The Real Problem With Google

Trump is bellyaching about how he thinks that Silicon Valley is using their technology to discriminate against Conservatives. Essentially: Google bad. That's not quite true. Why are you more likely to see a liberal viewpoint on Google? Because it's more relevant. To be clear, what I mean to say is that Conservatives are, by definition,  more open-minded than liberals, and are thus more likely to seek out opposing opinions.

 From my own experience as a Trump Republican, I spent years, previously, watching The Young Turks on Youtube. Only recently did I stop. I live and work in a one-party Democratic city and most of the people that I interact with on a daily basis are Liberals. Deeply Liberal. Most of the books that I read on a yearly basis are written by Liberals. Liberals control the narrative, because they talk about an ideal, of how human nature should be, of how everyone should pay attention to #Mee, of how life should be easier for #Mee.

It's very appealing, almost a sinful pleasure, to entertain the notion that Trump just hates everybody who isn't white, because if we believe that then we don't have to look at the real problem and we can continue in blissful ignorance.

But the real question is that has the potential to be even greater of a burden is: Is Google good? More specifically, is Google too good? Is Google to Google? Tell me if you've ever experienced this. You get off the computer to go to work. On you way to work, you think of something. It could be anything. Something that you haven't thought of in years. It just comes to you and you don't say anything to anybody, you don't write it down, you don't search it in you phone, sky-write it, smoke signals, nothing.

As soon as you get to work you log in to your Youtube account and there are one or more videos in your feed talking about exactly what you were thinking, and you didn't tell anybody. Or at the very least, there's an ad on one of your videos that talks about just what you're thinking. And you never told a soul.

Am I Really That Friggin' Predictable?

The question is not "How does Google do this?" or it corollary, "Whom do I sue?" The question is, what is it in me that caused me to patronize Google in the first place. If you're my age, the answer is probably not what you're thinking.

What is it that attracts me to something that can know my every thought before I think it? True, Google knows our personalities. It has our file. It knows our tendencies, even our histories and pasts. But what doesn't Google know. What is it that we desperately want Google to know about us that it can never learn? Is that what keeps us coming back like a faithful spouse?

It's not "What is Google trying to tell us?" that we should be worried about. It's "What are we trying to tell Google?"

What about Trump?

What do I feel about the NFL protests? I'm extremely proud of all of the NFL players. It's amazing that these people, who make millions of dollars a year on average, are willing to risk everything to go after something they believe in. It really is a atheist miracle that these athletes, who, to be fair, are jocks, would care about something other than pythons and Bros long enough to take a stand. And I say this even though I completely disagree with them. Just as a fellow American I salute them. Moreso, I salute them for providing for their families in ways that I never could. Risking their knees, their fingers, and their brains for the greater good.

What this protest tells us is that we need more people like Trump in office. Trump brings the winner out of everybody, especially me. Voting for him last year made me feel like a winner, and I'm happy to announce that the reports of my hopelessness and demise were greatly exaggerated. If I know Trump like I think I do, he secretly loves NFL players, for their bravery in standing up to a President with a mandate. Even though the President could technically remove the NFL through executive order and make all of the players destitute, or at the very least get some of the players fired, they remain undeterred.

It seems like these "jocks" are taking a page out of Trump's playbook. Everyone told Trum that he was wrong. Everyone said he couldn't win. And now he's in the white house. In the same vain, everyone told these NFL players that they weren't smart enough to succeed, that they would spend the rest of their lives scraping by, that they would never see a mansion, much less own one. These players have done the impossible.

I don't watch sports, but I'm proud of these players. I think that this whole Trump debacle will end one of two ways. Either Republicans will see how people react to Trump and will resolve to stop complaining about minorities, or, what I'm hoping for, we will have ten more presidents just like Trump. Having lived in a one-party democratic city my whole life, I understand the liberal platform quite well. Kiss your butt to your face and then stab you in the back. As I've gotten older, I prefer to have somebody say it to my face than to have somebody go behind my back.

About the black men and police: If black men truly believe that the police are out to get them, that's okay. But the second these same blacks have a disagreement with one another, the first call is to a white cop. Which is it? When you want to get back at your siblings for defending themselves against you, you make sure that they get charged and convicted. You take off work to testify against them. You apply for numerous orders of protection. You rely more on white cops than white people do. No disagreement is too small to call a white cop. There are more calls to the police in black areas than white areas. I'm not saying to "stop snitching," because we need to snitch. I'm just saying that that blacks are pretending that they are different when they are more like us than we are. And if the democrats couldn't beat Trump 2016, how are they supposed to bring along the Law Enforcement Revolution?

JJ.

Trump Over Reagan

I heard a few weeks ago that Trump had made some comments regarding the civil war. Apparently there was some kind of media "storm" about it. My first reaction was, when are they going to leave that man alone and let him work?

As usual, I ignored the fake news and went on about my day. It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that I actually read the quote. What did I think? I thought that it wasn't possible.

It was literally impossible to have one man be so utterly qualified for the office of president. Impossible. I could not believe that I'd had the pleasure, and the duty, of voting for the greatest president alive.

Who else could've come up with such a rational comment about the civil war? Hillary would've talked out of both sides of the mouth, talking about how "evil" southerners were, whilst acquiescing to the norther practice of denying blacks jobs until they create crimes of necessity and then incarcerating them for life, and their kids.

It seems like a sweet deal. We get a great president, they get something to whine about.

"But Andrew Jackson was a slave owner," they say.

Well, your job only exists because of slavery, liberal. Now all liberals should quit their jobs and give them to black men. Plus, the purpose of "No Gun States" was to prevent blacks from defending themselves from the KKK, so you can reverse that too. See how that works? You don't feel that you should have to pay for something that was natural back then? Well, if Andrew Jackson were alive, neither would he.

Don't like being blackmailed for things you didn't create? Neither do black ex-cons. So go easy on them.

I don't understand what is going on here. This is some kind of bizarro world. They try to guilt and shame, to prevent him from being president. But it was precisely this guilt, this shaming, that caused him to be president. Not to mention the constant jokes about his skin color and natural hair. Was that really the only thing you could come up with?

More recently I look on Yahoo! news and see a story about how Trump and the Republican congress have repealed Obama Care.
Am I mistaken, or is this the first time in American history that a major entitlement has been repealed? Do you now understand what I meant when I said that Trump already surpassed Reagan?

Why Is McDonald's Flagging?

Why are McDonald's profits slowing? The answer is simple. One word, two syllables.

Subway.

Subway is the upstart, the old upstart, that promised years ago that it would surpass McDonald's in number of restaurants nationwide. So how did subway win?

First of all, location. McDonald's are much easier to get to, but Subways are more economical. They are parked at free, open, well-lit locations that sort of lead you to the library, or lead you to work. It something to do on your way to do something else.

McDonald's, on the other hand, leads you to a cul-de-sac parking lot and a death trap eating area, full of cumbersome immovable furniture.

What else is there? Subway is the restaurant of the Proletariat, whereas McDonald's mainly targets the Steve Easterbrooks of the world as customers. What? Subway's cheaper. Not only that. Subway is cheaper, more filling, arguably better tasting, healthier and provides more energy.

If you go to Subway for breakfast, you can get the best-tasting, most filling and almost most affordable sub they have (Spicy Italian) for just $8.12, which includes a fountain drink that you can mix yourself. Suicides, anybody?

What does McDonald's have? Well, if you're going for the breakfast menu, you can get two Sausage McMuffins with Egg and a soda (no mixing allowed) for $8.60. That's an extra $14.88 per month in taxes.

But isn't two better than one?

Not exactly. Those two sausage McMuffins with egg are the size of doughnut holes and you'll be hungry within the next fifteen minutes again.   

My One Word

I received my copy of Evan Carmichael's YOUR ONE WORD last Thursday. Reading through the book, it seemed a little...cliched obviously. It was pretty much standard fare. You owe it to yourself. Stop making excuses. The usual. I got up at 4:00 am to read it, and I was ready. After all of my hard work, I'd made it. How to make your one word. I don't want to ruin it for you, but I went through the exercise and it turned out that my One Word is...SLAVE!

What cruel fate! When I had first heard Evan Carmichael pitching his One Word philosophy on his Youtube Channel, I said " Oh, that's easy my brother! My one word must be READ!" Why? Well, I normally read for four-and-a-half to five hours a day. So I thought that "Read" would be a shoe-in for my One Word. It seemed so...Intelligent. So astute. So prudent. So...safe. I could've gotten invited to a few school assemblies with that one.

But what does #Slave mean to me? Well, everybody keeps telling me that slavery is over, that it was "a million years ago" and that it has nothing to do with today. I'm a conservative, of course (as conservative as a black man can be) but I can't fall for it. Since 250 year is the "cutoff" year for relevance, why do I know the names Plato, Socrates, Poe, Shakespeare, George Washington and Adam Smith? Just today I started reading and enticing little book about Alexander The Great. Really fascinating stuff. If stuff that happened three centuries ago has "no bearing" on today, then how does something that happened ten times as long ago get to be mentioned?

Why we're at it, why do we keep using those damn wheels, that pesky mortar and that confounded roof? Why not abandon them and live underneath a wind mill? I know what I will be accused of, but my ancestral history as a slave is very integral to my personality and my current life. I don't try to run from it anymore. It's in everything that I do. It's the way I think. Always applying for that next job. Waiting for permission to strike out on my own. Ever seeking someone's approval. Raised on welfare. The list goes on.

We went from being considered less than dogs to being the president of the United States. If you say that Obama was only half black, like I do, then we blacks should stand aside and applaud the Mulatto men of America, whose very existence would've been illegal less than 300 years ago. Even more remarkable if you ask me. But it all comes back to #Slave.
And blacks weren't the only slaves. Many races recovered from slavery, but we recovered the fastest and the strongest.

As a black man, if you doubt that the history of Slavery in the United States impacts you today, just walk outside. We are still half-way in transition from the plantation to the promised land.

Important Life Lesson For 2017 And Beyond, Part 3

The fourth lesson from Chinkee Tan's video was that poor people believe that they are the only people that matter. I have to stop and think about that for a while. Do I believe that I am the only one that matters? I regularly help others, but could I help more?

When I eventually read a few of David Backh's books, he constantly drilled into my head that if I wanted to get more I would have to give more. I'm not quite sure how this works. Look at Bill Gates. He's the richest man in the world and he gave away over $40 billion, around half of his fortune at the time. But the fact is that he's got at least a billion dollars. He can afford to buy any property in this country.

He'll never starve or be homeless. Me, on the other hand, if that check doesn't come like clockwork I'll be on the street.

But I do understand what Chinkee Tan meant. He means that, well, poor people are poor because they are selfish. My unnamed relative was the number one person always begging her relatives for money and shelter. But let a homeless person ask her for a quarter and all hell would break loose.

It goes deeper than that. If you believe whole heartedly that you are the only one that matters, you won't help others to succeed - not sincerely - and as a result your community will fail. You'll be living in squalor. A popular activity for blacks in the ghetto who are riding in cars is to give the middle finger to anyone they see walking. If you ride the train past the white areas, it is almost empty at rush hour. See the connection?

Blacks are always bragging about this and that, but we all fall behind because no one wants to be truly selfless. But the question is, do I believe that I am the only one that matters? I believe that no one else cares about me. I believe that I am the only one on earth who has my interest at heart. Everyone else on the planet has somebody looking out for them, except for me. So I do think that way in a sort of round-about way.

The fifth and final point that was made in the video was that poor people believe that they will never be successful. This is poison. You know, as long as I have been alive it seems like every time I try to get my life together, to become successful, something comes along to rip that success out of my hands.

When I started high school I said, "You're going to be an A student." But it seemed that I was fated to fail my freshman year. Even when I pulled it together, graduated high school and made it to college (on a scholarship, no less) it happened again. I started failing my freshman college classes.

I made it all the way to my final class for the Bachelor's degree and all of my money dried up. I was penniless. I don't believe that I will ever see success in my lifetime. I think that it's too late for me. And I work less hard as a result. Other people seem to get all the breaks. I know that this mindset is holding me back, but that's how I feel. 
JJ

Important Life Lesson For 2017 And Beyond, Part 2

Continuing my previous article, there are five rules of what you should not believe if you do not want to become poor. I found the video by Chinkee Tan by searching Youtube, the second most popular search engine, for "Why people don't succeed." I avoided the video at first because I didn't like the aesthetic, but, just like so many other videos, I found that it was top notch and of great quality. This is the ultimate internet. Finding videos that make you think, that make you want to succeed.

So, I went through the first and second points he made in his video. The first was that poor people believe that success comes overnight. That really hit me hard. The second point was that poor people believe that other people can give them success.

The third point he made was closely related to the second point, which is that poor people believe that someone else is at fault for what happened in their lives. It's really hard not to believe that as a black man, especially as a victim of abuse. If somebody does something directly to you and that action that they take against you has an effect, it's hard to turn around and say that nothing happened. But truth be told, I don't judge black men anymore, because I know how the game is played. If you felt that you were dealt a bad hand, you probably were.

But I also believe that there are many, many avenues toward success. You can be successful in life if you apply yourself. I haven't been able to make it for myself, but I'm glad to say that I'm motivated to try. More importantly, I understand that I was ultimately responsible for what got me in this situation. The entire world deceived me into believing that the only way to survive was to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a worthless piece of paper, without even a handshake, and I ended up trapped in an abusive situation because I wouldn't just walk out the front door and cut my losses.

The problem with that narrative is that if I had just walked out and "cut my losses," I would have been living on the street without the possibility of getting a job. I could've gotten hypothermia, beaten, bitten, killed, framed or all of the above. I guess that what I'm saying is that it's not so much that I don't blame anybody for where I'm at. It's that I'm satisfied that I made the best choice given my options. I guess that for me it's the equivalent of saying that "Nobody got me here but me."

But how do we eliminate all criminal records for black men in America? I can't even begin to fathom the answer to that question. Just being more lenient on crime and not reporting would result in a spike. Increasing prosecutions would result in a cycle. Maybe if we treated it like a sport, like basketball or football, that would get the young minds excited about beeing "Free and Clear." That's all that I can think of.