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How to determine which buzzing insects might be your friends…

MAKE SURE YOU GUYS KNOW THE DIFFERENCES we need the bees?❤️ pic.twitter.com/8eUiJ7If7o

— halloween ass bitch (@DADDYDARlON) October 12, 2016

Feynman and Gell-Mann, as colleagues, always engaged in low-level one-upmanship. This story from Al Seckel at Feynman Online is a classic:

…I was with both Gell-Mann and Feynman and the subject of kooky letters and phone calls came up. Feynman started relating the story of how one crazy woman called the office about some ridiculous theory of magnetic fields. He just could not get her off the phone.
Gell-Mann responded, “Oh, I remember that woman. I got her off the phone in less than a minute”.
“How’d you do that?” Feynman asked.
“I told her to call you. That you were the resident expert in the topic” said Gell-Mann.

https://twitter.com/joshua_becker/status/780494663106998275

Teacher and educator Jay Adams, who writes the excellent blog the36review, has this speech he gives to his high school students at the start of the year:

I begin each school year by telling high school students some version of the following:

“I believe you are capable of adulthood right now. I do not believe you have to wait for a certain age, or society’s permission, or a diploma, to become a person worthy of my respect. In fact, I am desperate to treat you like an adult, because I think the world is falling apart because it’s run by mental children. But I can only treat you with as much adult respect as you will let me, so please earn it.”

For most kids I teach, it’s the first time they’ve ever heard anything like that. And it works.

“All professions are conspiracies against the laity.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara

This famous quote from Shaw pretty much sums up the role of State Bars in disciplining errant lawyers. It seems that in the modern USA, only a conviction of something mega-serious like embezzlement or felonious conduct will get a lawyer disbarred at state level. Certainly, scumbaggery and ethically challenged behavior does not qualify most of the time in most states.
The good news is that one of the principals of the defunct legal entity Prenda Law, a copyright troll firm, has essentially agreed to a plea bargain with the Minnesota State Bar, under which he is barred from practising law in that state for a minimum of 4 years.
However, elsewhere, the culture of impunity appears to be alive and well.
This article about the copyright troll company Righthaven, which was shut down in late 2011 after losing a collection of lawsuits against it, is illustrative. Righthaven was clearly a sleazy and unethical enterprise from the very beginning, and its principals were adjudged to have deceived the court system on multiple occasions. Yet attempts to have the principals of Righthaven disciplined by the Nevada State Bar went nowhere. The bar brazenly bullshitted about the conduct of Righthaven, finding that there was no malfeasance even when the court system clearly pointed it out.

Following the untimely death of Frank Zappa, the man who in many ways has taken up the banner of smart libertarian man in the modern USA is Penn Jillette, the higher-profile and more extrovert half of Penn and Teller.
This is a short but very interesting interview with him. The money quote is this one, when talking about what he describes as a non-social but practical working relationship with Teller:

It turns out that respect is more durable than affection.

“Toots” Thielemans, one of the world’s great chromatic harmonica players, passed away last week. Here is his version of Edu Lobo’s classic tune “Casa Forte”, recorded for his Album “The Brasil Project”. Lousy pretend piano sound aside, this is a great version of the tune.

Time for a rousing 6:00 a.m. game of "what did I just hear the fucking cats break"

— (((Popehat))) (@Popehat) September 4, 2016

1. Mandatory Minimums – What a Fine Idea
Or Not. ken White eviscerates Donald Trump’s latest bright idea about how to stop those immigrants from re-entering the USA after deportation.

2. Weird petitions to the Supreme Court
This document, replete with strange language, was an attempt to appeal a judgement to SCOTUS. I am still not entirely sure what the writer is trying to appeal by reading this document, but it seems that he was terminated by IBM and lost a court case under the ADA, and also lost on appeal. I fear that this petition will hit the SCOTUS out-tray on the floor in short order.

3. Weird Lawsuit of the Week
A guy with too much time on his hands think he has a slam-dunk RICO lawsuit against the mainstream media…where is my bulk order for popcorn. I need to increase it.

4. A classic tale of whistleblower retaliation
In which persistent abuse of police databases by school district leaders is brought to the attention of law enforcement, who decline to prosecute the persons engaging in abuse, but instead penalize the person who noticed the abuse. The result is a lawsuit that is likely to cost the school district a lot of money.