Only if I wind up around a lot of other people. People’s behavior in crowds and public transport tends to piss me off to an irrational degree.

Okay. I mean, are they like old-timey sexist jokes or something? Because if you’re saying modern humor isn’t sexist/racist/whatever-ist, I’d strongly beg to differ.

No, you still don’t get it and I don’t think any further explanation on my part is going to change your mind, but just know this is about mass psychology, not the particulars of any political system or culture. You think you’re protected from this kind of hysteria, but you’re not.

Anyway, best of luck to you and yours.

Took a look at his posts. I mean, yeah, a lot of them are kinda just dad jokes and/or only chuckle-funny, not real funny, but I don’t see the boomerishness. I think that word has kinda just become a slur for people online who one doesn’t like at this point.

I’m sorry, maybe I’m OOTL, but what about this is particularly boomerish? And why all the hate?

I’m fully convinced that it won’t happen here, unless we’re directly invaded.

As I said, you’re making the exact same mistake many made in America. Dictators come to power when a population is suffering and their government has profoundly failed them. In such times, they’re so desperate that they’ll vote for a strongman outsider who promises them their wildest dreams. This is not an American error that the Irish are immune to making, and if you think so, you’re just as ignorant as the Americans you think so little of.

Oh, yeah, this type of insane bullshittery could never happen in Europe. Except that it already has and continues to. You’re parroting the same, lame “it can’t happen here” crap many of my American friends were in 2016.

In the U.S., the federal government is obviously bad, but I’m honestly more concerned about the voting populace that elected it. They got so desperate and fed up with both parties they voted for the strong man that promised them he could rewind time, and apparently didn’t have the basic level of empathy and psychological wherewithal to see him for what he is: a pathologically narcissistic conman.

The Trump administration is a problem, but it’s not the problem. The problem is that both Republicans and Democrats are so dislikable as political parties that enough people are so fed up with them that they’ll vote for someone like Trump instead. That’s just really sad.

Apart from showing affection, I’m pretty sure animals like licking us because we taste salty.

MOAR CLIX!!!

Or Aphex Twin.

Actually, the current generation of AirPods Pro (2) do as well, you just have to update their firmware to the new iOS 26 version.

Go talk to a fucking lawyer and stop seeking advice from people online!

Then she too wasn’t using the word correctly. She may have meant the affective portion of it, which she probably didn’t have.

There’s nothing in the context of this quote or Elon Musk’s that suggests they’re talking about empathy being taught in schools and it making boys weak. In both cases it’s more a response to Democrats using the word a lot in their political speech to try to bring coalitions of people together.

I would encourage people to read the Wikipedia page on George Floyd. He was a complicated and flawed individual, who definitely did some bad things and didn’t make very good decisions all the time. But he tried to improve later in his life with mixed results (at least with regards to drug addiction), and that counts for something, I think.

Derek Chauvin and Charlie Kirk, by comparison, tended to get worse as their lives went on. Chauvin may well have framed Floyd for a drug crime and Kirk espoused factually false information to millions of people just to gain fame and power in conservative circles.

These people are not the same.

Then please explain the quote above.

The man simply didn’t understand the word at all. Empathy is our capacity to understand the minds of others. It does not convey approval or agreement, simply understanding. Psychopaths have empathy; it’s how they’re good at manipulating others. You have to understand someone to manipulate them effectively. All humans possess some degree of empathy, as do most animals.

There is an affective (emotional) component to empathy that effectively causes your mind to conjure the same emotion you perceive another person (or animal) to be feeling. This is why you cry when watching an emotional scene in films sometimes. Psychopaths do not have this component, which is why they seem emotionally cold to people sometimes. Psychopaths have to fake this in order to blend into society, and they learn to do so over the course of their lives.

Charlie Kirk simply didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about in this instance, and Elon Musk doesn’t either. As someone on the autism spectrum, I’m not surprised Musk has some difficulty with the concept (no disrespect to autistic people, btw, just stating facts).

I wasn’t talking about being polite to a fish. 🤪 I wouldn’t say it to a guy who had a slight head injury from a tank shell barely missing him, but I’d still consider him lucky.

It got away somehow, so I’d say it’s actually quite lucky.