February is Black History Month
Today is
National Tortellini Day
17 year old Rochelle Ballantyne is one of the best chess players in the world. She's on the brink of becoming the first female African-American to ever earn the title of Chess Master.
1) Bill Maher smoked a joint on National TV with Killer Mike! Only Bernie Sanders has made Legalization a part of his campaign platform.
2) Oh, the irony! Anti-Government Nevada rancher, Cliven Bundy, is seeking a government funded Lawyer. Schadenfreude!
3) 79 year old Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died in his sleep, at a weekend resort. It was discovered, when he didn't show up for breakfast.
Moments after Justice Scalia’s death was confirmed, a GOP Senate staffer pledged to block any Obama replacement.
4) With a new poll showing the Nevada Caucus race TIED, Nate Silver (legendary Election Results soothsayer), of FiveThirtyEight, now estimates that "Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton each have a 50% chance of winning the Nevada caucuses." This is YUUUUUGE!
5) Johnny Depp travels with his Captain Jack sparrow costume at the ready, to make impromptu visits to sick kids in hospitals.
6) By law, no building in Washington, D.C. can be taller than the Capitol building.
Tyson Foods, one of the largest producers of meat in the world, is responsible for dumping more toxic pollution by volume into U.S. waters than companies like Exxon and Dow Chemical, according to a new analysis from environmental advocacy group Environment America.
The analysis, released last Wednesday, coincides with a decision by Tyson shareholders not to institute a new water policy that would have mandated the company keep better track of its water pollution both inside and outside of its direct facilities.
Hawaii just became the first state to ban "Animal Performance."
Inspired, in part, by the escape and gunning down of a well known circus elephant, Hawaiian citizens moved to ban the use of animals for entertainment purposes. Animals banned include big cats, elephants, bears, and other wild exotics.
The new law will also ban the import of the animals, though it does make exception for government zoos and commercial filming for movies and television. It is expected to go into effect some time in 2016.
“We’re hoping of course that Hawaii will set an example for other states to take the next step", said senior Hawaiian state director for the Humane Society, Inga Gibson.
And it may. Cities are banning the use of puppy mills and people are learning more about the rights of non-human animals, especially with the speed of knowledge on the internet.
There are 50 municipalities within 22 states that have a partial or full ban on entertainment animals.
Bay Area Music giant, Amoeba Music, is planning on opening a Medical Marijuana Dispensary next to its Berkeley location. Brilliant plan!
In other Cannabis news, Roseanne Barr is entering the lucrative industry with "Roseanne's Joint".
And this: A house made of Hemp can absorb pollutants, and create Oxygen.
And finally, Washington, D.C. has banned employers from drug-testing their employees for (the now legal substance) cannabis.
"In the 1960s the CIA spent five years and over $20 million training spy cats. I guess it's not as strange as it might first seem. Cats are stealthy, smart, fast, and can jump tall objects. Also, most people, when they see a cat, will pet it, and not assume that it's a spy.
For these reasons the CIA put a three-quarter inch transmitter in a female gray and white cat. Then they installed a microphone in it's ear canal and had the antenna run along the back all the way to the tip of its tail.
However, since cats are relatively small in size, the batteries that were used were also small and could only record short conversations. It took some time to get each component just right, making sure that the cat had full mobility and didn't lick or scratch at the audio device hidden inside it.
The operation was the easy part; the hard part was training the cat to follow directions. As anyone who has ever owned a cat, or been around a cat for any length of time can tell you, getting a cat to do anything other than what it wants to do is nothing short of amazing.
After five years of training and $20 million, the CIA felt that they could get their special cat agent to move in specific directions and go to specific locations on command (as long as it didn't get distracted, bored or hungry, which, for a cat, is almost all the time).
Nonetheless, they decided to field test their $20 million, highly trained acoustic kitty agent. They drove the van across the street from a known Soviet meeting place in Washington, D.C. The targets were two men sitting on a bench in a nearby park. They opened the door and deployed their secret kitty agent. The agent took a few steps and was immediately hit and killed instantly by a passing Taxi Cab. Needless to say, it was a "catastrophe" (pun intended). The "Acoustic Kitty" Project was then scrapped and was called a complete failure."
[At first I was absolutely horrified and disgusted at what those scientists did to this poor kitty cat, then I laughed at the irony of it, and the karma of them losing their $20 million investment…but then I got sad that the cat had to give up its life to exact its revenge. All that money could have done so much more for so many…]
11) via sfgate and The Guardian
The legendary Titans of Mavericks Surfing Contest took place yesterday. It is an event that has no specific date, because it depends on surf conditions. It is always announced just days before the event.
Thousands fly in from all over the world, and line the rocky cliffs of Pillar Point in northern California to watch 24 of the world’s best surfers take on the waves that barrel into the legendary spot.
Nic Lamb of Santa Cruz was a finalist at the Titans of Mavericks event for the first time Friday, and then he wound up winning the whole she-bang with a solid overall day that included the best ride of the finals.
Even Lamb, though, thought the real story of the day was the runner-up — because his friend, Travis Payne wasn’t even supposed to be there.
“Travis was surfing great all day, hats off to him,” said Lamb, who won the $30,000 first prize. “You should be interviewing him.”
Payne, 31, is a San Francisco Fire Department paramedic who was an alternate for the internationally known big-wave surf competition, and organizers believed they had a full 24-man field the day before the event. But then, Shane Dorian of Hawaii decided to opt out because of a back injury, and Payne, who is from Pacifica, got the call Thursday evening
Payne managed to get a friend to swap shifts with him so he could surf in the event he has dreamed of competing in since he was a teen — and he was a surprise finalist, then put together two good quick runs off the bat in the finals to contend for the title.
“I was just trying to make sure I got into the event next year and I’m going for the final,” Payne said on the dock at Pillar Point Harbor. “I can’t believe it happened, but I’m happy. Today was a day not to be cautious,” Payne said. “I was going for waves that are normally a little sketchy.”
Traditionally, the swells can rise to 60 feet, are highly dangerous and over the years there have even been two fatalities. This hasn't stopped the competition or scared off the competitors.
However. there is a change on the horizon for the annual contest. The California Coastal Commission has told the competition organizers that they must develop a plan to include women or risk their permits to hold the event being revoked.
At a meeting in November, the organizers Cartel Management and all-male judges of Committee 5 were confronted by community members and commissioners who pointed out the lack of female competitors. Jeff Clark, who first rode Mavericks in 1975 and is a Committee 5 member, replied that the event had always been open to women, but that the group had yet to see a women with the skill level to compete.
That sentiment was recently echoed by top big-wave surfer Grant Washburn, 48, of San Francisco, who has competed in every Mavericks event since it started in 1999.
12) In SC, Hillary has 14 paid staffers; Bernie has 240. Maybe they all want to work for Bernie because he is the ONLY Presidential Candidate who actually PAYS his staffers!
"Unpaid interns, often students, are an island unto themselves. Unlike volunteers, who set their own schedules and enjoy unlimited coffee and appreciation, interns compete for the prestige of working in demanding jobs without pay. In return, these privileged few get to add the experience to their résumés and try to win favor with future employers.
This is a particularly devastating equation for Black and Hispanic students, who generally do not have the same financial resources as their white counterparts.
There is a racial divide between students wealthy enough to participate in internship programs and those who lack the financial reserves to do so.
Yet, although many of the leading candidates for president bemoan the eroding middle class and rising social inequality, they seem to suffer from cognitive dissonance when it comes to unpaid internships.
In August, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton tweeted an application for unpaid interns, requiring a résumé and two letters of reference. Just a few days later, she was posting about the student debt crisis.
On the Republican side, former Florida governor Jeb Bush has called the opportunity gap “the defining issue of our time,” and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has railed against “upward-mobility stagnation.” Like Clinton, both of them have proposals to reduce student debt. Even retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson wants public universities to pay the interest on student loans, while business mogul Donald Trump has accused the federal government of profiting off students.
Whoever wins, [unless it's Bernie] the next president will likely follow the pipeline of free labor all the way to the White House, where interns are, of course, unpaid. The issue is truly nonpartisan, as neither the Democratic nor Republican national committee pays its interns, although summer interns for the RNC do get a $100-a-week stipend."
[What do Bernie's interns earn per hour? $10.10, btw. This is what donations to the Sanders Campaign buy, employee wages, not $2000 worth of unhealthy grease-soaked Dunkin' Donuts! Don't know what I'm talking about? That's because you don't read The TILT every day! See my past TILTS to find out!]
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***Special Thanks to Star Kelley for all her help with the Daily TILT!***
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*NOTE* - Please understand that I do not claim to be a “journalist”. I am only passing on tidbits of information, which others have researched, that drift through my awareness, on any given day. I watch, read and listen to any number of different news and entertainment sources, and it’s more than anyone could possibly intake and retain in a day, so I created this little daily “cheat sheet” for myself, so that I could remember all these oddball facts. Then I decided to share these gems, and thus was born the Daily TILT. I do this for fun. I hope you enjoy it.
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[Snarky comments by me are usually in brackets like this].
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**NOTE: I purposely do not include links or photos in the TILT. The idea is to not have one story be highlighted above all the others. And sometimes links can be stressful. I, myself, sometimes get conflicted when presented with too many choices, so I thought I'd save you the trouble of having to make any of those types of decisions for a few minutes, while you read the Photo and Link-Free TILT!
I encourage you to further research any story that interests you, though. They are easy to Google.
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***My Daily Sources are usually one of the following: Democracy Now, The Daily Kos, Thom Hartmann, care2, Mother Jones, David Pakman, Ring of Fire, Jim Hightower, Alternet, Bill Press, Wired UK, John Fugelsang, Lee Camp, The Huffington Post, The Daily Show, TYT Network, todayifoundout, Truthout, DIGG, Think Progress, Politico, Salon, Star Kelley, Friends of the Earth, Talk Media News, NRDC, Pirate Television, The Upworthiest, The Chase, The View, Soul Pancake, The Petition Site, Bioneers, TechKnow, The Daily Beast, PPP, YouTube and occasionally, MSNBC.
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As Thom Hartmann always says, "Democracy is NOT a spectator sport. TAG, you're it!"