In a statement to The Post, a spokesperson for NBCUniversal claimed the tree work is simply an annual ritual at this time of year. “We understand that the safety tree trimming of the Ficus trees we did on Barham Blvd. has created unintended challenges for demonstrators, that was not our intention. In partnership with licensed arborists, we have pruned these trees annually at this time of year to ensure that the canopies are light ahead of the high wind season,” they wrote. “We support the WGA and SAG’s right to demonstrate and are working to provide some shade coverage. We continue to openly communicate with the labor leaders on-site to work together during this time.”
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If those trees were pollarded annually, the cut areas would NOT look like that. There would be big knobs of old growth at the trimming sites. Not seeing any of that here. The way those trees were topped (not pollarded, which is a very careful process that has to begin when the tree is immature) is excellent way to kill them due to loss of hydration, open sites to infection and parasitism during the best time of year for both, lack of nutrition due to so little greenery and new budding growth being left, sunburn and other exposure damage, and a myriad of other possibilities. Plus, if they were topped annually, they would not have the lovely drooping branches seen in the other picture but would have tons of vertical suckers instead.
This is what an annually pollarded mature tree should look like:
If this was done by the city, the public works arborists should be protesting in front of city hall and screaming their heads off right now. I’m not hearing about that, so… Tree law!
The Studios: *speak*
Botanists and other Tree Experts:
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Update and confirmation of Imminent Tree Law:
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He mentions later in the thread that not only do they not trim the trees annually, they’re trimmed at best once every 18 years. Supposed to be every five, and only in dormancy, which even my layman’s ass knows about tree trimming.
And yes, Universal can probably eat the fine. But it’s gonna be a whopper even if the trees survive (which is as mentioned kinda unlikely), California is a triple damage state for tree law, and it may increase dramatically if there were nesting birds in the trees.
All this to be a Captain Planet filler villain to some writers. And yes, it’s currently just the writers officially picketing there; SAG-AFTRA recommended against it for petty bullshit like this and the suddenly necessary sidewalk construction.
I asked my dad— a retired arborist—about TREE LAW and he just kinda blinked and said (i paraphrase because Dad Tangents, amirite?):
“Worst and best case I ever saw was a guy who was caught in the act of cutting down a C&C tree by two Department of Urban Forestry supervisors while they were randomly driving around on a Saturday. Not only did he have to deal with the cops showing up and months of paperwork and bureaucracy, but he also had to pay the fines AND cover the cost of the tree removal + stumping + buying a new tree + planting the new tree + wages for the regular crew plus the extra workers they needed to get the jobs done. That tree ended up costing him upwards of $35K, and that was over 20 years ago.”
So yeah, respect Tree Law or pay out the bootyhole.
“In the instance an employer makes an illegal request for a photograph as part of a job application, you may submit a complaint to the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.” Successful violation fee collections are paid partially to the one who suffered the violation, which in many cases exceeds a year of work at these shit jobs. There’s only two weak points to a corporation, and those are in the budget and in the supply chain. Hit them where it hurts.
Last week I accidentally took an edible at 10x my usual dose. I say “accidentally” but it was really more of a “my friend held it out to my face and I impulsively swallowed it like a python”, which was technically on purpose but still an accident in that my squamate instincts acted faster than my ability to assess the situation and ask myself if I really wanted to get Atreides high or not.
Anyway. I was painting the wall when it hit. My friend heard me make a noise and asked what was wrong—I explained that I had just fallen through several portals. I realized that painting the wall fulfilled my entire hierarchy of needs, and was absolutely sure that I was on track to escaping the cycle of samsara if I just kept at it a little longer. I was thwarted on my journey towards nirvana only by the fact that I ran out of paint.
Seeking a surrogate act of humble service through which I might be redeemed and made human, I turned to unwashed dishes in the sink and took up the holy weapon of the sponge. I was partway through cleaning the blender when it REALLY hit.
You ever clean a blender? It’s a shockingly intimate act. They are complex tools. One of the most complicated denizens of the kitchen. Glass and steel and rubber and plastic. Fuck! They’ve got gaskets. You can’t just scrub ‘em and rinse them down like any other piece of shit dish. You’ve got to dissemble them piece by piece, groove by sensitive groove, taking care to lavish the spinning blades with cautious attention. There’s something sensual about it. Something strangely vulnerable.
As I stood there, turning the pieces over in my hands, I thought about all the things we ask of blenders. They don’t have an easy job. They are hard laborers taking on a thankless task. I have used them so roughly in my haste for high-density smoothies, pushing them to their limits and occasionally breaking them. I remembered the smell of acrid smoke and decaying rubber that filled the kitchen in the break room the last time I tried to make a smoothie at work—the motor overtaxed and melted, the gasket cracked and brittle. Strawberry slurry leaked out of it like the blood of a slain animal.
Was this blender built to last? Or was it doomed to an early grave in some distant landfill by the genetic disorder of planned obsolescence? I didn’t know, and was far too high to make an educated guess. But I knew that whatever care and tenderness and empathy I put into it, the more respect for the partnership of man and machine, the better it would perform for me.
This thought filled me with a surge of affection. However long its lifespan, I wanted it to be filled with dignity and love and understanding. I thought: I bet no one has hugged this blender before. And so I lifted it from its base.
A blender is roughly the size and shape of a human baby. Cradling one in your arms satisfies a primal need. A month ago I was permitted to hold an infant for the first time in my life, an experience which was physically and psychologically healing. I felt an echo of that satisfaction holding my friend the blender, and the thought of parting with it felt even more ridiculous than bringing it with me to hang out on my friend’s bed.
The Greeks had this word, right, we have no idea where it came from, it just kinda popped up out of nowhere, and it could mean either apples, cheeks, or boobs. Problem is it looked and sounded *exactly* like another, unrelated word which could mean sheep, goat, or any animal in general really, which must have got confusing if you were a farmer talking about your livestock, but anyway…
Then the Romans, having stolen practically everything else from the Greeks, thought they’d nick this word too, because Latin isn’t confusing enough without throwing in a bunch of loan words. And they adopted it to mean a pumpkin.
Then the English came along and were all like “when in Rome”, and stole it, where it became our word ‘melon’. Which has now come back to mean boobs.
sadly, killing any oil executive will not cause a work stoppage or any reduction of production at any oil corporation. because companies are unsentimental and many of these executives are entirely extraneous to production. you know what will slow production? a concerted strike by workers. maybe some property damage.
In the mid-2000s there was a brief fad in Australian government messaging where they went out of their way to insult the public as much as possible.
This fad eventually died out after the tourism board attempted the same style of messaging in the UK, causing a minor scandal which led to the head of Tourism Australia, Scott Morrison, getting the sack.
I used to pass “Drink and drive, die in a ditch” fairly regularly. It is hands down my favourite street sign.
DRINK DRIVE, DIE IN A DITCH is still up in multiple places in the ACT. Every time I see it, I think, “That’s not just a warning, that feels like a promise.”
If I can recommend you do 1 low-effort thing for the love of God it is this:
Keep 5 cards in your pocket. One will say “yes”, the second will say “no.”
If you lose your voice, or lose speech, or want to make a dramatic embellishment at the right time, it is an elegant and efficient solution that is right there at hand.
But what if people question you from there? “Why do you have that card? Why would you do this? How long have you had that in your pocket?” For this, or whatever else they say, the third card: “I don’t have a card for that.”
“What the fuck,” they ask. They laugh. They are bemused. You bring the energy back down with the fourth card: “I have laryngitis. I’ve lost speech. My throat hurts”. Whatever you expect to occur.
The joke is over. Rule of threes. Now they are curious. YThey wonder about logistics. “How did you know I would say that? Is everyone so predictable?”
As a three-part bit, nobody ever sees the fifth card coming.
“I have powerful wizard magics.”
Gets them every time
On it boss!!
[id: a set of 5 UNO cards upon which has been written, “Yes”, “no”, “I don’t have a card for that”, “can’t talk right now 😢”, and “I have powerful wizard magics 🙂”. End id]
conservative women are harassing a retro clothing brand for featuring David Ross Lawn wearing their dresses, which they apparently used to love because their linen clothes are modest and it allows the tradwives to cosplay as waifs from the olden times so they’re big mad that the brand is inclusive
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Also, when I followed the brand yesterday, they were at 320k followers and now they’re at 323k so they’re gaining, not losing
personally I allow retro clothes and it’s all linen!
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