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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • The story of the Tree That Owns Itself is widely known and is almost always presented as fact. Only one person—the anonymous author of “Deeded to Itself”—has ever claimed to have seen Jackson’s deed to the tree. Most writers acknowledge that the deed is lost or no longer exists—if in fact it ever did exist. Such a deed would have no legal effect. Under common law, the recipient of a piece of property must have the legal capacity to receive it, and the property must be delivered to—and accepted by—the recipient.[6] Both are impossible for a tree to do, as it isn’t a legal person.

    […]

    “However defective this title may be in law, the public recognized it.”[11] In that spirit, it is the stated position of the Athens-Clarke County Unified Government that the tree, in spite of the law, does indeed own itself.[12] It is the policy of the city of Athens to maintain it as a public street tree.[13]

    […]

    Although the story of the Tree That Owns Itself is more legend than history, the tree has become, along with the University Arch and the Double-Barreled Cannon, one of the most recognized and well-loved symbols of Athens.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself

    In reality, the tree is not protected by law, but by the will of the people. Kind of symbolic if you ask me.










  • I found the original source of the photo: It is an article by “The New Yorker” from 2019 that confirms and explains the situation.

    https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/a-guided-tour-of-hebron-from-two-sides-of-the-occupation

    […] Hebron, in an area where about thirty thousand Palestinians—a fraction of the number who used to live here—live under direct Israeli military rule, which protects fewer than a thousand Israeli settlers. This part of the city is freely accessible to Israeli citizens and foreigners, but most Palestinians can enter only if they’re residents.

    […]

    For a second it felt like we were in a covered market, but this was because the street is fenced in from the top, with a sort of wire net intended to protect the Palestinian traders and their customers from rocks, bottles, and trash thrown by Israeli settlers who live on the street just above. Amro pointed at metal sheeting placed over a section of the net; it is meant to guard against acid that settlers pour down, to destroy the goods sold here.

    […]

    In 1997, as part of the Oslo peace process, Israel and the Palestinian Authority drew a line splitting Hebron in two. The area designated as H-1 is controlled by the Palestinian Authority; in H-2, the Palestinian Authority has civil administration over Palestinian residents and the Israeli military controls everything else. H-1 is far larger, and in the past two years its population has roughly doubled, while H-2’s has dwindled because settler violence and I.D.F. restrictions have made life unbearable for Palestinians. But H-2 contains the city’s historic center, its most popular square, and its wholesale, vegetable, spice, and other markets—all of them now hollowed out. The market street through which Amro leads his tour hits a dead end at the border between H-1 and H-2. Here, though, the border is also vertical: the market street is in H-1; the street directly above is in H-2. This is why the protective net and metal sheeting are necessary.






  • The source is NABU = “Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union” (the largest non-profit nature conservation organization in Germany)

    Translated from german:

    But you have to look at the overall picture: only in human settlement areas are cats a serious factor that can partially lead to a decline in bird populations. But in fact, bird populations are increasing there, while they are decreasing especially in agricultural landscapes, but also in forests. Blaming these declines on cats would be far too simplistic. The greatest threat to biodiversity is and remains the progressive degradation of habitats by humans.

    https://www.nabu.de/tiere-und-pflanzen/voegel/gefaehrdungen/katzen/15537.html

    They recommend castration to limit the cross-breeding of house cats with wild cats, but see no general problem in free-roaming house cats.