Phil Landmeier @shuttersparks@social.cleverlibre.org

@lauren I only caught second half of your segment. Something went haywire with the way I normally listen. Halfway through the theme music it just quit. Had to find another source. Hah.

@lauren Nicely done

@lauren Roger that. I'll be listening

@lauren Then I guess you're immune to the whole problem -- kind of the definition of an expert. (An expert is one who has made nearly every mistake possible in a given field.)

@lauren Break a leg!

@ai6yr Speaking of oil... Ever been to the La Brea Tar Pits? If not, you should. That's the biggest clue of all that the whole region is bulging with oil. It's been seeping out and pooling on the surface for millions of years.

@ai6yr I should add that every home and property owner on the West Side got monthly royalty checks for the oil taken from under their property. Ours came from Signal Oil,

@sarae Well, back in the day, every little business had custom pencils to give out. My dad had them. I had some with my name printed on them. It was super common. And they were sometimes handy because the business's phone number was usually on there too. They served as useful business cards.

3,000 seems like a lot but it really isn't if someone was actively trying to collect them.

@ai6yr Yes, that was before the offshore rigs were built.

Before the offshore rigs were built, when I swam in the ocean there and walked on the beach, I'd come home with blobs of tar stuck to my feet. (The Tarheels had nothing on me.) My mom would clean it off with naphtha.

I assumed the tar was associated with leakage from oil tankers. But when the offshore rigs were built and high capacity wells sunk into the oil-bearing layers, the pumps along the Speedway were shut down and the tar on the beach went away. No more tar on the feet.

Later, in my 20s, when I got involved in the oil exploration biz, I learned the real answer.

The tar was from natural oil seeps on the seafloor. Those seeps had been there since forever. Long ago, American Indians used to collect the tar to seal their boats.

All the wells from before couldn't pump the oil out fast enough to reduce the pressure and stop the natural seeps. The offshore rigs each support numerous large boreholes into the oil reservoir(s). They're able to pump fast enough that the natural seeps are stopped and this cleaned up the beaches. Yay.

@sarae Trying to determine how many of those I've seen before. Lol.

@ai6yr Hamilton High at the top of the map there was my high school.

@ai6yr My old stomping ground there. I remember when "The Speedway" adjacent to Venice Beach was lined with oil well jackpumps, one after the other. The area smelled like crude oil and diesel exhaust.

@ai6yr I used to sing that to myself when bicycling to school. Hahaha.

@smellsofbikes @cobalt Yup. That must be the reason. I remember in the '60s when evaporative coolers were everywhere.

@cobalt That does seem odd. Seems to me it would be more expensive in several ways to put it on the roof. You put the unit on the roof if you have no other choice.

@futurebird @mmeadway I hope you succeed, and you might in certain markets. But in the regions that are the bread-and-butter of Fox News, like here, it won't work. Here, Fox is the main reason people have a TV in the first place.

Also, the primary broadcaster here is Fox. So you don't even need cable. Fox has a big solid signal here that costs nothing to receive.

@futurebird @mmeadway I don't see any "whole strategy" other than to lobby for them to drop Fox. That's not going to happen in the middle of the country where Fox is by far the most important thing on TV. Here in West Virginia, Fox is on every TV in every barber shop, bar, casino, and most homes.

Also, what do they mean by threaten to switch? Switch to what? Cable companies are monopolies in their area. Here, there's just one cable on the pole and it belong to Spectrum (Formerly Time-Warner).

@mmeadway Much of this settlement will be covered by insurance. But you are still right because they know that more settlements are coming and their insurance will already be spent.

@futurebird @mmeadway I doubt that you can. Fox is a built-in service on many Cable systems and there is no means to block it on a per customer basis.