The Brief

A woman wearing what can only be described as rags struggles to push something large, round, and yellow up a mountain. She lets out a primal scream. A female comedian’s face appears overhead, shimmering through ominous clouds. This is not the cold open for a wacky alt-comedy web series — it’s an ad for a plant-based cheese company.

The company in question is called Plonts, and the large yellow thing is, of course, a humongous wheel of (plant-based) cheese. From here, things get weirder: The comedian whose face looms large in the sky is Kate Berlant, a performer known for her screwball and self-referential work. As Berlant quibbles with the woman on the mountain, her wry and goofy presence instantly sets the ad’s tone. With this tongue-in-cheek approach, Plonts seems to be saying that this is not a regular plant-based cheese brand — this is a cool plant-based cheese brand, one that doesn’t take itself too seriously and doesn’t want you, the consumer, to either. This ethos is aptly summarized by the ad’s tagline: Buying Plonts “won’t save the planet,” it reads. “But it probably won’t hurt.”

In the plant-based protein space, Plonts is zigging where other brands are zagging. Many plant-based brands — whether it’s oat milk or fake-beef burgers that really bleed — introduced themselves to consumers by hyping up the environmental benefits of a plant-based diet. But as they’ve learned that sustainability isn’t a deciding factor for most customers, alternative protein brands have pivoted in recent years, putting more emphasis on things like taste and nutritional benefits. 

Using humor in climate messaging

Rather than relying too heavily on any of these messages, Plonts’ new ad makes a show of playfully shrugging off its climate advantages — and calling into question whether consumerism can really get us out of the climate crisis.

If nothing else, this tactic makes the company stand out. “The category of plant-based foods, I would say, has had a pretty uniform ethics or party line,” says Jason Moran, creative director on the marketing team at Red Antler, a branding agency.

That line has traditionally been hyper-focused on the environmental benefits of eating more plants and less meat. A vegan diet results in 75 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than a diet high in meat. Because animal agriculture tends to require both land for grazing and cropland to grow inputs for animal feed, livestock also uses a disproportionate amount of the Earth’s agricultural land — about 80 percent.

These statistics once seemed like the key to swaying consumers to eat less meat. A decade ago, plant-based protein companies made an earnest case for the environmental benefits of fake meat. When Beyond Meat launched its “beef-free crumbles” in 2014, CEO Ethan Brown told reporters that addressing “all this doom and gloom about climate change” is “as simple as changing what’s at the center of your plate.” At times, plant-based companies doubled down on that rhetoric, practically pleading with audiences to see the writing on the wall. In a 2016 TED Talk introducing the world to Impossible Foods’ hyper-realistic veggie burgers, company founder Pat Brown (no relation) said that the global appetite for meat “is the main reason behind an ongoing wildlife holocaust.” Eliminating animal agriculture might sound like a tall order, Brown said, but it “has to be done.” The oat milk brand Oatly once took out a full-page newspaper ad on “how the pursuit of profit without consideration for the planet should be considered a crime,” according to the company’s creative director.

Now, the same companies are trying different approaches. Market research has shown that consumers are motivated by factors like taste, familiarity, price, and nutrition more than plant-based foods’ “altruistic attributes,” like sustainability. Earlier this year, Impossible Foods announced “a new brand identity inspired by the craveability of meat.” This kind of brand positioning alludes to meat’s climate impact without saying the word “climate” directly — and instead by repeating the word “meat.” (“[W]hy not solve the meat problem with MORE meat?” reads one page on the Impossible Foods website.) Oatly, meanwhile, has continued to highlight the environmental benefits of a plant-based diet, but in surprising, off-the-wall ways. The brand’s cheeky “Help Dad” campaign is aimed at convincing reluctant fathers to make the switch to oat milk, while its recent mock-exposé attacks “the dairy industry’s lack of transparency about the climate impact of its products.”

Rarely, though, has a plant-based protein brand knowingly leaned into the ambiguity around consumerism as a meaningful lever for climate action, as Plonts is doing. In the ad, Berlant suggests that the woman on the mountain needn’t huff and puff on that ragged path upwards — an act meant to symbolize eating a plant-based diet to save the planet. Instead, the woman can buy Plonts. “Fighting climate change is too hard,” the company declares on its website. “Just eat some plant-based cheese instead.”

Here, Plonts takes an honest stab at having it both ways: The company acknowledges the environmental impact of eschewing dairy without overstating the power of individual choice. “It’s really frustrating to be up against this massive problem where, you know, realistically, our individual sacrifices aren’t going to move the needle on climate change,” said Sophie Moscovici-Troyka, brand manager at Plonts, who previously worked at Impossible Foods. “At the same time, you see a lot of mission-driven companies putting the pressure on consumerism as the answer to climate change, which has all sorts of paradoxes within it. We wanted to poke fun at that tension.”

To sidestep the guilt that can come with eating meat or dairy on a warming planet, “We definitely took inspiration from different comedians and brands,” said Moscovici-Troyka. On the comedy side, that includes comic and actor Julio Torres, who has joked that the hardest part of being vegan is all of the apologizing. (“People ask me if I miss meat or dairy,” the joke goes. “I mean, I miss being liked.”) On the brand side, Moscovici-Troyka cites Oatly and the canned water company Liquid Death for their arch, irreverent approaches to marketing.

Making food choices

Plonts also seems to be part of a new wave of plant-based cheese companies promising to compete with dairy milk on taste. Its cheese is made by adding cultures, enzymes, and salt to plant-based milk, in a process similar to making dairy cheese; the resulting product is then aged to enhance its flavor, and additives are introduced to give it the ability to melt. Currently, the vegan cheese is only available to order at restaurants in New York and San Francisco, but the company hopes to break into retail in the future. It may be too soon to tell whether the brand’s messaging is resonating with consumers; just a few weeks out from its launch, the company declined to share sales numbers. Right now, the Plonts ad is appearing on social media and video sharing platforms.

A view of the exterior as Carl's Jr. & Beyond Meat Partner For First-Ever Plant-Based Meat Menu Takeover in Glendale

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Jesse Grant

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Getty Images

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One of the best things any brand can do when establishing itself, says Moran, is picking an audience: knowing both who you’re trying to sell to, and who you’re OK not reaching. He suggests that even if Plonts’ approach doesn’t resonate with everyone, it’s on the right track.

If Plonts is speaking “directly” to the people who are “unsure or who are not actively making food choices to save the environment,” said Moran, that may be good business. While only about 4 percent of Americans identify as vegetarian (and even fewer as vegan), a 2020 report found that more than half of Americans would be willing to eat more vegetables and less red meat. A slightly smaller percentage, 46 percent, said they’d be willing to try nondairy alternatives to products like milk and cheese. For many, making environmentally-friendly dietary choices just isn’t top of mind: Two-thirds of survey respondents said no one has ever asked them to eat more plant-based foods. Courting those eaters, said Moran, “I think is powerful.”

A criminal justice watchdog is calling into question whether Latinos in the L.A. County Superior Court get a fair shot at bail.

The new report from the nonprofit La Defensa, which advocates for reform in the legal system, analyzes a sample of pretrial decisions from 2025 which had been documented by community court-watching volunteers.

One of the key findings was that defendants who were perceived to be Latino had an average bail amount of $157,700 — more than 15 times higher than white defendants and nearly three times higher than Black defendants.

Studies show that inability to pay bail can affect defendants’ livelihoods and their ability to defend themselves, according to the Vera Institute of Justice.

“ Most families — no matter what they did, no matter what they sold — cannot actually purchase that person’s freedom to give them the fighting chance to go against the state,” Titilayọ Rasaki, La Defensa’s state policy and legal affairs director.

The L.A. County Superior Court says it’s following the law on bail requirements and that the findings are missing context because observation is limited.

How court-watching works

La Defensa’s Court Watch LA program is a community-led effort to document and hold the courts accountable. They train volunteers to go in and observe cases.

The volunteers take notes on the charges, the judge’s conduct and the person’s criminal history, if it comes up. That then gets analyzed against publicly available case information and state law. Programs like this exist in several other cities around the country.

For the latest report, La Defensa volunteers observed 140 felony and misdemeanor criminal cases, chosen at random, between January to November 2025.

Judicial accountability lead Bryanna Siguenza explained how she decided where to send the volunteers.

“ I choose a department, specifically ones that are pretty busy, have high case loads, and are arraignment and pretrial,” she said.

What watchers saw

Racial disparities in pretrial settings have been researched at local, state and national levels, but La Defensa’s findings are based entirely on human observation, Siguenza said.

The volunteers are trained to listen for important details that come up in proceedings, but they may not always get the full story behind the charges, like a defendant’s criminal history.

L.A. County Superior Court spokesperson Rob Oftring said the report needs more context.

“Many of the report’s findings, for example, do not appear to account for charge severity or criminal history, both of which are legally significant factors in any release decision…” he wrote in a statement.

La Defensa did not include in its report what charges had been filed in the cases observed. However, according to the report, comparable charges still had disproportionate bail outcomes that “couldn’t be explained by charge severity alone.”

The severity of charges legally informs bail decisions. The Superior Court is required to have standard bail amounts based on the crime, which judges have discretion to adjust.

State law also requires judges to weigh issues like public safety in bail decisions, as well as the defendant’s ability to post bail. According to the volunteers’ observations, the judges considered the latter in just a quarter of cases when setting bail.

Oftring said the court has taken steps to reduce money bail’s usage as allowed by law.

“Bail at arraignment is set only after both the defense and prosecution have been heard and the judge has weighed the specific facts of the case,” his statement read.

The limits of the findings

Oftring said the court values the role organizations like Court Watch LA play in keeping the justice system accountable, but that the sample size of the researchers used in their report is too small to draw any definitive conclusions.

Roughly 272,000 criminal cases took place during that time period, according to Oftring.

Representatives from La Defensa said they know the report is only a snapshot of the system, and that human observation has its limits.

That’s why in November, they requested 10 years of de-identified data to analyze whether bail outcomes differ across judges, courthouses and demographic groups. Rasaki said they haven’t received it.

“  We would say release the data … by all means, we want to partner. We want to analyze,” she said.

Oftring told LAist they are working on several projects that “provide data-informed scrutiny of how the court operates.”

Southern Californians are in for yet another scorching weekend.

The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for much of the region through Monday, with temperatures expected to hit their peak on Sunday.

Highs in the San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley and other inland areas of L.A. County are expected to range from the mid-90s to about 105 degrees. Downtown Los Angeles and much of Orange, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties will get up to the lower 90s. Beaches will also be hot — in the lower 80s.

Moving farther east, things get really toasty. Forecasters have issued a more severe extreme heat warning for parts of the Inland Empire, where temperatures could get up to 108 degrees, and for the Coachella Valley, where they could hit 120.

Humidity will likely also continue to add to the discomfort, but will be concentrated in areas closer to the coast, where it will keep nighttime temperatures relatively warm and make it more difficult to cool down. Inland areas will feel drier.

Those who are most at-risk from the heat are people who work or spend time outside, people without access to air conditioning and those who are either over 65 or young children.

Forecasters are also warning of dangerous rip currents and swells along the coast this weekend.

If you’re headed to the beach to beat the heat, as many Southern Californians likely are, they recommend staying out of the water or, if you do go swimming, stay in front of lifeguards. It’s also a good idea to avoid jetties and tidal rocks.

Wildfire risk

This weekend will also come with a high risk of wildfires.

Forecasters warn that fire danger will be elevated through at least Monday, driven by heat, dry vegetation and low humidity levels away from the coast.

Despite some extra moisture in the air over the last several weeks, there hasn’t been enough to actually produce rain. Without precipitation, and under consistently high temperatures, plants will continue to dry out and become fuel.

“We have humidity, but it's not reaching the saturation point. Therefore, we won't have a cloud. We won't have precipitation,” said Rong Fu, an atmospheric scientist at UCLA who specializes in weather patterns and wildfires.

Fu said a system of high atmospheric pressure sitting over the Western U.S. is pushing warm, dry air across the Sierra Nevada from inland deserts and into Southern California.

That can generate what’s known as downslope wind. Those winds plus the already dry conditions align to create some especially dangerous fire weather.

One spark can easily turn into a large blaze, and humans are the most common cause of wildfires in Southern California, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

People can accidentally start wildfires in a range of ways, including throwing a lit cigarette into dry brush or dragging a chain behind a vehicle, creating sparks. One of the most common human causes is improperly extinguished camp fires.

Lightning can also start wildfires but is unlikely under current weather conditions. Southern California has seen minimal thunderstorms this summer.

The new normal?

Heatwaves in the summer and fall are obviously not new for Southern California, but they are getting worse.

Much of the heat currently blanketing the region is being driven by the high-pressure system, which traps warm air and compresses it against the ground, heating it even further. Forecasters say it’s likely to stay that way through the end of July.

But high-pressure systems like this one usually don’t stick around this long.

“For this pattern to linger almost two weeks — yeah, I would say, from a climatological point of view — that's pretty unusual,” Fu said.

One major driver of the change, Fu said, is climate change: As the climate warms, this kind of “anomalous” high pressure system will become stronger and more frequent.

And one consequence of hotter and longer heatwaves, is extended elevated periods of risky fire weather.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Los Angeles will be under a heat wave advisory until Monday evening as temperatures show no signs of letting up over the weekend.

Temperatures will linger in the high 80s and low 90s in downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods, including Koreatown, Pico Union and Westlake.

The National Weather Service projects temperatures will peak on Sunday afternoon. Meteorologist Bryan Lewis with the National Weather Service said residents can expect more humidity than usual. 

While dense, urban centers have more concrete and see more vehicle traffic, downtown and the surrounding areas will not be the hottest locations during this heatwave in the Southland, as the Antelope Valley will be under an extreme heat advisory over the weekend.

During hot weather, the beach is an immediate go-to for folks that want to stay cool, but Lewis warns against this as the surf will be extra choppy.

The Pacific Coast will see large swells “coming up from tropical systems off the coast of Mexico,” Lewis said. “We are issuing a beach hazard statement that’ll be in effect through at least the weekend [which] may be extended.” 

While the weather is expected to cool down on Monday, forecasts show that another heatwave could develop by the end of next week.

Pools nearby

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Echo Park Pool

Eleanor Green Roberts Aquatic Center

Cooling centers

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Pico Union Branch Library

Felipe de Neve Branch Library (Westlake)

Pio Pico – Koreatown Branch Library

Councilmember Heather Hutt’s office recommends residents to rest in shade or a building with air conditioning and to stay hydrated with plenty of water.

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