Troy

Below is an interesting comment to an article on the site, "The Music Moguls Who Bled Millions from a Black Legend" by Reclamation Project. (Note: Someone from the Nation must have given me permission to run this article and I must have had an explicit reason to run it as I rarely republish entire articles that have been published elsewhere it is bad for SEO) What do you think about the article linked at the end of the commentor's post ("Motown’s abuse of its artists")? In an earlier version of the comment Minister Farrakhan was referred to as "Sinister Farra-Con." I deleted that version as the comments were the same save the gratuitous diss. J. Feldman's Cooments Follows: Total racist, anti-Semitic rubbish. Louis Farrakhan's claims are unsupported. The fact is that without the Chess family, you never would have heard of Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, and plenty of other Black artists. Yes, all artists--regardless of race, religion, nationality, or ethnicity--need their own proper legal representation and managers to look out for them. That's always been the case. Even the Beatles had to get involved in litigation to get their share of royalties due them. And that has nothing to do with whether or not the record companies, theater owners, etc. are White, Black, Jewish, Christian, or whatever. Now, as part of getting proper management representation, one of the biggest names in the business years ago was Joe Glaser, a Jewish manager of musical artists. Joe Glasser was a feared person in the business industry, as he fought fiercely on behalf of his clients. Associated Booking Corporation, or "ABC" as it is also known, was incorporated on June 26, 1943, and is still in existence today. Glass and his company have represented such performers as Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Woody Herman, Dave Brubeck, Barbra Streisand, B.B. King, The Allman Brothers Band, T. Rex, and The Platters, to name a few. Does Louis Farrakhan have anything to say about Joe Glasser, who has done far more to benefit Black people than Farrakhan ever did? Nope. And when Berry Gordy started his own record company and created the Motown empire, Gordy ripped off Black artists far worse than the Chess Brothers could ever do. But does Louis Farrakhan have anything to say about Berry Gordy? Of course not. This entire article is just racist, anti-Semitic BS. Here's just one article on Berry Gordy's ripoffs: https://english.elpais.com/...

Yeah she looks good. If her mind is as sharp as yours there must be something in the water

that was the definition I was using. Does your response change? that is a surprising response, if someone were responsive for “humankind's greatest achievements and accomplishments” surely we would know there names if you shared them.

@Delano If AI becomes superior to humans the rights we bestow on it and the murder question are irrelevant. The power dynamic will have shifted. AI would potentially be as concerned about us as we are with chickens. AI would know us better than we know ourselves and train us to do their bidding the way we train animals. That is assuming AI found it necessary to keep us around and not exterminate us like vermin. @aka Contrarian I often wonder if life would be better without technology. It seems no one is able to make the evaluation given the bias of living in a given time. I’m old enough to remember days before technology was in use and I’m not convinced we were less happy. technology has brought us longer healthier lives, the ability to travel cheaply and widely, more food, access to information and entertainment, but I’m not convinced people are actually happier. I doubt white men are happier. Women are probably happier, but that may have more to do with freedoms enjoyed by civil rights. One could argue that the increased happiness Black people enjoy due to emancipation and civil rights has been wiped out by technology. net-net I believe I’m personally better off with tech, but as a society I’m not so sure. The quote from Kurt V, @Delano shared was a excellent example.

This implies that being human is the pinnacle. AI has the ability to become something far superior to a human.

You gotta add two more things @Delano; (1) provide free and low cost labor; and (2) serve as a scape goat to low and middle class white people. Woodson called it “miseducation.”

There is true by definition I was unaware of this. can you name a couple of examples from the last decade or two?

When anything really good is made, music, books, ideas, discoverability is the problem. The last time I looked cardi b and Meghan the stallion topped the rap charts. I doubt anyone serious about rap would consider their music the “best.” i used to tell an poster (from long ago), @CDBurns, that there isn’t any good rap music today, and he would say essentially the good stuff is under ground it is not the stuff you heard in the hot 97s and the power 99s. Cream does not rise to the top. the stuff with the most money behind it does. Currently, in the book world, Heaven and earth grocery store is outselling all other black novels by a wide margin—the next 5 books combined don’t come close. But I don’t know a single black person who has read the book that likes it.

Oh, OK. I kept going back trying to figure it which photo Chevdive was about. When Ms-77-looks-like-35 can make a baby I’ll be impressed. note if this was posted in the black excellence forum, I works have kept that comment to myself

In a few days it will be the 54th anniversary of the Kent State massacre. While I can't speak for the motivations of the individual protestors, considering the number of Black boys killed in the Vietnam "conflict," these protests disproportionately benefited us. @ProfD, I don't know if the protests are staged. That is a cynical, but understandable, perspective. @aka Contrarian, It could be that the information you've consumed regarding the protests are biased in such a way to lead to a "false ring" feeling. It could also be that these protests are unsustainable, when the semester ends the kids will go home. sort of the way the Black Lives Matter protests when home after the end of the pandemic... I don't think the protests are staged and I think the participants are, largely, sincere in their protests.

The reality is that I'm largely defenseless against a direct malicious attach

@Delano simply "educated" is sufficient. We have been filled with propaganda. We've been taught what to think, not how to think. This is getting worse. On this conversation I tend to agree more with @aka Contrarian part of this is my bias to intelligent elders. When I encounter such individuals. I generate reevaluate my positions, for experience is a great teacher. But back to @nels question: Since there were no specific predictions, it is not possible to provide an adequate answer. If Nels was talking about a race war, a collapse of the US government, sea level rise, the Rapture, I'd say yeah, we are prepared, simply because we have survived everything else hurled our way

I've spoken about this subject with several current educators and the verdict is largely the same, were have lost a generation of students and we are in for a "shit-show" (my phrase based upon what I've heard). Our reaction to the pandemic has made an existing problem FAR worse. In one school system students are 5 grade levels behind upon graduation and are being pushed out the door with a meaningless diploma. My information is purely anecdotal, bit one sister I spoke with was apoplectic over the situation in her system. It was also a community in which gun violence, already high, is increasing (that was a correlation I made later). If we chose to fight, for the Palestinians, for reparations, against Trump, for lowering carbon admissions, for the right for abortions, for universal health care, or to save the whales, none of it will really matter if our population is dumb and ignorant.

Vox also explains how they get made. “It’s partly AI, partly a get-rich-quick scheme, and entirely bad for confused consumers.“ The internet, though, has always been a safe harbor for those with plans to innovate that pesky writing part out of the actual book publishing. On the internet, it’s possible to copy text from one platform and paste it into another seamlessly, to share text files, to build vast databases of stolen books. If you wanted to design a place specifically to pirate and sleazily monetize books, it would be hard to do better than the internet as it has long existed. Now, generative AI has made it possible to create cover images, outlines, and even text at the click of a button. If, as they used to say, everyone has a book in them, AI has created a world where tech utopianists dream openly about excising the human part of writing a book — any amount of artistry or craft or even just sheer effort — and replacing it with machine-generated streams of text; as though putting in the labor of writing is a sucker’s game; as though caring whether or not what you’re reading is nonsense is only for elitists. The future is now, and it is filled with trash books that no one bothered to really write and that certainly no one wants to read. Read the full article ▶

Bots have been dominant on the web for a very long time. We know most of the posts on Twitter is generated by bots. Now that AI has demonstrated its power, things will just get worse, The following is a bot generated post which originated from a foreign language. I've seen spam before, but this is absolutely terrible. This type of crap regularly shows up on Richard's Blog. It does not get displayed live, but periodically I delete this stuff from the server. Guest Scottdiumb Posted 5 hours ago · IP · Hidden - Member is in a group which requires approval for all content. As someone who straight tried CBD like [url=LINK DELETED]cbd melatonin sleep gummies[/url] representing the at the outset time, I requirement bruit about I'm genuinely impressed! I've been hearing about CBD in place of a while on occasion, but I was a bit skeptical less how it would feign me. I decided to try a niggardly administer of CBD fuel to reflect on if it would serve with my persistent mix with pain and nervousness, and the results were more reliable than I anticipated. There are also spam member sign ups. I'm sure more than 90% of new signups are spam. I know some of the names below look legit, but there were other tells that indicated these are accounts would have been used to deposit spam on our forums. This is a recent list. Even Google serves spammy advertisements. The Big red "Next" on the screen shot below is an advertisement being served by Google. Of course, it is designed to trick the visitor into clicking the ad. Google will penalize website for this type of thing and bury them in search, but Google is happy to take money and allow advertisers to use this trick. Google used to make it easy to hide ads you did not like... not anymore

honestly, I’m really not paying that much attention however, I was not aware that Israel was trying to claim Gaza. I walked by the campus recently. It was locked down. People had to show IDs to enter the grounds where normally is completely open to the public. The sign said that was due to an event… @ProfD similarly the house in the Senate quickly garnered by partisan support to ban TikTok or at least get China to sell it. some argue that this too is a free speech issue. Speech has never been free or protected by the government that has always been a pretense. if they don’t like what you’re saying, they figure out how to shut you down. Let some young black man try mouthing off to white trooper here in the south. Let’s see how far free speech gets them. All the recent book banning should tell you something about hire we feel about free speech. Whatever the government is doing their motivation, I’m sure, is to protect interests the ultra-rich both abroad and domestically.

@Chevdove, people do stupid things things over the world every single day. We don’t need to know about any of of, for it is of little consequence. The problem with sharing this stuff is it leads people to draw faulty conclusions about the entire group as if those idiots are representative of the entire group of Jews. it is no different than the media’s bias to black dysfunction and how white peoples think all black people must be like that. @ProfD I don’t have a problem with Black individuals picking a side. Have any black organizations picked a side?

Me neither. i wonder Who the brother with the cigarette is.

I don’t Look at the Israeli Palestinian conflict as a racial one. There are Black people on both sides of the conflict. What does appear to be true is that that Hamas’ initial attack on the Israel was brutal and Israeli reaction is over-the-top. I won’t pretend to understand the source of the strife, partially religious, partially tribal, but clearly very violent. Why should domestic Black people be overly invested in either side of the conflict, when we have our own immediate problems to deal with right here at home?

The kids in this video are being stupid. I think making us a new story was not a good idea what it does is exactly what the kids wanted to do go viral get a lot of attention which is something that is fueled by people motivated by social media. Similarly, the so-called new outlets looks for this type of thing as it attracts attention by generating outrage, but does little to inform or enlighten. The algorithm which allowed Africa diaspora news to discover this video is, at fault. but this type of crap is amplified then the media outlets, take it and amplify even more My take on this is, yeah some Jewish kids created a stupid racist video. So what? what is news worthy was the Jewish kids that that were murdered in Mississippi fighting for the civil rights of Black people.

what makes you believe we are thinking now “for now” is the operative phrase for now will probably not be as long as you think. That would seem to make sense, but what appears to be happening is we have more followers people who are more easily manipulated by the information they consume rather than using it to develop better and more sound ideas @aka Contrarian thank you. you are, as people in some circles would say, blessed Do you think someone in your position 75 years ago would’ve been less well off? You are old enough to have been able to witness this, a time before personal computers, cell phones, televisions, and maybe even plush recliners. You are in the last generation of people old enough to have known someone who was formerly enslaved. Did I ever ask you if you did?

@ProfD Transportation: Planes fly themselves (for all practical purposes). The trains I ride in many places are fully automated, and self-driving trucks are on the roads today as well as self-driving taxis. There are people who will never stop working. I'm one of them. People are addicted to their phones. I have to be very intentional on how I used my phone in order to avoid becoming addicted to it. Itis a great tool, so I'm not getting rid of it but I have to be careful with it. I OFTEN see men at urinals one hand on their penis and the other on their phone?! These dudes usually leave the bathroom without washing their hands. How many of us know someone who has dropped their phone in the toliet by accident. People can't even drop a deuce without their phone. @Delano I don't read a daily newspaper anymore (1) they are very expensive and (2) they are not as widely available as they once were. You used to be able to buy a newspaper or get a free like the Village Voice or Newsday one in most subways stations, but those days are long gone...

The idea that these companies are so wealthy (and desperate) for data that buying on of the world's largest publishers is on the table boggles the mind. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/technology/tech-giants-harvest-data-artificial-intelligence.html "At Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, managers, lawyers and engineers last year discussed buying the publishing house Simon & Schuster to procure long works, according to recordings of internal meetings obtained by The Times. They also conferred on gathering copyrighted data from across the internet, even if that meant facing lawsuits. Negotiating licenses with publishers, artists, musicians and the news industry would take too long, they said."

@Delano that’s true and with AI you can solve even more difficult problems, which is more rewarding. @ProfD it is artificial intelligence, so while AI can tell you how to do something, Artificial labor will probably take a bit more time, unless you are a truck driver