Monday Open Thread [6.3.13]
Let’s get the important stuff out of the way — the Holy Trinity Greek Festival starts tomorrow at 11AM. If you are in town (even if not, my office orders carry out once during this week), you can FAX in an order and pick it up curbside for a killer lunch. And there is even a shuttle bus to bring cubicle dwellers from downtown to the festival for lunch.
It looks like today is the day the Supreme Court starts clearing its desk for the summer — it upheld today a Maryland law that lets the police collect your DNA if you’ve been arrested, with no warrant. It was a 5-4 decision, but the dissenters this time were Scalia, Ginsberg, Kagen, Sotomayor. What is interesting to me is that a conservative court isn’t just privileging corporations with the rights if individuals, but it also doesn’t see much government overreach that they want to curtail, either. Say hello to the national DNA database, people.
Last, but certainly not least — Senator Frank Lautenberg from NJ died today. He was the oldest member of the Senate and the last to have served in WWII. He may have made his greatest mark in helping to improve highway safety regulations. RIP, Senator Lautenberg. Gov. Christie gets to pick a placeholder until there is a special election to replace Lautenberg.
What interests you today?
Guys, I don’t know whether you track this but …
It seems to me that, since you moved to the new format, the number of comments on each thread seems to have dropped significantly.
Maybe there’s less to write about.
Just wondering.
MW, do you think that there is something specific about the new format that discourages commenting?
I think that this transition happened just before a major holiday, and we typically get dropoff before and after. I know I’ve been fairly scarce because work and other commitments have been pretty heavy…..
I’ve been swamped, as well – son home from college, daughter getting her driver’s license and approaching finals, school banquets, both kids starting their summer jobs, etc. May and June are the busiest months of the year for us.
Also… Republicans have become soooooo predictable. I can’t even muster up outrage.
Well… one thing is that the Recent Comments widget no longer displays a preview of the comment. That makes me less likely to click on the comment to find out what it is and maybe respond to it. But if it makes me comment less, that may be a feature, not a bug 🙂
I’m with Puck on his observation about the Recent Comments widget. Getting a hint of what others are saying may prompt some readers to jump into the discussion. (That’s not a factor for me, because I will take a look at comments on most topics, but it may well be for others.)
I understand your point about bloggers being busy with their own lives (and with being good sources for the NJ!), but the discussion on the Wilmington budget has been tame by DL standards and little has been said about the new school choice law and the proposed changes in charter school law. Those topics often light up the board.
I agree with puck re: recent comments. I miss the comment previews!
The “no” and “meh” votes far outnumber the “yes” votes on the DL 5.0 poll as well.
The poll itself probably doesn’t mean much. People generally don’t like change. But please bring back the comment preview feature.
Worth watching:
Comedian Jim Norton debates Jezebel’s Lindy West on “the ethics of rape jokes” on Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. Only 5 minutes of the debate made the air, but the entire 16 or so minutes is worth watching.
Huffpo article on the above
Youtube video of the entire debate
FWIW, Norton went on the air (SiriusXM) this morning & told the asshole youtube commenters that they weren’t helping their position by calling West names & attacking her personally.
Thanks, everyone, for the comments on the site. I know that DD is looking at restoring a way to preview comments. He’s swamped right now too, so it may take a little time. And, yes, MW, there could have been more discussion on the budget back and forth, and I wish I could have. This is about the busiest part of the work year for me, so I can’t always be on top of everything. Will try harder, tho!
I think it has a lot to do with the comment previews. Also, with the new design, viewing the regular site on a mobile device (not the mobile edition) means recent comments are aaaaallllll the way down at the bottom. On the old site, I could see them all right at the top on the right.
You also might want to consider merging the photos and open threads. Often the photos get posted long before someone gets around to creating an open thread for that day. I presume a scheduling widget does that. You don’t need a writing prompt to start an open thread.
Can El Som repeat what he was saying on WDEL today about what he found out about Sigler’s leaving his post? I only caught a scant sound bite and would love to hear the story.
Love the bit about scary raising the specter-for-every-statewide-candidacy of Beau Biden dum da dum da dum da dum – need a bigger boat for Beau.
And I do agree that without a tempting first half of a sentence of the comments, there is much less appetite to click onto a comment thread.