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.
While it’s true that the singular they/them has been used for a very long time, it was used in a very narrow context. It was used almost exclusively for an unknown person, or a theoretical person. In your example, the suspect is unknown, if it was known that it was a male suspect or a female suspect, the suspect would no longer be as unknown and so the sentence would probably be changed to “The suspect entered the store, then she exited through the back.”
You can tell that it had a very restricted use because of how “themselves” was used. For example, “anybody who wants one can get themselves a beer”. That’s a singular construction, but in a way that it might apply to multiple people individually. There was no need for “themself” because “they” was always used for unknown or theoretical people.
Using it for a known person, especially a person who might be currently sitting in the room, is a brand new and confusing use. Now, it’s not like English doesn’t have other confusions, even around pronouns. Take: “she was drunk and her mother was angry, and she slapped her”. Who slapped whom? Sometimes the pronouns alone aren’t enough and you need to restructure the sentence to make it more clear. But, the fact that the singular they is used with the same verb forms as the plural they can add extra confusion. Take a non-binary player playing a team sport: “They’re not playing well but they are.” If the personal pronoun version used “is” instead of “are” it would be less confusing in situations like this, but it would be more confusing in other ways because “they” could use both plural and singular verb forms.
It would be just as confusing if people suddenly started using “one” as a pronoun not used for a theoretical person, but for a concrete and actual person. One has been used as a subject pronoun: “One must remain vigilant”, and an object pronoun: “Wounds can make one weary.” But, it is always a theoretical construction, it has never been used to refer to a specific, known person. So, it would be confusing to start using it that way: “Give it to one, one doesn’t have one yet.” But, even that would be less confusing than singular “they”, because at least “one” uses singular verb forms, etc.
They/them for a specific, known individual is a new way of using “singular they” and it adds a lot of confusion You can argue that despite the confusion it’s necessary, but you can’t pretend that it doesn’t add confusion.
- Help the poor
- Healthcare for everyone
- Good treatment at work.
I like the idea, but I don’t think those are very well phrased.
Take “help the poor”. When you say “the poor” it sounds like you’re talking about a certain group of people who are born poor and die poor. Often the characterization is “the poor” are that way because of personal failings, like that they’re lazy. Nobody wants to think of themselves as poor, and they definitely don’t want to consider themselves part of “the poor”. So, even poor people are going to have a bad reaction to being told that we should “help the poor”.
IMO, a better slogan would be something like “Help people who fall on hard times.” because it makes it more clear it’s temporary help, and that it’s not their fault. I think poverty should be eliminated, and billionaires should be, ahem “eliminated”, but I think the average American would be much more likely to accept a social safety net rather than expected to continuously help “the poor”.
For “healthcare for everyone”, I think the issue is that it sounds like people are imagining high-end luxury healthcare for everyone at no cost. Something like “basic healthcare for everyone” is something more Americans would accept, and is more likely the kind of improvement you could actually get from American voters. Those of us who live in developed countries are used to the idea of “equal healthcare for everyone”, but I don’t think you could get that past the average American voter.
As for “good treatment at work”, what American actually thinks that they’ll get good treatment from their employer? Americans are used to thinking that it’s a doggy dog world out there, and don’t expect loyalty or love from an employer. What’s reasonable is fairness, so why not “fair treatment at work” or “fair treatment for workers”?
And if you do say socialism, say it along with something they like that isn’t scurry. For example, “socialism, like the fire department”.
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.
They should call it “Australia”.
Yes, it saves parking, but why would we choose this over busses?!
Because you have to walk to a bus stop, which in some areas can be a 15 minute walk. Then you have to wait for a bus, which in some areas can be a 30-60 minute wait.
Busses do essentially everything self-driving taxis do
Except come to your exact location and come on demand.
Self-driving taxis are car companies trying to make you stop advocating for better solutions that lose them money
The biggest self-driving taxi company isn’t a car company, it’s Google.
That’s it
It’s not it.
Stop doing their work for them.
I’m not. You’re as unaware of the self-driving car space as you are about spelling your favourite alternative: it’s “buses” not “busses”.
Push for public trains and busses
Yes, those are great too, but there will always be a demand for vehicles that go directly to your doorstop and come on demand. In less dense areas a bus will never be able to compete with that. So, you can push for both.
that don’t benefit anyone except shoveling money into a few rich people’s pockets.
Who do you think is getting rich off self-driving cars?
You’d think they’d at least try something like:
Either that, or there are people working menial jobs at Fox News who hate it but need the paycheck, and when they’re told to make a graphic they do something like this.
Because that’s not what they’re being told. I haven’t watched, but I assume it’s more like “These rapists, murderers and drug dealing gang members are going to be put in a comfortable detention camp that’s escape-proof because of the alligators.”
I assume they think that it’s only the worst of the worst that are being sent to these camps. They believe Trump’s narrative that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a member of MS13 who had MS13 tattooed on his knuckles. They believe that the people being rounded up are gangsters and terrorists, and if there’s occasionally a story of someone who wasn’t a gangster being deported, they think that’s an exception. So, while the detention might be difficult, they think it’s literally protecting innocent American lives.
I found the video this was taken from and he starts out very red. I don’t know if it’s bad studio lighting, a bad sunburn, or a combination, but right from the start he was very red. I guess when he got all emotional it just got that much worse.
It’s not “getting emotional about being a father figure”, whatever you mean by that.
It’s Jordan Peterson, a horrible human being. One of his main beliefs is that women should adopt traditional roles and men should lead, and he justifies that with vague things like saying that women score higher in negative emotions. So, it’s perfectly fair to dunk on him for losing control of his emotions in a video interview.
it also now has to drive around empty to pick up new passengers
If it’s picking up new passengers, that means it isn’t sitting around parked for 8 hours.
Additionally, how much time is spent looking for parking? How much time is spent disrupting traffic while trying to parallel park?
While it’s true that a car might end up driving around empty for a certain amount of time, it’s only doing that in the short space needed to get to the next passenger. The empty trips will be much shorter than the trips with a passenger onboard. And, every time that happens it saves 2 parking spots. One for the passenger it just dropped off, and one for the passenger it’s currently picking up.
At least a personal car never occupies or damages road infrastructure when it isn’t in use.
You live in a place without on-street parking?
How would you get parasites to not use the self driving cabs in lieu of public transit?
Pricing. Taxes on robo-cabs that partially fund the cost of public transit. Subsidies for disabled people who need a robo-cab and can’t use public transit.
IMO there should also be an additional tax on self-driving cars for private use. It’s ridiculous right now that many people use their cars for maybe 2 hours a day, and the other 22 they just sit parked somewhere.
I can see a lot of possible futures if self-driving cars become common.
In some, people use self-driving taxis whenever they need a car. In places like NYC where owning a car is a real hassle, self-driving cars mean you can ditch that annoyance and still enjoy the benefits of a car when you need one. That means urban living is much more popular, and high-rise building don’t need to be built with obscene amounts of parking attached. Because nobody has to park their car when they’re not using it, parking spaces and parking lots completely disappear. This opens up space for bike lanes or other uses. Because nobody has to worry about parking anymore, pedestrian malls are more common. People can just be dropped off and picked up in a small area nearby. In this scenario, mass transit might also be more common. People could take self-driving cabs from their homes or workplaces to the nearest transit hub, switch over to mass transit, and then get a self-driving cab on the other end to get to wherever they’re going. This would be less convenient than taking a car the whole way, but if the pricing was right, and the mass transit was nice enough, people might want to save money this way. This would work especially well if you have things like express subway lines that go very quickly between two very popular spots.
Unfortunately, there’s the other end of the spectrum. In this one, people decide they want to own their self-driving cars. The fact that they can get to work, working while the car drives, means they want to live out in the middle of nowhere. So, instead of reducing urban sprawl it makes it much worse. Because everyone owns their own car, you still need lots of parking for the self-driving cars to use while the owner is at work. One possible benefit of this is that you don’t need the parking right next to the associated building, so at least you can do away with parking scattered everywhere, ruining cities. OTOH, you will end up with some dystopian hellscape parking structures where 10k cars wait for their owners to call.
It could get even worse too. If the rich all move deeper into the suburbs and self-driving cars make traffic more efficient, I could easily see cities passing laws that give cars much more priority even than they already have. Jaywalking might be considered an even bigger crime because not only are you interfering with the driving of one or two human drivers, you’re disrupting the algorithm-optimized flow of traffic.
Plus, I assume virtually every job there is expects you to be fluent in Italian. Italian plus English would be very useful in some jobs, but like most countries you have to know the language.
We’re basically talking about truthiness.
People fact checked a crazy uncle if the things their uncle was saying weren’t truthy. But, if a friend’s medical advice sounded truthy, they simply accepted it and didn’t bother to check.
ChatGPT and other LLMs are designed to sound truthy. If you asked “What’s the biggest planet in the solar system” they could respond “I think that the biggest planet is Jupiter. My information is that Jupiter has a mass of X and a volume of Y. The next biggest planet should be Saturn, which has a mass of Z and a volume of Q. But, you should verify this by consulting these sources…”
Instead, these LLMs are designed so that the answers they provide are incredibly confident. When a user replies that they’re wrong, they change their answer and generate a new one that is just as confident. That’s the kind of answer that is going to seem truthy.