October 31, 2022

Ex-Grand Rapids Cop Will Face Murder Trial For Killing Patrick Lyoya

A Michigan judge ruled Monday morning that prosecutors presented enough evidence for ex-Grand Rapids police officer Christopher Schurr to stand trial for fatally shooting Patrick Lyoya, an unarmed Black man, in April.

Kent County Prosecutors charged Schurr with second-degree murder after he shot 26-year-old Lyoya in the back of the head at point-blank range while pinning him to the ground.

After a two-day preliminary examination hearing last week, Judge Nicholas Ayoub determined there was enough probable cause presented in court hearings for Schurr to stand trial. A jury will ultimately decide if Schurr’s use of deadly force was justified.

Ayoub wrote in an opinion that prosecutors had demonstrated evidence that could lead someone to “conclude that defendant’s shooting of Lyoya in the back of the head was not reasonably necessary to prevent his escape.”

A trial date has not yet been scheduled.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/patrick-lyoya-shooting-christopher-schurr_n_635fed28e4b04dfacf829d8b

October 31, 2022

My Winnie cat

has appropriated my husband's chair on the workshop veranda as her "throne". This chair used to be exclusively Vicky's. Whether it's because the cushion still smells of Vicky and it's comforting, or whether it's her way of asserting her position as #1 cat, it's now her place. Today it's chilly and drippy and she's been there all day, only rousing to change positions.

[url=https://postimg.cc/kVR3m6V6][img][/img][/url][url=https://postimages.org/app]free screenshot software[/url]

October 31, 2022

Did a 1930s Wisconsin farmer not realize he helped discover one of the world's most significant medi

Did a 1930s Wisconsin farmer not realize he helped discover one of the world's most significant medical breakthroughs?

On Oct. 12, a dedication ceremony was held on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus to celebrate a revolutionary discovery that both prolonged human lives and killed rats.

The American Chemical Society, or ACS, bestowed the National Historic Chemical Landmark designation on warfarin, the generic name for a prescription blood thinner that, in a slightly different form, proved to be an enormously effective rodenticide. The ACS established the awards in 1992 to recognize seminal events in the history of chemistry. An ACS board member, Dr. Lisa Balbes, was among several speakers at the dedication ceremony for warfarin, which was first marketed in the late 1940s and early ’50s.

As it happened, I was invited to say a few words as well, by one of the event’s organizers, Dr. Kevin Walters, public affairs analyst and historian for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, or WARF. Walters knew — my wife, Jeanan, is his colleague at WARF — that I have been researching and writing a biography of Dr. Karl Paul Link, the colorful UW–Madison biochemist in whose laboratory warfarin and its prequels were discovered.

I began my research several years ago at the behest of Karl’s son, Tom Link, who knew the magnitude of his father’s achievement. (Tom’s mother, Elizabeth “Lisa” Link, was also well known in Madison as an activist with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.)

My book was sidetracked when the pandemic closed the library that houses Karl Paul Link’s considerable archive, but the finish line is now in sight.

I had, in any case, written about Link and warfarin earlier in newspaper columns. One of the most intriguing came in 2003 around the 50th anniversary of the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. I interviewed a Yale professor, Joseph Brent, who had coauthored a new book called “Stalin’s Last Crime” in which a theory was advanced that Stalin’s generals had fatally poisoned him with warfarin.

https://www.channel3000.com/did-a-1930s-wisconsin-farmer-not-realize-he-helped-discover-one-of-the-worlds-most-significant-medical-breakthroughs/

I grew up passing the WARF building. I didn't realize the significance of it until later, when I was in nursing school.

October 28, 2022

Former MPD police officer confronts Jan. 6 Capitol attacker at sentencing

Former D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone appeared in court Thursday to confront a rioter who dragged him into the mob of Trump supporters that brutally assaulted him during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, urging a federal judge to hand down the maximum sentence possible for his crimes.

"I would trade all this attention to return to policing," Fanone said at the sentencing of Tennessee resident Albuquerque Head. "But I can't do that. And the catalyst for the loss of my career and the suffering that I've endured in the past 18 months is Albuquerque Head."

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ultimately sentenced Head to seven-and-a-half years in prison, describing him as one of the "most serious offenders" in her Jan. 6 caseload and "instrumental to one of the most horrific attacks on officers" that day.

Prosecutors had urged Judge Jackson to sentence Head to eight years in prison, one year longer than the sentence handed down to one of Head's co-defendants, Kyle Young, who also joined in the attack on Fanone.

They said the longer sentence was justified based on Head's initiation of the assault on Fanone and his substantial criminal history that includes roughly 45 prior arrests.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/mpd-police-officer-confronts-jan-capitol-attacker-sentencing/story?id=92211175

Dude is a career criminal, FFS. Is it too mean to hope something bad happens to him in prison? (Just to clear things up, I am not referring to prison rape)

October 27, 2022

Did a 4-Year-Old Boy Really Die Because He Ate Weed Gummies?

A four-year-old Virginia boy who died after allegedly eating “a large amount of THC gummies” may be one of the only known cases of a child dying after consuming a cannabis product—but medical experts say some pieces of the story don’t quite add up.

Tanner Clements died on May 8, two days after his mother Dorothy said she found him unresponsive after he had eaten part of a weed gummy. More than five months later on Oct. 17, Dorothy, 30, was charged with felony murder and felony child neglect.

Dorothy said she called poison control on May 6, after Tanner ate part of a CBD gummy and was told “Tanner would be fine,” according to a search warrant executed by the Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office and obtained by VICE News. She said she’d been watching TV on her phone when she noticed he was unresponsive. It’s not clear how much time elapsed before authorities were called to the scene, performed CPR on Tanner, and took him to the hospital, but he was taken off life support two days later. It’s also not clear who called them.

Police said they seized an empty jar that had contained THC gummies, not CBD. (THC is the main psychoactive cannabinoid in weed.) Dorothy told police there was only one gummy left in the jar when Tanner got a hold of it. The search warrant quoted a pediatrician at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center saying that the level of THC in Tanner’s body was “extremely high” and that if Dororthy “had sought medical attention for Tanner, his death could have been prevented.”

Police seized Dorothy’s phone, believing it may show that she’d sought advice on what to do after her son ate THC gummies.

But two doctors told VICE News the metric used in the search warrant to indicate that Tanner had high levels of THC in his body doesn’t actually mean that. .

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxn7wn/virginia-4-year-old-boy-weed-gummies-death

Just looking at the boy's picture, I wonder if he had other medical conditions. He was morbidly obese for 4.

October 27, 2022

John Fetterman survived a stroke. It could be an asset if he's elected.

By Keren Landman

In last night’s first and only debate between Pennsylvania Senate candidates John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz, Fetterman’s speech was often halting, his thoughts were occasionally incomplete, and the words and phrases he used didn’t always fit their context.

In May, Fetterman survived a stroke caused by a blockage in one of the arteries in his brain, his campaign has said. It has left him with what he calls auditory processing issues (commonly known as an auditory processing disorder) — that is, problems with the brain’s work of processing speech. As a result, Fetterman sounds very different compared to how he sounded before May — and very different from what pundits and many members of the public expect from political campaigners.

Ever since, his campaign has been dogged by questions about what his disability means for his capacity to serve in the Senate — questions loaded with biased assumptions about disabilities, and misunderstandings about how a stroke impacts cognitive capacity.

Two weeks ago, in his first televised interview since the stroke, Fetterman used live captioning technology for assistance. When Fetterman’s interviewer, NBC correspondent Dasha Burns, made pointed observations about his need to read her questions in order to understand them, it touched off an avalanche of questions and bad takes.

Among the swirling questions are ones about whether Fetterman’s stroke has caused cognitive changes that render him unfit to serve in the Senate. On their face, these are not unreasonable — although in both the NBC interview and in a podcast interview recorded October 10 with New York magazine’s Kara Swisher, herself a stroke survivor, Fetterman’s thinking and expression appeared to be intact.

But the questions become ugly when they ask if someone who requires accommodations similar to the ones Fetterman used can do the job of governing. Questions like this conflate the use of language-assistive devices with intellectual delays. More broadly — and especially when they’re weaponized politically, as they have been by the campaign of political rival Mehmet Oz — these questions conflate disability with weakness of character and mind.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2022/10/15/23403699/john-fetterman-pennsylvania-senate-interview-captions-disability-dasha-burns-mehmet-oz

October 27, 2022

Former Henrico teacher speaks on why she left

After teaching for six years, one former Henrico High School teacher has switched professions due to issues in the teaching industry.

Micah Fae Thomas taught English at Henrico High School and says she found her passion in teaching and interacting with students. However, she started to see flaws in the teaching profession throughout her experience. She says her reasoning for leaving had nothing to do with her students and staff. Instead, deeper systemic issues within the career field led her leave the classroom.

“It was, you know, the most fulfilling experience of my life,” Thomas said. “I still feel the most whole when I’m teaching.”

With an increase in teacher resignations and vacancies, many teachers like Thomas had to choose between their passion and pay.

“I had been teaching for six years. I had a master’s degree,” Thomas said. “I still made the same salary as I did year one.”

https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/henrico-county/former-henrico-teacher-speaks-out-against-teaching-conditions/

And governor Dumbkin wants to "lower the bar" for teacher licensure!!!!! He thinks "anybody can be a teacher"!!!!!

October 27, 2022

St. Louis school shooter obtained a gun after his family worked with police to have one removed from

St. Louis school shooter obtained a gun after his family worked with police to have one removed from their home, officials say


Months before a 19-year-old shooter opened fire Monday inside a St. Louis high school, his family told police he had a gun and had it removed from the home, officials said Wednesday.

The family were aware the gunman had mental health struggles and did “everything that they possibly could have done” to help him —including getting him therapy and medication and committing him on several occasions — but “sometimes that’s not enough,” interim St. Louis Police Chief Michael Sack said at a news conference.

Police said that earlier this month, the gunman's mother found an AR-15-style rifle in the family's home and wanted it removed.

"While it is not yet clear when or how the suspect came to be in possession of the firearm after this incident, we can confirm that the firearm involved in this incident is the firearm used" at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School on Monday, police said in a statement Wednesday evening.

The chief declined to discuss how the gunman entered the building despite locked doors, security guards and metal detectors.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/family-removed-gun-suspect-st-louis-high-school-shooting-police-say-rcna54136

It sounds like the family tried, but the police didn't do as much as they might have. And you can only do so much with a mentally ill person over 18

October 27, 2022

At Least 22 Women Allege Sexual Assault at Liberty U.

She Alleged Sexual Assault but Said Liberty U. Football Player Wasn’t Even Benched

In another week or so, the world will have a better understanding of the special relationship between Jerry and Becki Falwell—first couple of the modern evangelical movement, former powerhouses, and stewards of Liberty University (the largest evangelical university in the country), whose unprecedented endorsement probably guaranteed Donald Trump the presidency—and Giancarlo Granda, the hapless “pool boy” who spent his twenties in a misbegotten affair with them. (That is, if it’s fair to saddle a young man of 32 with a master’s degree from Georgetown University in Real Estate Finance and Development with such an unfortunate epithet.) That’s because Giancarlo’s book, of which this writer is the co-author, dropped on October 25 (Off the Deep End, by Giancarlo Granda and Mark Ebner, Harper Collins Books). On November 1, God Forbid, Billy Corben’s independent but overlapping documentary on the Falwells and their affair to remember, will premiere on Hulu.

The Falwells’ sexual peccadillos blew up into such a media frenzy in part because of the puritanical views of the evangelical community, which they quite intentionally came to embody, and the breathtaking hypocrisy of living their lives on such extreme parallel tracks, and amid such cognitive dissonance.

As Giancarlo writes in the book, “The sex was never the issue; it was the hypocrisy and the abuse of power. Because they helm an institution whose business it is to shame others for what they do in private, and to hold the threat of shame over them to demand fealty and subservience.”

This refers specifically to “the Liberty Way,” an elaborate and punitive honor code that demands students there refrain not only from premarital sex and traditional college vices like drinking and smoking, but also using profane language and being alone with a member of the opposite sex, particularly at off-campus residences. In practice, this quickly becomes a way to control women, since they’re the ones who must deal with the fallout, be it pregnancy, damage to their reputation, or sexual violence. Traditionally, there was no way to report a sexual assault there without risking violating the Liberty Code, and with it one’s tenure or standing at the university.

As has been tirelessly reported by Politico, ProPublica, and especially the Gangster Capitalism podcast, this has led to what amounts to an epidemic of campus rapes at Liberty, allegedly enabled in part by the institutional decisions of the university itself, of which Jerry Falwell was both President and Chancellor. Chelsea Andrews, a former Liberty senior class president and campus rape survivor, took to Twitter in 2021 to protest Becki and Jerry, who by then had resigned in disgrace, hosting Liberty students at a party at their home—where, she noted in a letter to the Liberty board, “…his wife is alleged to have initiated oral sex on a drunk, sleeping student.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/she-alleged-sexual-assault-but-said-liberty-u-football-player-wasnt-even-benched?ref=home

October 25, 2022

I just have to rant a little

I spent two a a half hours this afternoon trying to find an acceptable Medicare Part D substitute for the one I had this year, which I really did not like. Why does Medicare have to make it so damn difficult, and why does the website have to be so damn clumsy? I finally picked the one which seemed to be the least offensive, but who can tell? After awhile they all look alike and you can't really tell anything about anything.

*rant mode off*