Wednesday's Most Active Threads

The four most active threads yesterday were all ones that I've previously discussed. Therefore, I am starting with what was yesterday's fifth most active thread. Titled, "What is the Republicans' whole ‘return to office’ obsession?" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the original poster has composed a lengthy screed on the topic of federal workers returning to the office. The post seems to be heavily influenced by a commentary published by the Federal News Network to which the original poster linked and which singles out Iowa Senator Joni Ernst for efforts to bring an end to work-from-home policies. Working from home and returning to the office have been the topics of several popular threads, and I have discussed a number of them in this blog. I've even written about efforts to force federal employees to return to the office in recent weeks. As such, I've already discussed much of what is in this thread. One thing that does distinguish the original poster's contribution from earlier threads is his presentation of data that shows that working from home has been studied repeatedly and shown to be more efficient than working in an office. The data contradicts many of the claims made by Ernst. For instance, Ernst has claimed that only 6% of federal employees work in person full-time. However, an August 2024 report by the Office of Management and Budget explains that fully 50% of federal employees are not even eligible for telework. Among those who are eligible, 61% of their work hours are conducted on-site. But what this thread demonstrates is that topics such as this are more often influenced by vibes and anecdotal experience rather than data. For instance, one opponent of working from home stated, "Republicans are pro-business, and WFH [work from home] is not efficient and reduces productivity. I don’t care what anyone says." Apparently, there are no amount of studies that would change this poster's opinion. The original poster is curious about Ernst's motivation for championing this issue. That's a good question. One would think that Ernst might have an interest in promoting Iowa as a low-cost-of-living area that could be attractive to federal employees working remotely. Instead, she appears to be more aligned with First Lady Elon Musk and failed businessman Vivek Ramaswamy in their efforts to use return-to-office policies to encourage federal workers to quit and, thereby, reduce the size of the federal workforce. This is probably the least efficient means of achieving efficiency imaginable. Part of the problem is that the question of where and when federal employees work does not exist in a vacuum. Republicans have devoted years to demonizing federal workers, and such attacks have been internalized into their ideology. Accusing them of abusing work-from-home policies is just one more example. In many cases, there is hope that the jobs can be privatized, perhaps to the benefit of Republican donors. Even someone like District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, normally a strong proponent of the federal workforce, is supporting a return to office because she is worried about the impact of missing federal employees on DC's downtown businesses. This issue goes well beyond simple efficiency and accountability.

The next most active thread was another one that I've already discussed. So I'll move on to yesterday's 7th most active thread. Posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum, the thread was titled, "Any Emory ED1ers?". As I explained earlier this week, we are now in the college admissions season. Specifically, applicants who applied for the early decision round of admissions are hearing their results. Some colleges have two rounds of early decision applications, often referred to as "ED1" and "ED2". The original poster wants to know how anyone who participated in Emory University's first round of early decision admissions feels about the result. On the face of it, this post doesn't make much sense. The entire point of early decision admissions is to give applicants a better chance to be accepted by their preferred school. Anyone who was accepted should be thrilled. Anyone who wasn't would be disappointed. At any rate, I think every single poster who responded ignored the question. Instead, those responding simply treated the thread like a normal early decision results thread and just revealed whether their kids had been accepted or not. Almost immediately, the discussion got hijacked into a debate between Emory and Vanderbilt University. Posters were in strong disagreement about which of the two schools was more selective. As is typical in all DCUM college threads, someone brought up yield protection — drink — even though yield protection is not a factor in early decision admissions. I would say that this discussion got surprisingly heated, though it is never really a surprise when DCUM threads get heated. There are several posts in this thread that demonstrate a trend that seems becoming more common. That is accusations by posters that others who post data that is wrong — or with which they simply disagree — are lying. As a result, there is post after post saying things like, "Why are you lying?" and "You're lying again". Folks, sometimes people are just mistaken or whatever they are saying is open to interpretation. In this case, it appears that Emory is inconsistent in how it reports acceptance numbers. As a result, posters can legitimately believe different numbers. So maybe slow down with the accusations of lying. There are few things more ridiculous than full-grown adults getting bent out of shape about which university has the better acceptance rate. Hats off, though, to the posters who repeatedly tried to get the thread back on track and who were primarily interested in congratulating those who were accepted.

Next was a thread titled, "if you're a ‘no divorce expect with abuse / cheating’ person - what would you do in this situation" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster and her husband have two children who are 3 and 5 years of age. Her husband has several mental health issues, some of which have been diagnosed and some of which are suspected by his therapist but not officially diagnosed. One outcome of the original poster's husband's issues is that he cannot be depended upon to do anything. He will only take responsibility around the house or with the children on his own terms. He cannot be depended upon, for instance, to make dinner every Saturday night. He has several other habits that upset the original poster as well. While he goes to therapy, his participation is half-hearted and the original poster suggests there is little hope of him changing. Therefore, she has three options: pick up all of the household labor and childcare responsibilities herself, continue her wasted efforts to get her husband to change, or divorce. She is very concerned about the likely negative impact of divorce on her children. Most importantly, she is concerned that if her husband received partial custody, he would neglect the kids since he is so unwilling to do anything for them. Apparently being familiar with the DCUM relationship forum where advice to divorce is normally the solution for everything, the original poster only wants to hear from those who have a relatively high bar for divorce. The most common advice offered to the original poster is to hire people to assist her. However, the original poster says that she already does that and has basically reached the limit of what she can outsource. Multiple posters report being in similar situations and suggest that the best of the bad options available to her is to stay married and accept that she will essentially have to do everything. They suggest ways to make that situation more tolerable. Their main argument, put very succinctly by one poster, is that "Being a married single mom is far easier than being divorced". Even one poster who had been in this situation and divorced warned against divorcing. They do suggest, however, that she consider divorcing when the children are older. Several posters suggest that the original poster "build her own life" separate from her husband. They advise outsourcing as much as possible, taking time for herself and spending time with friends, and having her own activities and hobbies. They say that this can make life with her husband bearable and create times when she won't be there for the kids and he will have to take care of them. Some posters worry about the cost of massive outsourcing, but another poster provided a nice rebuttal to those concerns saying, "One household with outsourcing would likely be cheaper than two households with lawyer fees."

The last thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum and titled, "One conservative position I agree with". The original poster linked to a Fox News article saying that Arkansas Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has sent a letter to incoming members of President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump's administration asking that junk food be excluded from the food stamp program. The original poster says that he supports this idea because, "We shouldn’t be buying Coca Cola for welfare recipients." There are two facets to this suggestion. One that is promoted by Huckabee Sanders is that junk foods are unhealthy and that the food stamp program should be encouraging more nutritional eating habits. The other, and the one that most of those responding seem to address, is cost. They consider buying junk food to be a waste of money. Picking up on the original poster's argument against buying Coca-Cola, one poster says that store-brand cola should be good enough for those using food stamps. I am not sure if that poster is aware, but store-brand cola is still junk food, even if it costs less. A number of those responding, and me too for that matter, could get onboard with promoting healthier eating by food stamp recipients. However, this is a more complicated issue than simply prohibiting junk food from being purchased. Healthy food costs more and is less available. Poor people, already likely to be trapped in food deserts, often have few options. Simply not allowing them to buy junk food will not by itself lead to them purchasing healthy foods. They will still need access to healthy foods and be able to afford them with their food stamp benefits. The cost-cutters should be aware that actually restricting food stamps to healthy food would either result in more hunger or require increased funding. Moreover, Huckabee Sanders' position is somewhat hypocritical. As many posters point out, the government subsidizes corn, which is used to produce high-fructose corn syrup. Sugar is also subsidized. Simply cutting those subsidies would either raise the cost or reduce the supply of sugary foods. It would save more money and have a wider benefit than implementing food stamp restrictions. Moreover, as a poster points out, 18.6% of Arkansas' population struggles with food insecurity, the second-highest rate in the nation. Cutting off junk food is not going to help feed those folks. It was not that long ago that then New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to ban "Big Gulp" drinks. Republicans had a field day accusing him of running a nanny state and demanded their freedom to drink a gallon of soda if they wanted to. The effort was eventually ruled unconstitutional. It is therefore ironic that the same crowd who once claimed that you would have to pry their Big Gulps from their cold, dead hands now want to prevent poor people from having even 12 ounces of soda. Times change, but the urge to score political points on the backs of the poor does not.