Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• While you were sleeping: A deadly police shooting in North Carolina resulted in protests.
• As you awake: Streets around Times Square are shut down due to suspicious packages.
• Arochi verdict prediction: Guilty with less than a 10% chance of a hung jury.
• I don't think I would personally find him guilty. The case is a perfect example of "beyond a reasonable doubt" and how it applies to each juror. Do I think the guy may have done it? Yes. Did he probably do it? Yeah. Do I have any doubt about his guilt? Well, sure. Are any of those doubts reasonable to me? Yes. That means a "not guilty" vote in America's jury rooms (when it works.)
• I've always wanted to do away with jury selection and just show the jury panel Basic Instinct and then see a show of hands regarding their belief in the guilt of Sharon Stones' character. 
• If Jacqueline Vandagriff, the deceased girl whose body was found by Lake Grapevine, met her killer through a "dating" site, I'm stunned we haven't had a story like this before. (And the more I read about that Vandagriff case the more it sounds like something right out of American Psycho.)
• Cell phone towers and surveillance footage have been big players in both the Vandagriff case and in the Arochi's trial since they are both are who-done-it cases.
• How far do you think you could go before there is no digital trail of your movement (phone, bank, cell records or photos/video)?  Can you even walk away from where you are at this moment without it being digitally documented? 
• Sheriff Joe is still a birther. 
• I asked yesterday why Trump wasn't in Florida since it was beyond important to him. Now I've learned that Hillary will basically spend her entire week there. Trump needs the state to even have a chance. She wins the presidency if she takes Florida. She's there for the kill. 
• "Door prize" is an outdated term.
• Trump tweet from February:
  
• Within 10 years, I think we will all know several people who will own self-driving cars. (Heck, the government is already firing off rules and regulations for those things.) 
• I've said it before, self-driving cars will have an economic impact we can't even imagine. (Less need for body repair, insurance, cops, lawyers, and medical care.) 
• I kind of enjoyed seeing the head of DPS, Steve McCraw, being grilled in Austin yesterday (paper below). But his comments on the settlement in the Sandra Bland case, which included de-escalation training by DPS, were odd.  He said, in what seemed a dismissive way, that DPS already provides 76 hours of "embedded" de-escalation training. So did the Sandra Bland settlement require more training? DPS later officially said it had: "not settled litigation regarding Sandra Bland” and was not a party to any agreements