When Fawlty Towers was made, it was possible to have a character use a racial insult as a way of presenting that character as racist. John Cleese reports that this has become impossible, and *said some people "don't understand metaphor, irony or comedy exaggeration."*

I suggest that their deficiency is in "theory of mind": the faculty of distinguishing between what you think, what your interlocutor thinks, and what some other persons think.

*The US universities that allow protest encampments — and even negotiate.*

A university president who rushes to call the thug department is not fit for the office.

A general heat wave in south-east Asia, stretching from Bangladesh to the Philippines, is killing people and destroying crops.

It is clear that our global heating activities are part of the cause. Even worse, they are sure to make it hotter in the future. People can't survive if farming does not work.

The Columbia College Student Council accuses the university administration of imposing a policy of arbitrary repression ever since October, and become ever more cruel, arbitrary and unjust in the past weeks.

The university directed violent uniformed thugs at students it was falsely accusing of violence, all the while interfering with video recording of their violence. While claiming it was striving to "keep all members of our community physically safe", it opened the door to physical danger to them. This is part of a broad pattern of thugs committing violence against nonviolent protesters.

Some protesters were not entirely nonviolent — throwing things at thugs is aggressive, as well as self-defeating since it gives thugs an excuse to commit violence against those protesters and others too. It may also provoke them to the point that they lose self-control. That is not an excuse for their violence, but it is a reason not to provoke them.

The protest movement needs to develop nonviolence discipline, and marshals to enforce it, just as the civil rights movement and Vietnam peace movement did.

*[A group of prestigious] Australian universities reject calls for police to break up Gaza protests.*

That bespeaks thoughtful attention to their various responsibilities.