Troy

Schools are getting rid of racial preferences but keeping legacy admissions which is a disadvantage to students who were historically prevented from learning to read let alone attend college. Reparations may be a way to achieve that level playing field. Did you ever read anything about reparations @nels?

hey wait a minute waddaya mean “small website.” AALBC, comparatively speaking, is a rather large website. If you are comparing the site to the massive social media or the likes of Amazon by then yeah we are tiny. But if your are comparing it then the rest of the web then we are rather large.

"Books help us understand the world around us, learn about people and histories in a personal and in-depth way, and provide escape and joy when we need it most. However, reading isn’t just enjoyable as a hobby; it also provides long-term benefits for our brains. We’ve compiled a few researched reasons on why and how reading in every stage of life is good for your health." Read the full article at Penguin Random House.

Jane is a recognized authority in publishing and knows a lot, but on this subject, I completely disagree with her analysis and conclusions. This is not a self-published authors' problem. I would not couch it as a "problem" at all. Banning AI generated books is a flawed strategy, and not sustainable (all people want to do is ban books nowadays). The market will sort this out. Interestingly, the quality of the book, or lack thereof, wasn't addressed. That should be the primary consideration when evaluating the merits of a book -- especially when you are calling for its banning. B&N flagged the book as a bestseller. How did that happen? We should be more concerned about the signals B&N and Amazon sending regarding the books they sell and how potentially misleading this is to the reader. How many indie brick and mortars bookstores stores did not book show up in? I'll tell you, zero. It is highly unlikely a book like this would ever have appeared on my site, because I familiar with each author's work. I'm also not hell-bend on having every book ever written on the site. This is why curated book websites and stores will become increasingly important in the age of AI. There will come a time when AI generated books will exceed the quality of the majority of human written books -- should they be banned too? We have to think more long term when it comes to AI generated content. Also, “temporarily out of stock” does not mean that Amazon "took down" the book. You can still plop these titles into your shopping cart and it will be sent when they have it. You see this all the time with indie books not printed with Amazon.

@ProfD I hear you man and thanks. Actually I decided to kill one of my ad partners, lets see what happens.

Here we go with the strawman. I did not say that and nor is it related to my question. The code basically takes control over a defined area even if the ad is not present, basically blocking keystrokes and mouse clicks in the predefined space. I'm going remove all advertising for a day or two and see if that cleans things up.

Why don't you tell me when the last lynching was. This is simply a false statement. I go as far as calling it a lie, because to be so against reparations surely you must be familiar with some of its proponents, and you'd be aware that many are successful people. If you are not lying, and unaware of any successful people calling for reparations, you can't possibly know enough about the subject to express a meaningful opinion.

Inc. used to be a reputable source of information for business news. Today they like many other platforms they have sold out and are now one of the "clickbaitiest" platforms on the web. I got a newsletter from Inc. this week. I do not know how I was added to their mailing list (I unsubscribed). Over the years when I've clicked links like the ones below the article NEVER delivered on the promise suggested by the article. Usually, you are just directed to an article spanning multiple pages with a ton of ads. Far too many sites on the web are like this now. They are SEO optimized to maximize advertisement delivery and crowd out better websites that are designed to provide information. As a result, the quality of the most easily discoverable content on the web today "sucks." I never read any of the articles listed below. I just share them as examples of click bait and how a publication has fouled up their brand and reputation, IMHO. An American Airlines Pilot Was Absolutely Fed Up With Passengers. His Solution Was a Stroke of Genius If You Can Pass Any of These 8 Tests, Science Says You're Likely to Live Significantly Longer (and Feel Happier and Less Stressed) Nearly 30 Years Ago, Steve Jobs Said There's 1 Simple Habit That Separates the Doers From the Dreamers This simple act taught him one of the greatest lessons of his brilliant career. Google Sent an Email Warning Customers It Plans to Start Deleting Their Inactive Accounts You have four months to decide what to do with your old account. Neuroscience Shows That Nightly Scents Could Boost Memory and Help Your Productivity This nightly ritual could revitalize your brain. Researchers Asked 146 'Failed Entrepreneurs' About Their Past Experiences. It's a Remarkable Lesson in Resilience Mindset about failure matters most for whether a founder gets back in the game.

Your argument is inconsistent. First, all the crimes stats you keep repeatedly trumpeting reflect people you will be punished for their crimes. the government has never compensated the victims of their monstrous behavior. you and others go on and on about black crime, but you never talk about the countless rapes and lynching against Blacks by whites that was never punished. You talk about the need for more fathers but fail to mention the history of fathers having their wives raped and their children sold. I believe Black people should be compensated for the crimes protested against us and I will support those engaged in the fight. your questions about when does it end and who gets paid are things that can be worked out. unfortunately we live in a country that refuses to reckon with their most egregious sin. people like to perpetrate the racist propaganda that blames the black victims. And have gone as far as to ban books and to stop teaching slavery in schools. I don’t think the country will ever reach a point were a serious attempt will be made to correct historic wrongs against Black people. So you can stop worrying @Jeromex. @Pioneer1 I don’t think Jerome is black either, but what difference would it make? We know there are black people who lap up this propaganda.

that is nonsense. Nobody is sitting around waiting for reparations. Where are you getting this information? the truth is that Black people have done astonishingly well given hundreds of years of violently imposed oppression. Question for you @Jeromex independent of your exaggerated description of Black people or America’s willingness to pay, do you believe that America owes Black people compensation for slavery and Jim Crow?

Pleasure to meet you too @Greg Thomas Football fans will really appreciate your book. Southern football is something else and that win after 20 years was epic!

@Jeromex everyone in the country pays taxes. Far more white purple have benefited from government handouts than Black people ever have. It is hard to believe people are still spreading these played out narratives. It is no wonder folks like this was to ban books.

Yes to do look great @Cynique and to be technically savvy enough to be online is amazing. it is also possible for you to have personally known someone who was enslaved. When you were a kid, do you have any memory of someone who was 90?

you failed to understand what I wrote, try rereading it. When I was a kid my neighborhood could be scary, but go into the wrong white neighborhood you could definitely catch a beat down. White threw the rocks when we accidentally went into their neighborhood. They still had sun down towns (look it up) when I was a kids. @Wide awake stop repeatedly posting the same stuff. I’ll give you a until Monday to edit them down, otherwise I’ll delete them entirely. One less person going around fouling up Black discussion forums. Still there is no way you could get him to change his world view.

Yeah, this is really f'ed up man. We live in a world where a candidate for President can be impeached twice and be facing four concurrent indictments on charges as serious as inciting an insurrection and it helps him in the polling! I think the misinformation is used to create and expand a racist base. As a country we really need to be dealing with more pressing issues.

This has always true, but the web has made it far worse. A new poster to this forum with the counterintuitive moniker @Wide awake shared an inflammatory video (below). Wide awake has been bombarding the site with a deluge of racist and antisemitic memes and content. "Wide" shared so much content it was impossible to consume it all, let alone address it. One such obviously untrue meme stated a Black man was the first to own a slave in America, suggesting that this Black man single handedly started slavery in America. When I pointed out how the meme could not possibly be true Wide Wake accused me of cherry picking and ignoring the great number of other memes he (I'll go with "he") posted. Wide Awake has exhibited "troll-like" behavior including the posting of great volumes of bogus information, "spamming." Normally I would just ban his account and keep it moving. For some reason, and I'm probably wrong, I don't see Wide Awake as your garden variety troll, he seems somewhat willing to defend his posts, so I have not removed his posts. Wide Awake feels the media is not reporting the "news" as reflected in the video. The agenda he is promoting is that Black people are running amok beating white people and that the Jewish run media is failing to report this. He already preempted any comparison the Montgomery Alabama ferry incident as looking like it was "staged." This video is particularly pernicious in the sense that is can be particularly compelling if you don't think about the motivation of the people who created it and are sharing it. The video was edited to speed up the action to make it look more frenzied. The voice overs of people taking about white racism created a sense of hypocrisy. Seeing little old ladies and babies assaulted was designed to ramp up the emotional impact. The faces of some victims were obscured if their race was unclear. None of these are novel techniques. Actual journalists do not use these techniques. People looking to promote an agenda, in this case one biased against Black people do. It is commonly known as propaganda, not reporting. Of course, none of the videos provide context. Is it possible some of the folks being beat initiated the violence? We will never know because that was not the intent of the video. Videos like this help me understand why white folks shoot Black people for asking for directions or walking through a neighborhood. It may also be why white Americans are the most armed people on planet Earth. Racist propaganda like that shared in the video, kills the incentive for teaching the history of slavery and makes it more difficult for people to entertain reparations. Too bad they did not have video cameras in the 19th century. Clearly a video like this could be easily created showing the opposite. But what would be the point? The record of racism in this country speaks clearly for itself. The propaganda being shared on the web lead to schools become increasingly reluctant to teach the history of racism. Instead, social media feeds student a steady diet of the nonsense shown in the video ... one can understand how progress toward ending racism is being undone. @Pioneer1 do you really think you can change the mind of someone like Wide Awake? I believe AI has the potential to make people like Wide Awake far more effective. Deep fakes and other AI enhanced technique will make propaganda videos more compelling and easier to make. Algorithms will make it possible to more efficiently get these videos to the ones most likely to be incited -- all in the name of increasingly already fantastic profits.

If you are in the Dallas area this weekend (Saturday, August 19, 2023), I'll be on a panel with my author Kalisha Buchanon at the Tulisoma South Dallas Book Festival The following day (Sunday, August 20, 2023), I'll be at The Dock Bookshop in Ft. Worth from 1 to 3 p.m.. Come Join Us!

I know, the Illuminati right?

again describe one situation. after more more than a decade on this forum you can’t point to one situation where you changed your position after learning something new?

One will suffice. I’m sure if you had it you would have shared it by now. I’ll wait….

True. Initially they admitted learning from Africans, but later "stole" it by insisting to take credit for it. I read what Malcolm supposedly said. If true I seriously doubt he continued to believe this stuff after leaving the Nation, do you @Pioneer1?

@Pioneer1, don't even think it...

Looks like me "fix" did not work. I just saw the problem. I have another idea....

What?! Rarely is this the case with most people. Exhibit #1: You! In all the years of engaging with people here have you ever changed your mind about anything (let alone an entire perspective)? If so, please relate the experience.

Unlike yourself, I can assimilate new information and adapt accordingly