Mel Hopkins

I hope you kept such good records that they find they owe you!! #dabastids

AND they get hired (Epstein) to teach with ONLY a high school diploma allegedly from Lafayette High School... Now I ain't mad at him...I got a great gig and I hadn't even graduated from college yet _ BUT don't tell the rest of the world they can't ahead without going into debt to go to and graduate from college. Just be honest and advise that withtyout cronyism and a well-connected network, the best bet is to go to college so you CAN get into a well connected network. Dude even worked at Bear Sterns handling a lot of cash.. Most black men have to get a college degree and an MBA just to get an interview. Black women? Fugghedaboutit unless she's fly. Yeah, this society is full of crap but patriarchy strikes again. So, all I can do is laugh. I benefited from it too! When I was young, my body was slamming and that opened a lot of doors. Today, my daughters are young, gifted and gorgeous. So you've guessed it - They are living their best lives! One of my daughters just got her first corporate Credit card account - to wine and dine clients . (Still, I hate patriarchy. I for one am glad it's on its way out.) Btw, Judge dismissed Actor Kevin Spacey's sexual assault case. Dude wouldn't testify and prosecutors didn't push it as a crime against the state; which is standard operating procedure. smh

@Pioneer1 lol! I can’t believe it! BUT on this topic - we are in agreement! And every day through the news it’s being revealed how folks and their halftruths have been cheating all these years. Btw Harvey Weinstein’s criminal trial is in September but he fired his legal team - I guess to get another adjournment. Except in Essex County (New Jersey)! The Sheriff sells foreclosed property. - The courts notifies the sheriff of the status of the court cases - and the sheriff post it on the sheriff’s website. Auctions are every Tuesday. - and unless the foreclosure case is continued anyone can bid. But if folks aren’t already following the foreclosure in the courts - they can see the update - online. In the north - everyone is crooked so they have even the playing field through the courts... now if someone is too lazy to follow proceedings they are SOL! Still, that’s just one county...

@Delano , I figured you had but maybe not others. @Troy exactly, But Scientific method is fallible. It doesn't matter to me how many years they stick with a result - methods are faulty or there would never be a reason to discard a result. It reminds me of religious folks who say god is unchanging - that's completely ignorant statement ESPECIALLY when you dealing with the INFINITE and unseen. Which of course, is how I view people who put their faith in modern science too. Modern Science is just another crutch to deal with uncertainty. Scientific method has value because it forces people to use data to make sense of things...people like absolutes and tangibles but it's still a crutch. The value however is found in "conceptualization" or using one's imagination rather than stopping at it's "god's will". I recently read a piece on cryptocurrency that mentioned we humans have gone through three stages of organization and explanation so far, -THEISM - HUMANISM- DATAISM... Astrology relies on all three - planetary gods; human understanding and tracking the movements of the stars relies on data. although I've never heard astrologists claim absolutes except for when they are discussing the movement of the planets constellations et al. But who knows maybe that's not fixed either...

Big Five Publishing House – Direct to Consumer SALES Penguin Random House https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/faqs/#shopping (YES) HarperCollins Publishers https://www.harpercollins.com/corporate/customer-service/ecommerce-faqs/ (YES) Simon Schuster https://www.simonandschuster.com/c/help-shopping#checking-your-order-status (YES) Hachette https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/ (NOPE) Holtzbrinck/Macmillan UShttps://www.holtzbrinck.com/ https://us.macmillan.com/ (NOPE) U.O.E.N.O. #readingblack.com NOMO !!

@Troy the challenge here is the critic is comparing two things, Natural Philosophy vs Modern Science, that are held to different standards. It's like comparing home birth to hospital births -and then trying to determine why mothers recover faster when having children with only a midwife present or none at all. (I think that's an accurate analogy lol) But the same came be said for empirical testing. "True" in modern science is based on varying levels that we agree upon. And the scale is always sliding. For example, "smoking kills" but my mother is nearly 80 and is healthy (no lie). She really is AND she goes to the doctor regularly - yet she's been smoking since her early teens. Recently, (2015) Mark Zuckerberg awarded Dr. Helen H. Hobbs, a geneticist, the breakthrough award for isolating a gene responsible for low LDL cholesterol found in African-Americans. The finding- could help others who suffer from the alleged heart disease causing high bad LDL... But my point is all you ever hear is African Americans are at the highest risk for heart disease meanwhile there a quite a few of us walking around with a gene that prevents it... I haven't come across any absolute truth in science yet. Have you? (that's not a challenge - I'm really asking because although I read a lot I know what I don't know)

@Troy , I really enjoy Amazon! I'm an Amazon associate. I like its gadgets and how they showcase the many different ways to market products. I like its ease of use. I like media content streaming and availability of some films, television shows and sometimes music - BUT I would never sell a book on Amazon ever again! And full disclosure, I do promote amazon books on my websites, I do my best not buy books from the site either. Amazon is a master of information and I locate the book there and if I find that the author isn't selling it. I'll buy straight from the publisher. Amazon is usually the last place I will buy books and here's why. It is NO secret that Amazon monetized its business on books - it was their entry into the marketplace. It was never going to NOT "giveaway" books. So any author that can't see or understand that, isn't very good at business. And unfortunately that is what Amazon counts on. Thank you Troy. Keep up the good work. I hope you post or link this in readingblack.com too.

@Troy , I'd say yes but I don't know enough about astrology to even share an informed opinion. But CONSIDER ( etymonline : from Latin considerare "to look at closely, observe," probably literally "to observe the stars," from assimilated form of com "with, together" (see con-) + sidus (genitive sideris) "heavenly body, star, constellation" (see sidereal).Perhaps a metaphor from navigation, but more likely reflecting Roman obsession with divination by astrology.) this, astrology hails from a time of Natural Philosophy - which predates modern science. This is one of the reasons why some of the words in our language (latin) are star-based. I mentioned the scientific method didn't come into existence until the 17th century but modern humans (i.e. "Africans", kushites, Aksumites, Romans, were dabbling in Natural Philosophy long before Anglos took the "scientific" reins. So, while Astrology isn't recognized today as a hard science maybe that too has to do with politics. Aside: I did a quick search to see if anyone ever got a PhD in the field of Astrology and it appears "Patrice Guinard was awarded the first PhD in astrology in 1993 from Sorbonne University" Here's some links if anyone wants to do a deep dive http://cura.free.fr/histo.html http://www.astrology-and-science.com/p-guin2.htm

Don't worry Troy, your sex is not getting in the way here - I'm a black woman and I often find myself out of step with my sisters. In fact, I think you understand most black women better than I do! Which is another reason why you've been in business for over a score. Anyway, I think we are socially conditioned to support black men. I hope I misunderstood Pioneer's comment. I rather be wrong on this one.

@Delano I know I had grown weary of it. In fact, the reason I visited today was because of you and Feynman articles. When I saw those I thought of you and then I thought to visit the forum. Sadly, Pioneer’s comment up there - reminded of those times. @Pioneer1 you do realize President Obama was in charge (FOR REAL) and had a cabinet filled with black women. They seemed to love him being in charge! Most Black women have no problem working for black men - And there are plenty of black women who will follow black men anywhere. So maybe I’ve misunderstood your statement or its context.! But as it’s written it makes NO sense. Troy owns the website but he works for us, the visitors, members and contributors. In fact, I bet there are more women signed up than men. So why would anyone (but alt-reicht) be turned off by a black man owning a website?

I’m in agreement with you @Pioneer1 ! And I used to subscribe to James Clear too - but then I thought his perspective is no better than mine - and in fact, mine is far superior to his when the topic concerns MY life. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about “facts” - and insisting something subjective is a “fact” does a lot of damage to those it seeks to subjugate. Case-in-point, I was having a discussion with someone about foreclosures and homes up for auction. The person said you have to pay auction.com $100 to see the property. Well, that’s not exactly “fact” Now it is a fact that auction dot com charges a fee BUT that’s not the whole story. You can see the house for free - if the former homeowner , the one going through foreclosure let’s you in. Because chances are they are still living there! Also it’s a fact that you can buy the property at auction. You don’t even need auctiondotcom in Essex County for example, because the sheriff handles the sale. But it’s also fact that you could save yourself aggravation and wait until the bank takes possession. You can buy it from them with financing and for less than you’d pay at auction. All this to say, ask yourself who do the facts benefit? Then you’ll understand why they don’t change minds. And in some cases rightfully so!

@Troy Any observation of the universe or species that reside within that hasn’t been tested is an opinion. Some don’t even rise to the level of hypothesis - but politics allows some opinions to enter mainstream - while actual theories are sidelined. ( i’m thinking of two separate documentaries one about evolution and the other about mathematics in reference to that last statement.) For centuries cancer and the various causes were opinions - - Today the opinion (scientific opinion they like to say) is damage to DNA ...Meanwhile over in the DNA lab the current opinion is there are some protein pairings that need to be investigated . And let’s not forget the opinion held today about the humble origin of the universe.

Even science is an opinion. That is until there's consensus through experimentation that result in the same outcome for everyone who uses the prescribed method. Unfortunately, that still doesn't make it gospel as many theoretical scientists are learning today. While repeating the same method may get the same outcome but when someone else comes along using a different method and gets yet another outcome we're left with more questions. Any way the scientific method is still young (17th century) and it rest on the fact that we have is agreement since we're taught not question authority. I imagine if civilization last another millennia - they are going to look back at us like we're barbarians.

@Delano, Exactly!!! As the header says - this is a discussion forum... where people exchange ideas. I don't mind exchanging ideas or even hearing new ideas. Also commentary...I'm tired of commentary. I'm tired of talking about what other people "think" Opeds, commentary - I'll may give it a like, laugh but I'm bored with commentary. It's time for us to come up with something new or expand on something old that has NOT run its course yet.

@DelanoAgree! I won't acquiesce to someone's opinion. I may even add a point or two for consideration but I've returned to my old ways of NOT debating opinions either. It's actually a waste of time.

Lol! @Chevdove that sounds like. Lifetime Movie Title! Lol! She’s there for a coding program - and just for the summer. She creates software programs. But from what my daughter told me - she probably will be Harvard Bound.

That sounds like an opportunity! In fact, that series query - sounds like a perfect addition to one of your newsletter Did You Know: If you search on AALBC site for “series” you’ll find many of our authors who have a series collection - you won’t find that google! This is the type of Marketing promotion small websites will have to do to build their community and get ahead of google’s shenanigans. @Troy thank you for that info! I recently read that there is a preference for authors who write series.

@Troy SHORT TERM SACRIFICE! Yes I was thinking this too...but I didn't want to write it... Do share the sacrifices just in case someone is reading this. One sacrifice I can think of is deep dive your area of expertise.. For example, if I search for films like The Fourth Kind - GOOGLE snatches top space with "films others also searched for" - but when I search for African American authors with book series- I get nothing from google. The results suggest some new books at the top spot but it doesn't return a match to my question. So if a small website creates a blog post with "African American authors with book series" - it would be hard for the search engines to ignore. By the way, I also did a search for Walter Mosley book series and google snatched that right up.

YEAH DABASTIDS!!! YEAH!!! I'm glad you included it because I'm about to be the website marketing evangelista for small websites The other day, I was actually thinking about that workshop we talked about. Someone contacted me to teach them about setting up a blog...and I thought of you - I got the monetization and marketing part for new startups but I was thinking there should be someone who speaks in plain English about dealing with google too... You know, teach them what googles does so they can do a creative endrun. But first folks have to know what they're up against. Once folks know how google can jack you up that's when folks get creative!!! #EFFGOOGLE!!!

The challenge with numbers is if applied wrongly can destroy us - since the only numbers I experiment with is in cooking - I'll leave it to the professionals and enthusiasts. Speaking of which, my oldest daughter's sister is at Harvard right now because she's some kind of math wiz... she's only 15 - I admire her - she probably knows about perfect numbers and their uses

@Troy , As I'm currently kneedeep in working out my own digital asset management issues- all I can say is I wholeheartedly agree with you... Google's management has decided to own the internet and police it too. - I'm kind of sorry that I took your and @CDBurns ' advice about "registering" my websites with google. Now they monitor everything I do - from whether my images are large enough and other things they send me notices about now. In fact, they send me warnings and then almost demand that I fix them and let them know when I fixed them. The funny thing is I don't even use their AdWords or any advertising through them. One thing that helped me back in the day is I relied on traditional marketing communication- not hoping that folks would stop by because I used the right words. So, recently I went back to the type of marketing -and EFF google. In the last month, I picked up 3 subscribers to my professional site and actually sold a magazine!!! The latter came from the community I'm building. I'm not interested in google sending me traffic... I'm back to building communities like I did in the past that got me featured in Black Enterprise. Also - because I'm paying attention now, do you know I realized I get more traffic to my site because of the domain name than what google sends my way? Don't get me wrong though, google is the top search engine to send me traffic - BUT my domain name is outpacing google traffic. Now the traffic that comes to my melhopkinsdotcom is abysmal but since I've changed the tagline to communication strategist and made my professional page static, traffic is on the uptick. ALL this to say - websites that aren't necessarily gossip or lifestyle sites - are going to have to do old-fashioned marketing and networking to get numbers up so that we won't be censored by google facebook and amazon. Speaking of AMAZON; folks are finally catching on about "fake books"...(they are really talking about the "buy box" that amazon made publishers pay for back in ??? I don't remember.) Anyway - there was an article on linkedin -(NYtimes /Washington Post) allegedly the FTC is looking into the trade practices -I think it's because "45" is so petty and Jeff Bezos pissed him off lol... (I'm no fan of 45 but he does seem to go after his enemies - and you know what they say about enemies …"enemy of my enemy is my friend" - OK I got to jet I've been extremely busy minding my business LOL....

Wow! Leave it to a technite to syndicate himself! Fabulous! Gotcha! Yes, that is unethical. In fact, it’s plagiarism! I’ve seen this happen on The Root and once on Black Enterprise. But they aren’t the only publications who “copy” - I’ve been on twitter when folks have outted white publications for “copying”original content. I’m an old school journalist - if I’m tempted, I simply just add one line intro and link to the source. Then I’ll go back later and write a synopsis.

Yes, this is frustrating and time consuming because I have to write so many version of my articles. I'm writing an article right now that I want to post on linkedin because it's professional insight but I also want to post it on my OWN website too. I have to decide what to do once I finish it. I don't think google should be in everyone's kool-aid like that but it does hurt the writer because we can't scale our work. We have to produce original works for everywhere our work appears on the internet. I have more than 300 posts on my websites but I have to re-write a lot of it because I don't always remember where it's visible. I end up making lot of my work private. I have even on occasion removed some posts from AALBC.

Insights News is owned by Al McFarlane - https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/al-mcfarlane Media executive Al McFarlane was born on September 15, 1947 in Kansas City, Kansas. He attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia from 1965 to 1966, and the University of Minnesota School of Journalism from 1969 to 1971and graduated from there with his B.A. degree in mass communications. McFarlane worked as a reporter for the Saint Paul Pioneer Press before moving to General Mills where he worked as the community relations coordinator from 1971 to 1972. He then was hired by the Midwest Public Relations division of Graphic Services as vice president, a position he held from 1973 to 1976. In 1974, McFarlane became editor-in-chief at Insight News, a community newspaper serving African and African American residents of Minnesota. He also established McFarlane Media Interests, Inc., a multimedia marketing and information services firm with newspaper, internet and broadcast properties. McFarlane purchased the rights to Insight News in 1975. In 1992, McFarlane served as chairman at Minnesota Multicultural Media Consortium, a marketing and advertising sales advisory for Minnesota African & African American, Hispanic, Asian and Native American newspapers. He also was named president of the Black Publishers Coalition, which managed regional and national advertising contracts for Black newspapers and the member group of print media investor-owners in Chicago, Toledo, Detroit, Milwaukee and Minnesota. In 1996, he organized ethnic newspaper owners in the formation of the Minnesota Minority Media Coalition. In 1997, Insight News initiated a series of public policy forums, “Conversations with Al McFarlane.” McFarlane served as host of the series that aired in partnership with the community radio stations KFAI and KMOJ, in Minneapolis. In 2002, McFarlane worked as president and CEO at Midwest Black Publishers Coalition, Inc. In 2010, McFarlane won a Federal American Recovery and Restoration Act grant that provided the University of Minnesota a $3.7 million grant to create public computing centers in targeted ethnic and urban communities to increase broadband access and awareness. McFarlane also launched Garth McFarlane & Mudd, LLC, a national media buying and promotion firm in 2011. McFarlane was also elected chair of the National Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation Board of Directors from 2015 to 2017. Al and his wife Bobbie P. Ford McFarlane have five adult children. Al McFarlane was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on June 20, 2018. Do you mean through prnewswire or business newswire? I haven't checked through the my news releases in the past few days (kind of busy) but sure - every news outlet has access to news releases - but it's up to the journalist to follow up on it or include their own information. Are you implying there were some inaccuracies in the Insights News https://issuu.com/insightnews/docs/june_3__2019_-_june_9__2019_insight article? I'm sure if you contacted them - they would correct it. Mr. McFarlane seems to have been a journalist before you or i could write our name LOL (just kidding)

@Pioneer1 this is exactly how I felt - and see, you did understand. Some how I had a feeling you knew exactly why I responded the way I did! And yes, I understand why it struck you as irrational - because “love” is irrational and to actually have love for all living things equally is probably something you don’t come across on a daily basis. Now, before you throw my children in the mix - I also have an uber irrational “LOVE” for them but if I were to think it through ... it would be because they came from me... and there’s no greater love, I suppose than one who you’d lay down your life for..so yeah, my babies are on a whole different astral plane... one that even I can’t comprehend. Not at all! There are a lot of smart people. I don’t think it suits me. I’m curious and i keep digging like a dog looking for a bone. Someone might say “he’s hungry” ... but in most cases that’s not true—-The pooch is looking for his “treasure”. My definition of “smart” ? I like what you’ve said @Delano “pedigree” - a “person of letters” is my definition of smart. People who know enough to get the task completed by an agreed upon standard.