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Ponderosa pine fire protections

Ponderosa pine and its bark listing out some of the fire protections it has

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Many trees and forests were built to live with fire and in many cases, fire is essential for a healthy ecosystem. Giant sequoias, for example, have cones that dry out during surface fires releasing their seeds so they can germinate at the ideal time to grow with less competition.

Ponderosa pines have a number of ways they have evolved to live with fire.

They have bark that when heated can split off from the tree protecting the trunk and reducing the spread of fire.

They often lose lower branches, sometimes from smaller fires, reducing the likelihood of ladder fires that climb towards the crown.

The shade they cast and the acidic soil they favour helps reduce understory plants that could catch fire beneath the tree and help a fire to latch onto the main trunk.

They have deep roots that can remain intact after a fire allowing the tree to still gather water and nutrients even when surface roots are damaged.

Some policies of suppressing natural fires have changed the balance of many forest systems and helped promote some of the recent mega-fires.

More about the Fire ecology of ponderosa pines (pdf).

Also see: identify a douglas fir, time hierarchy

Published 14 Aug 2022

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Phubbing illustration: Someone sat in a cafe being phubbed by their friends on their phones while a parent and child walks by, gently heartbroken by being upstaged by a phone

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis — Hegel's dialectic — as a progression of ideas illustrated with alerts invented on a phone, frustration with alerts leading to do not disturb settings

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis

Fruit vs vegetable drawing: showing the elements of a plant that are fruit or vegetable and a 2x2 matrix for which are commonly miscategorised

Fruit vs vegetable

What is a time Hierarchy example explained: a lush, verdant, coniferous alpine forest is depicted as a means of explaining the range of layers within any durable system that develop at different speeds. From the individual needles on the trees that develop over a year, to the surrounding biome, 10,000 years in the making.

Identify a douglas fir: showing a douglas fir cone with it's 3 pointed mini-leaves named Dougie, Douglas and Doug

Identify a Douglas fir

Who cut down the last tree illustration: 300 years ago we see someone cutting down a tree with an axe in a large dense forest. 100 years ago we see someone cutting down a tree in a now much more sparse forest. Today, there's only a small sapling left, and someone just snapped a branch off it. So what next?

Who cut down the last tree?

Phubbing: snubbing people for your phone. We've probably all experienced it — heck, we've probably all done it at one point or another — or at least it's likely to be familiar. Someone in a restaurant waiting for their friends to put their phones down. A family gathering where people are no longer talking to each other. A teacher without the attention of their students. A child failing to get the attention of an adult who's trying to process some messages on their phone. Research on phubbing, mostly since the word was coined, says it largely has the effects you'd think it would. The effects vary with who's being phubbed and who's doing the phubbing: bosses and employees, family members, parents and kids, or partners. Whoever's phubbing who, snubbing is a suitable root word for it — it's not so nice to feel snubbed. I learned about phubbing from the Mind over Tech community — they also have a newsletter on forming better digital habits. The word phubbing has the unusual distinction of being created for an advertising campaign to sell a dictionary. Phubbing, you may have spotted, is a portemanteau. For more phone annoyance see halfalogue. See, for example, Knausenberger, J. et al. (2022). Feeling Ostracized by Others’ Smartphone Use: The Effect of Phubbing on Fundamental Needs, Mood, and Trust. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.883901 Also see: phone zombie, continuous partial attention, when drinking tea…Phubbing: snubbing people for your phone. We've probably all experienced it — heck, we've probably all done it at one point or another — or at least it's likely to be familiar. Someone in a restaurant waiting for their friends to put their phones down. A family gathering where people are no longer talking to each other. A teacher without the attention of their students. A child failing to get the attention of an adult who's trying to process some messages on their phone. Research on phubbing, mostly since the word was coined, says it largely has the effects you'd think it would. The effects vary with who's being phubbed and who's doing the phubbing: bosses and employees, family members, parents and kids, or partners. Whoever's phubbing who, snubbing is a suitable root word for it — it's not so nice to feel snubbed. I learned about phubbing from the Mind over Tech community — they also have a newsletter on forming better digital habits. The word phubbing has the unusual distinction of being created for an advertising campaign to sell a dictionary. Phubbing, you may have spotted, is a portemanteau. For more phone annoyance see halfalogue. See, for example, Knausenberger, J. et al. (2022). Feeling Ostracized by Others’ Smartphone Use: The Effect of Phubbing on Fundamental Needs, Mood, and Trust. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.883901 Also see: phone zombie, continuous partial attention, when drinking tea

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