By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
As a world food, potatoes are second in human consumption only to rice. And as thin, salted, crisp chips, they are America's favorite snack food — the potato chip. Thus, every time a person crunches into a potato chip, he or she is enjoying the delicious taste of one of the world's most famous snacks – a treat that might not exist without the contribution of black inventor George Crum (also known as George Speck July 15, 1824 – July 22, 1914) was an American chef. Speck was born of an African-American father and a Native American mother,
Speck developed his culinary skills at Cary Moon's Lake House on Saratoga Lake, noted as an expensive restaurant at a time when wealthy families from Manhattan and other areas were building summer "camps" in the area. Speck and his sister, Wicks, also cooked at the Sans Souci in Ballston Spa, alongside another St. Regis Mohawk Indian known for his skills as a guide and cook, Pete Francis One of the regular customers at Moon's was shipping tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, although he savored the food, could never seem to remember Speck's name. On one occasion, he called a waiter over to ask, "Crum, how long before we shall eat?" Rather than take offense, Speck decided to embrace the nickname, figuring that, "A crumb is bigger than a speck."
The now George Crum was working as the head chef in the summer of 1853 at the Moon's Lake House, a resort in Saratoga Springs, New York. At work one hot summer day in August, Crum was in his kitchen when a patron ordered a plate of French-fried potatoes. Cooked to perfection, the potatoes were delivered to the customer, who, turning his nose up, complained that the potatoes were too thick and too soft. Crum cut and fried a thinner batch, but these, too, met with disapproval. Exasperated, Crum decided to rile the guest by producing French fries too thin and crisp to skewer with a fork. Slicing potatoes paper thin, Crum over fried them to a crisp and seasoned them with an excess of salt. Crum then gave the chips to the customer, who, to his surprise loved them.
Almost overnight, Crum's invention became widely popular. Known as Saratoga Chips, the delectably salty treats resulted in a booming business and Crum was able to open his own restaurant in Saratoga Lake in 1860 with the profits he made selling his crisps. As a tribute to the snack that got him started, Crum made sure that customers to his restaurant were greeted with basket of chips on every table. Crum's restaurant flourished and within a few years he was catering to wealthy clients including William Vanderbilt, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and Henry Hilton.....Read More Here
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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A top Pentagon officer whose abrupt retirement came as a shock to his colleagues was reportedly forced out after repeated clashes with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Admiral Alvin Holsey, the head of U.S. Southern Command, had been in charge of U.S. forces in Latin America, which included Donald Trump’s crackdown on “narco-terrorists” in the area.
Questions were asked after Hegseth announced on social media in October that the four-star officer would be retiring at the end of the year after 37 years in the Navy. Holsey, 60, only started the job, which usually has a three-year term, in November last year—meaning he was leaving two years early.
At the time, rumors flew that his departure was due to clashes with Hegseth over the Caribbean mission.
The Washington Post reported at the time that Hegseth, 45, had grown “disenchanted” with Holsey and wanted him to step aside—a claim denied by the Defense Department.
A new report in The Wall Street Journal confirms that Hegseth actually asked the former helicopter pilot to step down after months of feuding between the pair.
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As the AI industry explodes in the United States, backed by hundreds of billions of dollars in investments from tech companies, Democratic lawmakers and civil rights leaders are calling on Congress to protect Black Americans and marginalized groups from bias.
“We need to be able to trust that when as we, as Black Americans, go to apply for a bank loan, secure employment or even enter our own homes, we will not be denied on the basis of algorithmic bias,” said U.S. Rep. Yvette D. Clarke, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, on Tuesday as a group of Democrats re-introduced the Artificial Intelligence Civil Rights Act.
“Americans have the same civil liberties online as they do wherever else they live their lives, and when these liberties are not just infringed upon, but ignored, insulted and abused to the degree that we have seen in AI…any inaction from this point forward is totally unacceptable.”
Clarke, joined by Reps. Summer Lee, D-Pa., and Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and U.S. Senator Ed Markey, D-Mass., co-sponsored the legislation.
The bill, first introduced by Markey in 2024, would “establish protections for individual rights with respect to computational algorithms, and for other purposes.”
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Last month, a federal judge dismissed indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James after finding that Lindsey Halligan, the U.S. attorney appointed by President Donald Trump, was unlawfully appointed to handle the cases. Halligan was also a woefully incompetent reverse-DEI hire who had no prior experience as a prosecutor, and she was only placed in the role after the Trump administration fired seasoned DOJ prosecutors for opposing the charges they believed had no merit in James’ case, and others reportedly expressed concern over the flimsy case against Comey, who was indicted for allegedly giving false statements and obstruction of a congressional proceeding, charges that are related to his testimony on Russia’s interference with the 2016 presidential election — a case that was already falling apart before it was dismissed.
Well, on Thursday, the Justice Department attempted to reindict James on charges of bank fraud and making a false statement to a financial institution, but a grand jury in Virginia said no. As previously reported, the original indictment against James was dismissed without prejudice, meaning whenever the Trump administration got its ducks in a row, it could move to indict her again. Apparently, getting a grand jury in Virginia to indict James a second time should have been a slam dunk. Instead, it was another L for Trump’s MAGA-fied DOJ.
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“Abbott Elementary” creator Quinta Brunson is channeling her inner Janine Teagues in her latest initiative. This week, Brunson launched “The Quinta Brunson Field Trip Fund.” In partnership with the School District of Philadelphia, the fund was created to provide free school trips for the city’s students.
“I’m proud to support Philadelphia students with experiences that remind them their dreams are valid and their futures are bright,” Brunson said in a statement to the Philadelphia Tribune.
Brunson, an alum of the Philadelphia school district, understands the importance of field trips in a student’s scholastic journey. And now with this fund, she plans to help eliminate the costs of field trips to Philadelphia’s museums and landmarks for more than 117,000 public school students.
In hopes of making learning “meaningful and memorable,” the fund will allow district school teachers and administrators to complete short applications for field trip grants, which will be evaluated by an independent group of educators, with funds dispersed twice a year, as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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The Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama has become the first African to be named the most influential figure in the art world in ArtReview magazine’s annual power list.
Mahama, whose work often uses found materials including textile remnants, topped the ranking of the contemporary art world’s most influential people and organisations as chosen by a global judging panel.
He told the Guardian he felt humbled to be named at the top of a list he first heard about while studying at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana in 2011, when the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei topped the ranking.
He said: “For me to be part of this, especially coming from a place like Ghana, which for many years was almost as if we were not even part of the discourse, is quite humbling.”
Mahama, who is based in Ghana’s northern city of Tamale, said he hoped his success could inspire younger artists in his country to “realise that they are part of the contemporary discourse and not just on the sideline”.
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‘They waited in a kind of deranged inactivity for the possibility of a visit’. The Guardian: Women behind the lens
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This photograph was taken inside the Poli-Valencia detention centre, where I began to understand what imprisonment means for women in Venezuela. The room had once been an investigation office, converted into a cell after authorities decided to move the women out of the main area, where they had been held alongside male detainees.
When I returned a year later, the space had been transformed. The women had made it their own, covering the walls with names, phrases and small drawings of hearts, even taping up a poster of the Colombian singer Maluma. What had once been a sterile office now held traces of their presence, their effort to hold on to a sense of identity in a place meant to erase it.
On one wall, someone had carved a phrase of both defiance and exhaustion: “I don’t expect anyone to believe in me because I don’t believe in anyone.”
You see women resting on thin mattresses on the floor, bodies intertwined, one woman’s legs serving as a pillow for another, as if physical closeness were the only comfort left in that airless room.
Here, for them, meant limbo: no ventilation, no running water, and days that bled into one another. Many did not know their lawyers, did not know when their trial would be, did not receive food, water or medical attention regularly; they waited in a kind of deranged inactivity for the possibility of a visit.
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