Rocknation
Rocknation's JournalUPDATE
"At some point, the prosecutor believed either that (Ryan) Holle wasn’t as guilty as the others; could be turned into a snitch; or that felony murder would be overcharging -- hence the 10-year plea deal offer...(Holle) should not have been charged with felony murder -- he was an co-conspirator at best; an accessory at worst...
"The defense might have generated sympathy from the jury if they had countered the prosecution’s 'No car, no robbery, no death' strategy with 'No underage drinking, no DECISION to supply the car, no robbery.' Instead, the defense gambled on a complete acquittal and lost, the prosecution gambled on an excessive charge and won -- and between them, Holle looks into snake eyes for rest of his life...
"Reduce the charge, reactivate the plea deal, and deduct the time already served."
"I move to commute Ryan Holle's life sentence to 25 years' imprisonment, followed by 10 years' probation," said Florida Gov. Rick Scott...
(Holle says)..."It's a blessing in the sense that I know I'm not going to have to spend the rest of my life in prison, but it still hurts that I'm going to have to do another seven years, and I will have spent 21 years and three months of my life incarcerated."
...Unless he's granted a new hearing, Ryan Holle's family won't be welcoming him home until 2024...
Rocknation
I'm fully vaccinated, but I wouldn't be surprised if I were to test as immune
Three days short of the eight weeks after my first Covid booster (it takes eight weeks for vaccine antibodies to become fully operational), I went through a few hours of no appetite, fatigue, feverishness, and a slight headache, culminating in not-so-slight diarrhea. I dismissed it as the "common" flu aggravated by overpartying the night before, and ended up feeling more than well enough to go out again that very evening. At the time, I didn't know that absence of appetite and diarrhea are not uncommon with Covid.
Within the Covid 2-to-14 day incubation period prior to my feeling ill, I had attended a pair of socially UN-distanced musical events -- one indoors, one outdoors. Had either of them triggered an encounter of the Covid kind that my vaccines had squashed?
Rocknation
Very good (and very, VERY inevitable) news
especially since America's 70% fully vaccinated Covid rate brings herd immunity within our sights.
Epidemiology 101: Viruses survive by mutating; viruses fade into oblivion when they can no longer out-mutate either their naturally or medically made antibodies.
Thanks to epidemiology, any antibody can now eventually be medically made -- which is why polio, anthrax, smallpox, measles, more recently HIV, and most recently Ebola are pretty much the stuff that distant memories are made of.
Welcome to the beginning of the end, Covid.
Rocknation
Meghan was never invited. But they wanted Harry there so badly, they paid him and/or cut a deal
In exchange for Harry's attending solo (in order to publicly rub his face in what he will never have for refusing his royal duty banishment -- oops, I mean assignment -- in Africa with his "well-qualified" wife), and Meghan "babysitting" back home, their children got an upgrade to their previously withheld (but nonetheless still quite worthless) royal titles.
Rocknation
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead when the skies of November turn gloomy.
They might have split up, or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all the remains is the faces and names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.
Rocknation
Moved to Jersey circa 1995 -- not because NYC had gotten too expensive
but because I'd come to realize that I'd been born to be a Jersey girl...despite having been born in the Bronx.
P.S. There is no such place as Central New Jersey: with a vertical reach of barely 175 miles, New Jersey is just too plain short to have a credible central region.
Northern New Jersey consists of the counties of Mercer, Middlesex, and the counties north of them; the rest is Southern New Jersey (including Monmouth County, because it shares a border with the Jersey Shore's Atlantic Ocean). Thank you and good night.
P.P.S. And it's pork roll -- In 1906, the government decreed that way it was made, it doesn't qualify to be defined as ham.
Rocknation
Ironically, "Is it OK to be white?" would have made a great subject for a Dilbert strip
During the Feb. 22 episode of “Real Coffee with Scott Adams,” he referenced a Rasmussen Reports survey that had asked whether people agreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white.” Most agreed, but Adams noted that 26% of Black respondents disagreed and others weren’t sure.
“It’s OK to be white” is not a "statement," but a race-baiting attempt from a polling company known to be politically biased, and as an experienced satirist of corporate culture, Adams should have seen right through it. I mean, exactly what does "It’s OK to be white" mean -- WHAT makes WHAT okay to be white, and in what context?
I've enjoyed Dilbert's jabs at corporatism for decades, but I will be donating neither money nor tears to Adams' cancel culture fund because he cancelled himself. To paraphrase Shakespeare, he threw away the dearest thing he owned -- his ability to take jabs at corporatism for a living -- as though it were a careless trifle.
Rocknation
"...The firm disputed many of his theories..."
Remember those 11M additional votes Trump got in 2020 that he couldn't stop bragging about? His "theory" seemed to be based on his getting them from Democrats with "buyer's remorse." Actually, they came from the 26M voters who were either too young or too apathetic to vote in 2016: Biden got the win because he got the rest.
Add that excess of 4M non-2016 voters to Trump's 3M popular vote margin of defeat in 2016 (how likely is it that the "landslide majority" of them came down with buyer's remorse?), and you get Biden's 7M-vote margin of victory.
Rocknation
The WordPress Re-Installment That DIDN'T Happen
Went to my WordPress blog home page -- was greeted with their "white screen of death":
Never got a "site admin email."
Rounded up the usual suspects -- the plugins and the databases -- but everything "tested clean."
It looked like I'd have to do a complete re-install. But it's been years since my last one, and apparently the WordPress "famous five minute install" is now the stuff of ancient history.
I decided that the smartest route to take was via the latest edition of the WordPress installment instructions. One of their very first instructions? "PHP 7.4 or greater."
Consulted my Web host's PHP section. My account was set on PHP 7.3; my Web host's current maximum is PHP 8.1.
Two clicks later, my blog was back: WordPress complete re-install NOT accomplished!!!
Rocknation
We didn't even ATTEMPT "do-it-yourself" home hospice care
because it seemed that when it comes to babysitting terminally ill loved ones literally to death with no qualifications, no training, no job experience, and no pay -- well, what could possibly go wrong?
We said that if our mother did not yet qualify for full-time nursing home or hospice care, then either she would get full-time PROFESSIONAL home care, or we would get a lawyer. She got 24-hour home attendant care until she qualified for hospice.
My most sincere condolences for all your losses.
Rocknation
Profile Information
Gender: FemaleHometown: New Jersey
Home country: USA
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 44,910