The Epic Saga of Market Basket

h/t to folks over in DSLJ for the pointers to the two-part account in the Gloucester Clam about the incredibly messed-up history of the past century of the Demoulas family, and why Market Basket currently doesn't have any produce on the shelves. Here are part one, and part two.

It's worth reading, but here's the summary, as best I understand it: the once-"bad" side of the family wound up producing an unusually decent CEO, who has just been ousted by the formerly-screwed side of the family (who appear to resent the fact that he has been putting employees' interests over their recently-won profits). The employees are quite seriously up in arms, and the result is, ironically, that the most dramatic labor action in recent local memory is happening in a non-union shop...

Talk about great timing

There is currently a Kickstarter running for Bellingcat, an open-source investigation site that crowdsources information to figure out What's Really Going On. And they've effectively wound up leading the public investigation on MH17, piecing information together quickly and making it available, complete with their sources and reasoning. The blog posts are a tad rich in self-promotion, but that's unsurprising under the circumstances, while they're trying to raise money.

Rather neat, and it does suggest that they're on to something. I may toss a few dollars towards this one. (Although they do seem better-suited to Patreon than Kickstarter...)

ETA: And having donated a few bucks (which gets you access to the beta site), this thing is really kind of fun.  There is an article there that systematically debunks the Russian claims about the photos that have been released, demonstrating in gory detail why the Ukrainian government's claims are far more credible.  (They cross-correlate all sorts of image sources, and show the comparisons.)  Been a long time since I've seen a news source that enjoys not just deduction, but showing its work, quite so much...