrapping DEI. The argument that diversity initiatives have tended to primarily benefit White women has repeatedly come up in DCUM discussions. However, a number of the posters in this thread reject that notion. Some resent being pigeonholed as "DEI" hires and others believe that women have made gains due to their qualifications rather than DEI preferences. Part of the disagreement is due to varying perceptions of what construes "DEI". DEI is a fairly new term. Before it came into vogue, we had affirmative action and even before that various women's rights movements. Many women have come to age without a full understanding of the gains such efforts made. To them, the way things are is the way things have always been. They don't have fears about going back to an earlier era in which women had fewer rights. Moreover, DEI has come to refer to prioritizing racial and ethnic minorities rather than women. Many of the female posters in this thread see their competition as unqualified minorities rather than unqualified White men. Therefore, they welcome an end to DEI, not realizing that before women made the gains they have, qualified women often lost out to lesser-qualified White men. Many of the posters in this thread appear to be putting a lot of faith in the gains that women have made not being reversed. There is considerable evidence that their faith may be misplaced. Even when women are promoted within the current administration, it seems to require a combination of Barbie doll looks and a willingness to pose with a machine gun (and maybe even shoot your own dog). Anyone who thinks we've suddenly become a society that promotes purely on merit needs to have their head examined.

Yesterday's next most active thread was the Blake Lively thread that I've already discussed twice. After that was a thread posted in the "Jobs and Careers" forum and titled, "The Fork got fork’d". As I mentioned in yesterday's blog post, the offer that Shadow President Elon Musk made to federal employees to encourage them to resign has come to be referred to as "Fork" due to the webpage describing the offer being titled "Fork in the Road". Yesterday, a federal judge stopped the Fork program hours before the deadline for turning in resignations. U.S. District Judge George O’Toole wrote, "I enjoin the defendants from taking action to implement the so-called fork directive, pending the completion of briefing and oral argument on the issues". Consistent with the administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump's constant flouting of the law, administration officials promptly ignored the restriction on implementation and simply claimed that the deadline to resign had been extended. The administration has continued to collect and process resignations despite the Judge's order. I am not sure why the plaintiffs have not gone back to court and argued that the government is in contempt. Perhaps they expect to have the entire program killed and, therefore, it doesn't matter if additional resignations are collected. This thread starts out with a bit of confusion as some posters seem to be under the impression that the judge had tossed the Fork directive out completely. As noted, the judge simply enjoined until a hearing on Monday. Opponents of Fork hope that stronger action halting the program will be taken following that hearing. The arguments in this thread are similar to those that I've discussed in earlier blog posts. Many believe that Fork is legally dubious, creating the possibility that it cannot lawfully be carried out. Others note language in the offer that leaves those accepting it few rights if implementation doesn't meet expectations. Posters who are willing to believe Musk argue that Fork is a generous offer and are frustrated that legal intervention is preventing it from being implemented. But generally, posters are much less naive than that. Some don't put it past the administration to have orchestrated this entire effort simply to cheat those resigning out of their promised salaries. One other development reported in the thread is that several posters described a ramp-up of efforts by the DOGE team to pressure them into resigning. This included moving return-to-office deadlines up so that employees will have to return sooner and threats of layoffs if not enough employees resign.

The next three threads were ones that I've discussed in earlier blog posts and will skip today. After those was a thread titled, "If you’re an Independent" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster asks those who are independent how they are feeling about recent political changes. This discussion probably requires a few stipulations. First, DCUM posters have no ability to observe posting discipline. As I have said for years, a thread asking for advice about cats will undoubtedly attract posts from dog owners who know nothing about cats. As such, few of those responding in this thread are actually independents. Second, studies have shown that while many describe themselves as "independents", they actually tend to consistently vote for one party and, more often than not, that is the Republican party. Therefore, it is not surprising that a significant number of those responding are quite happy with the way things are going. On the other hand, a number of those responding say that they feel that they are currently without a voice. Some posters are actually disappointed in the way things are going, mostly because they see the negative impact on friends and family. Many years ago when I was a political science student, I was taught that independents, despite how they often portray themselves, are generally less informed than voters who are committed to a political party. The explanation for this is that the differences between parties are so stark that anyone having any awareness of where the parties stood could easily choose the one that best matched their values. Independents tended to be those who were clueless about the parties' policies. While I think this argument continues to have some validity today, I think there is a significant change. In my experience, one of the largest groups of independents today are former Democrats who were alienated by pro-transgender and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies promoted by Democrats. They believed that pro-trans policies, in particular, were negatively affecting them while the policies of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump would negatively impact others. They don't agree with those policies, but they didn't think they would be affected by them. Now, they realize that Trump is worse than they expected and that there may be some negative effects for them. However, rather than assume some responsibility, they argue even stronger that Democrats are to blame. It is Democrats, they claim, that forced them to either support Trump or avoid supporting Democrats. The world might be burning down, but at least they don't have to worry about trans girls playing on girls' soccer teams. At any rate, the argument about exactly just how terrible Democrats have been takes up the bulk of this thread.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Titled, "ED is the name of the game", the original poster argues that Early Decision college admissions is the best choice for applicants with high stats. The poster further says that Early Action and Regular Admissions are "crapshoots". Frankly, based on my reading of the forum, every type of college admissions other than recruited athletes is a crapshoot. Nevertheless, Early Decision, or ED, does have its particular characteristics. To refresh, Early Decision applicants are submitted, as the name implies, early. Applicants can only apply to one university, and not every university offers ED. ED applications should be targeted at a student's preferred school, and applicants commit to attend if accepted. A benefit of ED to schools is that it solves the so-called "yield control" problem because they can expect almost all of those they accept to attend the school. For students, the benefits are that they are competing with a smaller pool of applicants and they don't have to be worried about being rejected due to yield control concerns. Also, they don't have to be concerned that the school has not already accepted a number of students from their same high school or region, something that might result in a rejection during later rounds. ED applicants, in effect, are applying before all the slots have been taken. There are, however, a number of downsides for students. For one thing, the application deadlines are so early that students might change their mind about their favorite school later in the school year. Also, due to the required commitment, applicants don't have the opportunity to compare merit aid offers. As such, ED is often considered an application period for wealthy applicants. Some posters are suspicious that universities purposely select full-pay applicants during ED in order to avoid having to provide aid. As many posters in this thread point out, there is no one answer for the best college application strategy. Certainly, for some applicants, ED is the best choice. For others, EA might provide more options. For most applicants, however, regular admissions is certainly adequate. The number of factors involved is such that this topic is very popular with DCUM Fantasy College Admissions League participants who love nothing more than to game out various variables and possibilities. In addition to the imaginary scenarios described, the thread also contains plenty of real-life examples of ED experiences, both positive and negative.