Troy

@Pioneer1 #1 ignore something called competition. If you’re competitors are using low wage labor and foreign companies and sell their products for half of what you were selling yours, you would not be in business very long. #2 I guess we could exploit the labor in those black countries as well, but then you’ll still be left with the same problem a loss of jobs in the United States I still have no interest in seeing the new Michael Jackson movie. When I saw TV for free, I still don’t think I will watch it unless I’m with someone who’s really wants to see it. I don’t know enough about Michael Jackson’s parents to offer an opinion other than to say, my guess is that they did the best they knew how like any of us parents.

I had not considered there may be gender component to doing this. I’ve known so many women, over so many years that post so much personal information on social, that I have long since given up even commenting about the activity to them. That behavior will not change anytime soon, as social media creates all types of incentives for people to share as much as possible about themselves. It’s one of the reasons I deleted my original Facebook account. But going back to the point of this conversation 🙂 I’ve considered the fact that something that I, or someone else, has written here could be taken out of context and come back to bite me in the real worl. I’m not anonymous, because it takes some effort to do it, and I’m too lazy to maintain anonymity. @Mel Hopkins I might stop short of the word “love.” but if you consider the fact that AALBC.com is almost 30 years old with the boatload of content and there’s increasingly less competition from other website, AALBC really should rank high in search be referenced by aggregators. But I still feel that Google search has done more harm to the web than it has to benefit it. I think AI will do even more harm so much more that it poses and existential threat to the WWW we know today. I’m not confident what we get in return will be better than what we have today.

Me too, and it is actually affordable 🥰

I can't imagine that Sharpton or any of those guys would take an upfront payment, taking their vig from any settlement.

True dat.

Well, the answer to that question is, it is unknowable. Given the popularity of published public domain books, if any are discovered they are quickly published.

@richardmurray I could be wrong, but it reads like you are conflating "Democratic Socialism" with "Socialism" at least you have used the terms interchangeably in your analysis. I don't think any sitting politician is advocating for socialism. That is a good definition, but I was say more simply, "Critical Race Theory examples how race influences society and perpetuates racism. What do you think? You have a penchant for verbosity, huh? I think this leads to a TL:DR reaction from potential readers of you posts. What do you think?

Well gas prices have been falling... so I dunno.

And what? That is what the internet is for now right 😜 Of course it is, But that has always been what entertainment is about If Shakira was your run-of-the-mill 50 years old, who would want to see that? Maybe so. but I will not be the one doing them. I've had a YouTube account since before Google took it over 20 years ago. I have no interest in providing YouTube with free content and trying to monetize it.

@Pioneer1 why drag Janet into this? let’s see a picture of you when you were 18 and a picture of you when you were 50 of course you’re gonna look different. What did that prove? Plenty of white people get those jobs. What are they trying to do make their nose look whiter? I have no idea what Joe Jackson did to his kids other than help make them global superstars. You clearly have a great deal of affinity for Michael Jackson, and are willing to blame everyone else in the world for his behavior leaving nothing Michael himself other than being “very sensitive.” I think Michael was a very weird guy at best, a pedophile at worst, who brought joy to a lot of people through his music and dancing.

Jays-Z Jewish lyric spurs criticism from ADL

LOL! @Pioneer1 , @Breck hampton had some challenges but he made it!

So, you are actually capable of changing your position. It is not being presented with facts or new information you have to learn it over decades through personal experiences. Are you a basketball fan? You think San Antonio would be the same team without the French kid Victor? Don't you want to see the world's best players? Immigration... yeah, they stopped dragging us over here on those boats and raping us after we got here.

The equivalent of "jumping the shark." There are many NY City Lakers fans.

@Dee Miller it is always cool when looking for something on the web to be pointed back here.

Wow, I got so sidetracked by @Phil Lamar‘s response, I never answered @Pioneer1’s question. I think net-net things are marginally worse today than they were 50 years ago. The legacy of racism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, Islamophobia, are with us, but in general individuals are overall more accepting of our differences. And even if they are not, they recognize that hating someone simply because they are black or gay is generally frowned upon in polite society. On that level, things have certainly improved in the last 50 years and certainly since the founding of our country. Of course, technological improvements have made things much better. It is so much easier to do so many things than it was 50 years ago. Communication and access to information is light years ahead of what it was 50 years ago. Despite the improvement in access to information, we are far less informed, to the point where people believe completely different things on very fundamental issues like the importance of vaccinations or even whether our current president is a righteous man. The basics are more expensive; housing and education. These two drivers of wealth are far more expensive. The prison population, despite decreases in recent years has skyrocketed, particularly among Black people. Our political system is dysfunctional. One of the consequences of this is the increasing wealth gap which is at an all-time high in our country with no signs of abating As a result, incentives become increasingly perverse, favoring the extremely wealthy and putting a great deal of downward economic pressure on the middle class and the poor. 50 years ago, it was perfectly reasonable for a person with just a high school education to be able to buy a home and raise a family on a single income. I’d imagine for most 19-year-olds today that just seems unimaginable. This is obviously one of the reasons the birth rate has decreased. Again, we are worse off today than we were 50 years ago. The main reason is that it is more difficult for young people today. It was far easier to get started in life 50 years ago. Your childhood would’ve been spent playing outside versus behind the screen. I am so glad I grew up in the world without social media….

I'd discourage you all from judging ANY group of people based upon what you see on social media.

That is an understatement 😉 I'm afraid you completely missed the point of the rhetorical question. Yes, and that is the point. @Pioneer1 can you conjure up a reason why Shawn is "allowed" to do what Michael was not?

Sure, it makes the job market more competitive... The NBA recruits played from all over the globe today. Would you prefer to restrict the talent to just American players? It is not hype man, it is just math. There are simply not enough ADOS being born to support social security we need more white people to have kids too. Also, while the Black population is growing our percentage of the population has been decreasing since the 1790 census. Me too. But do not think for a split second that that company would hire only or a majority of Black people. I was being facetious 😉

Michael would not have lasted 5 minutes growing up in my neighborhood... SMH I don't think Michael's father turned him into the man he became, sadly I believe was just born that way. We all had pimples for Christ's sake. He was actually a handsome guy. I guess he had body dysmorphia. He needed help.

I'm as pro-Black as the come, but stuff like this does not interest me in the least. If someone brought me a ticket I would definitely go, but I'm not going out of my way. @Pioneer1 It will be in youtube soon enough.

@Pioneer1 I had no idea Shakira was 49. She looks GREAT! Shoot, she looks great for a 30-year-old! I have no clue what she may have done to her body. But she is of course wearing makeup and surely the video was edited to enhance her appearance. This is par for the course and no one involved in the production is considering the impact on the self-esteem of the viewer--nor should they. Their concern is to make a good video and I think they accomplished that. The viewer should be knowledgeable enough not to judge themselves by the images seen in magazines and on the screen -- the models themselves don't look like the images of themselves. Finally, 49 is not THAT old man. Now I won't say 49 is the new 30, but you should not be broken down at that age. Here is a video of me at 49. Now I appreciate most people could not do this move at any age, but I was a D1 gymnast. and I was in shape most of my life. Shikira has been wiggling her fine booty for decades; of course she is gonna be better at it than your typical 50-year-old Besides her JOB is to look good .

I don’t know about all that you do know many cities have Self driving taxis. And again self driving trucks are on the road today. I think both are coming faster than you might expect. Dude, there aren’t even white own versions of those companies. Those organizations are unicorns and the true sense of the word. Those companies are formed as a result of a once in a lifetime rallying of the capital markets and government resources (looking the other way as monopoly form), some level of brilliance, and luck. There have been some large Black on organizations created but nothing to the scale of a Walmart or Amazon, alphabet or Meta. But to cap it off, these companies aren’t even immune to AI as they scale back in the number employees. yes, we are a very odd nation when it comes to how we use our financial resources. Immigration is typically a net positive for this country, particularly when we attract the world’s best and brightest. Sure, we also attract people who are struggling or fleeing a wart nation, but even these people have treated properly would be grateful contributors to our society. Our population is not growning fast enough to support our elderly I understand we would deplete the Social Security trust fund in a decade or so…

I enjoy hearing the stories and perspective of people,your age @R. E. Hayes

Well, the answer to that question really depends on how the person wants to spend their life. For example, I wouldn’t recommend that anyone do what I do unless they were really passionate about it. It’s hard to make a living as a full-time musician or artist, but if you’re really passionate about it, you’ll probably figure it out, but I wouldn’t suggest anyone pursuit that as a way to make a living. Now, if you just wanted to make money, I would say do stuff that people really want a human doing or something that would be really hard for a robot or an AI to do. Like nursing Now you mentioned trucking. I wouldn’t recommend that someone pursue that as a vocation because trucks are already self driving. But if you told me you love spending hours on the open road driving then go ahead go for it. Seriously, there is no shortage of company started by Black people — especially in recent years there are all types of incubators funding startups in the tech space. Of course you have the traditional businesses, barbers salons, restaurants all types of service businesses that black folks continue to start. At the rate, I tend to agree with you the proverbial pitchforks will come out. It won’t be pretty, and it will be hard to recover from the aftermath. I just hope people do something before it comes to that. This is a problem that will need to be worked on by people of all so-called races.