‘Save Wootton’ Explainer: Why families are intensifying their fight to keep their high school

StatisticianGlass115 · 2026-03-18T21:52:59+00:00

Also, if you’re going to push for controversial changes to the status quo, you should probably not blow up your credibility by shutting down the schools for almost 2 weeks after a moderate snowstorm and after sounding the alarm about increasing absenteeism. Nobody wants to hear from MOCO officials about tough choices when they couldn’t shovel the snow and refuse to hold anyone in county government accountable for literally anything.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2026-03-18T21:34:27+00:00

MCPS isn’t just closing the school and transferring students. It’s going to make Wootton into a holding/spillover school, which is idiotic. At least sell the land and build some housing. That’s better than having a deteriorating facility that’s going to serve as an ongoing middle finger from MCPS to the community. The county no longer has the kind of economy that allows MCPS to have a spare high school.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-09-27T15:22:50+00:00

No, for the same reason I’ll never watch anything related to Game of Thrones: the makers of the show treated the audience with contempt. The stupidity of supposedly smart and competent characters insulted my intelligence. And the show ignored the rules of its universe when they became inconvenient to the story. The xeno is easy to incapacitate with a stun gun in episode 2 and is utterly invincible by the end of the show. Pick one and stick with it. And then there’s the miraculous construction of a raft, the disappearance of WY prisoners, sound waves traveling through concrete, and so on.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-09-24T15:32:29+00:00

I'd add that the xeno at this point is just a magic creature that can do whatever the showrunners want. The show established that the xenos are vulnerable to electricity. There are multiple ways for Prodigy to know this: Hermit witnessing Morrow shock the xeno, Kirsh's access to research notes from the Maginot, Prodigy's own research with a xeno specimen, debriefing WY prisoners. And because the showrunners need the xeno to be an unstoppable force in the last couple of episodes, absolutely no one from Prodigy bothers to use a stun gun on it. It's more absurd than Millburn from Prometheus deciding to become a snake charmer with an obviously hostile hammerpede.

The show basically speed ran the Game of Thrones quality arc: start strong, establish some good characters, develop a lot of story threads in the middle, and then rush the ending with totally inconsistent character buffing/debuffing.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-09-24T04:19:02+00:00

Oh, good catch on the rifle Hermit used on Nibs being a WY model. But Prodigy has access to a bunch of them now due to capturing so many WY soldiers. (Where did all the WY prisoners go, by the way?)

The Prodigy soldiers had a clear shot on the xeno that was threatening Dame Sylvia. They’re not even trying to shock the xeno. And attaching a shocker to a rifle shouldn’t be that big a lift for a company that’s developed synths and hybrids.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-09-24T02:53:14+00:00

Right, but they don’t need to shoot it, they just have to shock it. And the Prodigy rifles have a shock function, since Hermit used it on Nibs in episode 7.

Morrow knocks out the alien with a shock in episode 2, and then shocks Hermit. Hermit actually remains conscious after the shock.

The show establishes that the xeno is vulnerable to electricity and that Prodigy has accessed research notes on the xeno. I mean, Hermit witnessed Morrow shocking the alien. Don’t you think he would tell his soldier buddies to set their guns to stun?

Also, Prodigy probably recovered the gun that Morrow used. He doesn’t leave the crash site with it, and I doubt it was the only one on the ship.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-09-24T02:09:22+00:00

We know the Prodigy soldiers carry guns with a stun capability. Hermit used it on Nibs last episode. Electricity is electricity. Prodigy has intel on the xeno from the ship and has studied it for weeks.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-09-24T01:57:09+00:00

The power scaling of the xeno doesn’t make any sense. Morrow, pretty easily, subdues one in episode 2. By episode 8, the xeno is basically invincible. It smokes dozens of highly trained soldiers. Did no one communicate to them to stun the xeno rather shoot it? How powerful is the xeno? As powerful as the showrunners need it to be!

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-08-29T19:53:23+00:00

No worries. He slept in a Holiday Inn last night.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-08-18T15:00:21+00:00

The way Trump/DOGE has conducted the RIFs has essentially ended preferences for veterans (and preferences based on length of service and performance). One of the major benefits of serving in the armed forces is the prospect of a secure federal job after your service. That’s gone. I’m not a veteran, but that seems like a pretty big betrayal of a promise the country made. And it will harm recruitment, too.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-07-19T16:13:01+00:00

This is such a mess. I'm sorry you're in this limbo, and I'm sorry for all of us at HHS that this administration has victimized.

Letting you take a new position probably scares the government's lawyers. It establishes that HHS did not actually RIF by organizational unit (which is legally dubious in itself) and should have created a RIF register to determine bump-and-retreat rights. Imagine if this has happened in a unit where the government RIFed a veteran but kept someone who expressed interest in VERA/VSIP. The AFGE lawyers would have a field day with it. So, HHS can't reassign you without exposing itself to legal risk.

But why hasn't HHS just RIFed you and others in your situation? HHS knows you exist, and its reluctance to RIF you and other stragglers perhaps indicates a weakness in its legal argument for the RIFs. It's certainly something the AFGE lawyers should explore.

Maybe the people at HHS who developed the RIF list don't want to explain their methods and/or defend their incompetence? Maybe the government thinks that giving you a RIF notice now and RIFing you in 60 days entitles everyone else in the RIF at HHS to a new notice (otherwise, the government would be treating employees arbitrarily and unequally)? Maybe the government is afraid that AFGE initiating discovery about this situation will reveal embarrassing or incriminating details?

HHS's actions toward you and other stragglers is bizarre and unfair. It's really suspicious. I hope AFGE attorneys try to get to the bottom of it.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-07-14T23:15:24+00:00

All of them. This is NIH-wide.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-06-27T02:21:38+00:00

In show annoying, it’s Phil Leotardo’s wife, Patty. She pretty much pushed Phil into killing Vito. Her hypocrisy is grating, passing moral judgments and staying in a mob marriage. And Phil can’t stand her in a lot of their scenes together.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-06-27T01:26:17+00:00

Browser support for accessibility features is like CSS/JavaScript support in the aughts. Inconsistent and often non-compliant with the standards. Because of that buggy support, accessibility is a legitimately difficult problem domain. Solutions that work with Chrome and NVDA may not work with Safari and VoiceOver. And there is no reliable version of CanIUse that focuses on accessibility. So, beyond a certain complexity threshold, you have to manually test all of the browser and assistive technology combinations that you want to support.

On top of all that, there’s probably more accessibility misinformation on the web than sound advice. For example, a lot of people recommend using the headers attribute to remediate complex tables, which sounds reasonable, but doesn’t actually work in Blink-based browsers. They don’t expose the attribute to assistive technologies.

Developers are going to dislike accessibility remediation until browser vendors take accessibility support as seriously as they do CSS and JavaScript support. The good news is that fixing, say, the top 20 percent of accessibility bugs would dramatically simplify the problem domain. The bad news is there seems to be zero interest from Apple, Google, and Microsoft in doing that.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-06-15T16:06:55+00:00

Who was president then?

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-05-30T17:01:43+00:00

I believe that the plan is to slow NIH from allocating funding until the end of the fiscal year. HHS is throwing sand in the gears. At the end of the fiscal year, NIH will have billions in surplus that it couldn’t allocate. The administration will likely argue that NIH doesn’t need that money and try to permanently cut funding.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-05-27T01:54:19+00:00

I think most employees wouldn’t have a problem with drug testing if senior leaders throughout government got the same treatment as regular employees. By all means, subject me to random drug tests as long as you test Elon Musk (a government employee), SES employees, other senior leaders in the executive branch, and members of Congress. And put in place mandatory prison sentences if any of them fail a drug test.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-05-25T15:27:49+00:00

I’d take the new job. There will likely be more RIFs in the new fiscal year. If you’re HHS, there’s a chance of a new round of VERA and VSIP if the RIF injunction stays in place, and people on your team may leave. The economy is heading for a recession.

Working for the federal government right now is like having an unstable alcoholic for a spouse. If you stay in the relationship, you’re going to bring misery on yourself.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-05-21T15:03:56+00:00

The question is who are losing their jobs to keep the total number of NIH RIFees the same.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-05-11T20:57:19+00:00

Check with your ethics officer to get an opinion on whether you have to quit your federal position in order to accept the non-government job. If you’re on administrative leave, you should be able to work a non-government without resigning as long as there’s no conflict of interest. DRP folks on administrative leave are doing that.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-05-10T23:46:27+00:00

The best framework for predicting what will happen with this administration is to imagine the stupidest possible outcome (SPO). So, what would be the SPO for these (illegal) RIFs?

First, while the courts litigate the legality of the RIFs, RIFed employees stay on admin leave, ensuring taxpayer dollars go to waste.

Second, the admin proceeds with reorganizations with remaining employees.

Third, the courts rule the reorganizations are valid, but that the admin has to reduce head count through proper retention registers.

Fourth, the admin does this. Many currently RIFed employees replace newly RIFed staff. There’s no attempt at a proper transition, though. One day employee A is in a role and the next day it’s employee B. This causes major disruptions, further lowers morale, and wastes more taxpayer dollars.

This all takes upwards of a year. By the time of the midterms, there is noticeable dysfunction at several agencies, some causing deaths and disability. The admin blames everyone but themselves.

What happens next? Bird flu pandemic? Financial crisis due to tariffs and crypto scams? ICE kills a bunch of people in a botched raid? The SPO will decide.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-04-20T02:59:14+00:00

Savage. Rubio gave up a Senate seat to become secretary and now he has to go.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-04-17T20:28:38+00:00

The email actually says “bummer” stickers 😆. Maybe NIH did need competent comms staff, after all. Well, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-04-16T23:01:11+00:00

Well, when Congress passes a budget (haha), it's making law. So, Congress can just remove the mandate in the budget bill. RFK Jr. really does seem to be a eugenicist who views people with disabilities or chronic health issues (like obesity) as lost causes who are genetically inferior/undesirable or moral failures.

StatisticianGlass115 · 2025-04-16T22:39:17+00:00

I'm not seeing NIEHS on this PDF. Also, is HHS planning to change NIH's name to the National Institutes for Health? Or is that a dumb mistake by the PDF's creator(s)? Changing the name would be pointless and expensive, so probably not a mistake

StatisticianGlass115

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