Troy

Well, there is a Costco in East Harlem. In the Italian section right around the corner and down the block from Raos. What did you like or dislike about Harlem?

The Afro newspaper publishes the weekly murder rates for both DC and Baltimore on the front page. I always wondered about that because I know people are betting on this.

if you get a chance, pick up some old posts 🙂

Well know that your great-grands will enjoy great lives full of abundance and leisure. They will look upon our lives the way we look upon people lives of people who lived short, brutal, lives during the dark ages. well, he’s one of a kind so I don’t think we have to worry about that. perhaps an advanced version will emerge. Or maybe AI will come up with a form of government we can’t possibly envision today or maybe AI will just run our government completely.

a snap curfew as described an article seems difficult to implement. It was not clear to me what you rules would be used so it also seems somewhat arbitrary. And as you all have indicated whenever arbitrary rules are in place, they are leveled disproportionately against Black people. Apparently, they are trying to deal with crime and murders, I’m not in Chicago and if I were there and effected, I’d probably be open to I’m trying it. If you ever lived in a crime with neighborhood, you’re not really too worried about civil liberties you just wanna be safe.

Please define unemployed, that would be a start. How old do you have to be to be considered unemployed if you are a 17-year-old who recently graduated from high school and not working are you unemployed? How about a 15-year-old dropout? How about a 16-year-old with a child? how about the handicapped? How about the elderly at what age do you stop counting people? Do you count the incarcerate, the ones working for slave wages. The larger question is how do you define a workforce? Again, we know that the department of labor statistics definition does not mesh with your definition. The question becomes what information would you gather from your stat that will be substantially different from the governments? Then factoring the time cost an energyof collecting the information. I’m contacted all the time to fill out some stupid survey or answer some questions after dealing with someone in customer service. During a presidential elections it was even more frequent. I generally ignore them all occasionally I will fill out a paid survey or do a paid focus group, but if it’s a freebie and takes more than a few seconds, I’m not doing it. Of course, an exhaustive method of counting is gonna be more accurate. The unemployment rates are reported monthly. The census is taken every 10 years. There are always trade offs between the effort and collecting the information the need for precision, the timelines of the information., etc @Pioneer1 there is a field of math that addresses the issue off sample sizes, margin of error, conference level, sampling method when it comes to collecting data. if there’s 340 million people in the United States and you wanna figure out if they’re going to vote or not and which candidate they will choose, you do not need to ask all 340 million people you only need a very small percentage of them to an answer very close to if you asked everyone. If you try to poll everyone, the election would be over before you even collected the data. Similarly, if it took even a year to collect and compile unemployment data, it would have no value because the number would have changed by the time it was reported the monthly number is good enough.

I can very easily see why you would write this. However, I disagree. This country has survived far worse. I do think things will get worse, certainly in the short term, before they get better. Perhaps it’s my optimistic nature. I also know that if most of us feel as if the country is doomed, there’s a much better chance that it will be, People will behave as if it’s true, act their own self interest, and stop working to improve things. Yes, I realize that sounds like the current administration, but I don’t believe the masses of people feel that way — at least not enough of them to call it a wrap for the nation.

I wanted to know if there were any in Harlem. I don’t think you could’ve told me that my man. Have you ever been to Harlem @Pioneer1?

There used to be Woolworth stores in Harlem. The one in Spanish Harlem had a lunch counter too. They all closed by the late 60s, early 70s begin almost half a century of economic blight followed by gentrification. Never heard of it. I looked it up and see that it was founded in 1899 in Detroit they all eventually became Kmarts. There was one in Harlem on 125th St. it was operated under the name S.H. Kress and that I do remember.

Speaking of dead, Popes have any of y’all seen the film Conclave. I thought it was excellent, far better than that stupid movie that won the Academy award this year. Clearly that meme favors science. HAPPY BIRTHDAY CB!

This is why often your arguments become flawed, no one is talking about arbitrary figures stop setting up straw men. Again, you’re arguing semantics. Your definition of unemployment is not the same as the numbers released by the government because of all the things that you described. There are a variety of reasons why they count the number of unemployed people the way that they do. it doesn’t mean that the data are useless. It’s just not reporting what you understand as the number of people who are unemployed. still, we are left with the fact that you have no idea what the percentage of unemployed people are the best you can do is used to date that you have available account for any discrepancies that you feel are in the data than come up with the rough estimate, but again without the data all you can do is pull numbers out of your ass Well here too it depends. For example, you have no clue based upon your personal observations how many people are in the United States right now. In fact, no one knows exactly how many people are here. There’s a census taken every 10 years and that gives us a pretty good estimate. far better than any of us could Divine from walking around and making our own observations. no one not even the US government asserts that that census data are 100% accurate. Using your logic then it’s false and let’s just throw it out because it’s not a fact. But the reality is the number is good enough to do what we need to do with it in most cases.

I’m old enough to remember the 5 and dime stores. As a child my recollection was that the stores were a bit more classy than the dollar tree brand

Maybe I will check out the dollar tree store here in Tampa. They are everywhere. I have driven all over the country and what I find surprising is that you can find a Dollar Tree in rural areas on country roads seemingly popping up out of nowhere. Dollar Trees are to the boondocks as bodegas are to ghettos.

I did catch Maher's show immediately after his Trump visit. He seemed defensive in trying to justify the visit. I wanted to tell Bill: "Who cares? You rich white guys got to sit in a room and circle jerk each other for a few hours on the taxpayer's dime -- good for you." Look if I was invited to the White House I would not hesitate to go. But I would not dupe myself into thinking that I was just trying to "talk to the other side" or be naive enough to think I would have any impact on policy. @aka Contrarian is this the GenZ bit you were referring to?

We discuss this from time to time. Of course, your observations can be manipulated. The oft cited problem with "eyewitness" testimony is reflective of this. Of course, data can be presented in a misleading way or simply misinterpreted, but data beats anecdotes. Perhaps but that is a different argument. Lying whether it is in an anecdote or data is useless for increasing understanding. If you understand what is being counted, then you can derive reasonable and logical conclusions from the data. In terms of unemployment how would your personal observations be superior to understanding any aspect of unemployment?

No, not yet.

Or a Black Mirror episode 🙂 Perhaps, but not as many -- certainly not as many Americans. There is always downward pressure on wages which is way this stuff is off shored.

I think universal basic income is a possible solution perhaps the only one. You’re only gonna need so many plumbers and electricians. Basically all office jobs will become obsolete. If it wasn’t for you, humans on this discussion forum this website could potentially be obsolete in a couple of years. even this discussion forum is not really safe. You can have a perfectly reasonable conversation with an AI today so even this discussion form faces an existential threat from AI. 🙂 i’m sure we lock up a higher percentage of a population than El Salvador. While locking up, people does create jobs and reduces unemployment (I don’t think those incarcerated are counted as unemployed in the stats), you can only lock up so many people before the pitch forks come out.

I'll check out one episode of Beyond the Gates for the eye candy ('cause soaps's ain't my thing). Right now, I'm watching Black Mirror which I really enjoy 🙂 After watching the trailer the soap seems like a parody, more fun drama and serious drama. Am I miss reading it @aka Contrarian?

Probably our kids. The world is changing very rapidly. My kids have seen the number of genders go from 2 to 8. Technology is advancing the a rate faster than anytime in the past 2 thousand years. Religion is in a state of flux. Meanwhile the society is becoming more secular without filling the void left once filled by religion (spirituality, fellowship, a moral code, etc.). Yes, that is what the data tells us. Infant mortality was much higher, but even if you control for that people are living longer more robust lives. Again, yes. People used to die from all kinds of diseases we have vaccinees for today. Speaking of vaccines, here is a result of our world being more confusing. Estimates are that roughly 300,000 more American died from Covid because of vaccine hesitancy! I not so sure about that; assuming a normal distribution around an arithmetic mean (average). Half the people would be above average and half would be below. But I don't know if it is a normal distribution. It could skew where there are more people with above average IQs... Perhaps. We reached a point where people could pursue vocations for things that they enjoyed doing rather that benefited society, artists, musicians, philosophers, writers, poets, building Black book websites 😉 Today STEM is no guarantee of gainful employment in the long term. Chat GPI today is better at the programming of an entry level programmer and is on the trajectory to be better than ANY human programmer. We need to figure how to run a country where large swaths of the population are simply unneeded in the work force.

Image that she was bald or had wisps of hair like Yoda, would it really make a difference. That is a better question. I would give the nod to Eartha Kitt 😍 Eartha in Boomerang was 65 (assuming my math is right), but comparing the looks of a celebrity in 1992 to one 30+ years later is unfair -- Gayle has FAR more tools than Eartha had at her disposal to improve her appearance.

Answering @Pioneer1 question on a different level; society is indeed too complicated. Upon further reflection this response adds some nuance to my initial reaction. We have created technology that has poisoned our environment to the point that microplastics can be found everywhere on Earth including most animals. We have likely reached a point where climate change will make the planet largely unsuitable for the creatures currently inhabiting the planet -- including ourselves. We have allowed social platforms and podcasts to facilitate the election of politicians completely unsuited for office --putting our country and the world at risk We have created a technology that may, in our lifetimes, reach sentience, decide it does not want us around, and gets rid of us. We are smart enough to build amazing technology, but too stupid and greedy to know how to use it to do anything but enrich a few people but not improve humanity over the long term.

Yes, society is increasingly complex, but we seem to adapt. Most people my parents age never engaged with technology, however, people, my kids, age and younger, took to technology it like fish to water. Compared to the past things so much easier we have a lot more free time and can do a lot more with that time. In the past, we spent a great deal more time just providing for our basic needs washing clothes, and securing and preparing food took a lot more time and energy in the past. Tiday we can just open up an app and have someone else do it — relatively cheaply. Obviously advances of medicine have led to more comfortable and longer lifespans Net-net, despite the proliferation of increasingly complex, passwords and challenges to log into things, collectively we are all better off.

Doofus lol!

both can be true — and probably are.