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I’m not so sure about that bruh. BTE, my 10% figure is probably in the right ballpark. If 90% of the people use something and 10% use something completely different. The 10% are fringe, marginalized, outside the main stream, “different.” And as such, they exert no influence and others wonder what’s wrong with them. So no, Google search is not a monopoly but for all practical purposes they are. Meta does not have a monopoly on social media among Black people middle-age and older but effectively it does. And because this companies have monopolies they have a great deal of power, which day exert to our detriment. Again, the people on these platforms, using them every day posting pictures of their grandkids liking some rant against Thomas Sowel or sharing some cute puppy meme could care less about what I’m saying. But that doesn’t invalidate what I’m saying.

@ProfD it sounds like you are equating conservatism with racism. Just because most racists are “conservative” does not mean conservatives racist. Shoot, the Klan are Christians.

This conversation is surreal. I would never image conversation of this nature and content taking place with an American President and 60 Minutes.

This is @Delano when he was a boy 👍🏾

No messages saying he could not login (I know @harry brown has been having difficulty) Did @aka Contrarian finally run him off? Did @Pioneer1 find a better Black forum with women willing to tolerate "real" men? Well your absence is felt. i hope to read your still-believing-in-the-concept-of-race posts soon.

With the way the "information" is disseminated today conspiracy theories are completely understandable. With all the trash being generated no one really know what to believe. so folks "do their own research" and come up with whatever makes sense to them. Of course with seemingly no floor to what the current administration is willing sink to why wouldn;t someone believe they are capable to staging another assassination attempt. Speaking of the Nation's birthday, the 200th celebration, 1976, seemed to elicit have a lot more patriotism. The 250th not so much...

Of course, that is true indeed modern computers are backed by more than a century of advancement. But still the technological progress since I started this website has been astounding. The tech back then was from the stone age relatively speaking and so much more expensive. The barriers to entry to creating something on the web back when I started were relatively high. Today the only barrier, besides the tech giants, is one's imagination. Perhaps that has always been the case.

This is happening right before our eyes and I don't think most of us are prepared for this. True, but this does not mean optimists don't worry we just believe things will ultimately work out. My ex saw this as a flaw as a flaw in me. I used describe her as the "glass-half-empty-woman." I think people come out the box inclined to see the world one way or the other. Humanity probably would not have progressed this far without both perspectives.

The pendulum will swing back.

I think his followers will like this one. When did the hippie white Jesus come into vogue?

He IS the embodiment of the American spirit -- THAT is why he is a 2-time president and multibillionaire.

OK I'm glad the regular logins work-- maybe that is for new accounts. I'll update my post. @ProfD There are some features of the main part of AALBC that require a login like following an author or adding a book to you bookshelf. My goal was to have a single login but to get over that tech hurdle is not something I'm not keen or starting right now.

Should I Feature first post? Basically featuring the first post by showing it at the top of every page in the topic? Sometimes on multipage conversation who forget the what the original point of the conversation was supposed to be. Maybe this will keep conversation on track -- maybe it does not matter.

Thanks, man. This whole website upgrade has been a challenge, but things will be much better overall.

There are a bunch of thing I need to work through, but the most important thing is that one. Resetting your password does not work yet (did it ever?). I hope to have that working sometime this evening. If you can login you are free to use the forum. After I get the password reset working I'm begin making some esthetic changes. Fun facts: We have been using this software since Sunday, September 13, 2009! The last time I upgraded to a new server was in 2019 and the forum was down for 10 days (at least)!

Really? I was an adult before I learned to do this. It is liberating 🙂 This is funny in this context. Otherwise it is not... at least not to me. Was the murdered? The he start the altercation?

...well they the ones paying him. Were it not for y'all I would know nothing about pop-culture. I would not worry about the promoter too much. You gotta buy insurance. T-Boz and Chill lbetter squash their beef and make that paper! "Independent thinker" Is a euphemism for arrogant ignorance. The idiot who does "his own research" in fringe corners of the WWW.

Yeah, I just read that year-long conversation that states 23 years ago! I pose the question to kick the conversation off and didn’t really express my personal opinion until a while into it “Hi Ruby I don't buy into the concept that Black people are attempting to mimic white standards of beauty. Black women do so many different things to their hair. Many of the styles, textures and colors used don't belong "naturally" to any racial group on this planet. Nor do I buy into the concept of self hatred. Simply because, as Cynique pointed out several months ago, white people also go to great length to modify the natural color and texture of their hair. However white people are not accued of self hatred to the same degree as Black people and they may go to greater extents to change their natural hair. A great many people (Black and white) are victims of consumerism. Marketers have figured out an way to make many women want to change their hair -- often on a regular basis, at significant cost and time. In much the same way that someone figured out how to convince women that 50 pairs of shoes is not too many to own, someone has convinced women changing their hair style is just as important. Men are increasingly victims of this as well; more and more of us are spending too much time in beauty salons, jewlery and shoe stores.” After almost a quarter of a century, my opinion on this matter has changed a little: I think we need to take more responsibility and how we are so easily manipulated by marketers it’s not just a matter of buying things we don’t need or doing things to ourselves that aren’t necessary like getting butt lifts. Today It’s a matter of letting others tell us what to think. Manipulating what people think has always been around, but it became more aggressive and more pervasive as social media became popular, which wasn’t the case 23 years ago. Now, AI promises to put this on steroids. Today we have reasonably intelligent people who believe vaccines are bad or who believes it was a good idea to vote for our current president. I don’t think this could’ve happened 23 years ago, so my opinion has changed.

Well I'm impressed @aka Contrarian You don't seemed to have lost a beat intellectually. I don't know anyone close to your age actively engaging with AI.

While looking for coverage of today's celebration look what I found: https://www.nationaldayarchives.com/day/national-black-bookstore-day/ Left on Read apparently founded a National Black Bookstore Days last August! Of course this is the first I heard that Black bookstore day. That is a powerful logo.

The city of Tampa recognizes National Black Bookstore Day.

I'm going to stick with this software. As I plow through all the problems on the rest of the site. I don't think the trade off of moving to new software is worth the the learning curve. Besides this forum's posting capabilities are better than most other solutions I reviewed. This software has a major upgrade available. I think I will use it. I also want to better integrate this forum with the design of aalbc I also want to use the same login for the forum as well as the rest of the site. I'll try to get all of that working with the new version of the forums software. I'm also getting rid of the Google Analytics code and Google ads (they don't generate enough revenue to be worth the headache and it made using the forums on a phone more difficult. So things will actually be getting better around here 🙂

I'm sorry @ProfD and everyone else. I was waiting around for the techs to download a backup of my site to move it to the new server they did not tell me in advance and I discovered Thursday morning that it was done the previous afternoon! I spent 12 hours yesterday fixing problems with this version of the site (I'm still not done) and it simply did not occur to me to lock down this forum so that no one could post. So we are on a new server now I'm still searching for a fixing residual problems. Fortunately the forum did not experience an issues that I have detected -- save the lost of roughly 36 hours of posts, and sign up requests. Technically the old posts are still on the old server, but restoring them would be a real main in the butt.

She has a tattoo on her face. Why should we care about anything? She has to say… seriously? It’s a word anybody’s free to use it. Shoot white people invented the word. Black Comedians and rap artist use the word liberally. I think it’s dumb but that horse left the barn during the latter half of the 20th century. If it wasn’t for those two groups, one would probably really if ever hear the word in public.

No not exactly. Think of the algorithm's goal -- to maximize revenue (show you more sponsored content and ads) and it does this by keeping you engaged showing you what you "view most often" is simplistic. You view most often what you are shown and you are shown what keeps you engaged, so there is a strong bias to rage bait, celebrity gossip/scandal/humorous content, that is quickly consumed over things things requiring thought, contemplation, nuanced, or simply reading. Consider the heading, "Boris Kodjoe Told “Soul Food” Costar Nicole Ari Parker She Was Going Be His Wife While She Was Engaged to Someone Else." Scandal and when you layer on colorism it is a great way to attract attention. This stuff does not interest me at all, but I can see where other would be. Solange's son, 21, sparks dating rumors with reality star Tommie Lee, 41. You have what whiff of celebrity pedopilia, with man who looks like a woman with a mustache... Look I know none of us spend hours scrolling through a TikTok feed, but a great many other people do. Our best and brightest strive work for these companies. But the problem is this is just human nature; we wanna see car wrecks. everything else is boring. Black-owned platforms trying to do serve people will have to compete with the celebrity scandal and that is hard.