Whenever I Cringe About Capital Punishment...

I run into cases like this.

 Victor, Cal. (1973)

11/07/1973: Seven adults were bound and gagged in a semicircle, then shot to death. Two children were found shot to death in a bedroom. Police eventually arrested two persons for whom arrest warrants were already outstanding for a similar crime in Phoenix One of the dead owned a nearby market. An undetermined amount of cash was missing from its floor safe which had not been forced. Police believed this mass murder was to cover up the robbery. Police across Northern California were stacking up charges against these two for murder and rape. Arizona executed one of them in 1978; the other died of cirrhosis of the liver on death row in 1986.

Category: family non-residential

Suicide: no

Cause: robbery

Weapon: firearm[1]

---

[1] "Nine Murdered In Professional Style," [Lancaster, O.] Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, Nov. 08, 1973, 1; “Two Funerals for Murdered Families,” Sacramento Union, Nov. 13, 1973, 1, 8; Dan Walters, “Evidence Mounts in Massacre,” Sacramento Union, Nov. 13, 1973, 8; "List of People Executed in Arizona,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed_in_Arizona#cite_ref-7.

Whatever caused these two men to take this path, they do not deserve food or shelter paid for by anyone.

Weird ATM Experience

My wife went to an ATM to get some cash. She walks up to the ATM and saw an account balance.  Odd, almost like the previous customer walked away with exiting a menu. She put in her card and took out $20. The new balance in checking was essentially what it showed before she put her card in the machine.

Her first thought and mine was that someone put a scanner on the front of the ATM. The cleek in the store spoke little English. Our online account showed the transaction she had just completed. 

I called the credit union.  After hours goes to somewhere with cheap labor but at least English sufficiently free of accent that he could well have been an American. 

He agreed it was odd, but he said some ATMs actually interrogate your card as you get close. Think of this as an aggressive tap card interrogation.  He had me turn on alerts for all accounts just in case.

Do any of you have aggressive ATMs? 

First Hurricane

Admittedly, we are only on the edge of a rapidly weakening category 1 hurricane. Still, pretty heavy rain and winds.

Rain stopped and Sun came out. Then rain started. Did the eye pass over. I think it is too far east of us for that.

Myocarditis and COVID Vaccine Risk

 Vinay Prasad analyzes a 2021 published paper about COVID vaccines and myocarditis. Even my relatives who discounted the vaccines as a health hazard have noticed on an anecdotal level, acquaintances with sometimes fatal results from heart problems. Prasad is not some antivaxxer of questionable scientific credentials:

Vinay Prasad MD MPH is a hematologist-oncologist and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco. He was the Chief Medical and Scientific Officer and Director of CBER at the US FDA. He runs the VKPrasad lab at UCSF, which studies cancer drugs, health policy, clinical trials and better decision making. He is author of over 500 academic articles, and the books Ending Medical Reversal, and Malignant. He hosts the oncology podcast Plenary Session, the general medicine podcast the VPZD show is active on Substack and runs a YouTube Channel VinayPrasadMDMPH. He runs The Drug Development Letter, a must read for industry insights. He tweets @VPrasadMDMPH.

He observes:

This was the key figure in a Nature Medicine paper published on Dec 14, 2021. It showed clearly that myocarditis after vaccination (in this case, Moderna dose 2) was higher! than myocarditis after sars-cov-2 infection for people <40. 

There were a few remaining issues. While the denominator for vaccines is known with precision, the true number of infections is unknown. Many people don’t seek testing or medical care. So the red bar above will be shorter if you used a sero-prevalence (aka the correct) denominator. The authors needed to fix this.

The other problem is that this analysis lumps together men & women, while men have the greatest risk. Well, the authors are back with a new pre-print to fix this point, and here is what they find.

1. It is now clear for men <40, dose 2 and dose 3 of Pfizer have more myocarditis than sars-cov-2 infection, and this is true for dose 1 and dose 2 of Moderna.

2. Pfizer boosters (Dose 3) have more myocarditis for men <40 than infection.

3. Myocarditis post infection is more common as you get older, in contrast with myocarditis post vaccination, which is more common as you are younger (reverse gradients).

 

A Really Bad Idea: Livestreaming Maj. Hasan's Execution

1. I do not see this as deterring any jihadists. Islam worships death, not life.

2. It seems rather prurient in the modern world. 

3. It will just reinforce the European view of as savages (unlike those civilized October 7th murderers).

4. I suppose if it were pay-per-view to raise money for next-of-kin there might be an economic benefit but that is not going to happen. 

5. It will inflame a population already on the edge of radicalization. 

UPDATE: I am wondering if Trump is trolling the left.  Once he drops the livestream, they will have nothing to say.

UPDATE 2: People wearing "Free Luigi" T-shirts and images of Kirk dying lack any moral standing.

Shop Beginning to Get There

Health Insurance Here is Really Cheap

 Medicare in Idaho cost both the several hundred dollar Medicare premium deducted from my Social Security check, but also an additional $89 owed directly to Blue Cross of Idaho to cover what my Medicare Advantage added beyond Medicare: dental, vision, and some4 additional prescription coverage. In Tennessee, Blue Cross covers everything for the premium from my Social Security check alone. We signed up for the Diamond plan: $0 copayments for PCP; $20 copayment for specialists.