1. It's Mary's Birthday!!
Happy Birthday to my lovely wife Mary Wilson Shevlin.

2. Things you might not want to try if you are a defendant - #1
It might be a bad idea to threaten to kill members of the jury and their families.

3. Overcriminalization, Texas-style
Many years ago, I asked a solicitor in the UK (that's a lawyer to you) how many laws he thought existed in England, and how many were really useful. His estimates were 5000 and no more than 1500.
Given the plethora of obsolete and outdated laws that appear to exist in the USA, this is a worldwide issue. Basically, if Something Bad Happens, politicians find it expedient to pass a new law, in order to head off cries of "Something Must Be Done!" or to head off accusations that they are doing nothing. The net result is that the law keeps getting more complicated, which further increases the workloads for lawyers and the court system. At the same time, as this article explains, the need to be seen to be Doing Something results in new laws being passed instead of statutory remedies being created. This further increases the size of the mess.

4. Syncing files without entrusting data to a cloud provider
The current syncing model implemented by Dropbox, BitCasa et al copies data to those provider's servers in the cloud. Given the current state of illegal government surveillance, there is a better emerging solution. The solution is not surveillance-proof (data can still be intercepted "in flight") but it eliminates the copy of data that currently resides on somebody else's cloud platform.

5. Butthurt by online reviews of your business? Thinking of suing? Think again
This article helps to explain (via a link to a more detailed analysis) that suing over online reviews in the USA is not likely to be a successful business approach. There is better than a 50% chance that you will fail, and given the presence of anti_SLAPP statutes in many states, you may find yourself paying somebody else's legal fees in addition to your own. Then there is the Streisand Effect. Short conclusion: Don't Do It.