Troy

@Chevdove, I would stop well short of saying the Museum is "awesome." There really is not much to see in it.

@Pioneer1 We might not agree with Colin's tactics or lack of a strategy, but clearly we agree with the spirit of what he was trying to accomplish and we should support him. But again we won't because collectively (save the ministers in the video), we refuse to stand up for ourselves. The boycott now would be to punish the NFL, in a way they understand, financially, for firing Colin. @Chevdove, it probably is too early for us to boycott the NFL. We are simply not ready.

I posted on the google webmaster central help forum with this issue: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/QYFZLPIctE0;context-place=forum/webmasters I really went there to vent not because someone from Google would give me answer (they won't), but because I knew there would be people who could understood and relate to the Google issues I'm always complaining about. I got some interesting feedback a couple of really good suggestions and couple of condescending one too -- but t was all good. Probably a bit too wonky a conversation to interest most of you, but worth checking out if you are running a website for "fun and money."

Club participant Doriel Larrier introduces our club's first selection in 8 years: September 2018 – Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston HarperCollins (May 08, 2018)

Del startpage.com uses Google's search results. This simply emphasizes my point about Google dominance.

OK I had a good night sleep... It is not just my imagination regarding Google search results. Here are the results of the same queries on other search engines. If you click the search engines graphic it will run a query of African American books. While Google has the largest site dedicated to Black books on the 3rd page of it's search results Duck Duck Go has AALBC #4 and Bing has AALBC #2. There are other search engines like Yahoo and AOL, but they both use Bing's results. Still, relatively speaking very few people use these search engines. Because Google embeds their search engine in the Android operating system, Google commands and astounding 97%+ share of mobile search. If you added Bing and DDG's share of desktop search and multiplied it by 10 it would not top Google's share. I'm going to stop using Google as my default search engine. Bing offers reward points for using it. Duck Duck Go does not bombard you with advertising, insert their products in front of search results, plus they maintain your privacy. @Delano you'll be happy to read I will substitue the searchings below for Google's search engine. Now I just need to find a viable alternative for search on my website. A lutu continua

I'm not sure I understand your question Del. The biggest source of traffic to AALBC from search engines; the vast majority of this organic search traffic from Google's search engine. It does not matter which search engine people use all of them are capable of driving traffic to AALBC. Visitors can use Duck Duck Go or Bing, but the reality is that the vast majority of people use Google.

You can buy likes and shares and and thing else you need on Facebook. My understanding is that this are done by a combination of bots and humans. In facts many of the likes we get on social media are done by bots, so that when likes are are done for payment it is harder to detect. Regarding 45, perhaps.

Yes I know many webmasters have plenty of gripes about Google's search results -- all of whom feel their site's should ranks #1 in search results. Back in the spring of this year I noticed AALBC, which always performed very well on these search terms; "African American Books" and "African American Literature" (without the quotes) started to creep down the search engine ranking and is now getting clobbered on these terms. On a test I ran, just now, using incognito mode on Chrome browser, AALBC was on the third page of search results for African American Books -- effectively undiscoverable for a search on that term! I have never seen AALBC this far back in the search results for this term. Relatively speaking AALBC has only improved relative to the sites that are now beating it. What makes this situation particularly irksome is that AALBC is being beaten by some pretty shitty sites: On a search of the term "African American Books" http://www.aabooks.com/ shows up on page #2. This site has not been updated in over 4 years and is a site generated from an Amazon product feed. This site is beating AALBC?! My 20+ year old site is updated daily, optimized for mobile, uses SSL a CDN and is protected behind a fire wall. I have pretty much cleared every hurdle Google has setup. If someone can explain to me how on Earth a site like aabooks.com is beating mine -- on any search term -- I'd greatly appreciate it. I have at least a dozen pages on my domain that should beat that site. I could argue against several of the other sites beating mine but aabook.com is particularly egregious example of a poor search result. I'm tired of Google's monopoly. This month Google clawed back almost $500 for ads sales they owed me -- more than 20% of my total earnings for the month. They claimed it was because of "Invalid Traffic?!" WTF! There is no recourse. I can't call anyone for an explanation. I just have to take it. This is because Google also has a monopoly in online ad sales. Google's power is so great they can actually sell ad on my website than I can sell them! The worst part of it all is that Google can put AALBC -- any site -- out of business in 5 minutes and there ain't shit you or I can do about it. Google can read this post and say, "Put the little nigger out of business now!" and actually make it happen. I'm swearing because I'm pissed off and tired. Goodnight!

Someone forwarded this to me today on Facebook with the instructions to "forward this every Black person you know." I have to admit I was a little excited because i thought now, finally, some Black leaders are getting together to take substantive action against the NFL since Colin Kaepernick has been neutralized. I dug a bit deeper into this effort and see that he video was created LAST YEAR! My hopes were dashed because obviously this effort had less than zero impact. Why didn't this effort go viral on the Web? The video has been posted several times on youtube. The one with the most views (that I could find) is shared below. It got less than 83K views. This is a video created by a bunch of ministers with presumably supportive congregations why am I just now learning about this?!. They even have a hashtag #blackout. The answer is obvious we don't control social media. We also do not own any platforms with meaningful reach that would promote this effort and that we also support. As a result after NFL "killed" Kaepernick their revenues are higher than ever... But the most important reason for the failure of this effort is that we, as a people, are too WEAK to boycott the NFL. We won't boycott social media we won't boycott Amazon, we are pathetically support those who have demonstrated, time and time again, that they dont give s hit about us. We deserve everything we get. It is not too late for the 2018/19 season.

@Delano Perhaps, but they have no souls, but Twitter just did a massive clean up so I presume a majority of them are real. Even if it were half and only half of these supported what 45 tweets that is still a hell of a lot more people. The Wall Street Journal reports that 45's approval rating is current at 45%. 45% -- and those are all real people! Obama had an approval rating as low as 38%. Surely you understand 45 has a tremendous amount of support -- despite what you or I think. That support matters.

@Delano I believe your typos are better than mine. Seriously though, I believe you are using a handheld device which makes it a little harder. I almost always post from a laptop, so I really have no excuse...

I have never visited 45's Twitter page before 2 minutes ago. There was not need to mainstream and social media shovel 45's tweets as if the were in a race to be the first to share his BS. 7 minutes ago 45 tweeted the following: I was on the New York Times website, while reading a completely unrelated article about the Supreme Court's decision which changes the rules of the collection of sales tax by online retailers. Inside the article the Times included a tweet by Trump applauding the decision (which tells me this must be a bad decision for business like mine). This is what prompted me to visit 45's page 45 has over 53 million followers (there are only 68 million active users in the US). 18 people I know also follow 45. I'm seriously considering unfollowing those people 🙂 45 only follows 47 people. Other than VP Mike Pence and his family most of the others are right wing talking heads, not journalists, but talk show hosts like Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. This makes for the perfect filter bubble -- every tweet gets global attention, the large number of followers reinforce his popularity and the fact people want to read what he writes, and the people he follow are popular sycophants. The man has tweeted over 38 thousands times that is ALOT of tweets! I've tweeted 17 thousand tie, but the vast majority of those tweets were generated by bots. Let be go unfollow those 18 people....

Very true. The analogy between online discussion forums and our culture is both valid and depressing. Yes, the sun will continue to come up at least a few billion more years. Humanity will not be around to witness these as our presence on this planet will last a relative blink of an eye.

LOL where did you find this photo @Cynique? Actually this brings to mind another problem. It would be very easy for a hackers to create a fake video of me jacking off. Again, I would not pay a ransom to prevent for that from being distributed, but one could very easily be created. I've previous shared a couple of memes trolls created to make fun of me (after a quick search I can't find them now). I thought they were funny and, truth be told, being a target does reflects a degree of success.

The museum is not much to look at, but there is the annual Zora! Festival which they host and that I plan to attend. Also our newly resurrected online book club will be reading Zora's Barracoon for the month of September.

Hi Michael what is your new book's ISBN13 I'll add it to your AALBC page.

Wait, WHAT!? Please provide an example of this @Delano. Sometime I will use personal anecdotes to help explain a point but the notion that I use personal statement to "win" arguments is absurd. That fact that you would use the term "Win an argument" does not reflect what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to learn, share knowledge, vent my frustration and comment on the passing scene, and ideally have a few laughs along the way, all the while expressing myself in a manner that I often would not do in the real world -- less politically correct and less filtered (honest).

Yes @Chevdove, despite the typo the quote you copied shows you understood what I meant. Your point illustrated perfectly the point I was trying to make which is escaping some people. I only visited Eatonville because if it's history. Otherwise I would not have known about it or even cared to have visited the place. Many people know every little about their own communities, states, or country despite living here all their lives.

Today someone texted me saying that my Facebook account had been hacked. This seemed unlikely (I don't even know my facebook password -- it was auto generated and I let my computer remember it), but I checked it out anyway. Here was the post my friend thought was posted by a hacker: After I told my friend, a woman, that I was the one who posted the message she was very surprised at me -- almost incredulous. I told her that from time to time I deliberately make salacious posts to see if they would draw more traffic that my regular posts. She saw the post because she went to my wall. This post did not appear in her newsfeed, or anyone else's that I can tell. After 27 hours only 10 people from Facebook have viewed the post (12% of the total views of the post) and only one person actually engaged with it on Facebook. Bottom line, Facebook's algorithm does not share plain text posts with external links, even if the content is somewhat scandalous. Now I'm sure if I posted the actual email on Facebook I would have gotten more engagement. But I don't post content on Facebook because I'm interested in people visiting AALBC not reading my stuff on Facebook Does anyone else think that I hurt my reputation on Facebook by making this post? Does anyone thing I crossed a line in terms of decency? I considered removing the post given my friend's reaction, but then I'm not concerned about Facebook... and I can't be fired from anywhere because of what I post. I do however care what my people think. So let me know what you think.

@Chevdove are you saying that you know of family members who also survived the transatlantic slave trade? Perhaps they are part of the same "cargo." Is your family from LA or MS? Where in Florida does your family live? Depending upon where you are in the state some parts are easily more cosmopotitial that the North.

I guess the hackers did not want to make you feel inadequate. They don't call me "johnson" for nothing 😉

@Cynique good point. I don't mean to suggest the information can only be communicated through books. Videos are a great way to learn about far flung places and cultures. Before technology we replied upon an oral communication. The bottom line is personal first hand information is not always the best or even possible. @Mel Hopkins I never studied journalism but something is unclear to me. First hand experience, as I understand it is, one witnessing something happen. Now if you read something I witnessed is what I wrote considered a "First/Primary" source?

I'll take that as a "yes." You'd make a fine capitalist. Slave owners convinced themselves too that they were providing better opportunities for their darkies too.

This is why you can simply consume american propaganda. We have to read widely and outside out culture. If one did that they would not need to visit any place to learn this. It would take less time and be far cheaper. In fact it is the only way most of us can learn since most of us don't have the resources to travel the world. Most of us however can travel to the library.