Note from the Author
Hey there all you environmental enthusiasts!
I hope your October treated you nicely! Fall is starting to hit its stride where I'm at with cooler temperatures being the norm and the trees are showing their colors. I kind of wish we'd get "prime" fall temperatures for a bit longer than a few weeks, but I'll welcome the cooler weather nonetheless. Nothing quite like snuggling up with a blanket or a sweatshirt to keep warm!
Over October, I also attended a series of talks from Indigenous Potawatomi tribe members each going over topics of Indigenous sciences and how they are both like and unlike western sciences, which was a wonderful experience. As I hope Prismatic Planet gives others new things to think about and ways to engage with nature, I was delighted to immerse myself in the thoughts and ways of others! Especially from folks who come from a long history of living with nature rather than around it like we've come to be.
Also, you may have noticed, but there was no new educational page this month. I'm thinking those will definitely start slowing down now since I've written on every topic I set out to write almost 2 years ago! It's hard to believe I've been doing this for so long now! I'll definitely be doing Eco Extras from time to time, but I don't think I'll be holding myself to one per month going forward, just in case anyone is wondering where the new pages have gone.
But I digress. I hope you're all doing well and wish you all a fantastic November and we'll see you in another month!
~ Jon
~ And, as always, don’t forget to keep wondering ~
New from Prismatic Planet!
Haikusday
Tufts awaiting breeze
To fly, to find home, as home
Senesces to time
Fallen hollowed limb
Boughs tangled, weaving with life
Embraced into earth
We perch together
Share our gaze to skies ahead
Wistful, we await
Sun sets, shadows rise
Tendrils born 'gainst fading light
Nightmare breaks til dawn
Educational Topics
No new educational pages this month, but don’t let that stop you from learning! You can check out a bunch of our past material using this link right here!
Human Nature
Before I became a programmer, I was trying my hand at a lot of areas of study. It's probably a more accurate thing to say that me becoming a programmer was an accident that happened thanks to all the things I wanted to learn up to actually becoming a software and web developer. I studied graphic design in high school before falling in love with music theory my senior year and decided to audition for a music school and barely made it in. I studied music composition with the goal of writing music for video games before I started regularly designing and prototyping games with a friend. I learned that I really enjoyed the entire game development process and chose to study video game design on my own after getting my music degree. I couldn't afford another degree, so it was more or less a bunch of one-off classes of a DIY degree that demonstrated my experience rather than proving my schooling. Stifled by student debt from my college degree however, I needed something to help pay that off and I used the programming knowledge I picked up developing games (and the referral of a friend) to land my first programming job.
Why do I mention any of this though?
Well, I hope it shows that I have a deeply-held enjoyment of video games. I find them a fascinating medium capable of involving the audience in a way that other media can't effectively do. I also enjoy thinking of ways to fuse other interests with the video game medium. After all, game design often starts with a core idea and designing a space around that core. It's a part of why it's so easy for people to agree of categorizing games in genres and how new games take core gameplay from a genre, adding a personal twist or something novel with hopes of that novel thing to become a staple in the genre going forward. It's a neat cycle that brings us to where video games are today.
But I digress. Games that take one of my interests and see what they can do with it in a game setting really stand out to me. It's probably a big proponent of why I like rhythm games so much having spent a solid chunk of my educational career studying music, and percussion in particular. And if it isn't abundantly clear from writing for Prismatic Planet for almost 2 years now, ecology and the connectedness of nature is something I'm very interested in. I thought it'd be neat to find a game that attempts to virtualize how our planet works, and find one of those games I did!
The game is called Equilinox, and I'd like to explore a bit about how this game attempts to replicate the natural world and its interactions with the species that make up its ecosystems. After all, it's a very human thing to have a fully functioning natural world right outside your door, but choose to make a digital one that you can influence and observe.
Let's dive in!
October Eco News
Legumes are an integral part of ecosystems where they take hold because of their ability to "fix" nitrogen, or convert nitrogen from the atmosphere into nitrogen usable by plants and animals. A study published this month unlocks the mysteries behind this process with the hopes of using this knowledge to help other plants learn to fix nitrogen as well!
When we think of carbon sinks, we often think of the forests and the ocean surface, but studies this month show that rivers can be a surprisingly effective way to sequester carbon. Meandering rivers are much more capable of carrying eroded minerals to the ocean for long term storage, giving humans a reflection point about how often we try to control rivers by straightening them.
I never asked myself this before, but have you ever wondered which animals have tusks? If you guessed mammals, you'd be correct! Dentine tusks are a convergent evolution with enamel teeth specific to mammals, which this article discusses at some length thanks to the thoughts and research of a group of inquisitive paleontologists.
Indigenous Native Americans hold immeasurable knowledge around living with nature, and we're starting to see western science open its mind to the value of this experience. This piece goes over the use of cultural controlled burns to mitigate the chances of forest wildfires by preemptively burning low-lying debris and restoring soil nutrients for the coming year.
Humans are effectively entirely inspired by nature when it comes down to it. Our understanding of complex topics is often bolstered when we can observe nature tackling the same problem, and it turns out we've got some learning to do from oysters! This study observes how oysters manage nanoscale symmetrical precision over the span of generations of human time.
Thank you for checking out the Prismatic Planet newsletter! For more environmental thoughts and stories, be sure to check out the Prismatic Planet website.
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~ And, as always, don’t forget to keep wondering ~