#Best Management Practices

[vistalandcare]

Erosion Control and Auckland Council's Approach to Erosion and Sediment Management

Erosion control is a critical component of sustainable land management, particularly in urban areas like Auckland, where development can significantly impact the environment. The Auckland Council has recognized the importance of effective erosion and sediment control measures to protect waterways, preserve natural landscapes, and ensure the health of local ecosystems.

Understanding Erosion and Its Impact

Erosion is a natural process where soil and rock are worn away by wind, water, or ice. However, human activities, such as construction, land clearing, and deforestation, can exacerbate this process, leading to increased sediment runoff. Sediment can clog waterways, reduce water quality, and harm aquatic habitats. Moreover, erosion can compromise the structural integrity of buildings and infrastructure, resulting in costly repairs and environmental degradation.

Auckland Council's Erosion and Sediment Control Guidelines

The Auckland Council has established comprehensive guidelines to address erosion and sediment control in the region. These guidelines aim to mitigate the impacts of erosion, protect water quality, and promote responsible land use. Here are some key elements of Auckland Council's approach:

1. Erosion and Sediment Control Plans (ESCPs)

For any construction or land disturbance project, an Erosion and Sediment Control Plan (ESCP) is required. This plan outlines the measures that will be implemented to minimize erosion and sediment runoff. It must be tailored to the specific site conditions and activities, ensuring that appropriate control measures are in place before any work begins.

2. Best Management Practices (BMPs)

The Auckland Council promotes a range of best management practices (BMPs) for effective erosion and sediment control. These include:

Silt Fences: Temporary barriers made of geotextile fabric, installed to intercept sediment-laden runoff and prevent it from leaving the site.

Sediment Basins: These are designed to capture sediment from stormwater runoff, allowing it to settle before the water is released into nearby waterways.

Mulching and Hydro Mulching: Applying mulch or using hydroseeding techniques to stabilize soil and promote vegetation growth, which helps bind the soil and reduce erosion.

Vegetative Buffer Strips: Establishing buffer zones of vegetation around waterways to filter sediment and absorb runoff before it reaches sensitive areas.

3. Regular Monitoring and Maintenance

To ensure the effectiveness of erosion and sediment control measures, the Auckland Council emphasizes the need for regular monitoring and maintenance. This includes inspecting control measures during and after rain events, repairing any damaged infrastructure, and ensuring that vegetation is thriving.

4. Public Education and Engagement

The Auckland Council recognizes that community involvement is vital for successful erosion control. They provide educational resources and workshops to inform landowners, developers, and contractors about the importance of erosion and sediment control and how to implement effective practices on their properties.

Conclusion

Erosion control is essential for protecting Auckland's natural resources and ensuring the sustainability of its urban environment. By adhering to the Auckland Council's guidelines for erosion and sediment management, developers and landowners can contribute to preserving the region's waterways, reducing environmental impact, and promoting responsible land use practices. With the right measures in place, we can safeguard Auckland's landscapes for future generations while fostering a healthier ecosystem.

[mumblesplash]

comics as an art form make me insane. they’re so difficult to do well. there’s so many different ways to make sequential art work and most of them are deeply unintuitive. onomatopoeia that feels completely ridiculous to put down often reads seamlessly. panels on a page become a fractally nested image composition challenge that’s only possible to lose because if you do a good job no one will notice. you have to direct the readers’ eyes on a specific path across the page but also account for the fact that they won’t follow it. comic time isn’t linear. if the order of events isn’t crystal clear the story becomes incomprehensible. sometimes you need to do this on purpose. all this for a medium almost universally considered less effective than animation and less respectable than plain text. even its own name doesn’t take it seriously

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Conceal, don't feel, don't let it show.

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[imfromsixam]

Quick Guide: Stay Safe While Downloading Sims 4 CC & Mods

I just published a quick guide to help you download Sims 4 CC & mods safely. ⚠️ From trusted sources to spotting red flags. Keep your game clean and secure! 😊

Read it now

[kaiasky]

i don't understand piercing economics. Vancouver has 2.5e6 ppl. Ppl live 2.5e4 days. So if ur like okay, average person gets a piercing 2x per lifetime (many people get 0x piercing, many ppl just get ear lobes, some people are piercings georg so call it 2x overall). That's 200 piercings per day. if a professional can do like 4+ piercings a day it feels like that's only 50 piercers in the whole city. but there's more piercing shops than that, many of whom have multiple artists. Sure a lot of em do tattoos as well but like. A lot of people are 100% dedicated piercers.

am i making math errors? do people get vastly more than 2x piercings on average? do piercers do a lot less than 4 piercings a day? Do people work for multiple studios on an on-call basis?

[gardenofhope]

me and my beautiful wife on our wedding day

[victorluvsalice]

Help: How Do Tav!Smiler in BG3???

Hi everyone -- say, do you remember how, way back at the end of January last year, I made a post about how I'd recently gotten my hands on Baldur's Gate III and I was going to make Smiler my "Tav?" To go with my VTMB Malkavian Fledgling Alice and my FO4 Sole Survivor Victor? Are any of you wondering how that's going?

It's -- kind of not! I haven't actually gotten that far in the game, mostly because I stopped playing for most of 2024 due to a combination of "I want to play with cool mods but I'm nervous that they'll break the game thanks to these glitches I read about on the game's subreddit" and "I am already stressed about this game, Larian, if you're going to get cutesy about when Patch 6 is actually coming out I'm going back to Sims 4 and Fallout 4." I finally picked it back up again late last year, clearing out all my old saves and starting again using the in-game mod manager to manage the mods I wanted. And I made some decent progress for once: getting past the tutorial, picking up a bunch of companions (Shadowheart, Astarion, Gale, and Lae'zel), fetching Withers from his crypt, and helping the tieflings defend their gate from the attacking goblin hordes. I was all set to head into the tiefling camp, start helping them with their problems, and pick up Wyll --

And then Patch 8 came out. And while I was waiting for mods to update (a process that involved me going "shit what's going to happen with ImpUI, the creator said they weren't updating it anymore and I'm pretty sure at least ONE of my mods needs it" and "uh, how DO you update mods in the in-game mod manager?"), something happened in my brain related to an entirely different thing that I enjoy --

That made me realize "fuck, I think I need to restart again...and I might need some help figuring out what exactly it is I want to do." Let me see if I can sum it up step by step:

I. Okay, so -- all three times I've tried to get a playthrough of BG3 going pre-Patch 8, I've always had Smiler start out as a Bard. Because, well, I like the class features they get, and I felt that it suited Smiler pretty well -- they're reasonably musical (they play guitar and drums, after all), and they are definitely a high-Charisma person, which is one of a Bard's primary stats.

II. However, I've never actually been able to come up with a backstory for my Bard Smiler, beyond "probably raised by their uncle Felix instead of Matt and Carol in this universe" and "likely a traveling entertainer/alchemist pre-abduction" (since I've always used mods to have them multiclass into the Alchemist subclass of the Artificer class to represent their talent for all things chemistry and alchemy). I never worried that much about it, though, as I wasn't really trying to make a story out of any of my playthroughs (I only need ONE project like "Londerland Bloodlines" going at a time, thank you) -- they were just supposed to be about having fun. I just thought it would be nice to know what that Smiler was all about.

III. And here's where the entirely different thing comes in. Who here has heard of the web series CaFae Latte? It's a fun TikTok series (though I only watch the YouTube compilations for each season because I don't have and don't want a TikTok account) about a group of people working in and having adventures out of a fairy-owned coffee shop in a more magical version of Minnesota, by one C. M. Alongi. My friend Gigs got me into it last year, and I've been really enjoying catching up on all the various adventures of Bob, Cyrus, JC, Nicole, and all the other staff/customers/related entities who show up. In fact, I've been enjoying it so much that recently I started writing mental fanfic for it --

And me being me, it was of course Valicer-related fanfic. XD Specifically, I started thinking, "wouldn't it be fun to have Smiler get hired as a new barista at the coffee shop? I already have them working at one in the Modern AU! Though, given this is an urban fantasy series, maybe I should go for a not-exactly-human Smiler...maybe I can do something like my VITD Smiler and have them be somehow connected to our favorite eldritch god of happiness Mar-Mal? Yeah, that'd work!" So I started imaging a scenario where a Smiler with a link to Mar-Mal (expressed, of course, through their glowing yellow eyes) got a job at the CaFae and started making friends with the people already there --

IV. Which led to me thinking of a moment where one of the characters asked Smiler if their relationship with Mar-Mal was like being a D&D warlock (since some of the characters are D&D fans). And this made me think, "Hmmm -- I know that eldritch entities ARE valid patrons for warlocks in that game -- just look at Prudence from Oxventure. But can you pick one of those with warlocks in Baldur's Gate III? I've only ever looked at the Bard write-up on the wiki in detail, I should check it out, just for funsies." So one Saturday night, I did indeed check it out, going through the BG3 Wiki's entry on the Warlock class and looking at the special features you get with a Great Old One Patron --

And. Right at level one. I saw that one of the things you get is a slightly-expanded spell list to pick from for your first couple of warlock spells. With the two extra spells Great Old Ones give you being "Tasha's Hideous Laughter" -- the most Smiler spell of the lot because it's literally INCAPACITATING PEOPLE WITH LAUGHTER -- and "Dissonant Whispers" -- a spell I had LITERALLY JUST FUCKING GIVEN SMILER during their second level-up before Patch 8, because I'd decided they should focus on Psychic damage and I could headcanon the whispers as distracting creepy laughter. And then I kept going down the page, and I kept seeing all the mind control spells I thought Smiler should have on the list of spells Warlocks could pick up as they level up, and near the bottom the "Thought Shield" stuff specific to Great Old One Patrons that both grants resistance to and reflects back all psychic damage dealt to the warlock...

V. ...and my brain immediately went "oh hey! Can you imagine a younger Smiler, maybe running away from the local version of Kelman, getting contacted by Mar-Mal and offered a pact to help them out? With their service being to use their talents to spread happiness and joy throughout the world? By any means possible?"

...cue me realizing FUCKING HELL, I MADE SMILER THE WRONG BASE CLASS. *facepalm* Like, how the HELL did I not realize this before?! One of my favorite versions of Smiler is my VITD Smiler, who -- while not exactly in a pact with their god -- does have a strong connection with them through Mar-Mal blessing them, and who I've already decided gets at least one of their special playbook powers through Mar-Mal granting it to them ("Mesmerism," for the curious -- will allow Smiler to Sway someone, then make them forget it happened until the next time they see Smiler. Mar-Mal thinks this is a useful talent; Smiler thinks Alice is gonna get mad at them if they use it). And Warlock is another Charisma-based casting class! Smiler being a warlock of some description TOTALLY makes sense!

VI. Except -- well, it's not quite as simple as that. I've been thinking about this for the past couple of weeks, and I've come to the conclusion that there are three key things about Smiler that I would like to express in the "Tav" version --

a) Their connection to Mar-Mal, and the mind- and emotion-control spells that grants

b) Their musical talents and ability to get people's attention with a show

c) Their alchemist talents and ability to craft various potions and elixirs and whatnot

Now, of those three, a) and b) are easy enough to represent -- I was already planning on multiclassing Smiler with the help of a "go all the way up to Level 20" mod, and "Bardlock" is a very legit dual-class combination, given that both are Charisma-based casters AND learning the "Song of Rest" as a bard gives you the benefit of an extra Short Rest to recharge the warlock spell slots. Plus, for Smiler specifically, Bard has the "buff your allies" spells that I'd like them to have (like "Sanctuary" -- both because it's useful for keeping enemies away from a person and because of the name accidentally referencing Kelman's little asylum of horrors :P) and, as of Patch 8, a lovely "College of Glamour" subclass that would allow them to buff their allies, automatically Charm enemies who attack those allies in melee, and order people around in combat. All things I would love for my Smiler to have! So yeah, to cover those two items, Bardlock Smiler is definitely the way to go.

As for c), however -- that's a little trickier. While the game does have an alchemy system that characters can use to craft various items, I'm not sure that just using that a lot is enough to get across the idea that Smiler is a talented alchemist. Hence why on my first playthroughs, I was using Artificer mods to make them an official Alchemist via the power of subclass. However, there's two potential problems with doing that now:

One, that would mean triple-classing, and I'm not sure if that would be too complicated a character build -- especially since I'm not sure which class should be primary (I was thinking Warlock, as per my initial reaction to realizing how well it fit them above, but given my idea is that Smiler would have at least their alchemy skills before any pact with Mar-Mal, maybe Artificer makes more sense...) and how many levels I should take of each (I want all my feats, but I also want as many goodies as I can get from each class)

Two, the Artificer mod I was using for my latest playthrough via the in-game mod manager, "Artificer for Home Brew - Comprehensive Reworks" -- well, when I first downloaded it, I didn't realize the "Home Brew - Comprehensive Reworks" part of the title was referring to another mod that this mod was designed to work in conjunction with. I thought it was just referring to how the mod creator adapted it to BG3! The mod seemed to work fine for the short time I had it ("Home Brew -Comprehensive Reworks" is not actually required to play with it, from what I can see), but as you might imagine, I am somewhat concerned that the damn thing might break if I keep using it in a playthrough without the "base" mod (and after taking a quick look at said base mod, I'm not interested in it). I know there are other Artificer and even custom Alchemist class mods out there, but I'm not sure which ones are good and/or Patch 8 ready (and at least one seems to have used AI images to generate class icons and pictures for their write-up on how the class works, so I don't want to use that one on principle). I could also fudge it with this mod that turns the "Experimental Alchemy" passive certain Wizards get into a feat anyone can pick up, but THAT requires either waiting until I hit level 4 in a class (which feels like it could take a while) or tracking down a Patch 8-ready mod that allows me to just pick up ONE extra feat (as I feel like getting feats every level or every other level like most mods is a TOUCH overpowered).

So yeah. Shit be complicated, yo. And that isn't even getting into me debating if Smiler's background should be "Guild Artisan" (gives skill proficiency in Insight and Persuasion, has a "can happen anywhere" inspiration trigger) or "Entertainer" (gives skill proficiency in Acrobatics and Performance, has inspiration triggers involving telling stories and participating in comedy contests that do feel very Smiler)! *grabs head* I just want Smiler to be right, damn it!

Which is why I'm hoping to get some advice from the rest of you. What do you people who are more experienced with the game recommend I do to get the Tav!Smiler I want? In fact, let's do it in the form of a poll, bitches love polls:

I'd add in suggestions for how many levels to take of each class (like 12 Warlock/4 Bard/4 Artificer), but I have limited poll options and limited characters within each option, so if you have any suggestions regarding THAT, please leave them in the replies or a reblog, a la Option 7. Any help is appreciated!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS x Brazil (1985)

(Yes. Real movie dialogue)

[varjopeura]

.

[little-mouse-gardens]

Did these awhile back but I tried to draw some art for my rise oc Marcy + Donnie and then once I was finished with that piece, I did one for Skye + leo.

Akdndak I’m honestly still pretty impressed with how each piece turned out, now I just have to eventually get to sunny + Raphs peice and then Mikey + Angie’s.

————————————————

First one (marcy x Donnie)

Second one (Leo x Skye)

[throughpatchesofviolet]

I wonder which Heathcliff I'll think about, tonight ...

[sudokufriend]

hmm ok. today i need to 1) ask my mom if i can help replant the almost completely uprooted pepper plant on our balcony. poor man is half toppled. 2) record the first section of my radio drama. 3) probably write more of it.

i also need to check when my books are coming because i miss reading physical books… i’m very much returning to physical books from ebooks and it’s like it’s raining after a years long drought.

uhhh might take pictures of my toys or stuffed animals for my plushie sideblog… we’ll see.

oh and i’m going to go see our chickens it’s been weeks since i’ve been down in the garden. very sad.

oh and i need to take my odansetron so that i can actually do any of these without doubling over with nausea 👺

probably not playing disco elysium today because i’m afraid of meaningfully making progress and hard decisions in games. maybe when my siblings come home from school i’ll be courageous enough to try.

not going to watch house md because i’m afraid TM.

uhhh will probably do some divination/spirit communication w/ playing cards with the pepper plant if they feel up to it.

definitely going to be watching copious amounts of danny gonzales he is very funny and i like watching his videos. they’re so silly.

hopefully my new irl acquaintances will keep messaging me so i have people to talk to as well :)

i also want to shower today, it’s been a couple of days… hopefully i have the energy for it

[ur-ghostgirl]

so

[total-cg]

6 Ways Facility Managers Ensure Smooth Operations in Retail Spaces

Facility managers play a crucial role in maintaining smooth operations in retail spaces by implementing preventive maintenance, ensuring safety compliance, optimizing energy efficiency, managing vendor relationships, enhancing customer experiences, and utilizing technology for streamlined processes.

[rickybaby]

I don't know about Yuki's engineer. But Yuki's car was set up well, and the results were good and consistent. Unlike Daniel's, I don't know where the problem was. We had the best week in Miami. But cannot make it consistent. It's really terrible.

Maybe delusively so, but I’m choosing to stay positive. Daniel wasn’t that far off Yuki’s pace yesterday and looking at what @slutforpringles says here, it’s clear they’ve changed something on the set-up of his car. I personally just see this as Daniel and his team continuously pushing for performance. It’s being ambitious with the set-up to see if they can unlock more performance and yeah, sometimes they end up getting it wrong but they’re willing to try things out rather than being cautious. And when they do get it right, they’re able to put in performances like the Miami sprint.

Obviously, Yuki deserves the praise that he’s able to right on it from the beginning, but just like in Imola, I know Daniel can still turn this around and be right on par as Yuki.

[champstorymedia]

Social CRM: Engaging Customers Across Platforms for Better Relationships

In today’s digital landscape, where consumers engage with brands across various social channels, the importance of Social Customer Relationship Management (Social CRM) cannot be overstated. By effectively utilizing Social CRM strategies, businesses can foster deeper relationships with customers, enhance engagement, and drive loyalty, all while navigating the complexities of multiple platforms.…