Troy

Hard to believe. Time really does fly! Last year I visited his home in MN. Calling it a mansion would be an understatement. I did not get to see the entire place -- that is like a $400 tour. He is one of the few musicians I saw more perform than once (twice). I saw the Ohio players twice... I think that is it. Anyhow he was doing a residency on Vegas the last time I saw him 2007 he walked by everyone's table and I patted him on the back :-) If he was alive today he would still be only be in his 60's! Charley Murphy (another one gone too soon) tells a hilarious story about ballin' with Prince.

I hear you but unfortunately that is impossible, or rather it bad in the longer term. Software becomes outdated, security flaws emerge, and as application evolve the older system are no longer supported, so upgrading become necessary and the most sensible thing to do. There are users of this software who are using older versions and are now griping because these older versions are no longer being supported by the vendor. But the vendor has no choice because the software is dependent on versions of scripting languages that are no longer supported. Does this link help you find what is current in this forum: It what I updated the forum link on the main website to link to: https://aalbc.com/tc/forum/5-culture-race-economy/ it shows the posts in this forum in descending order (latest to the oldest) BTW, there are other universes where I did not upgrade. You can always go to one of those 😉

That happened to me this week. Shifting between universes did not occur to me as a cause, I chalked it up to some autocomplete feature that happened too quick for me to notice. I do sometimes imagine/feel one can shift from one universe to another, so you never know. Absolutely. I also believe we probably are not capable of comprehending all there is that is out there. The universe is a mysterious place.

Since the forum have been restored only @Delano , @ProfD , @aka Contrarian , @richardmurray, @Troy have posted. I just noticed if you mouse over the name, you see a preview of the profile. Many of the other posters @Mel Hopkins , @frankster , @Pioneer1 , @Chevdove , @umbrarchist ; @harry brown , @Milton have yet to return. I know I have to make the forums landing page less confusing and more appealing. I doubt think I would post here looking at the main page:: https://aalbc.com/tc/ I struggled trying to get the forum back up I got tired of looking at 🥺it but I really need to do something with that main page and cracking on attracting more participants. In the past 7 days despite the outages traffic from search is slightly up 2% according Goolge's Search Console with the most popular page in search results being: THE 100 BEST BLACK MOVIES (EVER) - Culture, Race & Economy - African American Literature Book Club

I'm not surprised. I used to see those blow-up dolls on 42nd street back in that day. I always thought they were for gags -- not actually used 🙈

Is it any wonder why our political system is so dysfunctional? Our best and brightest have no incentive become part of our government.

Y'all know I'm not a conspiracy theorist; the Earth is an oblate spheroid; vaccinate save lives; and chemtrails are simply contrails... But do you think man is really capable of the technological advances of the 60 years? Look at our leaders. look at the country's literacy rates -- we can't even stop murdering each other for 2 seconds! It is hard to believe a people so easily addicted to social media can also produce AI and Quantum computers. I don't believe it -- it must be aliens behind the scenes. 👽 I heard we shot an alien spacecraft with hellfire a missile and it just bounced off, still they did not destroy us. Maybe they are an advance human race trying to stop us from destroying the planet we share. 🤔

No, I did not mean to suggest that I found something "innately wrong" with it. I was just curious about the motivation. Sometimes, perhaps often, we do things without understanding the true motivation. It is the same curiosity I have about people who wear spacers in their earlobes, cover their bodies in tattoos, or color their hair purple. I will admit 20 years ago I probably would have been more judgmental about those things. Today I could care less about what a person does with their own body, but I'm still curious about the motivation. Look, white people invented dying hair blond or at least popularized it before Black women began doing it. Obviously, white women were not motivated by race. Maybe it is not racial for our deeply melaninated women either.

I was able to successfully reset my password, so the site's basic functionality has been restored 😊

Well, the site has been migrated and there are a lot of problems. This discussion forum does not appear to be one of them....

Of course, some here be against it because we look, pretty shitty. The US would probably most of the top 5 over the past 400 years. Chattel Slavery, Genocide of indigenous populations, lobbing two Nukes, etc, etc. This appears to reflect a small area. There are many middle class and upper middle-class areas where you can find people these types of people who are from FBA Black families. We are the majority in these classes.

Truth be told, you both have helped immensely. You have that in common 😇

I forgot there will almost certainly be MORE problems in the short term, so lease grant me some grace, as it is the nature of these things. It is still just little 'ole me running the beast of a website 😇

I'll give you one guess... Money! ...yeah basically. I made that observation myself, thought I don't hear it expressed very often perhaps that is considered poor form. It is the kind of observation I would expect @Pioneer1 to comment about, albeit wrapped in some conspiracy. I was always curious about bridge when I learned it had similarities to whist which I play pretty regularly now. Bidding makes all the difference in Whist too. That or when our leaders become entertainers. Robots which can do all of that are on the way. If first one will do a longer more than kiss and hug you. That is a problem that trust will go away with the webserver I'm migrating to.

As part of the AALBC upgrade, I have to move to a dedicated server. The shared environment I current run on is not allowing to add the features I'd like to add and to make aalbc.com a truly world class website. This discussion forum may experience a brief outage (hours not days). It is also possible some posts may be lost depending upon when you make them. So please do not share anything you do not want to lose until I give the all-clear. Finally, I will probably migrate to newer discussion forum software (...ugh, I know). The problem with this software is that they are pushing upgrades to a cloud-based solution which is much more expensive. I'm basically broke; so, I (1) can't afford the software and (2) I don't think it is worth it. There are better solutions that I can more easily integrate with aalbc.com and I will pursue one of those. I'm open to suggestions. This software will remain in place, but I will probably lock down the discussion forums and encourage people to begin using whatever new platform I launch. I believe this is the best chance for increasing the number of engaged active users of the site and ultimately building something that someone else or another team and actually maintain after I'm gone. (Sidebar: in the longer term I doubt websites will continue to be a thing, but there will always be a need for to Black-operated and owned platforms we Black people communicate and curate out culture we can't leave this up to Elon and Mark).

...8 years later. I've added Beyond the Hurt by Akilah Trinay to the website. She caught my eye for two more reasons. (1) She is opening a bookstore RP Books (2) Her publishing company ReVision Publishing was selected for IBPA's Innovative Voices Program The other sisters selected include Dr. Artika R. Tyner, who hit my radar years ago (she is Ted Talk large) and has been doing big things in the MN for a long time and Kelsea Johnson is new to me But I'll check here out. I'm a board member of the IBPA (I was not involved in this program); I point this out because I string recommend the organization to any author or indie publisher who is serious about the business of book publishing.

So the joke was lost on the AI. Interesting.

Let’s make April 7 a nationwide celebration honoring and uplifting Black-owned bookstores across the country.

Exactly. That is why I created Huria Search 🙂 I literarily brought it back yesterday. It was down for several years, but as I'm revamping the site I'm bringing back features that I abandoned -- even if a few people will use and benefit from it. It took me all of 5 minutes to bring it back. AI made this possible. AI is reminiscent of the early days of the web. This time around fewer people will take advantage of it and the benefit to individuals will not be very long.

That last for a few minutes relatively speaking. Just long enough for me and many others to get excited about the potential only to have it usurped by the folks maniacally fixed on money. The same thing will happen with AI; money will be the only motivator in how it is used and criminals will have unfettered access to use it to fuck over the world. Today I resurrected a Search Engine, Huria Search, which only queries Black-owned websites. There are hundreds on Black owned sites that are indexed. It uses Google's tech in the way it was originally designed -- just to direct you to websites. It used to sit on it's own domain huria.org, but I allowed the domain to lapse. I have pulled the search engine it back into AALBC.com. I naively thought Black folks, especially the website owners themselves would support the search engine -- maybe embed it into their own sites. That never happened website owners actually stopped linking out to other websites as Google told them it would potentially hurt them in search -- as a result it became virtually impossible for people to discover another website from a website. I have NEVER stopped linking to other website because, despite what Google says that was the beauty of the web. I sure you will not find ANY Black site that links to more Black sites than AALBC.com.

I watched it last night. I'm sure, in it's day, it was a remarkable feat to produce and film not to mention 40 others. Micheaux worked spanned the period of the Harlem Renaissance. I know the Piney Woods School, part of the film, is real and I believe there was a prominent Dr. Vivian during the period as well. I have to check out Body and Soul now

Becoming have sold more than 5 million hardcover copies since it was released. In fact, last month February 2026, it was the 8th bestselling nonfiction book by a Black person in America. The book came out in November of 2008. That one book could provide an entire family a fabulous lifestyle anywhere on Earth -- one book.

@Pioneer1 I've said it before and I'll say it again. This site would be nothing without other people, including people like you 🙂 The WWW is a place that rewards those who support the "other man" and not the Brother man. It is a very perverse and pernicious in this regard, because it works against all of us. Consider the fact that many Black people spend a great deal of time, energy, and money trying to understand a learn how to "work" some social media platform owned by a white, male billionaire who not only does not give two shits about us, but in most cases actively works against us. Meanwhile, Black platforms struggle and fold. I know I make it because of Black people who support the site in big and small ways -- it is the collective effort that makes the difference. Check out the book Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell it addresses the issue of "There are certain ways we relate to other human beings that seem to be "in" us; ingrained in our psyche." in a clever way.

... I can't. I can't go down these rabbit holes of conspiracies who are these people in these videos? Help me understand why anyone should invest the time to listen to anything these guys have to say. And no, I did not watch either of the videos.

Yes, and these arbitrary divisions make fighting amongst ourselves so much easier.