But he won’t. That’s not the way you create empathy. It’s the way you punish. I understand wanting him to be punished, and to suffer, but it almost certainly won’t make him a better person in any way.

That would be an awful attitude to take, definitely. You can easily argue, though, that she turned a blind eye to her husband’s criminal behavior because it allowed her to maintain a very comfortable life without having to posit that her husband’s criminal behavior had anything to do with any failure of hers as a…

Or anything above his brainstem.

I did read what you wrote. If you’d limited yourself to discussing the code and whether they broke it, you might have convinced me, although I think there’s an argument to be made that if the issue is partisan politics, that’s not what this was. When you implied this was in any way analogous to a Nazi salute, though,…

This approach only works, when it works at all, for people who are genuinely gregarious, that is, people who tend to talk and interact with strangers regardless of whether they have any ulterior motive. That’s not everyone’s style, and there’s no reason it should be. However, if you’d like to develop this skill, the…

Happens to the best of us.

I think you’re responding to the wrong comment.

Redacted — you’ve already worked this out between you, I should have read further down the thread.

Redacted — you’ve already worked this out between you, I should have read further down the thread.

Google “upskirt photography” if you’d like to understand how cameras can be rapey.

It’s a bit hamfisted, and I get how someone might feel he was making light of Prince’s death (“I’m here to tell you there’s something else: the NHL Playoffs”), but firing the guy seems excessive.

I’m just as white as you are, yet somehow I’m not seeing this bar that you do. She talked about a difficulty she faces that you don’t. That’s it. The only person who thinks you’re not allowed is you, which is ironic, since you’re the person who apparently feels that she shouldn’t be allowed to talk about the part of…

The day I turned 42, seven years after my brother’s death, it broke my heart, because I never wanted to be older than my big brother. That was 13 years ago, and it still saddens me to think of.

No, your inability to commiserate has nothing to do with not being allowed to do so. It has to do with your need for people to be like you in order for you to commiserate with them. I lost my brother, too. I know that part of her pain, and I can commiserate with her about that. I can also recognize that there’s…

It’s a gorgeous hairstyle, really. Clicking through and seeing it from the back, it’s even prettier than I thought it was. That stupid store doesn’t deserve that hairstyle.

Hahaha, yes, I’m the one who’s obtuse here, definitely. Sorry, but this is just intensely tedious, and I shouldn’t have bothered with you for this long.

Religion’s been around for millennia.

No, it’s like trying to understand a problem versus going for the knee-jerk superficial non-solution. Let’s not think carefully about the root causes of human violence, we might miss a chance to bash a big obvious target that makes us feel all smart and deep and all. Again, have fun with that. I’m not a theist myself,…

Ah, the old, “Let’s put words in someone’s mouth so we can feel like we’re winning an argument” method. Have fun with that.

How do we know this? How can we be certain they just wouldn’t have found different things to kill each other over?