Hello! I'm Betsy aka Adanska. I'm a writer on occassion; an easily searchable database of my stuff is at fe_masterlist, which also contains the stories for Fe, my main original universe (the right colomn has more tag options). I also am on AO3 as, you guessed it, Adanska, which may do you better fic-wise (although I usually take forever to update it whoops).
You love to see it. (Not the destruction of trees, obvs, but shitheads meeting their oncoming comeuppance at the hands of trees.)
Okay, as someone with their doctorate in plant health (specifically trees and landscape plants), I’m frothing at the mouth livid.
Pollarding is a type of pruning done where you remove the upper branches of a tree with the intent of forcing it to grow more branches. Historically, it was used to produce fodder for livestock and wood for fencing, crafting, etc. but now is more of an aesthetic choice - it creates dense shade and reduces the risk of heavy branches becoming safety concerns later.
However, that pruning is something that occurs in January - March, when the tree is dormant. Not in the peak of summer, when there’s a heat wave expected. By doing it during dormancy, the tree has already stored all of the nutrients and sugars the leaves held in the roots and trunk, ready for use in spring.
By pruning these trees now, they’ve severely damaged them, if not outright sentenced them to death. Leaves provide a tremendous amount of shade to the trunk, actively cool the area through respiration (pulling water through the tree and into the air around it), and provide sugars and nutrients necessary for growth through photosynthesis. These trees now have to work overtime to compensate and re-grow and entire canopy of leaves with reduced resources.
These trees are in what are sometimes affectionately known as “hell strips” - there’s a concrete sidewalk on one side, asphalt on the other, and they get hot. Not just upwardly hot, but they heat the soil underneath them as well. The root zone of these trees don’t get a lot of water to begin with (concrete and asphalt don’t let water in well) and it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of soil around the tree to begin with.
Trees in hell strips already have the heat and restricted root zones working against them - you can’t have healthy trees if you don’t have room for roots. Now these have to compensate and draw resources to push out new growth.
In addition, all of those pruning cuts are open wounds - places where infections and insects can enter into the tree. Usually mature trees can manage minor infections or infestations with no issue. But these trees are now extra susceptible because their immune response is weakened - all the extra energy available is going to new growth, not fighting off infections.
So there’s a bunch of factors here that have put these trees at a disadvantage: the removal of most photosynthetic plant material, an increase in surrounding temperature, a restricted root zone, the potential for increased infection, and a heat wave expected in the next week. These trees are going to struggle the rest of their lives because of the decision to prune these trees like this now - all over a desire to break a strike so the studios don’t have to pay their actors and writers and editors fairly.
I hope they get the book thrown at them with tree law. And then some.
@anneemay has also recced me and shared snippets from Manga Poverty by Sato Suho with me and its a very enlightening book on just how fucked up and difficult it is to make a living off manga and the efforts Sato made to get full ownership of his own work
As part of the consent order, Packers
Sanitation Services Inc., or PSSI, will review and enhance its existing
policies and training materials and hire a third-party consultant to
conduct “quarterly child labor compliance training” and monitor the
company’s compliance for three years. The company will also provide a
new child labor provision in its contracts with clients and will notify
the Labor Department as to how many employees it terminated as a result
of its compliance with child labor laws.
Allegations
of child labor at a slaughterhouse in Grand Island, Nebraska, date back
to 2016, according to a previously unreported local police report
obtained by NBC News. The report stated that an officer was called to
the local middle school because a 14-year-old girl had “injuries to her
hands.” The document shows that the allegations were investigated as
“child abuse.”
The resolution comes about a month after the Department of Labor accused the company
of employing at least 31 children on graveyard shifts in
slaughterhouses in three states, where they were tasked with cleaning
the killing floors and various machines — including meat and bone
cutting saws and a grinding machine — according to the complaint, which
noted that several children began their shifts at the facilities at 11
p.m. and worked until 5, 6 or 7 a.m, with some working up to six or
seven days a week. At least three chiildren suffered chemical burns as a
result of working in the slaughterhouses, according to that complaint.
According to court documents, the Labor Department identified as of
Monday another 19 minors who PSSI employed at two additional facilities
since last month’s filing, bringing the total number of minors who have
worked for the company to at least 50 at five plants in three states.
In their complaint filed last month, federal officials said initial
evidence indicates the company may also employ more children under
similar conditions at 400 other sites across the country.
The company is owned by the private equity firm Blackstone, which took it over in 2018.
“Think of the two major possibilities here: Either the studios owe untold millions to their talents and paying it out will decimate their stock prices, or they owe so little because there really is no money in streaming and the bubble of their entire 21st century business model will burst in spectacular fashion. And make no mistake: this is a bubble. This is the inevitable climax of a stockholder-driven hunger for infinite growth, despite the fact that, by design, such a thing cannot and should not exist. The infection of Wall Street has overwhelmed the entertainment industry beyond repair, leading to cultural vandals like David Zaslav to be appointed with the callous duty of strip-mining decades’ of artistic beauty for pennies of tax write-offs. The past and future are frivolous in comparison to the short-term demands that the line keep going up.”
hey science side of tumblr, if you’re not on your union mandated lunch break, a question for you
when these resin casts are made and the top is sorta like, opaque (if that’s the right word) how come when the liquid resin is poured on top and then sets, that it becomes perfectly clear
Because of light refraction! Basically when you sand Resin casts (or in this case, from sanding the pinecones down) you wind up with an absolute fuckton of tiny scratches in the surface, and light that hits it bounces in all kinds of weird directions. But, since liquid resin can still bond with set resin, pouring a *very thin* layer of it over the top fills in the imperfections and makes the surface smooth like glass, so the light travels in a normal pattern again
I STEPPED OUTSIDE OF THE FRONT DOOR OF MY OWN HOME ONLY TO FIND THE DEER THAT TRIED TO KICK MY ASS LAST YEAR STANDING RIGHT THERE IN MY FRONT YARD. BOLD AS BRASS.
AM I NOT SAFE ANYWHERE ANYMORE
for those of you who were not here last year: this deer is the most obnoxious, unnatural red-orange color I’ve ever seen, only appears when it’s raining, and once chased me a quarter mile through the woods. her name is Hot Cheeto Hatred and she is my nemesis
still so fucking weird to go from real life, where a cis man being flamboyant/effeminate/camp is judged like 70+% by how he speaks and carries himself, to online queer communities, which often seem to have no concept of male gender non-conformity that doesn’t involve wearing a skirt
i promise you, a man can be fem to the point of being in danger while wearing literally exactly the same thing as a hypermasculine guy. a boring basic black suit. a t shirt and jeans. a UNIFORM. gender conformity is not only about what you wear
None of you have watched that heartbreaking scene in The Birdcage where Albert gives up wearing everything he likes to try and blend in for their son’s conservative prospective in-laws and is so awkward and uncomfortable that no one says much until finally he says, defeated, “I know what you’re thinking - dressed like this, I’m even more obvious, aren’t I?” and it shows.
Here, have your queer heart broken:
This is what I’m talking about. This is still literally how it is in most places in the Midwest if you’re trying to “pass” for straight/cis/whatever.
I cannot begin to describe how hard I cried when I saw this scene the first time and how confused my conservative family was as to why I was crying.
It’s so funny how literally the way a man holds his wrists is an indication of femininity but also people think it’s all about makeup and clothing. But we’re also at a point that if you have a suit that is any color other than black, dark grey, or navy, it’s flamboyant.
Men’s sartorial stylings are so rigidly controlled it’s painful. Tim Gunn here is at the very absolute bleeding edge of “acceptably masculine” here for most cishet men, just for some noticible stripes, patterns, and purple, and that’s before he even moves. This is how restricted it is.
But Trixie Mattel (out of drag here) wearing standard masculine garb is could still be deemed unacceptably feminine for body language alone.
This is why we talk about “toxic masculinity” – the idea that any expression of emotion besides anger or even wearing colorful clothes is non-masculine and therefore restricted is horrifying. It sucks! Men should be allowed to express themselves outside of a tiny box of acceptable behavior, because they’re, y'know, people, and people have a wide range of expression in the way they like to look and move and act.
I honestly feel like it’s gotten worse over the last couple decades, too. If you look at men’s fashions from the 70s and even into the 80s, there’s a lot of style choices that look pretty cringe to us, but…. you also see a lot more color and pattern in suits than you do now. I’m not sure when this started to shift, or if it’s tied in to the increasing lack of color in all consumer products, but it sucks.
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