SpinnyNuNu

"The Fredericksburg [Virginia] Police Department released this body camera video of Officer Shaun Jurgens. Jurgens used a stun gun and pepper sprayed a man who was having a medical emergency May 4. Some audio was redacted to protect personal information of the driver."

Here's the local newspaper's report of the settlement of the case:

Washington was unarmed, but police considered him a hit-and-run suspect after his car allegedly struck another vehicle and knocked down a road sign before coming to a stop at the intersection of Cowan Boulevard and Powhatan Street. ..

Washington’s lawsuit claimed he was in “obvious and critical need of emergency medical care” and never gave police a reason to believe he posed a threat. It lists the city, Jurgens, and Officers Matt Deschenes and Crystal Hill as defendants.

The suit claimed Deschenes and Hill held Washington at gunpoint for several minutes as he sat unresponsive in the driver’s seat of his stopped car. The officers asked him to show his hands and exit the car, but Washington could not do so because he had suffered from a stroke while driving.

According to the lawsuit, Jurgens arrived several minutes later and fired a Taser at Washington with no verbal warning, striking him in the face. Deschenes then holstered his firearm and opened the driver’s side door of Washington’s car, “further confirming” the suspect had no weapons. The suit said Jurgens sprayed a can of pepper spray into Washington’s face, drew his gun and shouted: “Get out the car or I’m going to [expletive] smoke you!”

The lawsuit says after Deschenes pulled Washington from the vehicle, the car rolled backward and a tire struck Washington in the foot as he lay handcuffed on the road. Hill then drove the vehicle off Washington’s foot, the suit said.

Discussion thread at the Bad Cop No Donut subreddit.  The YouTube discussion thread is even more critical.

There are more such photos at the Find The Sniper subreddit.

Photo credits for these two to Saurabh Desai and via.

"I think in some cases they hate our country," Trump said to the crowd in North Carolina, a swing state he won in 2016 and wants to win again next year.

Two customers at a Florida fast-food restaurant were caught on camera berating a manager over hearing him speak Spanish to another employee.

I enjoy finding movie DVDs with commentary tracks by directors and technical staff that explain how scenes were created.

Discussed at the WhitePeopleTwitter subreddit.

You can see the tire.  And the door handle.  Discussion thread.

Here's another one:


Via.

The historic duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton took place on July 11, 1804.

An Elk Grove man was arrested Wednesday in connection with two robberies at an AM/PM convenience store, police said.

"Look, we got to call this what it is: When a woman isn't given access to the same things that a man would be given access to, it's sexism," Larrison Campbell, a reporter for Mississippi Today said.

President Donald Trump is lashing out at social media companies and the press ahead of a "Social Media Summit" he's hosting at the White House that will bring together mostly conservative groups.

The Los Angeles Angels threw a combined no-hitter in their first home game after Tyler Skaggs' death.

This isn't the ice-cream-licking.  This is licking a tongue depressor.

The girl is ten years old - not a toddler or infant.  When the mother posted the video online, she captioned it "Don't tell me how to run my life."  And in the interview she says "I really didn't think anything of it."

For fox ache.

When I went to my doctor's office yesterday for my annual checkup, I noticed a change in the decor.  And an explanatory sign on the wall.

From techdirt:

Recently, the North Carolina State Board of Elections asked suppliers of electronic voting machines a simple question: who owns you?..

This seems like very basic information -- information the Board should know and should be able to pass on to the general public. After all, these are the makers of devices used by the public while electing their representatives. They should know who's running these companies and who their majority stakeholders are. If something goes wrong (and something always does), they should know who's ultimately responsible for the latest debacle.

It's not like the state was asking the manufacturers to cough up code and machine schematics. All it wanted to know is the people behind the company nameplates. But the responses the board received indicate voting system manufacturers believe releasing any info about their companies' compositions will somehow compromise their market advantage.

Hart InterCivic, a corporation that derives independent actual value from this information not being generally known or readily ascertainable and makes reasonable efforts to maintain the secrecy of this information, requests that it be designated as a trade secret pursuant to G.S. § 132-1.2(1)d. and G.S. § 66-152(3).

One of ES&S's subsidiaries (and there are at least 39 of those) -- Meritage Homes Corp. -- shuffled some securities ownership the same day the North Carolina election board asked it to provide information about the company's ownership. Maybe it's a coincidence. Or maybe ES&S was offloading a politically-inconvenient owner. Whatever the case is, it certainly doesn't look good. 

More at the link, via BoingBoing.  Informed discussion at the Technology subreddit.

Cartoon from XKCD.

Hundreds of emails were in the inbox.

A gif says a thousand words, and if it’s a Nicolas Cage gif most of those words are probably rage screams

Nicolas Cage is one of the biggest actors in Hollywood and whether you love him or hate him, there is no denying that he gives some of the most memorable on-screen performances ever. Personally I’m not a fan but even I have to admit, the dude’s got range. Nic Cage has more emotion and wild energy in his pinky finger than I have in my entire body. So, hey, expressing yourself can be hard, and being able to convey how you feel with a gif that someone else made using a clip of someone else acting is like, zero effort. To hell with typing actual words, have a Nic Cage gif instead.

For when you’re feeling sad

Or happy!

Like... very happy

For when you’re feeling A LITTLE CRAZY, JUST A LITTLE

And, of course, for when you’re stuck in a helmet full of bees. We’ve all been there

“Hashtag where does the seat go”

The more time you spend around specific people or animals or objects, the more familiar they become, and the more easily you’re able to recognize them. That’s why nobody gets excited over pigeons and we can all identify their rotund, tiny-headed silhouettes from a mile away. So if being able to recognize certain things that are a part of your everyday life becomes so second nature that you don’t even have to think about it (you don’t wake up and look at your couch every morning and go, “oh hey, that’s a couch”) then you’d think that being able to recreate them would be a piece of cake. But you’d be wrong.

Comedian Emily Heller asked listeners of her podcast to draw a picture of a bicycle without looking at one for reference, which sounds easy enough. Everyone knows what a bicycle looks like... kind of.

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In a three-minute video released Tuesday, Kentucky Democrat Amy McGrath said McConnell has "bit by bit, year by year, turned Washington into something we all despise."

A young boy came to the defense of a black man on the Fourth of July as the boy's father questioned and later called the police on the man who said he was waiting for a friend at a San Francisco apartment building.

"Hopefully he'll stick to a much more bland diet in the future!" a vet said.

Jeffrey Epstein is accused of having operated a sex-trafficking ring in which he sexually abused dozens of underage girls.

President Donald Trump celebrated the story of America as “the greatest political journey in human history” in a Fourth of July commemoration on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial.

Britain's Duke and Duchess of Sussex have only been parents for a matter of months, but critics are accusing them of being over-protective.

Welcome to The Friday Buzz, our roundup of all good things, good advice, good feelings. It’s the happy hour of blog posts! Up this week.... Sopes, Holey Moley, Waterloo, and more!

Continue reading "The Friday Buzz: Sopes, Holey Moley, and Waterloo!" »

For a limited time, people here can pay parking tickets with school supplies.

After so much snow during the spring and winter, there was still fun to be had this Fourth of July on the Sierra slopes.

A 19-year-old who tried to rob a fireworks stand ended up getting shot in the face with his own gun.

Keep these warnings in mind before your next pool day.

At least three parade organizers received envelopes in the mail with no return address, one of the organizers, Samson Racioppi, said.