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Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where we hang out and talk about the goings on here and everywhere.
We chat about our lives, our health, our families, our social circles, our pets, etc. We welcome links to your writings here on dkos or elsewhere, posts of pictures, music, etc.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Good Morning!
The fence and the mountain. April, 2010. Photo credit: aigeanta
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!
— Upton Sinclair
News
Police, protesters face off as Bahrain Grand Prix begins
(Reuters) - Formula One cars took to the track in Bahrain on Friday, while the government, hoping for a successful Grand Prix, squared off against activists determined to mark it with "days of rage" after more than a year of Arab Spring protests.
On the eve of Friday's practice session, protests had flared in villages surrounding the capital, far from the circuit where the race will be held. Police fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse demonstrators in clashes that have been building in the week leading to Sunday's round of the World Championship.
Bahrain has been in turmoil since a democracy movement erupted last year following uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. Protests were initially crushed with the loss of dozens of lives, but youths still clash daily with riot police in Shi'ite Muslim districts, and thousands take part in opposition rallies.
800+ major corporations and U.S. Chamber of Commerce support internet freedom-crushing CISPA
Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Activist Post
It’s quite sad for me to say that over 3 million businesses in the United States represented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, not to mention 800+ other major corporations (see below list), all have shown their support for the disturbing legislation known as CISPA, or the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.
This long list includes corporations like Google, Facebook, AT&T, Verizon, Microsoft, IBM, Boeing, Intel, the Financial Services Roundtable, Lockheed Martin, Qualcomm, Northrop Grumman, VeriSign, Symantec, Oracle, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the Internet Security Alliance, the information Technology Industry Council, the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance, Cyber, the Space & Intelligence Association, CTIA – the Wireless Association, the Business Roundtable and more (all of which are listed below).
Please take a moment out of your day to either share this article or at least the list of corporations behind this legislation in order to help coordinate a boycott effort.
And now in the Wish-I-Never-Knew Department:
Starbucks to phase out coloring from crushed beetles
(Reuters) - Starbucks Corp said on its blog on Thursday that it will stop using a natural, government-approved coloring made from crushed beetles in its strawberry flavoring by late June, bowing to pressure from some vegetarian customers.
Starbucks has been using the extract in its strawberry frappuccinos and smoothies, as well as some deserts like raspberry swirl cake.
"After a thorough, yet fastidious, evaluation, I am pleased to report that we are reformulating the affected products to assure the highest quality possible," Cliff Burrows, president of Starbucks U.S., wrote in a blog post.
State sending inmates to work Vidalia onion harvest
ATLANTA, GA-- The state of Georgia is using transitional prison inmates to work in south Georgia's Vidalia onion industry this spring.
The program is an update of a failed program introduced in 2011, in which the state sent probationers into vegetable fields to help ease a labor shortage that followed the passage of a tough new immigration law. Growers complained that probationers were unreliable and slow compared to migrant workers who have historically worked in vegetable fields.
Hate To Break It To You, But Your Car Likely Has A Black Box 'Spying' On You Already
The big news in automotive privacy this week is that Congress is on the verge of passing a transportation bill that will make “big brother” black boxes mandatory in all new cars. InfoWars is encouraging drivers to freak out about the horrific invasion of privacy represented by the government’s insisting that all Americans have event data recorders that reveal exactly what happened before and after a crash. But the truth of the matter is that most Americans already have black boxes in their cars. They’ve been around since 1996, are found in at least 60 million vehicles, and are a feature in 85% of new cars every year.
“Virtually every car that has an air bag has some kind of recording ability,” says James Casassa, of Wolf Forensics which specializes in downloading crash information from vehicles made by GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota and Honda. The recorders capture information about how fast you were going and whether you slammed on the brakes in the seconds before and after a crash. They capture just a snapshot, not a continual record of your driving activity — which would be far more concerning for privacy. (But don’t worry! You can get a far more invasive event recorder from your insurance company if you’re looking to lower your car insurance rates.)
It's definitely a bubble
We're in a bubble now, and like all bubbles unless you're thinking about it the "right" way, you don't see it. That's how bubbles are. It wouldn't be a bubble if it were easy to see.
To find it, you have to look at your assumptions and challenge them.
And you have to look at the things you've chosen to overlook. The things, which if you think about them, make you feel funny, so you don't think about them.
It also helps to look at past bubbles if you want to see this one.
Bubble N+1 is usually bigger than bubble N. So don't look for one of the same magnitude as the previous one. Look for one that's bigger. Where the boldness of the assumption is bigger.
Server Seizure, April 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
On Wednesday, April 18, at approximately 16:00 Eastern Time, U.S. Federal authorities removed a server from a colocation facility shared by Riseup Networks and May First/People Link in New York City. The seized server was operated by the European Counter Network (“ECN”), the oldest independent internet service provider in Europe, who, among many other things, provided an anonymous remailer service, Mixmaster, that was the target of an FBI investigation into the bomb threats against the University of Pittsburgh.
“The company running the facility has confirmed that the server was removed in conjunction with a search warrant issued at the request of the FBI,” said May First/People Link director Jamie McClelland. “The server seizure is not only an attack against us, but an attack against all users of the Internet who depend on anonymous communication.”
Anti-abortion hacker jailed for stealing 10,000 records
Summary: Anonymous member James Jeffery last month hacked into the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and stole 10,000 database records. He has now been sentenced to 32 months in jail.
27-year-old James Jeffery has been sentenced to two years and eight months in jail for hacking into the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), Britain’s largest abortion provider. Last month, Jeffery admitted he defaced the website and stole around 10,000 database records containing the personal details (names, user names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers). His motivation was a disagreement with his sister’s choice to abort her pregnancy.
John Anthony Borell III, 'Anonymous' Member, Charged In Utah Police Hacking
SALT LAKE CITY — An Ohio man linked to the hacker collective "Anonymous" pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of breaching the websites of the Utah Chiefs of Police Association and the Salt Lake City Police Department.
John Anthony Borell III took credit for the attacks on Twitter, said FBI officials, who subpoenaed the direct messages the suspect traded with Salt Lake City reporters. The FBI traced Borell's Twitter account to a workplace computer.
From the Obligatory 4/20 News Department:
Upper Lake doctor accused of bogus medical pot prescriptions
The California Medical Board of California has accused an Upper Lake physician of gross negligence in connection with dispensing medical marijuana recommendations.
It's the third time since 1979 that the medical board has taken action against Dr. Milan L. Hopkins.
Hopkins, 67, on Tuesday called the new allegations, filed March 30, “baseless.”
Obama Administration's War On Pot: Oaksterdam Founder Richard Lee's Exclusive Interview After Raid
WASHINGTON -- When federal agents raided Oaksterdam University, Richard Lee's downtown Oakland, Calif.-based trade school, earlier this month, it wasn't simply a crackdown on a local pot business, it was one of the highest-profile moves in the Obama administration's nationwide assault on medical marijuana.
DEA and IRS agents hauled away computers, files and pot plants, leaving behind little more than office furniture. They did not disclose the reason for the raid and have not charged Lee with any crime as of yet. In an exclusive interview with The Huffington Post, his first since the raid, Lee, 49, blasted the federal crackdown as a senseless act of intimidation. "This is one battle of a big war," said Lee, "and there's thousands of battles going on all over."
"Before he was elected, [President Barack Obama] promised to support medical marijuana and not waste federal resources on this," Lee said. "About a year and a half ago, the policy seemed to change. They've been attacking many states, threatening governors of states to prevent them from signing legislation to allow medical marijuana. They've been attacking on many fronts."
