InappropriateEmote [comrade/them, undecided]

Given that you recognize there are multiple factors that are going into declining education and student performance, deep systemic problems that long predate 2020, what makes you think you have enough information to blame any of it on lockdowns?

They lost important years of socialization,

Lockdowns didn’t last for years.

I can literally give them the information to take notes on, ask a question that is directly answered by their notes, and their first instinct will be to Google the question and write down the first thing that comes up.

I had this exact problem with students (it was a widely discussed phenomenon) many years before Covid. I knew instructors frequently complaining about it even in the 00’s.

This is not exclusively a lock down problem, but it exasperated and multiplied already existing trends.

I don’t usually care when someone doesn’t know what a word means and uses it instead of the correct word, and even if I did I wouldn’t normally point it out. I’m sure I make errors like that at times too. But given the context here, I think it’s relevant and fair of me to do so. “Exasperated?” Really? Anyway, you say it’s not “exclusively” a lockdown problem, implying that lockdowns were still a major cause of the problem. But what evidence do you have that they contributed to it at all beyond a vibes-based opinion?

I’m not trying to be overly harsh with this response, but it really bothers me that people are blaming these long-standing, well-known issues on lockdowns when not only were lockdowns not the problem, but had they been longer (and better implemented in general) they could have actually saved millions of children from the cognitive decline they are now and will continue to experience as a result of a pandemic that literally gives them brain damage.

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.

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.

The United States Empire doesn’t have much time left on this earth. I think they are already into the process of ruining it for the rest of us on their way out.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this were in fact true, but if you or @yogthos@lemmy.ml can point me to where you saw this, I would really appreciate being able to read about it. Regardless of what heinous crimes against humanity and all life on earth that the US would actually perpetrate in a large scale nuclear war scenario, I was under the impression that their nuclear posture and targeting strategies are “highly classified” and even though they don’t have any NFU policy, they still at least pretend it’s about deterrence.

Ok, well I appreciate the comment and I stand corrected. Your meaning in the first comment was a bit ambiguous but on rereading it I can see that it makes sense that you’re referring to the post title, not to the article title. That said, the post title is referencing a meme and might make more sense in that context, but it is also not wrong. This war continues to be waged due to the insistence of NATO (essentially the US) that it continue. The opinions or consent of the Ukrainian people is immaterial to those in control, and Ukrainians will keep being sent to fight and die regardless of whether or not the majority of them actually wants to sue for peace or make territorial concessions (a position that is almost certainly being suppressed).

but arguments of the type “and your more” have never led any movement anywhere.

Also immaterial. What I said had nothing to do with leading a movement, it was merely calling a spade a spade and pointing out hypocrisy.

So what you’re complaining about is a biased title… even though the subtitle explicitly makes clear the way in which you think the title could be interpreted as biased? Putting that in the subtitle is the opposite of how you think it’s being manipulative. And even if it weren’t, that’s not “childish.”

If you think that’s manipulative, let me blow your mind by introducing you to NYT, WaPo, BBC, or literally any mainstream western media that straight up lies in the title, doubles down in the subtitle, and maybe if you’re lucky buries a nugget of truth near the bottom of the article in a passing mention surrounded by weasel words.

Also, do you think the (checks notes) Kyiv Post is a Russian propaganda rag, and they’re being manipulative on the part of that dastardly Putin or something? lol

Yeah, I think it’s really unfortunate that we can’t dunk on this sort of thing on hexbear unless someone sufficiently famous says it, especially for our anarchist comrades who may not want to post their dunks on an ML-specific instance, or for people who have their feeds set to local. But since several months ago, it was inexplicably decreed that there is no place on hexbear for dunking if it’s not actual politicians or someone with enough renown like Elon Musk directly, who are on the receiving end of the dunk. So for future reference, if you do want to dunk or discuss something concerning (or worse) that you found online somewhere, you now have to go to lemmygrad to do so. Thems the rules.

alcohol seems fine to me in comparison to the things that drive people to drink excessively

This is so relative and variable, it’s impossible to fully agree or disagree with. Addiction and the root causes for it involve such a complex interactions of different factors that such a statement is almost meaningless.

Like, is alcohol “fine” compared to the crushing weight of a lifetime of extreme alienation due to capitalism? I don’t know if “fine” is the right word, but sure, yes, alcohol is the smaller evil and the lesser detriment to society over all, in comparison. But that doesn’t mean that the person who, completely understandably, drinks a bottle of vodka every night for years to deal with that alienation isn’t doing damage to themselves (and likely increased pain and difficulty for their loved ones), by orders of magnitude greater than just the slow burn of alienation alone would have, even as the vodka makes the alienation vastly more bearable in the immediate short term.

And yes, almost any kind of distraction that replaces some pain of reality with a bit of dopamine can become an addiction that can potentially do great harm to the person afflicted by it. But there is still a spectrum of how bad various addictions can be to a person’s over all health, and alcohol undeniably holds a place close to the far end of that spectrum of harm. For example, you aren’t going to die at 40 from liver failure because of a social media addiction.

Addiction and habituation are complex. Different people are effected to different degrees by different types of addictions, but that doesn’t mean all distractions that can potentially become addictions are equally dangerous or detrimental. None of that has to do with any of those addictions being at “fault” either. But it’s a simple fact that continuously using alcohol as a means of coping with difficulty or pain will come with rapidly increasing costs to a person’s health as well as diminishing returns on its efficacy even as a coping mechanism.

Always use frontends like invidious, piped, or others. Then you won’t ever have to worry about giving views to channels you don’t like or dealing with youtube and its ads. Also you will have increased privacy.

In this case, piped: https://piped.yt/watch?v=div2SXe1NBA

invidious: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=div2SXe1NBA

edit: HexReplyBot beat me to it with the alternative links.

Seriously. It’s the only reason I ever would have clicked the link. I feel bamboozled.

Yep, this is who the episode was about where the rule came from.

Episode 346: Gaddafi’s Gold

That’s my only issue with the image. It kind of implies the the blue pill and red pill tend to be mutually exclusive when in fact those things are very often comorbidities.

If you want to read further but past hexbear discussion on the topic of “Uncle Ted,” he was talked about quite a bit around here when he died a year ago. I remember a couple threads where people were debunking the mythology you’ll sometimes see portraying him as a kind of based anarchist. I can’t seem to find the exact one I was thinking of, but here is another with 100 comments.