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We ran the lyrics of a hit song through multiple languages, then translated them back into English. Can you figure out what the song is, or who performed it?

An insult can come out of nowhere and at any time. So, it’s best to prepare yourself with a skillful response that doesn’t start a fight but puts the offending person in their place. A great response to an insult makes the other person look worse and shows that you are confident and don’t care what your detractors think. However, being hit with an insult out of nowhere can be jarring, making a skillful comeback difficult. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of 6 comebacks recommended by 5 therapists and a lawyer to put the hater in their place and make you look even better than before. How do you respond to an insult? 1. “Are you okay?” Bernadette Purcell, a popular LCSW on TikTok and author of "Divorced As F,” says that responding with “Are you okay?” puts “them on the defensive and gives you the upper hand.” Depending on how the response is delivered, it can be a genuine question to see if the insulter, who just said something inappropriate, is going through a personal problem. It’s also rooted in the assumption that the person is insecure and is trying to elevate themselves by putting others down. With this response, you seem confident and empathetic. 2. “Hey, flag on the play” Ajita Robinson, a therapist in Bethesda, Md., told Time she often responds to insults with, “Hey, flag on the play,” a reference to when a referee calls a penalty in football. For example, one of Robinson’s clients went on a date with a man who said some things that were a bit sexually suggestive. So she responded to him with a “Hey, flag on the play.” “I thought that was pretty cool because she used it as a way to express that this was something she was uncomfortable with,” Robinson says. “It’s lighthearted, but sends a signal that the comment or interaction crossed a boundary.” How to respond to a backhanded compliment? 3. “I'm sure you mean that in the nicest way possible!” Jessica Alderson, Co-Founder and Relationship Expert at So Syncd, says one of the best ways to respond to a backhanded compliment is by being humorous. “Employing humor can diffuse the tension of a backhanded compliment while also indirectly addressing the underlying criticism. You could respond with a lighthearted comment such as, ‘I'm sure you mean that in the nicest way possible!’ or ‘I'm glad I exceeded your low expectations’," Alderson told Verywell Mind. A backhanded compliment is when someone says something that sounds like praise but has a hidden critique or negative twist. It might seem flattering initially, but there's usually an underlying message that the person you’re talking to isn’t being kind. For example, "You look great for someone your age!" is calling you attractive but old at the same time. 4. Do nothing Riyan Portuguez, MP, RPm, RPsy, has the simplest response, but you must learn to keep a straight face. “So you take the insult, make no reaction to it,” he said on TikTok. “You smile and you look at them in the eye and say nothing. You are composed; it has no effect on you, and make sure you hold that smile and look them in the face and keep him waiting." Grayson Allen, a University of Cambridge graduate who shares TikTok psychology tips, agrees with Portuguez. “If you show that you're completely not phased or didn't even hear it, that's going to be awkward, they're going to look bad, and you're going to be in control,” he said on TikTok. 5. "What was your intention with that comment?" Jessica Good, a therapist in St. Louis, told Time that this response is both “effective and therapeutic” because “it makes them say the quiet part out loud.” This puts the insulter in a very uncomfortable position of admitting that they intentionally insulted you or forces them to backtrack and lie their way out of the situation, making them look bad. 6. Agree with them Jefferson Fisher isn't a therapist but a lawyer in Texas who calls himself an "argument expert." He says that when someone insults you, it's to get a dopamine hit. The key is to keep them from enjoying the chemical reaction. If he knows the person who insulted him, he'll agree with the remark. "By agreeing to it, I'll totally take away that satisfaction of the dopamine," Fisher said on TikTok. "So if someone puts me down, I'll say, 'You know, but maybe you're right. And, just checking in, are you feeling okay?' At all times, I'm letting them know I'm the one that's still here and in control."

I took a long Amtrak train trip from Atlanta to Baltimore with my 9-year-old daughter this summer.As far as I could tell, there was no way to reserve specific seats in coach on our particular train ahead of time. But we arrived as early as we could and, to our delight, were treated to a near empty train. We sat together in a two-person row and had a really nice trip up to Baltimore.On the way back? We boarded at Union Station and the train, having arrived from New York, was already packed. The conductor told me he would try his best to seat us together but couldn't guarantee it. You should have seen the terror in my daughter's eyes. It would be a 14-hour overnight train ride. Sitting her next to some stranger that whole time? Absolutely not. No way.They eventually found us seats across an aisle from each other, which kind of worked, but wasn't ideal. Luckily, the guy I was supposed to sit next on the other side flew into a rage that he wouldn't have a row to himself and stormed off to sit elsewhere, freeing up the row for us.But for a few horrible minutes, I had become "that dad" desperately asking anyone in the area if they'd be willing to move so we could sit together. I had become the dreaded entitled parent from all the viral travel stories.Stories of "entitled parents" desperately trying to get other passengers to switch seats go viral all the time. But a recent thread on Reddit shows why we don't always get the full story. RedditUser u/takeme2themtns recently shared a nightmare travel story in the r/Delta subreddit:"In typical Delta fashion, they just switched up our seats and placed my toddler in a row away from us," they wrote. "Booked three seats ... in comfort plus months ago. Now, several hours before the flight we get notifications that our seats have changed. They put wife and me in exit row seats and the toddler in a window seat a row away."With no way to fix the seating snafu digitally, the OP would have to rely on the Gate Attendant or even Flight Attendant to make a last-minute change — which would force someone else on the plane to move."I’m confident the GA (gate attendant) will take care of it," they wrote, "but it’s still so frustrating that we have to worry about it. I know we see posts like this all the time, but that’s because it happens all the time to people. Delta needs to fix this trashy system."Another user in the comments wrote to share a similar story:"I had this happen to me. The check-in person said to talk to the gate.The gate said to talk to the flight attendant.The flight attendant told me to ask people to trade seats.I asked people. People said no. Other passengers started berating me for not planning ahead and saying my lack of planning isn’t their responsibility.I defended myself by saying I reserved seats months ago and Delta moved me at the last minute. Then passengers started yelling at each other about my situation.The FA had someone move and I got to sit with my daughter."The user noted that the situation was chaotic and traumatizing. These stories are far from rare. Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash I found another story just like this from a few months ago on the r/United subreddit. The user's family booked seats together only for the system to separate them right before the flight, leaving an 8-year-old to fly seated alone. The flight crew's only solution was to ask other passengers to switch, causing the OP's family to get lots of dirty looks for the duration of the flight.Having a young child or toddler seated away from you while traveling is just a complete No-Go, for many reasons. But as a dad, leaving a kid of nearly any age to sit alone — even if they're 8 or 10 or 14 — is not acceptable. It's not just about convenience, it's a huge safety issue. There are plenty of horrifying news stories that support why a parent would do absolutely anything to avoid it.When we hear these stories, they're almost always framed as the parents being unprepared, lazy, and entitled. But maybe we're missing the point. Photo by Hanson Lu on Unsplash A story from January of this year praises a passenger who refused to switch seats with an "entitled dad" as a "hero."People are fed up with parents asking them to switch out of airline or train seats that they paid good money for. And I don't blame them!But we need to stop beating each other up and start holding the airlines and other travel companies accountability for putting parents and non-parents into this mess in the first place.There needs to be a better system for families booking plane and train tickets. When you buy tickets, you have to enter in the ages of the children you're traveling with — so it stands to reason that these mix-ups flat out shouldn't happen!Families shouldn't have to panic at the gate or on board about this! Other paying passengers shouldn't have to give up their seats!The good news is that the Department of Transportation has recently gotten involved with a dashboard of which airlines guarantee family seating at no additional cost.The DOT is looking to even make it illegal to for airlines to charge parents and children fees to sit together. Parents and children under 13 would be required to be seated side by side or immediately adjacent, and if not, they'd get a full refund or free rebooking — it's known as the Families Fly Together Act.Traveling in 2024 is stressful enough, from seat changes to unruly passengers to high numbers of cancelled flights.Seating kids and parents together seems like one small problem we should be able to solve.

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional. Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it. This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.” But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right. For context, the couple initially thought they were having a boy and were going to go the traditional route by carrying over the husband’s name. Easy Peasy. Except they were having a girl instead. And here is where our saga begins.“See, when we first started talking about names, the ‘boy name’ was immediately decided: Stuart Jr., after my husband,” she wrote. “No problem there, it’s a classic name and carries family meaning. But, for a girl, things got murky.”Apparently the woman’s husband thought he had come up with the perfect solve for their situation. Read on.“My husband suggested Stuarta,. No, you’re not having a stroke,” she continued. “Apparently, his logic is that since Stuart ends in ‘t,’ we can just add an ‘a’ to make it feminine.” Sure, okay. Some names can lean feminine or masculine depending on some letter tweaks, like Robert/Roberta, Eric/Erica, Carl/Carla, etc. But I think we can all agree that this trick doesn’t work in all cases. And that was how the wife felt. “I tried explaining why that doesn’t quite work, how it sounds more like a furniture brand than a human name, how she’d be endlessly correcting people and explaining its origin,” she lamented.AITA for rejecting the worst name ever for our offspring? byu/Beginning_Date1924 inAmItheAssholeBut, alas, “He’s adamant though, says it ‘honors’ him while giving our daughter a unique name.” In trying to respect his wishes, she even suggested some feminine name alternatives that sounded like Stuart, this still honoring his name. But he would not budge. At a loss, the woman concluded, “I love my husband dearly, and I understand wanting to honor family. But I can’t imagine subjecting our daughter to a lifetime of awkward stares and endless questions about her ‘unusual’ name. I also worry about potential bullying and the impact it could have on her self-esteem.”She also asked the forum if they had any additional name suggestions, but for goodness sake no other “-ta” names. “The man clearly has a theme, and I need to gently steer him away from it, not fuel the fire!” she joked. To no one’s surprise, everyone in the comments section thought “Stuarta” was dreadful. “It sounds like a word your cousin tried to use in Scrabble during the holidays of 1997 just to try and win the game — they didn’t,” one person wrote. Another added, “Stuarta sounds like a pharmaceutical product. I can hear the commercials now. ‘In some cases, Stuarta can cause headaches, rashes and even death.’ It doesn’t have a decent nickname. And no, adding an ‘a’ doesn't make it feminine in all cases; this is one of them. I’d go for Stuart as a middle name.”Others felt it unfair that the woman’s husband was so hellbent on being the one honored in the first place—especially if the child is already taking his surname. Others argued that naming a child after a parent, any parent, robs them of their individuality. “WTF should any child HAVE to be named after him in some way? I get the tradition thing but this is just weird behavior. The name should be about the child, not him alone. It's not only selfish, but arrogant to insist children must be named after him.” “I always believed that if you want your child to have their own personality, their own name is the best place to start.”Lastly, folks pointed out that regardless of how adamant the husband is about Stuarta, both parents have to be on board with the baby name: “Remind him that baby names need a yes from both parents or it’s a no. You both need to be able to live with whatever you go with. Even if that means both of you are missing out on the one you want most.” Case closed.Hopefully the husband comes to his senses and all gets resolved before we have a little Stuarta in the world. But if not, let’s be kind to her regardless. This article originally appeared on 3.28.24

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