Troy

Sorry @Pioneer1 I meant write "swirling." But nevermind... The dude player guitar in times square was a Busker, long after the commercial aired when the "40 deuce" area became respectable. Again, the commercial would have been ridiculed. It was an early example of Hip-Hop being misappropriated by brands. They mixed break dancing with locking and MJ's boogaloo moves.

Of course, monopolies are good for the owners; though I would argue, in the long run, monopolies are bad for them too. I read somewhere that 85% of the people in the US live within 25 miles of a Walmart. Walmart is a massive company and in small communities can put smaller competitors out of business, but Walmart is FAR from a monopoly, with single digit market share. In my neighborhood, I do visit Walmart but only because they are the only place that sells the large box of Swaggerty's sausages. Otherwise, I shop at Costco, Target, Winn Dixie, Aldi, Publix, etc. Walmart is not my only choice; indeed it is not even at the top of my list. If it disappears tomorrow the community would be little changed. The employees could easily find work elsewhere and maybe even make more money. Again, I'm not sure you are clear on what a monopoly, so it is like the race discussing race, vaccinations, or climate change with you. Technically there are probably no pure monopolies but there are plenty of examples that are much closer. Care to try again?

“Boy, don't you go down there fuckin' with them Jews without no money!” —Richard Pryor I always think of this line whenever someone mentions Jewish people in the content of power. The following is a paragraph from a very interesting article “TOWARD THE NEXT LITERARY MAFIA” In the first decade of the 20th century, it was both virtually impossible and virtually unheard of for a Jewish person, irrespective of their individual talents, to be hired for any job at a major American publishing company—even if they were Ivy League graduates, heirs to family fortunes, and had brilliant literary minds. They couldn’t get hired on the editorial staff of a widely circulated American magazine, or be granted a professorship in an English department at a prestigious university, either. But all that started to change in the decades after the 1910s, when Jews entered the industry en masse. In addition to founding many of the today’s largest publishing companies, Jews became so influential throughout the industry that by the 1960s American writers as different as Truman Capote, Jack Kerouac, Katherine Anne Porter, and Mario Puzo began to complain about a “Jewish literary mafia.” In short, a minority group went from almost complete exclusion to full literary enfranchisement in a matter of decades.

Man, that time is now. I'd be willing to bet you don't walk to down the street worried about some rabid racists. If you did, I suggest that you block all forms of media that "pushes" to content to you whether that is an autoplay YouTube video, social media feed, or search engine result -- yeah, I know that is pretty much everything online

@richardmurray, the Harlem Fete generally caps the year for me when it comes to the Black book world. it takes place in NYC. I'll email details.

Swinging I first learned of this term about 12 years ago.

Someone can bring up an accusation from 30 years ago and it gets international coverage. The Guardian sees fit to withhold the accuser's name but puts him on blast before anything is adjudicated. Side Bar: I'm often told I look like Eric Adams. A couple are Black people who know us both.

Welcome to the forums @Jean2021. The Florida governor is attempting to leverage the fear and insecurity created by an exploitative system that is weakening the middle class and class and keeping many more in poverty. I live in Florida, a relatively liberal area, Tampa, but over the past decade everything has gotten more expensive housing, insurance, water, energy, restaurants -- everything! I have never seen this type of inflation. I brought my mom a pack of cigarettes in NYC the other day and it cost me $18! Take someone to the movies in NYC, get some popcorn and a soda and you are talking 80 bucks. Go to a decent restaurant for dinner meal, order a couple of cocktails, and dessert -- you better have $200! Hotels in NYC fuhgeddaboudit! The mayor got rid of Air BnB, so the hotels have taken advantage. White folks storming the capital is not surprising at all -- especially when you consider all the misinformation on the web...

@Pioneer1 it is cute now, but it definitely would have been unequivocally corny to someone from Money Maker (Manhattan) or The Boogie (the Bronx) back in the day. What say you @Delano? You grew up down the street from Spofford, what do you think those brothers would have thought?

OK. Please provide an example of one such business.

My bad, but you know I'm posed/biased to express to disagreement

Thanks @richardmurray I just added Vanessa's information to the site: https://aalbc.com/authors/author.php?author_name=Vanessa+Walters

Yeah, I think waiting to exhale might have been the only Whitney Movie I have seen. Bodyguard does not interest me, nor does the preacher's wife. That is why I did not vote.

LOL! Despite the pun that is true Good?! That is the understatement of the year.

That's because he does not have an upper lip. But most would agree, I'm sure, that he is an otherwise handsome man. May he RIP

Yes because I know monopolies put downward pressure on the prosperity of the masses, through lower wages and higher priced good. I'm just not prepared to be able to distill the impact into a percentage, maybe some economist out there has done this. Since you believe monopolies are good, please tell me what percentage our wealth is a function of monopolies.

No, I have not noticed that email me a photo that you are unable to upload and I'll look into it.

It seems to me that the physical act of bring about an orgasm can be achieved many ways by oneself, with a mechanical device, someone you've paid, a fuck buddy, or a loved one. Each activity is different. If makes little sense to me to compare a woman getting off with a vibrator to getting off with a loved one. The sistas in the video saying that no man can do what a vibrator can do are right, obviously. But a vibrator cannot make love to a woman -- at least not yet I agree, but with the modern web controlled by profit driven algorithms this is largely impossible. I believe it is the other way around; if offline communication were better online communication might improve.

No, I never saw this commercial. I guess they knew better to play that video anywhere near the NYC market. I'm sure if I saw that when it first came out, "whack" would have been the only way to describe it. BTW, that girl's moon walk was terrible...

Is that a quote, 'cause she did not say that in the 40 sec statement I shared? Hate speech would of course, by definition, be encompassed it free speech. Speech in American isn't free either. We enjoy more liberties than some other countries, but folks are cancelled all the time for something the said. Mark Lamont Hill was cancelled for saying "from the river to the sea." As a PhD I have to believe he knew was that phase connotes. Now he is on Al Jazeera, where the "free Speech" isn'tcomplete free, just different.

@ProfD playing games is just another way of providing entertainment. Who are the strong, positive Black men, whose main role is NOT providing entertainment for the masses of white folks and that are held up in this culture? Al Sharpton, Barack Obama,...

I simply don’t know. i know if if we did not kill each other as much we would collectively be better off but by what percentage I have no way of knowing. No one does. again you think monopolies are not a problem. if I pulled some percentage out of thin air it would make no difference to you, so why ask?

Lol, where do you find this stuff! i can’t imagine how Google’s algorithm has manipulated your YouTube feed. I can only watch a couple of minutes of this video I wouldn’t put his experience in the realm of the miraculous. I have dreams that I can fly from time to time, but I wouldn’t try to explain it by saying that I went to a different dimension where I can actually fly, and I certainly wouldn’t call it miraculous.

The people causing poverty are obviously not bothered by its presence. I think it is irrational to say that people in poverty want to be in poverty. over the course of my life. I’ve been upper middle class and in poverty I don’t know anyone who was in poverty that actually wanted to be in that situation, and I definitely didn’t know anyone who is upper middle class that would rather be impoverished, that should be common sense. The fact that I have to say it is telling. Man, there is no gray area with you huh? No, I do not think that eliminating monopolies would Eliminate poverty. However, I do believe it would help a great deal. I also believe that the same companies currently holding monopolies if they paid their fair share of taxes, that would also help and if the government use those taxes in ways to directly address poverty, all of that would help. But these things were addressed in the video why they don’t resonate is interesting. I do believe a better understanding of why monopolies are indeed bad would help. I also think understanding how the wealthy and corporations avoid paying their fair share of taxes and how the tax code actually benefits them should make anyone angry with the way our tax dollars are extracted and used. The people who think this way are victims of a poor education system, propaganda, and I probably of below average intelligence. there are too many productive people in our country without adequate healthcare, the numbers of people with healthcare is misleading because much of what we have is terrible or expensive. The only time I had decent healthcare was when I worked in corporate in America If you consider the fact that Premium healthcare is tied directly to working for some corporation who does that benefit? Why is it like that?

I’m not surprised. there are plenty of intelligent people who are, but the reasoning is nonetheless flawed. It is the same mechanism by which we are so easily fooled by magicians and scammers. The fact that vaccines have proven to save the lives of many millions of people does little to dissuade people from being against vaccines… {sigh} this has nothing to do with believing vaccines are bad or that the earth is flat. It us just an attempt to protect us from people who would work together to do others harm i.e. conspire. perhaps, but the guy who claims he has an eaten or drank for 70 years should be obvious to anyone that is false. Anyone seemingly can post anything on the web and others will believe it no matter how outrageous. People will believe someone has not eaten or drank for 70 years nor has excreted liquid or had a bowel movement for the same amount of time, and these same people will not believe vaccines work or are even designed to kill us. Humans are fascinating creatures. AI will have no problem ruling over us.