• mommykink@lemmy.world
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    6 个月前

    Met Shaq for about ten seconds in Atlanta about five years ago. I’m not big into sports but knew who he was and pointed to him and said “Hey, aren’t you famous?” He laughed and said “I guess so.” We talked for a second about the city and he went on his day. My general impression was that he was a nice, down to earth guy.

    • sushibowl@feddit.nl
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      6 个月前

      And apparently the man is worth $500 million. By ultra rich standards that’s not even wildly wealthy. How many people could somebody like Warren Buffet pay education costs for?

      • scoobford@lemmy.zip
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        6 个月前

        Average cost of college is under $150k/person. Warrant Buffet is worth $133,500,000,000 (rounded heavily). Warranty buffet could pay for approximately 890,000 people to go to college.

        However given the fact that is most of a million people, and how much of a racket education in the US, I think the actual figure is much higher, because he could do several things to drastically reduce the overhead involved.

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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          6 个月前

          It would be far cheaper for him to build an accredited college and fully staff it for 20 years, providing free education, books, and rooms, to everyone who attends.

        • mommykink@lemmy.world
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          6 个月前

          Average cost of college is under $150k/person

          My guy, what? Tuition prices in the US are fucked, but “under $150k/person” is such a weird way to put $25,290

          • scoobford@lemmy.zip
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            6 个月前

            That’s for 1 year’s tuition. I looked up the average for 4 years plus books, supplies, fees, etc.

            • Leviathan@lemmy.world
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              6 个月前

              You’re talking to the average gullible idiot who falls for “fiscal conservative policies”, this is how they always frame gov spending or anything else, leaving out 80% of the costs, ignoring the bigger picture. Also always being confidently incorrect.

            • AlDente@sh.itjust.works
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              6 个月前

              That must be heavily skewed by expensive out-of-state colleges. I’m finding average yearly in-state tuition costs quoted between $7-10k.

  • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
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    6 个月前

    I had a series of classes in college with 6 students, including myself. If one of us failed, the rest wouldn’t be able to do the next course in the series. It didn’t help that the classes were some of the most difficult in our major. Barely made it through all 4 classes lmao

      • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
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        6 个月前

        It was honestly incredible. We all had so much time between classes, so we’d just get that classroom unlocked and hang out in there. There was a time all 6 of us decided to just have nap time. Professor walked in to all of us sleeping in makeshift beds. A couple of us even stashed blankets in that room. We really did work together on everything. Like, we’d have communal study guides and just edit it as we saw fit, then go over it as a group before tests. I was considerably shorter than everyone else, so I was the one who got to crawl under desks to plug in Ethernet cables and all that jazz.

  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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    6 个月前

    I would vote for Shaq for President.

    You should really look into this Prince. He’s such a genuinely good person, savvy entrepreneur, hardworking individual who is genuinely interested in ‘doing good for the sake of doing good’'.

    The big one for me is the Shaq Shoes. He specifically built a brand of high quality basketball shoes that don’t look like trash because kids were getting killed over Jordons and Shaqs Reebox brand were too expensive.

    Brief article on it: https://www.complex.com/sneakers/a/gerald-flores/shaq-sneakers-interview

  • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
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    6 个月前

    He could have went to a state college or university system instead of the for-profit University of Phoenix.

    Shaq is great but he chose an online for profit school with accreditation concerns and then paid them more money so it wasn’t online.

    • Forester@yiffit.net
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      6 个月前

      He paid to not have to deal with the general public interrupting his academic learning time.

      • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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        6 个月前

        They do have some state of the art facilities and laboratories, and I do mean literally cutting edge, which makes it all the more sad that they’re so shit in every other regard.

        EDIT: Might be confusing them with ASU in downtown Pheonix, idk.

        • Dorkyd68@lemmy.world
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          6 个月前

          Are you just shitpost commenting?? Cause asu is a legit school. University of Phoenix… not so much

      • Hagdos@lemmy.world
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        6 个月前

        Why go to an online university if you don’t want an online education? There are plenty of places that have in-person classes, without being elite or elite priced.

        • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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          6 个月前

          Why go to an online university if you don’t want an online education?

          It’s only an online university with less than 15 students.

          There are plenty of places that have in-person classes, without being elite or elite priced.

          One of which was shaq’s choice.

          He was probably also paying for privacy.

  • minimalfootprint@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 个月前

    He is a overall a good dude. I love what he did with his Sneakers:

    As per Joe Pompliano, In 1998, when Shaq was on his way out of the Orlando arena, a mother was seen cursing at him. She posed the question, “Why don’t one of you s** o** a B****** make an affordable sneaker?” in front of him that made him wonder. He even offered her $200 which she violently refused.

    The Lakers legend stopped to think about the enormous difference in the actual cost of basketball shoes and how much a typical family could spend. This led to his decision to leave Reebok and start his own line. A thought occurred in Shaq’s mind and he turned to the biggest retailer in the world, Walmart.

    It’s been two decades, and Shaq has been selling most of his shoes at Walmart for $15-$30, compared to Nike’s $200 and more. This helped him sell over 120 million pairs of shoes.

  • dumblederp@lemmy.world
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    6 个月前

    He seems a nice guy but I lost some respect when he did gambling advertising in Australia.

  • Leviathan@lemmy.world
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    6 个月前

    Every comment:

    Shaq’s great, but **goes on to describe something decidedly not great**

    Let me say this, between him making fun of a handicapped person on social media and him buying a tiger from Joe Exotic I’m gonna go ahead and say he’s just a straight up piece of shit.

    • the_artic_one@programming.dev
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      6 个月前

      He generally comes off as a nice person but he’s pretty irresponsible and ableist. People always want to build up images of celebrities but they’re just human beings with flaws like anyone else.