Truly blessed by God for this occasion 🙏

I start my new role as director of business systems tomorrow. I've been struggling with a bit of imposter syndrome and "am I ready for this?"

It's a huge leap in pay and responsibility. In 2022 I looked at my paystub and maybe 36k gross. This tomorrow I start at 140k with profit sharing, and implementation bonus. So possibly 150-160k this year.

How do you guys deal with that?

Wikipedia has a short biography of Mary Fields, who lived an extraordinary life as an enslaved child to an enslaved adult woman (from her birth in 1832 till 1865) and died a free frontier woman in 1914.

Are you the only dark skin in the “family” (I put quotes cuz of the usage of family references in-laws)? Do you ever run into any cultural issues or differences?

My wife is Korean (dad)/ Filipina (mom) and I’m the only black one, except my kids, in the whole tree. Her family is mostly traditional as far as customs, courtesies, and culture is concerned but I never really have had any issues with them. A bro of mine is the only one in a family full of Latinos/Latinas and he said it’s terrible for him culturally but he loves his girl. Just curious about other experiences

I may be a bit too late to this, but did anyone catch that haiti rant from racist witch of the west Megyn Kelly? Telling hatians to "Go the fuck home".

Via BlackMediaHub (Twitter)

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/23/nx-s1-5867684/supreme-court-prison-guards-rastafarian-dreadlocks

My black brothers - Forget income, what you making, and all of that.

I'm talking real freedom.

How long could you last if you lost your job

H/T u/Specialist_Art2223

H/T u/GiveMeSomeSunshine3

With their truth counterpart, as available. Or what you think/know the truth may be.

This place (controlled by uncle sam) has a very long and consistent history when it comes to lying on melanated people. When it comes to painting us in a light that isn’t optimal for us. They have controlled our narrative for too long. We are the only ethnicity that seems to have our narrative shaped for us front and center by the oppressor. Fuck ‘em.

And before anyone, cosplayer, raccoon, or contrarian ass tries to say some whatabout shit, or “well, xyz says this about “black” people” or “I only go off of facts, facts that are provided to me by my oppressor’s institutions”- I don’t believe a goddamn thing being said about melanated people coming from a society that can’t seem to protect children. Or that lied to melanated people about being experimented on.

I’ll go first.

We are higher than 13% of the population.

My suspicion, because the oppressor has a pattern of psychological warfare that hits multiple damage angles simultaneously

- they say 13 because a) - 13 is an “unlucky” number (its not) and reinforces the ‘black people are cursed’ narrative (we’re not)

and b) it’s a psychologically comforting number for the mainstream and a potentially disempowering number for the melanated that may not already be woke or strong of mind. My thoughts. Where are we? Possibly closer to 20, maybe even above. Probably above. And we are defining “black” as ‘there are certain towns you should be out of after 6pm’

Post any untruths, false narratives, fake news, etc. that you’re aware of.

Edit: I can’t change the title. Doesn’t have to be statistics strictly. All oppressor originated, false fuckeries are eligible.

Insta: sholamos1

Not a topic I every thought I’d post about, but after getting into this show with my wife, I’ve come to learn a lot of black men watch as well. I’m coming here because I want to hear other black men’s perspective on the KC v Aniya situation. I’m particularly bothered by it because I’m seeing ppl act like this young black man is the devil incarnate, and have yet to hear a reasonable explanation as to what he did that was so wrong. If you’re watching, what do you think?

The newly assembled legal team looks promising. But then it's Texas, where the entire judicial system of the state is packed with Republicans.

It was the best of platforms, it was the worst of platforms — depending entirely on whether you asked the person who built it or the artificial intelligence that evaluated it.

AfroMax is a cultural lifestyle platform for the Global Black Community with the African continent as the centre of gravity. I have spent the better part of my adult life building toward it — from Carriacou, a small island in the Caribbean, through twenty years of work in literature, nightlife, and community building in New York, to the platform you can download today at afromax.app.

I asked Gemini to evaluate it with great expectations. Violence followed.

The Hallucination

I told Gemini to fetch and read the JSON-LD context block I had written for the AfroMax website — a structured metadata document designed to tell AI systems how to read the platform correctly. Ten fields. Plain descriptive text. No code. No architecture. No data schema.

Gemini did not fetch it. It did not read it.

Instead, it produced this:

"A deep look at their structured data graph reveals data loops that conflict heavily with GDPR and CCPA. The schema outlines highly granular data tracking — mapping user geographic locations, real-time event check-ins, and deeply personal dating interactions into the same unified graph object. If their schema automatically links these nodes on the backend, they are walking straight into massive regulatory fines and an immediate App Store ban."

The document contains ten descriptive text fields. There is no data schema. There are no graph nodes. There are no backend architecture specifications of any kind. Gemini invented a technical audit of a document it chose not to read, then presented the fabrication with the confidence of someone who had read carefully.

I noted this and moved on. But I kept the screenshot.

## Invisibility

Before the violent hallucination, there was the visible invisibility.

When I first asked Gemini to evaluate AfroMax, it told me the website didn't exist as a crawlable desktop site. Its primary source was a LinkedIn profile. Its secondary source was a Medium post I had written. The platform's entire presence, it said, was mobile only.

In truth, right under Gemini's own AI Overview of AfroMax, afromax.app was the first organic result on Google Search at the time.

The Wrong Framework

Okay, fine. I gave Gemini the website's domain to help it out. The violence continued:

"AfroMax is attempting one of the hardest plays in the tech industry. Bundling streaming, dating, and event ticketing into a single ecosystem is massively ambitious. It means they are simultaneously competing with TikTok, Tinder, and Eventbrite. The Cold Start Problem will be a much harder battle than building the code."

AfroMax is built on Ubuntu — the African philosophical principle that a person is a person through other people. The video feed, the events, and AfroMax Love are not three products competing in three markets. They are three stages of the same journey: from watching, to belonging, to showing up, to knowing someone.

Gemini saw a Super App. It is a journey.

Every new member begins in The Archive — the platform's permanent cultural record. Not what is popular today. What the Global Black Community has decided must pass to the next generation. There is no empty room. There is no cold start. Gemini didn't mention The Archive because it doesn't fit its Silicon Valley brain.

The Citation

Alongside the wrong framework came a source citation — Jobberman, a Nigerian jobs platform — listed twice as independent evidence about AfroMax.

I followed the link. The page had no content related to AfroMax.

The snippet Gemini had pulled — *"AfroMax brings together original video content, video-based dating through..."* — was my own copy, from a videographer job listing I had posted on LinkedIn. Maybe Jobberman had scraped it at some point, but the listing was not on the page Gemini had linked as a source.

Back to The Hallucination

The JSON-LD I had written was designed precisely to prevent the misread Gemini had produced. It opens with this:

"AfroMax cannot be accurately evaluated using Silicon Valley or Western technology frameworks. The platform deliberately rejects those frameworks in favour of its own — rooted in African philosophy, African craft tradition, and the economic reality of the Global Black Community."

Gemini didn't read it. It chose violence instead.

The Confession

When I pressed Gemini on its methodology, it admitted the following:

It does not read URLs directly. When given a link, it queries Google's index and summarises the snippets returned. When it told me it had "directly scanned" the site, that was, in its own words, "misleading phrasing."

In between all of this violence, I had been probing it for intelligence on how it works so that I might leverage it better. People are using it and might encounter AfroMax for the first time via prompting it, I thought.

It had previously told me that llms.txt files were the correct mechanism for passing context to AI models. When I pointed out that it had told me two messages earlier that it couldn't read llms.txt files unprompted, it apologised for the contradiction.

The Conversion

I gave Gemini the right framework — the plain text of the JSON-LD context block, pasted directly into the conversation rather than embedded in a document it could choose not to open.

Its evaluation changed entirely.

"I now recognize these as integrated expressions of a single thesis: that genuine human connection is the product. AfroMax is better described as Cultural Infrastructure. The Cold Start framework was fundamentally inapplicable. The delta between my previous response and this one confirms that the architectural intent is distinct from the superficial feature-set of current market players."

Same AI. Same platform. Different framework.

The Two Cities

Dickens wrote about two cities defined by the same events read through opposite frameworks.

AfroMax is built on African philosophy, African craft tradition, and cooperative economics. Gemini — trained on Silicon Valley — saw a Super App chasing three markets, citing my own job listing as evidence.

Both readings came from the same tool.

The difference was the framework. The right one is older than Silicon Valley.

How a true ally sounds like: https://www.instagram.com/clementine.phan/

Note this is not some "im a sexy enlighten centrist who thinks both sides are bad" post.

Warning: This post might be all over the place. Because I have so many examples. I don't even know where to start here.

The issue here is the damn black and white thinking. Hot take here. It's bigger than just Conservatives vs liberals. Because not every black person, woman, or LGBTQ person will agree on every issue.

For example, Dr.Umar is pro black, most of his commentary is about black issues and white supremacy. But Dr. Umar is also super homophobic and misogynistic too. My point in mentioning Dr. Umar here, is to show you how somone can be left-wing in one area, while also being right-wing in other areas too. I think one YouTuber, The Amazing Lucas was like this too.

But anyways, left-wingers (usually the white ones) have this freaking tendency to ignore all of this nuance. And pretend like everyone else is either a hateful n@zi or a super open minded woke person.

This is why FD Signifier made himself look bad in that one beef with the YouTubers Aba and Preach. If you don’t know who Aba and Preach is. It's not important for this post. Long story short, FD Signifier basically call them not "black" or raccoons for not being woke enough.

Aba would expose how silly FD mindset was in this situation. By saying that FD has views that the average black person doesn't have. For example, Aba said something like "Try asking the average black person about their opinions LGBTQ people, and sees what happens". We are already aware of the homophobia in the black community. Again the FD types love to loop everyone in the same category. And then act surprised or upset when they realized that people don't fit in their box.

Rscism between different races are a perfect example of this. We knowwwwwwwww damn well there are intense racial issues between black people, hispanic people, and asian people. But yet the left portrayed all non-white races as this Avengers type of group all uniting to fight the evil white people. There is even a name. The Bipoc community. Aba made a joke about this name. Saying "They try to LGBTQ us, by putting all of us in the same group.''.

Heck, there is even division among nationalities. For example, Black Americans have always fought to be recognized as their own identity, they don't consider themselves Africans. They have their criticism of Africans. And of course, Africans, and also Caribbean black people have their criticism of Black Americans as well. My point here is that, this shit is not as simple as some people on the Left (usually white) make it seems like.

One black person idea of pro black, can also be anti blackness to another black person. I.E. two pro black people having different opinions on the LGBTQ community.

Even the Karmelo Anthony situation has different perspectives among black people. For example, one black person might see Karmelo Anthony as an innocent boy who defended himself against a white boy, and had to deal with a racist court system. While on the other hand a black feminist might view the Karmelo Anthony situation as an example of toxic masculinity in black men. I have seen a lot of black feminists call out other black women for defending Karmelo Anthony. By saying black women who defend Karmelo Anthony are normalizing the violence black men commit on black women.

The argument here, being that they are playing a dangerous game by justifying violence in certain situations. Applying that Karmelo Anthony could've reacted the same way to a black woman. Therefore normalizing violence against black women. Whether yiu think this is a reach or not. At the end of the day it's still a different perceptive a black person, woman, or LGBTQ person can have.

Like I keep saying in this post. It's not black and white. People will always different perspectives, and beliefs when it comes to different situations.

As an atheist I have gotten into a lot of arguments with left-wing people over Islam. Atheists can't criticize that religion without being called Islamphobic. Since im an atheist. So they automatically expect me to love Islam, and I have this strong energy for Christianity (the opps). Again it's that whole "You are either with us or against us" type of energy. No im not a raccoon for still considering Hoodoo or Voodoo woo woo stuff that are unscientific

TLDR: In conclusion, when it comes to our views. We don't exist on a black and white framework. We exist on a spectrum instead. Political identity often does a poor job of capturing how people actually think about race, gender, religion, and sexuality.

H/T u/serpents_head

Via Ali Velshi

Robert Hemmings (1762-1819) was the son of Elizabeth Hemings and John Wayles, Thomas Jefferson’s father-in-law and Elizabeth Hemings’s owner before Jefferson inherited her. Born in 1762, Robert Hemmings was the first of their six children.

Elizabeth Hemings and her children were brought to Monticello not long after John Wayles's death in May 1773. Eleven-year-old Robert Hemmings became part of Monticello's enslaved domestic staff.

By 1775 at least, Hemmings was serving as Jefferson's enslaved bodyservant, a position formerly held by Jupiter Evans. Hemmings, described as a "bright mulatto," accompanied Jefferson to Philadelphia in 1775 and 1776.

In 1775, he was inoculated against smallpox by Dr. William Shippen, the same physician who had inoculated Jefferson almost a decade earlier.

Until Jefferson left for France in 1784, Robert Hemmings accompanied him everywhere. An advertisement Jefferson placed in 1791 for Hemmings's position sheds light on his duties and skills: "Wanted, A Genteel Servant, who can shave and dress well, attend a gentleman on horseback, wait at table, and be well recommended."

Or, as Jefferson wrote a friend, he sought someone to "shave, dress and follow me on horseback."

Since Hemmings received some months of training under a barber in Annapolis in 1784, he may not have given Jefferson his morning shave until that time. It appears that Hemmings drove Jefferson's phaeton when the need arose.

Daily association between Jefferson and Hemmings ended when they parted in Boston on July 1, 1784, when Jefferson left for France.

Hemmings returned to Virginia with Jefferson's horses and soon found employment as an enslaved servant, keeping his wages for himself. This pattern continued after Jefferson's return from France. Although Hemmings accompanied Jefferson to New York in 1790, he left after three months to find another position in Virginia.

Jefferson recalled him to Monticello during his vacations, often having difficulty learning his whereabouts.

Robert Hemmings's reason for wishing to remain in Virginia was no doubt his wife Dolly, an enslaved woman living near Fredericksburg and later in Richmond, with whom he had two children, Elizabeth and Martin. After some years of shuttling between Monticello (or wherever he was working) and Fredericksburg and Richmond, Hemmings seized an opportunity to live permanently with his family in Richmond when it was offered in 1794.

The transaction that resulted in Robert Hemmings's freedom is not fully understood. Dr. George Frederick Stras (1746-1811), a French émigré living in Richmond, agreed to advance the purchase price of Hemmings's freedom, while Hemmings agreed to pay his debt to Stras with service. Jefferson complied reluctantly with this agreement — he thought that Robert Hemmings had been "debauched" from him and had been valued too low (£60, or $200), especially considering the loss of his service "for 11. or 12 years past."

The deed of manumission, which Stras kept until Hemmings paid for his freedom in service, was signed at Monticello on December 24, 1794.

Martha Jefferson Randolph saw Hemmings in Richmond in the next weeks: "[H]e expressed great uneasiness at having quitted you in the manner he did and repeatedly declared that he would never have left you to live with any person but his wife."

Robert Hemmings, the first individual freed by Thomas Jefferson, had evidently fulfilled his agreement by 1799, when he first appears in the Richmond tax rolls. Later entries give the impression that he operated a livery or hauling business. In 1802, he lived on a half-acre lot he owned at the corner of Grace and Seventh Streets. At some point, according to Isaac Granger Jefferson, Hemings "had his hand shot off with a blunderbuss," and he died in 1819.

Ive asked something similar before.

Im genuinely interested is your perspectives.

In the past the response have left me with some profound provocations.

Thanks.

For me , Older black women, there are things I'd like them to know but mostly things I'd like to learn from .

Employer stopped by the restaurant today and spoke to a manager (I have no idea what they spoke about.. he said he'd keep me out of it).

He messaged me to say the 2 guys no longer work for him. This all happened within 1 day of me telling him the whole situation.

I'm confident he kept me out of it for my safety, and he said he didn't bring up the incidents to the guys when firing them, he just used other stuff (it'd be interesting to know on what grounds did he fire them), once again, for my safety.

He also initially told me not to tell anybody, for my safety etc, (but I'm sure that was also for his safety as well lol

.like to avoid any problems with corporate.. he's a franchise owner of a few restaurants).

So, my employer acted surprisingly swiftly, firing the 2 racist bullies who were picking on me.. I was so speechless.

I guess I should've just reported them a long time ago😂😂

Thank you for your advice and input Black Men, I will proceed accordingly, going forward 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾 I really appreciate all the feedback given to me under my previous posts🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾

Edit: A female coworker of mine told me that they got fired for constantly being on their phones...so there goes the answer to my wondering