Tuesday's Most Active Threads

Yesterday's most active threads returned to a more familiar situation in which several were threads that I've already discussed and will skip today. That included the most active thread of the day, which was about the school shooting in Wisconsin. The next most active thread was titled, "GA & MLS NEXT Form Strategic Alliance" and posted in the "Soccer" forum. This thread was a bit of a challenge for me to decode due to the alphabet soup employed throughout the thread to identify various soccer-related entities. For those, like me, who do not speak "soccerese", I can translate the thread's title thusly: "Girls Academy and Major League Soccer NEXT Form Strategic Alliance". "Girls Academy" is a girls’ soccer league consisting of a nationwide network of girls’ travel soccer teams. "MLS NEXT" is a boys’ league that is associated with Major League Soccer that, if I understand correctly, is aimed at developing talent for the professional league. Based on my very rudimentary research into these two leagues, this does not appear to be the first time the two groups have announced an alliance. As such, many of the first responses were that this is not a big deal and is nothing new. You really have to have pretty arcane youth soccer knowledge — something that I lack —  to understand this thread. But what I think is behind the interest in the thread is the potential impact of this alliance on another soccer league. That league, Elite Clubs National League or ECNL, is currently the home of many Girls Academy clubs. Many of these same clubs apparently have MLS NEXT boys’ teams. As such, they may be caught between ECNL and MLS NEXT. There may also be clubs in the opposite situation who have Girls Academy teams and ECNL boys’ teams. The concern seems to be that ECNL may suffer as clubs switch to MLS NEXT. While many posters believe that this is a realistic concern, other posters scoff at the idea. One argument that I thought made sense — though, again, I really know nothing about this topic — is that Girls Academy and ECNL are focused on a development path that leads to college soccer teams, while MLS NEXT aims to develop professional talent. Right now, women's professional soccer is not all that attractive — at least according to some posters in this thread — and the emphasis on college is more appealing to girls. A thread about ECNL's plans to change the age cut-off for which teams players should join has been among the most active threads for months. That issue also comes up in this thread with some posters arguing that Girls Academy will not adopt the same changes and, therefore, will be more compatible with MLS Next. Or, maybe the opposite is true. I was repeatedly confused by the discussion in this thread, so I could very easily have things backwards. The bottom line appears to be that, in many cases, this announcement will change nothing. But, in other cases, clubs may have to make a tough decision, and there are strong arguments in favor of multiple choices for that decision.

The next two threads were ones that I've already discussed. After those was a thread posted in the "Jobs and Careers" forum titled, "Saw the Trump comment re: telework and dismissal, any words of sane advice". The original poster is a federal employee who has worked remotely since before the COVID pandemic and currently lives a long distance from the DC area. She is concerned after seeing remarks by President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump regarding the future of remote work. Trump was speaking in regard to an agreement made between the Social Security Administration and its union that would allow employees to continue teleworking. Trump said that he would challenge the agreement in court and that "If people don't come back to work, come back into the office, they're going to be dismissed." The original poster has no union protection and cannot reasonably be expected to move back to the DC area, something that would require uprooting her entire family. She asks for advice about what she can do other than look for a job in the private sector. This topic has repeatedly come up in the forums and I have discussed multiple threads that were among the most active. Fundamentally, Trump and the officials most involved in promoting a return to the office — First Lady Elon Musk and failed businessman Vivek Ramaswamy — don't understand the issue. Musk, for instance, has said that "almost no one" in the federal government works full-time in the office. In fact, over half of federal employees are not eligible for remote work. Of the rest, the majority of their time is actually spent in the office. Only ten percent are fully remote. I should also note that terms such as "telework", "remote work", and "work from home" have very specific meanings in the federal government and are not all the same thing. Frankly, I don't know the technicalities of the differences, but I am sure that Trump, Musk, and Ramaswamy don't either. Therefore, I'll treat them all the same for purposes of this discussion. Compounding things is the fact that Musk and Ramaswamy have explicitly welcomed federal employees leaving their positions rather than returning to the office. They see this as a means of reducing the federal workforce. These threads are always popular with anti-federal worker posters whose knowledge of the federal workplace seems limited to second-hand anecdotes about lazy employees. The main benefit of such posters is that they reveal the fairly warped thinking that is probably representative of Musk, Ramaswamy, and Trump. One poster, for instance, proposed that federal workers address the current shortage of office space by adopting "swing shifts" in which office workers work shifts from 4:00 p.m. to midnight and midnight to 8:00 a.m. For their part, current federal employees posting in the thread highlight the myriad ways that the federal bureaucracy is likely to stymie Trump's plans. As alluded to above, many agencies have downsized office space and can't physically house their staff. In other cases, union protections will likely tie things up in court. Management is likely to drag its feet whenever possible. But, ultimately, a significant number of posters are, like the original poster, very worried about the future.

Next was a thread titled, "I’m 34 and I have to ask permission for my SO to stay the night…." and posted in the "Family Relationships" forum. The original poster explains that her extended family, consisting of about 20 people, annually rents a beach house for the holidays. They rotate who pays for the house, and this year it is an aunt. The family has a rule prohibiting unmarried couples from sharing a bed. The original poster, who is 34, has a long-term boyfriend and respects that rule. However, out of courtesy, the original poster asked her aunt if her significant other could come for one night (staying in the house, but not in the same bed). The aunt said that the original poster should ask the aunt's husband. The original poster is offended by this and believes that she is being treated like a child. While the original poster did ask her uncle, and apparently permission was granted, she is still upset and asks whether her aunt was being weird about this. So many of the family relationship forum threads have been trolls lately that I routinely check such threads when they are among the most active. The first thing I noticed in this case is that the original poster, just a week ago, started a thread claiming to have a girlfriend in what was a fairly new relationship. In this thread, the poster has a boyfriend in a long-term relationship. It could be argued, and I am sure someone will argue it, that the poster is simply changing genders and other details in order to protect his/her privacy. Perhaps so. Alternatively, it could be argued that the poster is trolling. The second explanation makes a little more sense given that the original poster also sock puppeted extensively throughout the thread. In most cases, the original poster adopted a the persona of a person supportive of the original poster. Generally, those alternative personas reassured the original poster that her family was strange and that the requirement to ask permission was demeaning. The alternative personas also defended the original poster from criticism by other posters. As for those posters who took the thread at face value and responded accordingly, they generally thought that whether or not the requirement to ask permission was reasonable, the fact that their aunt was paying for the house justified the rule. Many posters thought that if the original poster didn't want to comply, she should either not go or stay in a hotel. While the original poster did eventually say that she would go for only a couple of days instead of the planned week — and would not have her significant other come at all — she normally had a reason for rejecting any advice that was offered. Just about the only responses to which she was receptive were those that supported her contention that her aunt and uncle were wrong and shouldn't have required her to ask permission. Regardless, due to the sock puppeting, I locked this thread.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum and titled, "We had our second burglary attempt within the past three weeks, and it changed our minds about gun ownership". The original poster describes two events in which a motion sensor near her garage went off. In the first case, the sensor appears to have been triggered by unknown men who had parked a pickup truck in front of her house and followed a path that led to her garage. When the sensor went off, they returned to their truck and drove away. The second time, the original poster does not report seeing anyone. But after the motion sensor alerted, she sprinted to her attic and hid there for 25 minutes until the police arrived. That experience left her feeling helpless and now she would like to purchase a handgun to provide protection. The original poster is met with a wave of skepticism. Many posters dispute the claim in her title that there had been attempted burglaries. As they pointed out, no attempts to break into the house had occurred. Almost all posters considered the original poster too high-strung to safely own a gun. Anti-gun posters and those who are very familiar with guns both warned the original poster that she was in no condition to currently own a weapon. There were concerns that the original poster would most likely end up shooting a family member or an innocent stranger. They also warned that she could very likely have the gun taken away from her. Several posters suggested that better alternatives were a dog, an upgraded security system, or a security fence. The original poster doesn't want a dog and is already planning for a fence and upgraded security system. Posters suggested that if the original poster were determined to get a gun, she should undergo extensive training. This should all be done before purchasing a gun and could be conducted using a rented weapon. Many posters who were very proficient in the use of firearms suggested that despite their competence with guns, they would not use one for self-defense and would instead rely on other measures. There were even gun owners who advised the original poster that getting a gun was a bad idea. One thing that was discussed was the inverse relationship of gun safety and using a gun for self-defense. Guns should be locked in safes, which means that they take time to access. Posters said that by the time they woke up, got their wits about them, and went to the safe to retrieve and load their gun, the police would have had time to arrive. Conversely, other posters suggested having loaded weapons closely at hand. That, of course, creates plenty of opportunities for accidents or misuse. I think gun-owning posters may have been successful in convincing the original poster to give up the gun idea because she seems to have stopped posting after questioning one of the gun experts about how that poster would defend herself without a gun.