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Tennessee Death Row Inmate Opts for Electric Chair

Posted by takyon on Tuesday October 09 2018, @06:02PM (#3584)
66 Comments
News

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.

PS5's Special Feature: The Patents

Posted by takyon on Monday October 08 2018, @01:13AM (#3578)
2 Comments
Techonomics

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?

Runaway1956 has reached peak crazy and is accelerating...

Posted by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday October 07 2018, @08:38PM (#3577)
144 Comments
Topics
Runaway1956 finally broke cover, unable to pretend any longer he isn't just as nihilistic and violent and bat-buggering insane as the worst of our commenters. He has firmly cemented his place alongside jmorris, khallow, and Entropy.

Read this. Fuckin' read it. You want someone with violent tendencies? You want "disasturbation?" You want stone-cold nihilism? Runaway has you covered. Here he is, cheering for megadeaths, wishing horrible demise upon 50 million people he dislikes ("progressives") because he thinks people with brown skin are somehow the privileged class in this country. He also seems to think I'm some kind of unreconstructed Marxist, which is...not only not right, it's not even wrong. I've bolded the especially...telling...parts of this little rant.

Alright then -

A civil war will be uglier than most liberals have ever dreamed. Maybe uglier than the war-happy conservative capitalists have dreamed, as well.

But, it might be better than allowing the progressives to have control. The so-called left is hardly any more left than the R's are, but they are strongly into authoritarianism. That left makes me look silly as hell with my claims of being an authoritarian. The REAL difference between me, and them, is the legitimacy of authority. If I recognize an authority as being legitimate, then I respect it. If I don't recognize an authority as legitimate, I fight it.

Your left wants to create it's own authority by force. There is no legitimacy to either the force, or the authority which they desire. None.

But, if the right stands by, and watches the "left" proceed, it's possible that the progressives could win. Chances are slim, but the possibility exists.

Yes, I'd rather see twenty million dead liberals lying in the streets, than to see their progressive heros taking over this country. And, I'll willingly sacrifice five million dead conservatives and independents to put a stop to the progressives.

The tree of life must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots, from time to time.

And, welcome to reality, where most important decisions by nations are settled by force. As it has been for tens of thousands of years, so it will be for tens of thousands of years into the future.

Have you ever considered the dystopias portrayed in much of science fiction? Have you never imagined one of those dystopias, in which death is preferable to living? The dystopia being offered to us by the progressives is one in which a child can be punished, and branded for life, if he so much as notices that his own skin is not the same color as that of his teacher, or one of his class mates. In this computer age, any "deviant" behaviour will be documented, put into a database, and NEVER forgotten.

Progressives promise a number of things, which I fear, and despise, with their racial inequality ranking high. "People of color" vs "white and Asian". It's already real, it has made it into headlines. Follow that to it's logical conclusion - if you're brown, or black, you get a leg up in education, employment, in everything. If you're white, or Asian, you get shit on, and you're lucky if you can ever get a job cleaning septic tanks, or collecting garbage.

The party, as well as the progressives, have forgotten Martin Luther King, who had a dream. They've abandoned his dream. Today, they don't want equality, they want vengeance.

And, I, for one, am not willing that my grandchildren should be cast into some third-rate citizen role, to make those brown or black people happy. I side with King - my great grandchildren should compete with black, white, brown, and Asian for their place in life. And, the best man/woman for the job should win the job.

Political correctness? I've fought that bullshit since I first heard of it. It was a Soviet construction - if you were in good graces with the party, then you were politically correct. Fuck PC. Seriously, just fuck PC. Progressives promise to enslave my descendants, at the expense of brown and black people. Just fuck them.

Twenty million dead progressives? Make it fifty million - it's all the same to me. A future with slavery in it looks pretty damned bleak, no matter whether it's my descendants, or yours, or whoever's. We had a war, ~150 years ago, over a number of issues, including slavery. Today, "liberals" want to go back and explore slavery. Kill 'em all, and let God sort them out.

The bunch of dumb bastards in charge of the Democrat party need to pull their heads out of their asses, BEFORE they spark that civil war. Once the first few shots are fired, there will be no mercy.

Gawwwwwwwwwd...DAMN. This is what a meltdown looks like. This is what "identity politics" actually is. The man has gone bat-boinking nuts. Okay Runaway, suit up in your Rambo gear, here's an MP3 player with the soundtracks to the entire Contra series on it, here's some MREs, now go and defend your country from those horrible brown people.

Jesus. Jetskiing. CHRIST.

The Musky Settling

Posted by takyon on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:45AM (#3565)
36 Comments

Yet more evidence Kavanaugh committed perjury

Posted by DeathMonkey on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:26PM (#3564)
73 Comments
News

(In July) Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court, and his staff were reportedly sending text messages to former classmates to underplay allegations that he exposed himself during a party at Yale University.

The text messages, which were obtained by NBC News, were reportedly between Kavanaugh's friends, Kerry Berchem and Karen Yarasavage. Based on the contents of the messages, Kavanaugh himself may reached out to his classmates to undercut the claims made by former classmate Deborah Ramirez, who told The New Yorker that Kavanaugh had exposed himself in front of others at a dorm-room party during the 1983-84 school year.

According to one message, Yarasavage said that Kavanaugh had asked her to defend him on the record, NBC News reported. Other messages indicate that Kavanaugh's surrogates had communicated with his former classmates before the story's publication.

Yarasavage said in a message that she corresponded with "Brett" and "Brett's guy." Bercham also claimed Yarasavage told her friend that she sent a copy of wedding party photo that included Kavanaugh and Ramirez "to Brett's team."

However...

"All right," an interviewer said in a redacted Judiciary Committee report. "My last question on this subject is since you graduated from college, but before [The] New Yorker article publication on September 23rd, have you ever discussed or heard discussion about the incident matching the description given by Ms. Ramirez to [The] New Yorker?"

"No," Kavanaugh said, according to the transcript.

Text messages between Brett Kavanaugh and his classmates seem to contradict his Senate testimony

Good news everybody, Clinton is innocent!

Posted by DeathMonkey on Friday September 28 2018, @08:28PM (#3560)
19 Comments
News

According to all the conservative legal scholars here on SN you can't even vote against a person unless they've been convicted of a crime.

So it's good to know they're finally all admitting that Hilary Clinton is completely innocent!

Baby steps.

People Saying "It Can't Happen Here" Is Why It Happens Here

Posted by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 28 2018, @06:06PM (#3559)
149 Comments
Topics

There was a massive ICE raid a couple of days ago on the east side of Madison, one which I apparently missed by mere moments. The Madison law enforcement were NOT notified of this, as stated by both Mayor Soglin and Police Chief Koval...though, of course, their primary concern (at least on the air) was "breakdown in communications" rather than "Jesus fuck, WHY are these people conducting damn near paramilitary raids without warning?!"

There is a way to fight illegal immigration. This is not how. Instead of enforcing the laws we have and going after the causes of the problem--this being large businesses like meatpacking plants who bring illegals in as essentially slave labor--they go after the individuals themselves. Not only is this about as useful as locking the barn door after the horse bolts, not only is it a tacit wink and nod to said virtual slavers, but it ends up being open season on these people. Because they're illegal (presumably; we do NOT know everyone targeted in these raids is!), they are not truly human in the eyes of many, and I guaran-fucking-tee you the kind of person who signs up for ICE is even less likely to see them as human beings than the average Joe or Jane on the street.

It's Happening Here.

"Oh, it's JUST the spics," people will say. "They ought not to come here illegally," they say. Well, that last one is true, but they ARE here, and how we deal with them speaks to who and what we are as a nation. There are better ways to handle this. What is being done is possibly the worst way aside from simply rounding up any suspected illegal immigrant and summarily executing him or her...and, frankly, not that far off. What is being done is, again, tacit approval to the big businesses profiting off these peoples' vulnerability in the first place.

One of the reasons I am not a fan of Franklin D. Roosevelt for any reason aside from his economic policy is because he ran internment camps. Or as they are better and more properly called, *concentration camps.* And I don't know how else to describe what ICE is doing in these so-called "detention centers." If you ask me, "detention center" is to concentration camp as "enhanced interrogation methods" is to *torture.* Call it what you want, but if it concentrates "undesireables" it's a concentration camp.

It's Happening Here.

Because people say it can't happen here, when it *is* happening here, they refuse to understand that it is. It's not in their worldview. This is why the euphemism treadmill that, among others, George Carlin called out for its dishonesty and evil is so sinisterly effective: because It Can't Happen Here, when it *does* happen here, people will latch onto anything to believe that it's not happening here.

It's Happening Here.

What's next? Where is this going? Once the infrastructure for concentration camps is in place, once warrant standards are lax and paramilitary action against citizens is legalized, once we have secret courts, once We The People "have a reason" to suspend the Constitution--whose basic clauses apply to EVERYONE, NOT just citizens!--a turnkey fascist state is in place, just waiting for the right crisis to come along, or indeed, to be manufactured.

It's Happening Here. First they came for the illegal immigrants...

#SecondFrontDoor: Brett Kavanaugh hearing

Posted by takyon on Thursday September 27 2018, @02:47PM (#3554)
46 Comments
Career & Education

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?"

Fox "News" censors the world laughing at Trump

Posted by DeathMonkey on Wednesday September 26 2018, @11:04PM (#3553)
43 Comments
News

U.S. President Donald Trump faced a round of laughter from world leaders Tuesday afternoon at the United Nations General Assembly after boasting that his presidency “has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” This hiccup didn’t bother Fox News, however, which promptly cut out the laughter on Twitter. And Fox News edits like this aren’t so uncommon.

During Trump’s UN speech to the assembly, Fox News uploaded two clips that circumvented the awkward moment. In the first clip, Fox cut off Trump’s speech as soon as he finished saying that the U.S. has accomplished more than any other presidential administration.

Three minutes later, Fox posted a second excerpt for viewers, this time beginning right after the uncomfortable moment had ended. This effectively cut out the entire moment, from world leaders snickering at Trump to the entire assembly bursting out in laughter. For Fox viewers checking their Twitter timelines during the event, it was almost as if the moment had never happened at all.

Fox News roasted on Twitter after editing out world leaders laughing at Trump

Beauty and the Beholder

Posted by takyon on Monday September 24 2018, @08:56PM (#3547)
23 Comments
/dev/random

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.”