Mate the chuds and creationists are uniquely your country's fucking problem

White supremacist right-wingers are uniquely a US problem? I'd agree they're uniquely powerful in the US but that's a major reason why the US is "uniquely" the world's problem. What a strange take to read here, that chuds are only something USians need to be concerned about.

You've constructed a straw man from this

That makes no sense. I'm not attacking anything, so there is no strawman to create. You just quoted someone else who said something that Dawkins himself never said, so it seems pretty obvious where the strawman is and who is creating it.

It's been decades since I read it but the selfish gene was absolutely full of this genre supremacist shit

"Gene supremacist"? lol, what even is that? Understanding how genes replicate is not "gene supremacist shit," it's scientific consensus. "The matter of the world around us is made up of atoms and their interactions? That's just atomic supremacist shit." These sentences have no meaning.

his evo-psych trash clearly infects all his views

To the extent he believes in evo-psych, I'm sure it does effect his views, some of which I explicitly addressed. That doesn't invalidate the real science, which despite being a terrible person, he has also done and made contributions to. He's hardly the only scientist who had a lot of shit views on other topics, that's even the majority. Plenty of them think their expertise on one topic makes them an authority on others and they are wrong, and Dawkins is one of these as well. That doesn't make him wrong about how genes work or the broader biology and it certainly doesn't make the premise of The Selfish Gene wrong.

You're not misremembering because those were major misconceptions about what he was saying, especially in the premise of the book that made him famous, The Selfish Gene. But that book as well as his other ones on evolution, genetics, and biology are accurate, with Selfish Gene just being a popular-accessible explanation of the scientific consensus on the role of genes in evolutionary biology. It was misconstrued, often intentionally and said to be this nihilistic justification for human selfishness, which it's not, and I think that's what you're remembering. It's one of those instances where someone who may be an asshole and totally worthy of criticism gets criticized for mostly the wrong reasons, and those wrong reasons are what end up getting solidified in memory incorrectly as why they're an asshole.

Replicating molecules (like DNA) replicating and propagating themselves is the "reason" for the whole thing in terms of how biology at the molecular level works. It's not an answer to a "why" question, but a description of what's really going on at scales we aren't used to thinking about or readily able to see. But neither Dawkins or any other evolutionary biologist I'm aware of ever implied that DNA is all that "matters" or that or that other systems aren't at play in reality. Just like the fact that "all the matter we see, including life, is composed of interacting atoms" does not negate the presence of society or human emotion, neither does the genetic description for the foundation of life and how it evolves.

But all of that is aside from Dawkins' Islamophobia, misogyny, deep misunderstanding of systemic racism (i.e., just racism), his flippant disregard of (CW) SA victims with the justification that he was one himself and therefore had the right to extrapolate everyone else, his creepy views on human sexuality, etc. In other words, Dawkins is a shit person and absolutely should be called on all the disgusting nonsense he's said, but let's call him on what he actually got wrong and not perpetuate misconceptions about all the stuff he got totally right regarding evolution and biology, which ultimately just carries water for the chuds and creationists.

Dawkins is a piece of shit for a number of reasons, but where did he ever say anything like that?

There are certainly different people with different preferences, and most Chinese people are indeed fine with CCP. A dictatorship has an obvious need to maintain many nationalist, so it is not surprising that you can find Chinese who loves CCP.

Lol "it's no surprise the vast majority of people approve of and appreciate their government, since a dictatorship has to be maintained." Yeah, what an awful, terrible dictatorship that rules with such an iron fist that it forced the approval and support of over 90% of the population. Clearly, in any real democracy, everyone hates their government, like the in the US. You sinophobic liberals are such a transparent joke.

Many people are more than willing to turn a blind eye on all the artists, journalist, and lawyer, who were arrested, since it has nothing to do when them. This is a emotional topics for me, because one of my highschool classmate has been seperated from her father, for he was advocating more transparent laws and enforcement.

And the lead protesters in the US who advocated for... the state to stop murdering black people openly in the street were themselves murdered and disappeared. It's an emotional topic for me since people I knew in school were beaten half to death and permanently blinded by the police. The US is an infinitely more heinous dictatorship than China, violently suppressing anyone it deems a threat, while pretending they have "freedom" because they don't crack down on the ones that are of no threat.

There are plenty of Chinese mastodon instance. Go there talk to them and see what they think.

I don't need to, I can and do talk to plenty of people from and currently in China. Even a few irl!

Of course, you don't need to believe me, or people on mastodon, or journalist from all "mainstream media"; and just trust people on hexbear. But that will likely be no different from people who only believe fox news and infowars.

It's not about trusting people on hexbear, it's about trusting the population of China, which again has overwhelming support for the CPC. It's also about being able to plainly see what the CPC does both domestically and internationally. I trust the Chinese people.

OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml did. Oh wait, they didn't paste the specific numbers that are both widely known and readily available, able to be found within a few seconds using search engine, they only referenced them. My mistake, I had assumed you were capable of doing that. But since you're not:

World Incarceration Rates If Every U.S. State Were A Country

Looks like someone couldn't handle some actual statistics when presented with them.

Honestly, I am quite surprised how low tankies are willing to go to defend China. As a Chinese, it is very disheartening to me that people have never experienced or seen the suffering of living under an authoritarian government, are more willing to blindly defend it

There are literally some "tankies" on hexbear that are in China and posting from China right now. @Flyberius@hexbear.net. There are some users here who are Chinese and grew up there (not sure if they'd want to be tagged though). There are journalists who decided to go live there in part because of how much more freedom they are afforded there, people like Ben Norton, who you would probably also label a "tankie." All of whom can attest to how baseless and sinophobic all the fabricated "suffering of living under an authoritarian government" stories really are. We aren't all just clueless westerners, but your assumption that we are is also telling.

That doesn't matter you numbskull, she not only endorses but is the enforcer and overseer of the racist system that does execute black people regularly (and they do it with trials or not, it doesn't matter - it's literal state murder with racist motivations). Your position is the same as "but did HITLER pull the lever that released the zyclon b gas?"

And yes, Harris actually did convict people, including black people.

you aren't necesarily a racist for arresting a black person

Yes you are. You're racist if you enforce a deeply racist system, especially one that regularly executes black people with and without trial.

Leave it to a liberal to come up with the take: "knowing what you're talking about and having the corroborative evidence to support it is 'hilarious' and 'kinda sad.'" Right, it's so much better to be utterly clueless about the world and only ever have conversations by talking out your ass with shit you made up on the fly. What a pathetic way to navigate life.

This was an extremely informative read. It answered a number of questions I've had rattling in my brain that I just never dug around enough to get good information on. Thank you for these comments.

I'm not sure if it's a different situation in Europe than where I'm at as far as things like self checkout, surveillance, how much store employees care, etc., but I'll tell you what works for, uh... some friends I know in the US. This is only for grocery stores with self checkout and using a handbasket. First, buy one of those reusable grocery bags you bring from home if you don't already have one. It should be opaque and fairly rigid. Grab a handbasket and put your normal, green-friendly grocery bag in it with the bag open. Expensive + small things go into the bag. Larger, hopefully cheaper things go in the basket but on top of the bag. You will be paying legit for the latter things. Do not put things into your bag if it would exceed 1/3 of your bag volume and don't put stuff on top that would exceed 2/3 (a little bit more is fine). Go to the self checkout. Take the things out of your basket but not out of your bag which stays in the handbasket along with its contents. Scan those items and pay for them as normal. Start loading your purchased groceries in your grocery bag on top of your unpurchased groceries that never left your bag. Casually leave the grocery store with bag in hand, along with a receipt for a bunch of stuff in your bag, right there filling the top 2/3rs of it. There's just more stuff beneath it that isn't on the receipt.

There are a few things that can go wrong and you can probably think of them. However, having known people who have done this for years and never had a problem is a pretty good indication that these things rarely do (if ever) end up going wrong, so long as you're really careful, casual, and only do it in the appropriate stores. And yes, this is done with cameras all over the store and at least one employee managing all the self checkouts. That last part is why it's better to do this when it's busy at the store, but it usually seems to work fine even when it's not.

edit: typos fixed.