February is Black History Month
Today is
National Science Day
National Tooth Fairy Day
National Floral Design Day
National Chocolate Soufflé Day
African American inventor, Jan Ernst Matzeliger created a machine that brought shoes to the masses.
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Matzeliger was born in Dutch Guiana, the South American country now called Suriname. He worked in machine shops as a child. In the 1870s, he immigrated to the United States and eventually settled in Lynn, Mass., where he found work at a shoe factory.
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In 1883, Matzeliger invented what many before him had attempted: an automated shoemaking machine that quickly attached the top of the shoe to the sole. This process is called "lasting". Matzeliger's machine could produce more than 10 times what human hands could create in a day. This invention revolutionized the shoemaking industry and made shoes affordable to the average person.
Matzeliger's first shoemaking machine prototype was made out of cigar boxes, elastic, and wire.
1) "At one point it got so raucous, that it's a wonder Ben Carson got any sleep at all!" ~ Bill Maher about the last GOP Debate
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2) JFK is the only President to ever win a Pulitzer Prize.
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3) Camels are sometimes called "The Ship of the Desert".
4) To avoid scurvy, Captain James Cook fed his crew sauerkraut.
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5) Neither a solid, liquid or a gas, lightning's "state" is considered to be "plasma".
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"If you’re using a wireless mouse then you could be in danger of being hacked by anyone with a basic knowledge of the black art. As discovered by security researchers at Bastille, millions of 2.4 GHz wireless dongles are potentially vulnerable to what the company is calling a MouseJack. And most wireless dongles will remain vulnerable, as they cannot be updated over the Internet.
Bastille found that anyone using a USB radio dongle, a laptop, and a few lines of code could hack into a wireless mouse from as far away as 200 meters (about 1/8 of a mile). The hacker essentially masks their device as a wireless mouse, latching onto an unencrypted dongle attached to someone’s PC. They can then use their laptop as a wireless keyboard, and control the victim’s computer from afar.
While there’s a limit to what a hacker could achieve without being able to see their victim’s computer screen, it would be relatively simple to direct someone to a malicious website or install a rootkit. And all potentially without the victim’s knowledge, unless they’re sitting at the computer at the time of the attack and seeing it happen in front of their eyes.
Wireless mice and keyboards manufactured by Logitech, Microsoft, Amazon, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Gigabyte are all at risk, with Bastille publishing a list of the affected devices. If you own one of the devices on that list you should probably stop using it immediately, and check for updates. If no updates are available then it may be worth investing in a new one, or switching to a wired keyboard and mice for the time being.'
[Unless you have no neighbors within an 1/8 mile. Then you’re good.]
Comedy Legend Dick Van Dyke Publicly Endorsed His First Candidate In 50 Years
"In Bernie Sanders I see a man saying that the emperor has no clothes, while everyone around him insists they see clothes. Whether or not he makes it to the White House, I hope and pray that everyone hears the alarm he is sounding now, it may be the last voice we ever hear."
Why is this important? Well for a couple reasons. For one Van Dyke is 90 years old and because he has been around and in the entertainment industry for 70 plus years he has seen his fair share of corruption and chicanery inside and outside of the industry, and maybe more importantly this is the first presidential candidate Van Dyke has felt passionately enough about to publicly endorse in almost 50 years.
Another important message that can be seen as a positive for the Sanders campaign is that this runs counter to the theory that Sanders is a millennial candidate who only appeals to the young and has nothing to offer the over 60 crowd. With the endorsement of Van Dyke, many older voters may take a second look at Sanders.
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"The beauty of me is that I'm very rich." ~ Donald Trump
General Michael Hayden, the only person to be Head of both the CIA and the NSA, told Bill Maher that if a President Trump were to order "water boarding and more (because they deserve it)", or to "kill the families of terrorists", the American Armed Forces would refuse to act. "You are not required to follow an unlawful order. That would be in violation of the International Law of Armed Conflict."
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9) Amazon has banned the sale of hover boards AGAIN!
"Amazon has pulled almost every single hoverboard off its website. The move comes just days after the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) declared hoverboards as unsafe to use and promised to seize any being imported into the United States. This is due to the risk of overheating.
This is the second time Amazon has acted to protect its customers from buying hoverboards that could potentially harm them, with a previous ban enacted in December. With no hoverboard yet having passed the Underwriters Laboratory (UL) safety certification process, the risks of selling these products are clearly too great for the online retailer."
"Democratic National Committee vice chair and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is stepping down from her post at the DNC and throwing her weight behind Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.
'First of all, I am resigning from the DNC so I can support Bernie Sanders for president,' Gabbard said early Sunday during NBC's 'Meet the Press' panel.
Gabbard, one of the first two female combat veterans to ever serve in Congress, stressed the importance of a leader with a 'military mindset,' which she described as a candidate who knows 'importantly, when we don't use [U.S.] military power.'
She pointed to Sanders, a Vermont Independent, as the White House hopeful with that knowledge.
'As a veteran and as a soldier, I've seen first-hand the very high human cost of that war,' said Gabbard, who served two tours of duty in the Middle East. 'I think it's most important for us, as we look at our choices as to who our next commander-in-chief will be to recognize the necessity to have a commander-in-chief who has foresight, who exercises good judgement.'
DNC Chair, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, accepted Gabbard's resignation Sunday.
'Congresswoman Gabbard is a role model who embodies the American ideal that anyone can dream big and make a difference,' the Florida congresswoman said in a statement. 'She is also a colleague in Congress and a friend, and I look forward to continuing to work alongside her when our Party unites behind whoever emerges as our nominee.'
The surprise announcement Sunday is not the first time Gabbard has split with the DNC. In November, the top committee official said that she had been disinvited from the first Democratic presidential primary debate in Nevada, after she had publicly called out for more debates.
Gabbard's endorsement of Sanders comes just a day after Hillary Clinton notched a big victory in South Carolina's primary Saturday night. But looking to the long term, the Hawaii Democrat emphasized Sanders' electability over the former secretary of state.
'You've seen the groundswell of support that he's gotten -- not only in our or two states but in states across the country -- I think this where there's a hunger for a leader, a commander-in-chief who is honest, who has integrity, who exercises good judgement,' Gabbard said."
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Three Michigan Legalization Initiatives
"Three groups that are gunning for legalized cannabis in Michigan have been approved to collect signatures on petitions. They’re all hoping to get on the ballot in November. Two of them have raised serious amounts of money and the third is just trying to keep up. The two that have major funding, and have been collecting signatures for months now, want to tax and regulate cannabis for personal use for people 21 and up. The third wants to fully decriminalize cannabis for anyone over 18, with no exceptions for use.
The first and most popular group calls themselves MI Legalize, something that’s as easy to remember as it is chanted by the crowds that gather in their support. With over 200,000 signatures on their petition, they seem to be the overwhelming favorite. Their grass-roots turned professional campaign is focused on several important factors: legalizing all forms of cannabis, including topicals, oils and tinctures for adults 21 and older; allowing adults to cultivate up to 12 plants, including the cultivation and possession of hemp and hemp products; granting additional legal protections; and allowing a 10 percent excise tax on recreational sales that will help education, transportation and local government.
The second group is the MCC, or Michigan Cannabis Coalition. With an equally flashy, but not as transparent, website, the MCC has approximately half the signatures the MI Legalize petition has. Started by Republicans, who might have never actually wanted to see their mission through until the end, it seems as though their efforts have taken a bit of a halt. Even their Facebook page shares links in support of MI Legalize. Whether their efforts were an experiment to see what people really wanted, or a way to collect information to use for future endeavors and even sell to third parties, they provided a healthy competition that can be considered as much needed motivation for MI Legalize to crush the polls.
The third group, the Abrogate Organization, had the most recent approval of their petition. The major difference with this group, however, is their mission to actually amend the constitution of Michigan and repeal cannabis prohibition. Their website isn’t flashy and is the form of an online forum, allowing for an intense and authentic conversation."
"No one knows quite how long it takes plastic to break down in the environment. It could be anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years; at any rate, it’s proven to be longer than the roughly 150 years that manmade plastics have existed. Count the things made out of plastic that you can see even just sitting at your desk -- water bottles, pen caps, iPhone cases, coffee lids, shopping bags, tape dispensers, everything else -- multiply that by a trillion or so, and you have an idea of the scope of the plastic waste on earth.
Now, just for fun, try to imagine the roughly 870 million people around the globe who are starving right at this moment. It’s enough to make you want to disown this garbage world we created.
But the good news is that for every problem, there are thousands of smart people trying to solve it. And Austrian designer Katharina Unger has figured out how to harness the power of a rare fungus that can turn plastic into edible biomass.
It all started back in 2012, when Yale researchers found a rare mushroom in the Amazon
(Pestalotiopsis microspora) that was capable of breaking down polyurethane, the main ingredient in modern plastics. That led to a lot of scientists trying to figure out how to use the fungi to deal with the world’s very real plastic waste problem. Unger, who was previously known for creating a kitchen appliance that incubated fly eggs into larva for the purposes of human consumption, took the idea one step further and resolved to figure out how to use fungi to recycle waste into food. Together with Julia Kaisinger and Utrecht University, she created the Fungi Mutarium, which turns mushrooms into an edible product.
The Fungi Mutarium is comprised of egg-shaped pods made with agar, a seaweed-based gelatin substitute, that serve as a base for fungi cultivation. The designers call these cups “FUs.” After loading them with plastic waste, fungi are introduced, and the mushrooms feed on the FUs’ starch and sugar along with the plastic. After a few months the plastic is gone, and in its place is a puffy edible substance.
The end result looks a bit like an egg-shaped rice cake, which could be used as an edible cup to hold any number of foods (the designers provide some suggestions, like seaweed and caviar, or fruit and yogurt). Though the idea is still in the incubation stage — you’re not going to be able to buy the pods at the supermarket any time soon — it’s a promising solution to a problem that most of us unconsciously contribute to every day. And just one more way that mushrooms could eventually help us clean up this mess we’ve made of things."
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*NOTE* - Please understand that I do not claim to be a “journalist”. I am only passing on bits 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 tidbits, 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, Bill Maher, 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!"