• TimeSquirrel
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    2814 hours ago

    Who died and made this goofball the official spokesperson for science and astronomy? It’s getting annoying seeing his face on my YouTube feed all the time. Along with that other dude, Michio Kaku.

    In case y’all got the wrong idea, they’re still cool guys, and fuck Elon. It’s just that I’m past the teenage stoner documentaries of people being “deep” when explaining the science. That’s who Dr. Tyson seems to appeal to.

    For some no-nonsense, no fluff science content, I’d recommend Sabine Hossenfelder and the PBS Spacetime series.

      • TimeSquirrel
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        12 hours ago

        Oh yes, how could I forget. I followed him getting his whole pilot’s license and everything.

    • @vitriolix
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      14 hours ago

      Re Sabine, there are so many non transphobe people to watch

      • TimeSquirrel
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        11 hour ago

        That’s unfortunate and I didn’t know that about her if true, I admit I only watch her videos every so often and didn’t see anything like that when I watched her channel.

    • @EtherWhack
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      03 hours ago

      Honestly, Neil D. Tyson comes off as an arrogant douchebag, same with Bill Nye.

      • FauxPseudo
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        411 hours ago

        Literally true.

        Socrates -> Plato -> Aristotle -> Alexander

        Sagan -> NDT -> ?

        Fortunately we are alive to see the original and the successor. Unfortunately NDT has become a greatest hits jukebox and hasn’t produced anything new and noteworthy in a long time. I’m looking forward to the next generation. I’m definitely cautious of what the generation after that does.

    • Random_Character_A
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      12 hours ago

      PBS Spacetime is one of those golden nuggets of a shitpile thats youtube.

      Youtube keeps pushing Sabine, but I don’t agree with her on many things relating to quantium stuff. But yeah, you definitely won’t find any new age quantium mystic crap on her channel.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 hours ago

          Well there’s the stuff I personally dislike. Like the Elon cringe skits she does, or the super weird uncanny valley face filter.

          But the biggest issue is she didn’t stay in her realm of expertise. She might know a lot about certain things, but then also talks about other stuff with the same level of authority. No caveats, no this is my opinion, she present it as fact. But the fact is she is really really wrong about a lot of shit. And just mixing and matching shit you know and shit you don’t know is a big no-no in science communication.

          One of the most egregious thins she did was make a video about trans folk and talked about it like it’s a fad or even a disorder. She was not only factually wrong, she was spouting anti-trans propaganda. When called out she kept the video up and didn’t do anything like a follow up, correction or apology. She has some really boomer views about a lot of things and then presents it like it’s fact. Another panned video was the one about neurodivergence (autism) and there are more like that. There are multiple hour+ video essays about how she is wrong in these cases and they are worth a watch imho.

          The annoying thing is, I don’t really know what she actually does know. Because she mixes everything and doesn’t stay within her knowledge base, now everything is suspect. So even the videos about physics where I think she does know what she’s talking about, I can’t trust. And even in physics it seems like she’s very hit or miss, I spoke to somebody at a party once that did his PhD on one of the physics topics she covered in a video. He said she was like 10 years behind the times and was wrong about several key facts. Some of these were just wrong because of simplification, which might be excused given the format, but others were plain wrong. Now I don’t know enough about the subject to make a judgement, but the dude I spoke to seemed to know what he was talking about.

          Science communication is really really hard and it’s a skill not a lot of people have. Look at how big the teams of researchers at for example Kurzgesagt are and even they mess up once in a while. But when they get called out, they go back and delete the video or better yet post a follow up or recently even a replacement video. And they qualify things with sources and caveats, mentioning which parts are fact, consensus, speculation and opinion. They also make it very clear at the beginning of the video what a viewer can expect. That way we can qualify the information and know what in what light to put the information presented. Now I realize Kurzgesagt may be one of the best channels when it comes to short form YouTube video science communication out there and it isn’t fair to hold everyone to that standard. But there needs to be at least some level of due diligence involved imho.

          I’m sure I left out some other stuff, there is a lot to find if you look for honest critique. I’m sure there’s also a lot of unwarranted hate out there, but also a lot of stuff that’s warranted.

          • @SpacetimeMachine
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            511 hours ago

            That all sounds pretty fair. I haven’t watched many of those videos you’ve mentioned but I certainly have noticed times where it feels like she is stepping outside of her expertise. And totally agree on Kurzgesagt. I feel like they are one of the more reliable science channels on the platform.

  • Jagothaciv
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    2014 hours ago

    All that money that went to Boeing and Space X should have went to NASA. Fuck private space cunts getting our money. Those engineers should be OURS, not fuckwit Leon.

  • Diplomjodler
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    2117 hours ago

    I won’t be taking sides in this particular battle of grossly overinflated egos.

    • @fluxion
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      4716 hours ago

      I’ll pick the side that’s not trying to overthrow the foundations of democracy

      • Diplomjodler
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        1516 hours ago

        You have a point there. Still can’t stand the guy.

    • @RememberTheApollo_
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      13 hours ago

      Yes. The shuttle was both rocket and spacecraft, obviously controllable for landing. The Shuttle SRBs were reusable. They were not controllable for landing, but nonetheless they did land in a state that allowed reuse.

      Musk achieved powered flight for landing his rockets, but even NASA had a long history of research with VTOL powered rockets that were not used for spaceflight.

      He can certainly claim to have perfected it, but he certainly didn’t invent it.

      • @[email protected]
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        1812 hours ago

        He can certainly claim to have perfected it, but he certainly didn’t invent it.

        He did jack all, SpaceX engineering teams did everything.

    • @Buffalox
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      16 hours ago

      That was not the claim, the claim was on the actual space frontier. And in that regard Elon Musk and SpaceX has not achieved anything.
      At 4:10 he even praise that SpaceX works on reusability, and call landing the rocket a tremendous achievement.

      You are arguing a strawman, the exact problem this video was made to address.

        • @Buffalox
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          16 hours ago

          deleted by creator

      • @[email protected]
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        -416 hours ago
        1. Elon Musk didn’t achieved shit.
        2. NASA hasn’t been achieving much lately either.
        3. Comparing current SpaceX with peak NASA is like comparing an infant with an adult.
        • Random_Character_A
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          312 hours ago

          In this case, should we measure maturity in the amount of money burned?

          where are we at?

  • @[email protected]
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    -1418 hours ago

    I’d put building cathedrals and pyramids more on slaves than worship of deity… other than that, spot on.

    And he singles out recovering rockets as a feat of engineering, not space exploration, which would’ve been my second quip.

    • FauxPseudo
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      711 hours ago

      Egypt didn’t use slaves to build the pyramids. They used paid skilled workers. We have their living areas and pay receipts. You are working with outdated information. Cathedrals cover a 1700 year period and multiple labor strategies. I’m sure some were built with slaves but the majority weren’t and slavery was all but absent for the majority of the period unless you count serfdom, but serfs didn’t have the skills to build them so they don’t count.

    • @TheGrandNagus
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      2116 hours ago

      Pyramids being built by slaves was debunked long ago. Cathedrals also weren’t lol.

    • MaggiWuerze
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      17 hours ago

      I’d put building cathedrals and pyramids more on slaves than worship of deity

      Neither where build by slaves.