The Myth That Women Are More Empathetic, What Countries Are Proudest and a Dancing Squirrel

Why Boycotting the State of the Union Address Is A Bad Idea

Every year in America the State of the Union is a speech given by the President to offer a summary of how the year has been going. It's taking place next week and some politicians are already threatening to boycott the speech and host their own political rally instead. A few weeks ago some unreasonably angry politicians on the other side decided to do the same thing by hosting their own sad Super Bowl halftime show in protest of "foreigner" Bad Bunny being the headliner. Both are terrible ideas. The close-minded belief that if you disagree with something, the only alternative is to host your own thing instead ends up creating even more division. It also minimizes what is actually important. At a time when there is far too much media coverage of things done by the President that really don't matter, such as what color he paints Air Force One, or what he thinks about Olympics athletes who criticize him or why he's angry at the host of the Grammy's. Random rants on Truth Social about hurt egos are NOT significant or newsworthy.

What the President says during the State of the Union address, or the administration's moves to curtail the power of the EPA to protect our environment or actual stories about policy changes or stories of rampant corruption ARE significant and deserve attention as well as scrutiny and fact checking. In other words, it is not something politicians (or the rest of us) should plan to skip or ignore. If anyone is going to boycott anything, may I suggest instead that they start with stories from once credible news sources like Newsweek that offer headlines like this: People Can't Quite Believe the Donald Trump Photo Nicki Minaj Just Posted (story not linked - obviously).

What Countries Are Proudest Of Their Culture and Lifestyle?

As I spent far too much time watching the Olympics this week, over and over from the winner's podium you would see patriotism on display. Athletes celebrating their heritage and proudly holding up their nation's flags. A timely piece of research from Pew this week also takes a deep dive into where the world people feel the most pride in their culture and traditions:

People in Italy are the most likely to mention something related to their national arts and culture, while Greeks are exceptionally proud of their history. Spaniards and Australians are particularly likely to praise the way of life in their country ... some people are proud of their flag, especially in India and Turkey. For some, national pride is tied to the language they speak. This is common in France, Greece and Poland - but especially in Hungary. Another national symbol people are proud of is their country's food. More than one-in-ten in Italy, France, Mexico and Spain say their national cuisine is a source of national pride.

The full research and corresponding studies offer some interesting conclusions about what people seem to take pride in today versus what they do not. Download the full research report PDF here >>

What If You Could Sue Someone For A Lack Of Ethics?

Soon Mark Zuckerberg will stand trial for Meta's role in making social media addictive and actively choosing to harm teenagers, or at the very least ignoring the plentiful advice and research that it saw illustrating the harm their platform was inflicting upon users. The depth of their moral resignation and unwillingness to offer even the most basic protections for their youngest users was shockingly detailed in the tell-all book Careless People that came out last year. While Meta and their legal team may have perfected the playbook on how to abandon their ethical duties and clearly they aren't slowing down judging by recent news about how they have patented AI to take over your account when you die so it can keep posting forever. An even bigger story about lapsed morals, of course, would be all the revelations about how many powerful men (and some women) were named in the Epstein files. They are driving widespread resignations and reputation hits, but the legal action is generally limited only to what can specifically be proven about someone's actions if and when they broke the law. What if there were a punishment for compromising your morals and ignoring misdeeds that you knew about? In other words, a cost for doing nothing when you could have done something. What do you think - could this ever work?