Thursday's Most Active Threads

The most active topic yesterday was sort of a return engagement. While the thread is new, the topic is not. Diligent readers of this blog may remember that last month I discussed a thread about school calendars for the Fairfax County Public Schools. That thread was about 4 proposed calendars that had been offered for public input. A thread titled, "School Calendar 2023-2024" and posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum revisited that topic because the school board was holding a meeting in order to approve one of the proposals. Posters provided live coverage of the board meeting, posting continual updates to what was taking place. Interspersed among the updates was plenty of commentary from posters kibitzing the board activity. Based on what was posted, it appears that the Board approved a modified version of what had been designated the "blue" calendar. This calendar provides for the first day of school two weeks before Labor Day, includes a two-week Winter Break, and a one-week Spring Break. These were all things that DCUM posters seem to have wanted (though, of course, there was not complete agreement on anything). In addition, the calendar provides for a host of Religious and Cultural Observance days. These days mark significant religious and cultural days in a variety of traditions and may be missed by students without earning an absence. Teachers are not supposed to introduce new material on those days so that absent students doen't fall behind. These days were selected based on public input and recorded absences from previous years. In the end, DCUM posters seem relatively pleased with the outcome, though everyone had their own personal nit to pick. The calendar was approved for three years, though the second and third years might be tweaked somewhat.

Speaking of return engagements, the second most active thread yesterday, which was originally posted in the "Off-Topic" forum before I moved it to the "Money and Finances" forum, and titled, "Common things that people spend money on that you would never spend money on?" covers similar ground as a number of recent threads. As such, the responses are very similar to those of earlier threads. Frankly, I am not particularly interested in reading ten pages of people listing things on which they would never spend money. Moreover, as the very first response demonstrates by listing "clothes", not everyone understood the question. I doubt that poster is walking around dressed entirely in hand-me-downs. I guess this is a good thread for bored people, but since I am not bored, I don't really have much to say about it.

The third most active thread may set a record for levels of strangeness. It also may end up getting deleted due to the terms of service of the advertising networks with which we work. Titled, "Would you suggest implants ?", the first strange thing about this thread is that it was posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum rather than the "Beauty and Fashion" forum where such a topic might be expected. The next strange thing is that the original poster addresses her post to those who have bodies "like Kate Moss", by which I assume she means women. However, later the poster indicates that she is really interested in feedback from men, though I am not sure if they are required to have bodies like Kate Moss. The bottom line is that the original poster is attributing her poor experiences dating to her small breasts and seems to believe that enhanced breasts will result in more successful dating. As one responder says, it it seems like her "time would be better spent with a therapist". The original poster mentioned that her cosmetic surgeon advised against implants and several posters find this notable given that the surgeon has a financial incentive to say just the opposite. Since I am not interested in reading 12 pages about breast implants, I just skimmed a few pages. As might be expected, there are posters both in favor and opposed to them. Some posters tell of considering implants, but then rejecting the idea. Others tell of successful surgeries and postive experiences. Other posters relate experiences of their breasts naturally changing in size due to various reasons, suggesting that the original poster might not need implants to eventually have larger breasts.

The final thread at which I'll look is titled, "Robinson dumping AP classes and focusing on IB" and posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum. This thread gets pretty far into the weeds and will only appeal to a very limited number of users. Nevertheless, interest was sufficient for the thread to be included among the most active yesterday. The original poster explains that James W. Robinson Secondary School, which is located in Fairfax, is dropping some of it Advanced Placement (AP) classes in order to concentrate on its International Baccalaureate (IB) program. The original poster is in favor of this decision and doesn't understand why she is seeing so much opposition to it. Several posters point out that AP classes can earn college credit, saving time and money in college. They consider this a big advantage over IB. Several posters consider IB to be a better program overall, but even they tend to say that is is not for every student. Many of those responding coalesce around the idea that FCPS should create IB magnet schools rather than implementing IB in a school such as Robinson. Other posters are disparaging of IB altogether, believing that it does not sufficiently focus on STEM. This entire thread may well be a lot of todo about nothing because, if what one posters says is true, Robinson, which is already IB-focused, is merely dropping one of only four AP classes that it offers. As such, it is not that big of a change and probably not deserving the 8 pages of discussion it has generated.