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.”
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!
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.
Also, Universal’s claim that they do this every year? And the city looking up permits & saying “no permits issued for the last three years, bro.” Means that Universal, in their infinite wisdom, has made an admission of guilt. Even if it isn’t true (and the appearance of the trees would indicate it isn’t), they have claimed, out loud, in public, with their entire chests, to have repeatedly and for years violated both Tree Law™ and Bird Law™.
As soon as I saw their “this was just a regular annual trim” statement my first thought was that there would be verifiable paperwork on that. At the least there would be a bill from whoever did the trimming!
I expected to learn that they had in fact never trimmed the trees before; “if they did they’re busted for doing it without a permit” is a bonus.
Lesson: don’t lie about stuff that’s super easy to fact check
I’m sorry friends, but “just google it” is no longer viable advice. What are we even telling people to do anymore, go try to google useful info and the first three pages are just ads for products that might be the exact opposite of what the person is trying to find but The Algorithm thinks the words are related enough? And if it’s not ads it’s just sponsored websites filled with listicles, just pages and pages of “TOP FIFTEEN [thing you googled] IMAGINED AS DISNEY PRINCESSES” like… what are we even doing anymore, google? I can no longer use you as shorthand for people doing real and actual helpful research on their own.
– https://search.marginalia.nu/ Search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and promotes websites that aren’t usually at the top of the list.
– https://www.worldcat.org/ Search engine for items in libraries (books, but also maps, articles, sound recordings, theses, etc.)
– https://scholar.google.com/ Search engine for scientific papers, reviews, etc. It’s still google, but a lot better than the normal search engine counterpart.
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines A list of search engines sorted by subject, area, and more. If you’re searching on a specific area, it might be worth checking if there is one focused on that area.
Also, P.S.: Please stop using Google, and start using more privacy focused search engines, like DuckDuckGo or SearchX (opensource; personally haven’t used it yet, but it looks promising for privacy-focused users)
Also, take care to scan first results, as way too many first results anymore are AI-generated for some reason??? make sure it’s from a source that has a chance of being reputable if you can
a clipboard to store neat things until I can read them
things I plan to reblog.. someday.. maybe
actual draft writing storage
At my worst I had over 1600 drafts.
Some drafts predate the 2018 female presenting nipple ban and WOULD have been violations if posted after 2018, but were totally safe to post in 2023 -- which I did.
The oldest Draft in my folder is dated July 14, 2014.
It's one of the coolest and most underrated features of the site.
Back when I first got on tumblr, the mobile app was not great for editing text. In particular I remember that you couldn’t do bulleted lists, which I used a lot.
So I got into the habit of browsing on mobile, saving any and all reblogs to drafts (even if I was only going to add like 2 tags), then going into drafts on desktop.
Problem is, I spend a lot more time on mobile than on desktop.
President Biden signed the executive order January 27, 2021. This is the first time I’ve even heard of this. Here are a couple of links with more info:
Biden gets a lot of flack for being a generic neo liberal rather than a cool leftist, and trust me I’m 100% on board with criticizing Biden, but it occurred to me that, at least by my standards, he’s the best president I’ve lived under. Clinton was just “What if Reaganomics but with a saxophone”, Obama did pass the ACA, but he also cut it to bits to appease the republicans who didn’t vote for it anyway, and he constantly bombed middle-eastern civilians. I’m not even gonna bother mentioning any of the republicans since I don’t need to convince my intended audience that they’re bad.
Biden, while he’s obviously had some major bad decisions (breaking the rail strike, failing to defend trans rights), has done more actual good than I think anyone else I’ve lived under. He’s nearly completely ended drone strikes, he’s addressing the debt crisis (everyone knows about the $10k, but very few I’ve seen know about the changes he’s made to how federal student loans work that make them far less of a burden/deathtrap), and now there’s the above, which I’m just learning about.
Never let perfect be the enemy of good, and while Biden is very far from being a perfect president, I’m pretty comfortable calling him a good one.
For all the people who insist they never trust politicians, they are sure adamant about waiting until the stars align and political Jesus comes down from the clouds to save us. If you actually didn’t like or trust politicians you would accept that the great majority of the time we are going to have to work with mediocrity.
Biden is boring and uninspiring for sure, but he is significantly less offensive than the vast majority of other options and he is someone we can influence. We want someone we can influence and push towards our positions. Biden has shown that if he isn’t an ally, he at least can be persuaded or pushed into doing what we, the left, want. There are few candidates we can actually say that about.
The point is not that he’s perfect. The point is that he’s very clearly shown that he cares about using his political mandate to make things better. The point is that he cares about accountability. The point is that he cares about what historians will say about him in the future.
The point is, these are good qualities in a leader. The kind of qualities that we can work with.
“We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.”
I’m starting to think Biden being boring is a strategic act because this dude is just walking around, not making a production of anything, and suddenly I look up and he’s achieved four ‘liberal dreams too liberal to think will come true’. Like, crazy take here folks but maybe sometimes having a career politician as your Chief Politician is a good idea. This dude has held some kind of public office for 50 years and it looks like he learned something along the way. I can’t figure it out but he somehow knows how to work the system while somehow avoiding the press making a big deal about it like he’s a Jedi telling stormtroopers to move along
Mr. Middle-of-the-Road is knocking out some big liberal wins under a lot of conservative noses, is all I’m saying, and I’m starting to think that bland image is on purpose
Other ai giveaways other than the fucked up hands-
Leaves have no form or order- they’re a green mass without reasonable veins or connection points to stems. See the weird bit that crosses Vince’s arm
Same with the yellow flowers tbh they look pasted on and are all the same level of blur despite the leaves being crisply in focus, and several seem to not have stems
The metal in the window has no actual pattern and isn’t continued into the second window
The chunk of rock texture in the middle of the wood next to the window
The folds on Vince’s clothes don’t seem to fall in a natural way and seem excessive, especially on his pants.
Overall the space is… Odd. Where is he? A random corner against a plain blue wall? Why is one wall made of wood and the other has no discernible texture? Why does the stone part have that weird corner and have the foundation so high up in comparison to where Vince’s feet should be? Why doesn’t the stone wall match the geography of its base? What is the fabric thing on the lefthand side that’s conveniently the same blue as the house and jacket?
Anyway, good practice to train your eye for ai generated images
That last bit is important! Not all of us are so sharp-eyed, and AI is likely to get better at fingers and perspective and so on. But sometimes basic real-world facts will tell you the image must be fake (see also: the “baby peacock” image that’s been going around)
TL;DR – Twitter thread by a library worker on a news article about a woman who pulled hundreds of books out of a library dumpster and donated them to an underserved school. THOSE BOOKS WERE THROWN OUT FOR A REASON. Like outdated science, racism, and misogyny. #ContextMatters
Listen, even if the books are legit crap and promote the most horrible things in the world, I am against burning them. The kids should be able to read these books - with the understanding that these books are flawed and have racism/misogyny within them. And maybe it’s a good opportunity to teach them how to recognize propaganda and misinformation? Or to see how outdated science can evolve?
But book burning is the wrong move. Always will be. Don’t go down this road, it will end up backfiring.
… books being discarded by a library is not equivalent to being burned or banned. To even be considered for removal, books will either be in very bad physical shape or will be ones no one has checked out in several years, or will be replaced by newer editions of the same biok. Copies of these books still exist in archives with the express purpose of being preserved, and can be gotten by the library through inter library loan if someone wants to read them.
Weeding and discard of books are very thorough processes, and as the thread says books in good condition that would be useful elsewhere are donated, or sometimes sold to fundraise for the library. Many libraries will also have a cart of free books for people to take if they want.
If, after all this work, and evaluation, and opportunities for reuse, a book is placed in a dumpster, it’s because it isnt needed or useful anywhere else.
Again, this is not the same thing as banning books or burning them. If that were the case we’d be talking about stuff like trumps autobiographies, not outdated books from the 70s that haven’t been circulating.
I left a similar but longer comment on a different thread of this post but it is in a way fascinating to see what’s come of the education system teaching the concept of book burning as like, the nazis piling up whatever books they could find and lighting them on fire for fun.
Book burning is the specific concentrated effort to eradicate specific information, it’s not just the literal act of destroying a book.
Also if you think an ‘underserved school’ who accepts the donations of out of date racist, misogynist, books has a full staff of teachers ready to explain to the kids what and why is wrong… like… no.
No one is putting those books on a shelf with a big sign saying “These are out of date books that have a lot of false information in them, your teacher will explain everything if you tell them which book you read, we promise.”
The kids are just going to have to go an unknown amount of time carrying some knowledge in their heads that the books made them think is true until they finally bring it up out loud in a situation where they’ll suddenly be confronted and maybe not by someone who’s pleasant and kind about correcting them.
I hope none of those books are as old and bad as some of the science and history books a friend of mine has collected for giggles, with y'know, entire chapters on why ‘the Chinese race is inferior’ etc, etc, etc.
Weeding is just plain necessary, if you think about it for a minute.
The library cannot serve its patrons without buying new books, audiobooks, DVDs, etc. every year. But the building doesn’t get any bigger. Some things are going to have to go!
Also, when choosing what to weed, “does anyone else have this?” is very much a consideration. If a librarian finds out their library has the country’s last copy of Book X, it’s not going in the dumpster, though it may get donated to another institution where it would see more use. Plus many libraries belong to a regional consortium of some sort and they make agreements about which library will keep what.
There’s definitely a place in some library for outdated science books; they’re relevant to anyone studying the history of science/education/science communication. They’re just notwhat you want in a public or school library where kids are coming in to look up basic facts about evolution or pollution or viruses.
before you see something and recoil at the price, be it handmade items, services, art, whatever. when you see something and you think, "i wouldnt pay more than $15 for that," you seriously have to ask yourself: if i were offered that same $15, would i make this object? would i spend the time to teach myself this skill to get this done, for $15? would i do this service for that same $15? would that be worth my time and effort?
yeah, that handmade necklace is $140. you might only be willing to pay $40 for that same necklace, but would you make it for $40 if someone asked you to?
you want to pay the babysitter fifteen bucks for the three hours she's watching your child. but would you honestly do that for $15? would you go into a stranger's house and change their baby's diaper and care for its needs, for $15?
you think its ridiculous that this artist is charging $30 for an icon commission. would you spend years catching up to their skill level to make that same drawing, start using your skill to make some extra cash, and then spend three hours on a drawing just to get $15?
would you be willing to work for $5 an hour?
no?
then don't be angry when someone else won't.
you don't have buy the service, it's okay if some things aren't within your budget or comfort zone, and it's also okay if the product isn't worth that much money to you. but do not be angry. be glad, because you know of another person out there who isn't being exploited for their time.
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