All Activity

Illiterate usually connotes an inability to read and write. Another definition is having little or no formal knowledge in a particular field of study. I'lll refrain from name-dropping on a public forum. However, looking at history past thru present they're easy to find.

@Troyhere's the picture of me and my 93 year old sister-in- law that Chevdove was talking about. It was taken last August at my 90th birthday celebration, and she is on the right.

This implies that being human is the pinnacle. AI has the ability to become something far superior to a human.

You gotta add two more things @Delano; (1) provide free and low cost labor; and (2) serve as a scape goat to low and middle class white people. Woodson called it “miseducation.”

There is true by definition I was unaware of this. can you name a couple of examples from the last decade or two?

When anything really good is made, music, books, ideas, discoverability is the problem. The last time I looked cardi b and Meghan the stallion topped the rap charts. I doubt anyone serious about rap would consider their music the “best.” i used to tell an poster (from long ago), @CDBurns, that there isn’t any good rap music today, and he would say essentially the good stuff is under ground it is not the stuff you heard in the hot 97s and the power 99s. Cream does not rise to the top. the stuff with the most money behind it does. Currently, in the book world, Heaven and earth grocery store is outselling all other black novels by a wide margin—the next 5 books combined don’t come close. But I don’t know a single black person who has read the book that likes it.

Oh, OK. I kept going back trying to figure it which photo Chevdive was about. When Ms-77-looks-like-35 can make a baby I’ll be impressed. note if this was posted in the black excellence forum, I works have kept that comment to myself

That is an education. I was likely to go to schools where that wasn't always the case. Black's aren't supposed to thrive. Black have two functions. Entertainment and to be the economic incubator for immigrants. It's been that way since the birth of this nation.

I've been hearing about this dumbing down of America for more than a decade now. Yet, I see little kids under 5 years old navigating their way through smartphones and tablets. Illiterate people have been responsible for some of humankind's greatest achievements and accomplishments. Functionally illiterate people have been handling jobs the best and brightest folks are unwilling to do. There's a huge swath of gray in the middle. Not to worry as AI is coming along to put a whole lot of folks out of work. For hundreds of years now, America has had a net IQ of average.

i don't know whether or not the protests are staged. Tying back to another thread, I don't imagine the protestors have to work anywhere. I wonder if a file is being kept on the protestors to prevent future employment.

The same thing is happening with music as well. We'll find out soon enough whether or not cream still rises to the top.

In a few days it will be the 54th anniversary of the Kent State massacre. While I can't speak for the motivations of the individual protestors, considering the number of Black boys killed in the Vietnam "conflict," these protests disproportionately benefited us. @ProfD, I don't know if the protests are staged. That is a cynical, but understandable, perspective. @aka Contrarian, It could be that the information you've consumed regarding the protests are biased in such a way to lead to a "false ring" feeling. It could also be that these protests are unsustainable, when the semester ends the kids will go home. sort of the way the Black Lives Matter protests when home after the end of the pandemic... I don't think the protests are staged and I think the participants are, largely, sincere in their protests.

The reality is that I'm largely defenseless against a direct malicious attach

@Delano simply "educated" is sufficient. We have been filled with propaganda. We've been taught what to think, not how to think. This is getting worse. On this conversation I tend to agree more with @aka Contrarian part of this is my bias to intelligent elders. When I encounter such individuals. I generate reevaluate my positions, for experience is a great teacher. But back to @nels question: Since there were no specific predictions, it is not possible to provide an adequate answer. If Nels was talking about a race war, a collapse of the US government, sea level rise, the Rapture, I'd say yeah, we are prepared, simply because we have survived everything else hurled our way

I've spoken about this subject with several current educators and the verdict is largely the same, were have lost a generation of students and we are in for a "shit-show" (my phrase based upon what I've heard). Our reaction to the pandemic has made an existing problem FAR worse. In one school system students are 5 grade levels behind upon graduation and are being pushed out the door with a meaningless diploma. My information is purely anecdotal, bit one sister I spoke with was apoplectic over the situation in her system. It was also a community in which gun violence, already high, is increasing (that was a correlation I made later). If we chose to fight, for the Palestinians, for reparations, against Trump, for lowering carbon admissions, for the right for abortions, for universal health care, or to save the whales, none of it will really matter if our population is dumb and ignorant.

I can imagine the maintenance required to keep the cyber-garbage can from overflowing. Cybersecurity is a 24/7/365 job.

https://www.tumblr.com/chenayder/749112040602337280/the-highly-anticipated-colors-qa-is-now-here

Vox also explains how they get made. “It’s partly AI, partly a get-rich-quick scheme, and entirely bad for confused consumers.“ The internet, though, has always been a safe harbor for those with plans to innovate that pesky writing part out of the actual book publishing. On the internet, it’s possible to copy text from one platform and paste it into another seamlessly, to share text files, to build vast databases of stolen books. If you wanted to design a place specifically to pirate and sleazily monetize books, it would be hard to do better than the internet as it has long existed. Now, generative AI has made it possible to create cover images, outlines, and even text at the click of a button. If, as they used to say, everyone has a book in them, AI has created a world where tech utopianists dream openly about excising the human part of writing a book — any amount of artistry or craft or even just sheer effort — and replacing it with machine-generated streams of text; as though putting in the labor of writing is a sucker’s game; as though caring whether or not what you’re reading is nonsense is only for elitists. The future is now, and it is filled with trash books that no one bothered to really write and that certainly no one wants to read. Read the full article ▶

Bots have been dominant on the web for a very long time. We know most of the posts on Twitter is generated by bots. Now that AI has demonstrated its power, things will just get worse, The following is a bot generated post which originated from a foreign language. I've seen spam before, but this is absolutely terrible. This type of crap regularly shows up on Richard's Blog. It does not get displayed live, but periodically I delete this stuff from the server. Guest Scottdiumb Posted 5 hours ago · IP · Hidden - Member is in a group which requires approval for all content. As someone who straight tried CBD like [url=LINK DELETED]cbd melatonin sleep gummies[/url] representing the at the outset time, I requirement bruit about I'm genuinely impressed! I've been hearing about CBD in place of a while on occasion, but I was a bit skeptical less how it would feign me. I decided to try a niggardly administer of CBD fuel to reflect on if it would serve with my persistent mix with pain and nervousness, and the results were more reliable than I anticipated. There are also spam member sign ups. I'm sure more than 90% of new signups are spam. I know some of the names below look legit, but there were other tells that indicated these are accounts would have been used to deposit spam on our forums. This is a recent list. Even Google serves spammy advertisements. The Big red "Next" on the screen shot below is an advertisement being served by Google. Of course, it is designed to trick the visitor into clicking the ad. Google will penalize website for this type of thing and bury them in search, but Google is happy to take money and allow advertisers to use this trick. Google used to make it easy to hide ads you did not like... not anymore

Surely. We are not supposed to agree on everything or anything. There would be less room for discussion/debate.

@ProfD You owe me no explanations. As I said, you and I view the subject at hand through different lenses and your responses proved this because you misinterpreted many of my observations. in particular what I said about Democrats wooing Blacks being like a husband courting his wife. Which simply meant it wasn't necessary to court her because he was already married to her, not the scenario you created to tailor your response to. And, of course, we disagree about whether Blacks are sitting at the table with white Democrats because you insist on underestimating local politics. I repeat: you and I view this situation through different lenses. So be it.

Some folks believe these protests are staged. Interesting to sit back and watch how it unfolds and their reaction to it. Surely, there will be no tear gas, rubber bullets and batons going upside heads. A few more college presidents might be scapegoats and lose their jobs similar to Dr. Gay at Harvard.

I get it. I just don't subscribe to it. What good is the husband who courts his wife and has side pieces (mistresses) all over the place? I guess as long as the wife is getting *something* i.e. a roof over her head or some other trinkets, she should shut up and settle for it. Naive is believing that politicians give a sh8t about a group of people with no permanent interests to which they can be held accountable. When it comes to politics, Black folks are showing up in Las Vegas playing penny and quarter machines. Never taking at seat at the table in the high roller room. Many Black folks are being strung along and oppressed by both politics and religion.

These protests are apparently inspired by the college student demonstrations of the 1960s. But, to me, they somehow have a false ring to them. Some participants are too overwrought, taking themselves too seriously, actually believing they will win people over by blocking traffic and parading around with signs while injecting the unrelated issue of free speech into their action in order to ennoble themselves. White kids finding a cause to embrace that will make them feel good about themselves. Glad black students have refrained from joining in. It is a tragic situation, taking a toll on innocent lives but there are no good guys in the equation; Just fanaticism gone amok, - reeking with religious overtones.

What is a black American example of "self-inflicting jocular ni**erization fetish"? Something right wing Conservative Republicans would consider authentic?