Troy

The vast majority people who should’ve gotten reparations were never emancipated. Every year that passes since then lessens the likelihood, or even the need, for reparations I supported the effort but have little hope of seeing a positive outcome. I believe our collective energy, currently going to reparations, should be redirected to supporting and uplifting our own businesses. On some level, I appreciate that last comment might be self-serving, but I still believe it to be true. No reasonable person can expect the Trump administration to do anything to advance the cause of reparations. Yet another four years we could be building our own….

Well, we are certainly an interesting times, but I don’t feel cursed. Maybe that’s because interesting times is all I know.

They have done this. Perhaps not to anyone’s full satisfaction, but certainly not unprecedented. Didn’t Biden issue an apology for slavery. Now the people who committed their atrocities never admit it wrong doing, but they are dead and gone. The government officials alive can admit that historical wrongs were made. Now I don’t expect this to be done in the Trump administration…

First, I appreciate your intellectual honesty @frankster. It is refreshing. I'll check out the Nova (a reputable and serious source of information) video as soon as I get a chance. Perhaps this evening.

I think the tapes will show in greater detail how aggressive our government was against any Black man actively improving Black lives. MLK's extramarital affair is public knowledge.

@frankster thanks for sharing. The . I watched the entire thing early on a speaker says Alaska is one of the most isolated places on earth; Why wouldn’t UFOs go there. a minute later, the narrator says because of the proximity to Russia Alaska is a very surveyed area with sophisticated radar. These are conflicting statements. Also, this is a commercial airline flight. Where are the accounts from the passengers? The videos is from some British based outfit called quest. Who are they? They appear to be tabloid like. Would you consider them a reputable source? Again, where is the American coverage? Why aren’t reputable media sources covering this extraordinary, bizarre encounter?

what?! That should be cause for alarm! you telling me some shit The size of an aircraft carrier is flying around with no apparent means of propulsion and out maneuvering our most sophisticated aircraft?! If you have a video or links to anything talking about a massive UFO, please share it. I’d like to check that out.

Like how big; the size of a car, a 747, a toaster -- I have no idea.

Really? I know this is anecdotal, but unless they are trying to promote a business or perhaps using it on the DL, I don't of any my peers on TikTok. How often do you consume "information" on TikTok. I was unable to migrate my content from TicTok to Fanbase. A validation error kept popping up. I'd be willing to bet Bytedance disabled the feature. They used to have websites that allowed you to post to all of you socials from one place. It would be nice to post to all of my socials like social profiles like Black Planet: blackplanet.com/troy; Blue Sky: aalbc.bsky.social; and Fanbase: fanbase.app/@aalb… from one place. I'm also convinced Elon's company deliberately locked me out of my Twitter account https://x.com/aalbc I can't even view it. If someone can follow the link to my twitter profile and tell me the date of my last post. That will be the date I last had access. The algorithm is already bad enough. I could care less about Twitter, but when a company as big as Twitter can exclude anyone for any reason (i.e. race) that is a problem. If Meta or YouTube locked me, or any of us, out our accounts "just because" that is censorship.

@frankster I haven’t had an opportunity to follow this conversation very closely, but just to be clear are you saying that you believe there are intelligent alien beings flying these objects? I get that @ProfD does not think so. I also find myself in that camp. Does anyone in that four-hour-long video say how big these objects are?

The problem with social media is the algorithm. the algorithm simply doesn’t favor people like me— a black man older than 12. But seriously whenever I see anyone, my age +/- 30 years who are actively staring at TikTok on their phone for more than 10 minutes I think there most be something wrong with them. It wasn’t just Young social media influencers trying to figure out what to do when TikTok shut down mainstream publishers were frantically trying the pivot because so much of their marketing is tied up into TikTok. I would’ve liked to have seen TikTok stay down much longer. It would’ve been an interesting social experiment.

Lol! That is harsh brother. You’re talking about a man of God it is hard to take anything seriously that’s in The New York Post, but I didn’t read the article and of course it had his right wing bias. What was surprising was all of Trump paraphernalia the newspaper is selling. This framed cover spread from the paper is going for $130. They did a pretty good job cropping all the Black people out the image Kamala barely made it. As well as some other brother on the far left is that the “modern day minstrel”?

Which is why it stopped truly serving Black people many years ago.

i’m sure a GoFundMe campaign would go much better if Whoopi would initiate it

Personally, I could care less about what the D O double G does and the rest of those brothers do. I file this under “don’t hate the players hate the game.” I presume they were white entertainers as well, did they receive any criticism?

170 police officers were injured. I believe some people died as result as well. All of the insurrectionist will be released from prison the vast majority with complete pardons -- some of these people like the leader of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were given decades long sentences. The president has too much power; these executive orders and get out of jail free cards are being abused and in the wrong hands they completely undermine our justice system. Of course this is true. Maybe Trump will start cutting more checks. That’ll be cool.

The number of active participants here can be doubled. It would take time and effort to do it, but it can certainly be done. All good things come to an end, but I will run AALBC as long as I can and beyond my life as well. Over the years, I’ve used 3 or 4 different platforms to host discussion forms. We’ve been on this version for 14 years. I have the files for the previous forum, but I no longer have the software to display it. The files for the form before that may actually be lost. I made every attempt to preserve those forums, but hardware and technology and software Are difficult to maintain over the years. The idea of migrating data from one platform to another is a great idea but rarely is it possible. There was some great discussions on the previous forums unfortunately, they may be lost… @richardmurray I’m not sure there’s a way for you to migrate your blog or even export the data in a manner that can be used somewhere else. I’m sure it’s technically possible. I just don’t know how to do it. By the way, I published the review you recently wrote the author sent it to me the other day you can find it linked from the homepage speaking of migration, I’m trying to migrate the AALBC website to another platform as we speak. The project has been installed for more than two years. I basically don’t have the money to do it. I’m thinking about doing a GoFundMe campaign. As far as race is concerned, it’s a stupid notion that does not respect culture geography, language, class, nationality, or any of the things that truly distinguish people from one another. Racism is even stupider as it is found in our race… Unfortunately @nels it is hard to move past race when it’s constantly being shoved down your throat and used against you. But eventually will look back at this period in our history and try to wrap our heads around how we could be so fixated on this notion of race.

I'm not sure I was aware of Fanbase I know I never used the app. We already know most Black people will use any Asian-owned comapany's product/service/business before a Black-owned one. I just created an account on Fanbase: https://www.fanbase.app/@aalbc (basically to claim my name as someone used jumped om aalbc on TicTok before I got a chance to). I'm also using the tool to migrate my TicTok content to Fanbase. In all the news coverage I heard about the TikToc shut down RedBook was the only app mentioned as where people were flocking to as a result of the shutdown. To be clearer. I got more views on TicTok than any other social platform, but this did not translate into more website traffic (my goal) or sales.

TikTok is for children; of course we don’t use it. However, I did try it for a few minutes, because so many people told me it was necessary to promote books. It did not work for me. of course one could argue I wasn’t using it correctly, but given my limited resources, I figure it’s best to focus on my own platform, which is much better at reaching readers. My newsletter alone is far more effective than all of my social media combined. I send it directly to people, and there is no algorithm deciding who gets to see it. Subscribers make their own decisions.

The older I get the more I believe this to be true. However, our culture pushes against this. By encouraging women to believe they don’t need a man to lead them and discouraging men from leading else they are trying to dominate women becoming misogynists even. I never believed, gender roles are fixed and rigid. However, I also don’t believe that women are just men without penises. I think we should better understand the differences between men and women and work toward a society that efficiently utilizes those differences—that apply to the majority of us, while also accommodating all types of people.

To @ProfD’s point, if it were not @Chevdove and others who support this site by simply using it it would not exist. It really is just a small thing and it’s something I try to practice in my daily life— supporting Black home businesses. As much as I complain about social media’s practice of manipulating people another primary reason I don’t use it is that it is just making the super rich even more wealthy. That never made sense to me. Spread the love: use BLACK-owned discussion forums and websites!

When I was a kid growing up in New York City, street. gangs were quite prevalent. Similarly in Los Angeles, and other major urban centers, street gangs were a were a problem, However, in 2025 I Know street. gangs are not a problem in New York City any longer, but are they still a thing elsewhere? I really don’t know… Yeah, the congregants of most churches a seem to be majority women. Going to church every Sunday is not something I do and I fought against it even in childhood. I don’t know why the whole thing appeals to women more than men. Most of the men that I do know who go regularly are in leadership roles. I doubt I know any man that goes to church regularly on his own gives the preacher man 10% of his take-home pay and it’s not a deacon or preacher himself, but I know plenty of women who do this.

@ProfD I was in your neck of the woods this weekend actually still here stuck at IAD on the typical frontier airline delay. It is stupid cold here. Looking forward to going back to Southern Trumpistan. Enjoy the inauguration next week. I have not watched the news in a couple of weeks so I really can’t appreciate the devastation in Los Angeles. From what I gathered is not just mansions of the wealthy, but modest homes are being destroyed as well. I hope none of the inmates were compelled to fight the fire and that none of them lose their lives doing so…

Yeah, it’s the same hair in Florida, but it seemed like I always heard about wildfires during a summer months. I guess for the same reason people wanna live on the beach here in Florida. It’s beautiful. Generally, it is the very wealthy who can afford to do that, but then you have the worker bees (cleaning people, wait staff, etc who tried to live nearby and suffer the most.

WTF! Wildfires in the winter time?! is that a thing?