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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • The quote in his online biography about his modeling career is a bit more detailed:

    Dolph took up modeling at the famous Zoli Agency to make some extra cash. ‘A bit too tall and muscular for a model’s size 40’,

    Wow. Can you imagine a bigger ego boost than being turned down to be a male model because you’re just too tall and muscular?

    Being perpetually exhausted because your celebrity girlfriend keeps bringing back too many girls for the group sex session is a close second though.


  • Ha! It makes it sound like you’re saying that young black kids are self-important dickheads and that’s why he’s a good role model.

    But, yeah, I know what you’re trying to say. Despite his social media presence, the image that kids generally see is a very positive one. He’s a somewhat stylish (in his own way) guy, who clearly has personality, and is a very accomplished scientist. I just cringe any time he comments on something not related to astrophysics.


  • Yeah, but look at why he quit:

    However, while preparing for the move to Boston, he was spotted in the nightclub where he worked in Sydney and was hired by Grace Jones as a bodyguard, and the two became lovers.[18] He moved with Jones to New York City, where he dabbled in modeling at the Zoli Agency but was described as “a bit too tall and muscular for a model’s size 40”.

    It’s not like he said “this is too hard for me”, it’s more like he said “wait, I can have this other life instead?”


  • Not the same with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

    I’m not his biggest fan, but I fully respect his scientific credentials. He has a PhD from Columbia. He published at least a dozen papers. There’s no question that he’s a scientist, a manager of scientists, as well as a science communicator.

    The problem is that his success seems to have destroyed his humility. It’s not that he brags about being so incredibly smart. It’s more that he doesn’t ever seem to sit back and say “hey, maybe this isn’t something where my contributions won’t be appreciated”. I think his science communication is doing more good than harm. I think he’s a great role model for little black boys who think all scientists are white, or that they’re all stuffy nerds with no personality. But, I think he’s at his best when he’s in a show where there’s a script and an editor. On social media and on free-form podcasts, he comes off as a know-it-all ass.


  • merc@sh.itjust.workstoScience Memes@mander.xyz>:(
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    1 day ago

    NASA says there are only 5 dwarf planets in the system. But, it’s all pretty arbitrary. The line between planet, dwarf planet and asteroid are all pretty fuzzy.

    An alien civilization looking at the Sol system might say that it’s only got one planet, Jupiter. Everything else is so much smaller that they’re not really significant.

    Another logical cut-off would be that planets had to be bigger than any moons in the system. If we went by that standard, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Earth, Venus and Mars could all still count as planets, but Mercury would get ditched because it’s smaller than Ganymede and Titan.

    What’s funny is that we’re still using the name “planet” which comes from “asteres planētai”, meaning “wandering star”. For the Greeks what mattered wasn’t the size or the mass, it was how bright they were. That meant that a tiny object near the sun like Mercury (Hermes) got the name planet, because despite being tiny, the fact it’s close to the sun means it reflects a lot of light. And Jupiter (Zeus) and Saturn (Cronus) got named not because they’re so big, but because they’re big and far away from the sun, which means they reflect sunlight in a similar way to the much smaller inner planets. Earth’s moon might have been given the name “planet” if it had been a lot smaller and/or further away.


  • His last name is hard to pronounce, apparently even for him.

    In his initial interview they ask him “what is your name” and he responds “Kepa Areethabelao”. I’m curious about whether the name means something, or what the origin is, and it’s interesting that the “correct” pronunciation has fewer syllables than it might seem.

    Also, bought by Chelsea in 2018 for €80m, sold 7 years later for €6m? Chelsea sure is good at this player trading business.



  • The Tragedy of the Commons was popularized by a man who was anti-immigrant and pro-eugenics, and it’s not good science. The good science on it was done by Elinor Ostrom who won a Nobel-ish prize for fieldwork showing that various societies around the world had solved the issues of the governance of commons.

    The thing is, Ostrom didn’t disprove it as a concept. She just proved that with the right norms and rules in place it doesn’t inevitably lead to collapse. IMO it’s not about capitalism or communism, it’s about population. A small number of people who all know each-other can negotiate an arrangement that everyone can agree to. But, once you have thousands or millions of people, and each user of the commons knows almost none of the other users, it’s different. At that point you need a government to set rules, and law enforcement to enforce those rules. That, of course, fails when the commons is something like the world’s atmosphere and there’s no worldwide government that can set and enforce rules.



  • merc@sh.itjust.worksOPtoGunners@lemmy.worldPick a team to lose
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    5 days ago

    He was at Arsenal for 8 seasons and played over 100 games. He had a few great games, but he also made a lot of errors. Given that the restriction was the player had to have made at least 20 appearances for Arsenal, there aren’t any truly awful goalkeepers, but Almunia was someone who never inspired confidence.


  • merc@sh.itjust.worksOPtoGunners@lemmy.worldPick a team to lose
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    6 days ago

    It would be insane to choose Koscielny as a bad player. With Mertesacker you could at least design a team around losing because the back line is slow, but he was also a very good defender, especially when paired with a faster, more aggressive partner like Koscielny.

    And where is Benter?

    A better question is who is Benter?




  • Yeah, even an established creator is going to have a hard time moving their audience.

    If YouTube weren’t a near monopoly it would be different. Then other companies would be competing for creators.

    Making it worse is section 1201 of the DMCA. It makes it a crime to circumvent access controls. In the past, Facebook was able to grow by providing tools to interface with MySpace. People didn’t have to abandon their MySpace friends, they could communicate with them through Facebook, and Facebook could ensure that messages sent on its platform arrived to people still on MySpace. But, if you tried that today Facebook has access controls in place that make that a crime. The same applies to YouTube. Nobody can build a seamless “migrate away from YouTube” experience because YouTube will use the DMCA to block them.

    The governments of the world need to bring back antitrust with teeth and force interoperability.