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Tennessee death row inmate wants electric chair as 'lesser of two evils'

A condemned Tennessee inmate wants to die in the electric chair, rather than by lethal injection, calling electrocution the “lesser of two evils,” his lawyer said.

Edmund George Zagorski, 63, is set to pay the ultimate price on Thursday for the 1983 slayings of John Dotson and Jimmy Porter — 35-year-old victims who were planning to buy 100 pounds of marijuana from Zagorski.

Lethal injection is the primary form of execution in Tennessee, but inmates whose offenses happened before January 1999 may opt for the electric chair.

The Volunteer State is one of nine that still includes the electric chair as a form of execution.

Kelley Henry, Zagorki's defense lawyer, said lethal injection is a long, brutal process that can take up to 18 minutes.

“Faced with the choice of two unconstitutional methods of execution, Mr. Zagorski has indicated that if his execution is to move forward, he believes that the electric chair is the lesser of two evils,” Henry said. “Ten to 18 minutes of drowning, suffocation and chemical burning is unspeakable.”

Use of the electric chair is rare, with just 14 of the 871 executions happening via electrocution since 2000, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The last electrocution was in Virginia in January 2013.

After serving me well these past five years, my good old Nexus 7 is finally going to retire. I've gotten a new tablet, a Xiaomi Mi Pad 4, which is more or less the same form factor, just slightly bigger, and the hardware specs are really sweet. But I should have been a tad more careful reading of both the place I bought it from and the stuff on XDA about it. First off I'd bought a version that has a Chinese ROM. This shouldn't be such a big deal, except that the damn thing doesn't have Google Play or any sane app market. There's the Mi App Store, and while it has some of my essential tablet apps, some omissions are rather notable, not even including including something as basic as a workable FTP client. Since one of the main uses of my tablet is to play video files I download from a network storage server at home, this is essential. Maybe there is something there that could do that... if only I could read Chinese. F-Droid seems to help somewhat, except that there still isn't a simple FTP client that will let me download several files in a batch. The closest thing there seems to be Ghost Commander, but it downloads all the files in parallel and can't display progress for all of them. This is ridiculous. Even the web browsers like Firefox are in Chinese! The keyboard is also the Google Chinese keyboard, and there's something of a dearth of alternative keyboard apps, at least no keyboard that will let me type numbers on a password screen lock without pressing a modifier key. I fucking hate that. There is a lot of space on a 1920×1200 screen that is 8" across, I could use a row of number keys at the top thank you very much! There certainly seems to be nothing like the Hacker's Keyboard on Google Play, which you can actually use vi on a remote shell with because it gives you that all-important Esc key. :P

The other thing is that locked bootloader. I could have flashed a custom ROM to remove the useless Chinese cruft. While Xiaomi will allow me to unlock it if I want to (after giving them something like $250 for it I expect no less), they have an irksome requirement. They are making me wait 720 hours (yes a whole fucking month) before they will permit me to unlock. The fact that they impose this delay on you for your "protection" is extremely irritating and paternalistic. Sure, if the device is stolen it becomes essentially unusable if the bootloader is locked but there are better ways to make that happen I think. Given the lack of GPS or LTE circuitry in this version of the Mi Pad 4 I have, if that happens I don't think it's going to help. So do I own my device or not? Seems they want to hang onto it for a month longer before they'll actually give it to me.

In the meantime I've managed to sideload a few of the essentials after using Titanium Backup on my Nexus 7 to convert them into APKs. They largely seem to work.

Rumor: New PlayStation 5 Feature Revealed

Earlier this week, a new patent filed by Sony suggested that it is planning on adding backwards compatibility to the PlayStation 5. Now, another patent has surfaced revealing possibly another feature the system will have.

Filed back in May by Sony Interactive Entertainment, and approved just a few days ago, the patent appears to suggest that hardware V-Sync will ship with the next Sony console.

Titled "Video Frame Rate Compensation Through Adjustment of Vertical Blanking," the patent is pretty extensive, but in short, it should help games run better on the system.

Great, patents for backward compatibility and V-Sync. WTF?

I've been hearing about that clown's support of Trump. And, about the snoopy Dog putting him down for it. And, assorted other nonsense responses to the Caney guy.

Now, let's be clear here - I don't like West. He's about as dumb as two boxes of rocks, IMO. In an interview, he said "They wanted to execute Galileo for saying the sun revolves around the earth". The host attempted to correct that little mis-statement, and West says he's really not interested in the details. Yup - two boxes of rocks.

Still, the guy is kinda, sorta, at least TRYING to think for himself. He gets an "E" for effort, anyhow. He likes Trump. A black dude who rejects the Democrat mantra. Maybe he's smarter than he looks? Well - probably not, but maybe smarter than he acts? Hmmmmm . . . Anything is possible.

Still - we have a rather popular person (Don't ask ME why he's popular!) who bucks the trend, and supports the President of the United States.

And, for that, West becomes "Uncle Tom. Ass nigga".

Alright, so the snoopy guy is the only one to use those exact words. (Well, the only one I've seen quoted as using those words.) Still, half of the D oriented population in the US suddenly hates West, for his political preferences.

“The blacks weren’t always Democrats. You know it’s like the plan they did, to take the fathers out the home and put them on welfare. Does anybody know about that? That’s a Democratic plan,” West said while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.

“Ninety percent of news are liberal,” he also said. “Ninety percent of TV … LA, New York, writers, rappers, musicians; so it’s easy to make it seem like it’s so, so, so, one-sided.”

OK, soooo - maybe West ain't smart. Still, he demonstrates that he's smarter than at least half of America's "progressive" "leftist" "socialist" "Welfare" "communist" supposed to be "Democrats".

Oh yeah - he demonstrates a little bit of wisdom in that last quote. He does seem to recognize that rappers aren't musicians. "writers, rappers, musicians:" He clearly distinguishes between rappers and musicians - maybe I'll have to up my estimate of his intelligence to THREE boxes of rocks?

Ass nigga. Is that an ultimate insult, among black folk? Or, is that just a generic insult, like, "You suck"? Or is that to be taken in context? Like, if I were to say it, I would be shot immediately, without so much as a warning. But, if another black guy says it, it's just so much banter?

Imagine if West got a vanity plate "A55NIGGA". I might have to salute the guy for being that ballsy. Still not smart, but ballsy. There are so few ballsy people left in this country, you gotta respect that. Well, I respect defiance, anyway.

BTW - how in the FUCK do you get "Conyay" out of Kanye? It still looks like "Caney" to me. His existence helps to lower the literacy rate in this country!

“I'll have those niggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years.”

― Lyndon B. Johnson

Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla: Fight the S.E.C., or I Quit

The SEC’s “Punishment” of Elon Musk Is Exactly What Tesla Needed

Tesla Is 2 Years Ahead Of Schedule On Gigafactory 1

Tesla will screen 'Cars 3' at Gigafactory as thank you to employees

The Future We Need — From The Tesla Gigafactory To A Chain Of Terafactories

Thrown in here to avoid Tesla fatigue.

Posting this in anticipation of a trending hashtag. See also: #KavanaughHearings.

https://twitter.com/mihow/status/1045325066857263104

A Second Front Door.

Consider this for a second.

A SECOND FRONT DOOR.

This is what sexual assault does to a person. This is heartbreaking. Deeply heartbreaking.

Get Mark Judge into one of these hearings.

Ooh, Dr. Ford used the encrypted Washington Post tip line (generates a "utm_term" in the URL, which doesn't sound so secure...). Good advertisement for the existence of that service, I think. The ratings for this event are probably high.

Ford mentions the death threats. We don't care!

That coffee break moment.

Dianne Feinstein enters into record 140 letters from friends and neighbors, and "1,000" from female physicians. Also she is actually asking the witness questions, whereas Grassley has deferred to his female proxy.

Turns out she has that #SecondFrontDoor. And her home is a place to host Google interns...?

She brings up epinephrine and norepinephrine to explain how her basic memory functions work and that she knew it was Brett Kavanaugh who assaulted her.

She brings up her hippocampus again in a response to Senator Leahy.

Party or gathering?

Uncomfortable encounter at the Potomac Village Safeway! She said "Hi" to Mark Judge, who was arranging shopping carts.

Did she say something about reporters trying to talk to her dog?

Answer about other PTSD risk factors sounds about as evasive as it does scientific.

Mitchell is attacking Ford's fear of flying!

Ford got her polygraph within 24 hours or so of her grandma's funeral.

Booker: "speaking YOUR truth".

---

Kavanaugh (BK) is pissed off.

He won't be intimidated into withdrawing from the process. "I have never sexually assaulted anyone... ever."

BK has a friend who was sexually abused! BK's voice wavered as he was talking about his mother. And a lot more as he talks about his 10-year-old daughter praying for Dr. Ford.

Choked up as he talks about his father keeping detailed calendar-diaries, a practice he adopted. BK is listing actual dates he was in D.C. on weekends. June 4, August 7, August 20-22.

"I liked beer. I still like beer."

Lol: https://twitter.com/jameshohmann/status/1045396951846539265

Brett Kavanaugh notes that the summer that the sexual assault allegedly took place, when Christine Ford says he pinned her down on a bed, he had spent a lot of time lifting weights and doing strength training.

^ Tweeter is a WaPost reporter.

Good thing there is a recess, because while BK was emphatic and pretty clear in his opening statement, he seemed a bit flustered during questioning.

Chris Garrett is "Squee"!

Durbin tries to get BK to turn his head to Don McGahn. Doesn't work. But he is getting BK flustered on the subject of an FBI investigation.

Senator Lindsey Graham mounts the defense.

BK defends his use of "Ralph Club" in his yearbook. Because he has a weak stomach. And "Renate Alumnius" has nothing to do with sex.

Dem overplaying his hand: "Do you believe Anita Hill?"

Why you don’t really have a ‘type’

“Beauty still is in the eye of the beholder, but our on-going work suggests that the beholder may be changing constantly,” says Haiyang Yang, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School and author of a study that found that our sense of beauty can change based on other people’s opinions. “It can be argued that the advent of the internet age may be causing people to change their beauty standards faster than ever before in human history.”

Sexy 'Handmaid's Tale' Halloween costume pulled after sparking online outrage

I Don't Know How to Feel About This Sexy Handmaiden Costume

Now you'll have to go as a Roblox instead.

Brett Kavanaugh, wife and Christine Blasey Ford all receiving death threats: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE

It's 2018. Why is a public figure receiving death threats "news"? There must be individuals out there making death threats to several people every day (hundreds per year), and the chance of them getting caught and brought to trial is minimal.

Pointing out that you receive death threats or mere angry emails does not mean you should get any sympathy. It was news a decade or two ago, but no longer. The Internet is a whirlwind of hate, and as long as (relative) anonymity exists, it will stay that way. And that anonymity is more valuable than the chance to get rid of (a % of) routine death threats.

Are we to the point yet where we can mostly agree that the name game is fucking stupid? You know, the one where as soon as everyone gets used to referring to a group by $name it gets declared *ist and a new and wildly less accurate one is created? This isn't a thing I lose sleep over and it doesn't offend me when someone uses one of the retarded terms but the fact that it is still a thing that happens annoys me much in the same way people not using their turn signals does.

Let's go through a few here. Mine first. Native American. I was born here, so I'm a native American. So is little Chewy who was born in east L.A. even though his parents were illegals. So is Tyrone who was born in Detroit. So is Sally who was born in Vermont. Which is to say, it's a fucking idiotic term. I prefer Indian or wagon burner but I'll answer to anything that isn't trying to paint my race as delicate snowflakes; even Azuma's favorite racial slur, Chief Shitting Bull, is better.

African American next. For starters, not all black people are American. Not by a long shot. Also, the vast majority of them are no more African than they are Martian. If you just emigrated from Africa and got citizenship, this term would make sense. Most black folks though can't even tell you which quarter of that continent their ancestors came from. They have zero genuine ties to Africa.

Asian Americans? They're generally fucking proud of being from their nation of origin and would prefer that nomenclature-wise. Don't believe me? Call a Japanese person Chinese and see what happens. Lumping them all together is actually insulting if you know their ancestry. You're basically saying they all look alike. See African American for the American bit.

Middle Eastern? See above but switch Israeli and Egyptian for Japanese and Chinese.

Hispanic? Did you know you can call a person from Germany German, a person from Canada Canadian, but not a person from Mexico Mexican? That's some fucktarded shit.

People of Color? Strictly a term to exclude white people. Damn fine way to spot a racist asshole though.

Now how about some that have been declared reee-worthy simply so you can call someone a bigot...

Retard/retarded. See, this word has an actual meaning and is not an insult to anyone who it is an accurate description of. But it's been around a while, so it must be offensive and need changing.

Ditto disabled, handicapped, etc...

Tranny? Short for trans-whatever using the long standing habit of chopping a long word and adding "y" to shorten it. No more insulting than Tommy for a guy named Thomas. Jimmy for James never made sense to me on account of having the same number of letters but at least it follows a pattern that makes sense in general even if not in every specific case.

We don't even need to go into the pronoun game much. Anyone who can't decide on male or female can fuck right off and anyone getting offended about not being called the one they prefer should stop fucking looking like the other one.

If you're pissed off and want to discuss this, please try and present a rational argument. You being offended isn't going to cause any fucks to be given by me, no matter how hurt your butt is.