Tuesday's Most Active Thread

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 next two threads were ones that I've already discussed. Those where the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce thread and Connecticut Avenue Bike lanes thread. The most active thread after those was posted in the "VA Public Schools other than FCPS" forum. Titled, "AEM post/discussion re racism and choice schools", the original poster is referring to the Arlington Education Matters Facebook group. Apparently there was a post by a teacher accusing Arlington parents of being unethical for choosing schools in order to avoid poverty and diversity. The original poster appears to reject that suggestion and implies that she didn't feel comfortable speaking up in that forum. This thread was started last Friday and is currently 21 pages. The thread received significant interest yesterday, adding six new pages. The argument being made here is very familiar to me because it has been a near constant topic of discussion in the DC schools forum. In fact, the eagerness of posters to attend a handful of mostly wealthy, mostly White DC public schools provoked a Brooking report accusing DCUM of contributing to racial segregation in DC. The issue is that parents commonly want their kids to attend the "best" schools. I put "best" in quotations because best is generally subjective. One common measure of school quality is test scores which tend to align with socio-economic status. In DC, and presumably Arlington as well, socio-economic status correlates — with significant exceptions — with race. Therefore the "best" schools tend to be the wealthiest and the Whitest. Parents will pretty explicitly avoid schools with high Free and Reduced Meal (FARM) students based on the expectation that the schools will be low-performing with a multitude of behavioral problems. Whether those expectations are well-founded is another matter, but this tendency is certainly noticeable. Just like in DC, these racial and socio-economic divisions are reinforced in Arlington by neighborhood segregation. Wealthy White parents can claim that they are simply attending their neighborhood school, not intentionally avoiding schools with high FARMs rates. In the case that high-achieving students find themselves in-boundary for a low-performing school, Arlington offers "option" programs that are an alternative to designated neighborhood schools. Use of the option programs tends to leave the neighborhood schools less diverse and poorer than they would have been otherwise. Hence the criticism by those such as the teacher whose post provoked this thread. On the other hand, there are parents who believe that their high-performing children can obtain a satisfactory education in schools that many would consider low-performing. They see a greater good in sending their children to such schools rather than contributing to the segregation of the school system. These parents are often resentful of the their well-off neighbors who choose other options instead. On the other hand, several posters in this thread argue that the option programs are often more diverse than either the wealthy or poor neighborhood schools. For them, being accused of ethnical failures or contributing to segregation is ironic. It is exactly this complexity involving an issue with many sides that causes threads like this to be so active.

Next was a thread titled, "Survey: Eat/snack in your bed?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that her boyfriend finds that it is strange that she eats in bed while watching TV. Therefore the original poster wants to know what others think about this. There is not much that can be said about this thread. Some posters do eat or snack in bed and some never do. Some think that it is normal and some think that it is "gross". A few used to do it and stopped and others never did until recently. Others will only allow eating in bed during illness. Many will only eat in hotel beds. Some posters eat in their beds despite thinking that it is a bad thing to do. One poster was actually eating in bed as she replied to the thread. Some posters don't even have TVs in their room so they couldn't eat and watch TV while in bed if they wanted to, which they don't. Many posters have bedrooms on upper floors and they don't take food upstairs at all. Among the non-eaters there was a common perception that those who eat in bed are overweight and have terrible diets. A number of posters, including the original poster, rejected that notion, saying that they are fit and healthy and have good diets whether in bed or out. They also deny that they are lazy or slobs. I wonder if eating in bed is tied to living circumstances. I haven't really considered eating in bed to be a big enough issue to even be worthy of an opinion. I don't do it now because the effort it takes to prepare food and carry it upstairs greatly exceeds that of simply sitting at the table or on the couch. But when I lived in a studio apartment and my bed was practically my only furniture, eating and watching TV in bed was fairly routine. For her part, the original poster accepted that she must be abnormal and said that her boyfriend enjoyed the thread immensely.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Money and Finances" forum. Titled, "Husband doesn't want to leave our kids much in inheritence", the original poster says that she and her husband are updating their estate documents and have reached a disagreement. While they have investments valued around $14 million, most of which will likely be available after their deaths, her husband wants to limit their children's inheritance to $2 million each, giving the rest to charity. The original poster feels that this is too small of an amount of their wealth to leave and, while it seems like a lot now, may not be worth all that much in 20 or 30 years. Personally, I applaud her husband and, if I didn't need to read more of the thread for this blog post, wouldn't feel a need to read any other opinions. Others, obviously, don't share my opinion. Some posters would like to leave as much as possible to their kids and, hence, take the original poster's side. But probably the most common response was to argue that since half of their wealth should belong to the original poster, she should leave as much of her half to the kids as she wants. Short of that, she is likely to outlive her husband and, therefore, can change their will after he is gone. Other posters argued that if the original poster and her husband pay for their kids college and help them purchase homes, things that they will likely do while they are still alive, they will have given them much more than the $2 million and already have helped them get a good start in life. Many of these posters scoff at the idea that the kids would struggle if left with "only" $2 million each. Other posters are believers in generational wealth. They were taught to manage money inherited from their families and are teaching their own kids to similarly manage it so that it can, in turn, but passed down to their children. There is a significant difference of opinion regarding the most appropriate use of a family's money. Many posters are very attached to the idea of passing it on to their children. This seems like such an obvious thing to do that they can't imagine another choice. Even if they consider leaving some to charity, that would only be a small fraction. Others think that the money could be put to much better use such as helping to cure disease through research or supporting non-profits and charities that solve important problems. They see hoarding the money or keeping it only for their kids as selfish, creating spoiled trust funders. Some argue that their kids need a purpose in life and being able to live frivolously on an inheritance wouldn't provide that. Some posters argue in favor of trusts that could be set up to direct some of the inheritance to grandchildren.