• mommykink@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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.

  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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

    • tpihkal@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I find it funny that I’m not a sports ball fan, nor do I know much about Shaq, but I do know the shoe story!

    • pubertthefat@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      “A lady cursed me out one day at the arena. I reached in my pocket to give her $1,000 and she smacked it out of my hand,” Shaq reminisced. “She said, ‘Why doesn’t anyone try to make affordable shoes?’”

      Shaq just shaqin

      • Kanda@reddthat.com
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        6 months ago

        Eh should be better than senile genocider or senile absolute psychopath

      • refalo@programming.dev
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        6 months ago

        have you seen most of the past presidents? the bar is not high.

        IMO disqualifying him using unrealistic (based on current president performances) criteria is just silly

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      6 months ago

      I mean, if the anecdote is an example of how he solves problems, maybe he’s not cut out for that. If you don’t like online classes you could just go to pretty much any other college/university instead of paying 15 times the price to a for profit diploma mill.

      • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        Wouldn’t he be distracted by interrupting fans? If it’s his friends then he can just talk to them about homework and projects.

        • jonne@infosec.pub
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          6 months ago

          People would get excited on day one and then they’d leave him alone the rest of the semester. Celebrities go do degrees all the time.

    • RegalPotoo@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Idk, I’d argue that given his wealth and influence he’s probably in a better position to do good as a private individual rather than having to get consensus with people who think migrants deserve to be shot on sight (as long as they aren’t white), that “freedom of religion” means choosing which Christian sect you belong to and that women shouldn’t be allowed healthcare

    • sushibowl@feddit.nl
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      6 months ago

      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 months ago

        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 months ago

          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 months ago

          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 months ago

            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 months ago

              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 months ago

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

  • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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.

      • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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        6 months ago

        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 months ago

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

    • Forester@yiffit.net
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      6 months ago

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

    • dantheclamman@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I used to like Shaq, but he’s been involved in promoting a lot of seriously sketchy stuff. He will put his name on literally anything if they pay him enough. Few celebrities put their name on more stupid scummy crypto bullshit. He lost my respect with that. I bet he had a financial relationship with Univ of Phoenix

  • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
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    6 months ago

    “You need 15 people in the class Mr. Shaq”

    “No problem, I’ll just pay for 15 friends to take the class”

    “…uh, we don’t require 16 people, but you do you. We’ll gladly take your money.”

  • minimalfootprint@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 months ago

    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 months ago

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

    • MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he didn’t know Aussie gambling is 90% money laundering.

      But advertising for gambling in general is scuzzy.

      • Hagdos@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        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 months ago

          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.

  • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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 months ago

        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.

  • Leviathan@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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 months ago

      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.