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More people than you'd expect have severe asthma or allergies that cause strong adverse reactions to being around smoke. Assuming everyone around you is okay with it can cause someone's asthma or allergies to act up and harm them. Also, if someone doesn't want second hand smoke, because even second hand smoke can cause health problems, that's their right to not want to be exposed to second hand smoke.

Despite its green image, Ireland has surprisingly little forest. [...] [M]ore than 80% of the island of Ireland was [once] covered in trees. [...] [O]f that 11% of the Republic of Ireland that is [now] forested, the vast majority (9% of the country) is planted with [non-native] spruces like the Sitka spruce [in commercial plantations], a fast growing conifer originally from Alaska which can be harvested after just 15 years. Just 2% of Ireland is covered with native broadleaf trees.

Text by: Martha O’Hagan Luff. “Ireland has lost almost all of its native forests - here’s how to bring them back.” The Conversation. 24 February 2023. [Emphasis added.]

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[I]ndustrial [...] oil palm plantations [...] have proliferated in tropical regions in many parts of the world, often built at the expense of mangrove and humid forest lands, with the aim to transform them from 'worthless swamp' to agro-industrial complexes [...]. Another clear case [...] comes from the southernmost area in the Colombian Pacific [...]. Here, since the early 1980s, the forest has been destroyed and communities displaced to give way to oil palm plantations. Inexistent in the 1970s, by the mid-1990s they had expanded to over 30,000 hectares. The monotony of the plantation - row after row of palm as far as you can see, a green desert of sorts - replaced the diverse, heterogenous and entangled world of forest and communities.

Text by: Arturo Escobar. "Thinking-Feeling with the Earth: Territorial Struggles and the Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South." Revista de Antropologia Iberoamericana Volume 11 Issue 1. 2016. [Emphasis added.]

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But efforts to increase global tree cover to limit climate change have skewed towards erecting plantations of fast-growing trees [...] [because] planting trees can demonstrate results a lot quicker than natural forest restoration. [...] [But] ill-advised tree planting can unleash invasive species [...]. [In India] [t]o maximize how much timber these forests yielded, British foresters planted pines from Europe and North America in extensive plantations in the Himalayan region [...] and introduced acacia trees from Australia [...]. One of these species, wattle (Acacia mearnsii) [...] was planted in [...] the Western Ghats. This area is what scientists all a biodiversity hotspot – a globally rare ecosystem replete with species. Wattle has since become invasive and taken over much of the region’s mountainous grasslands. Similarly, pine has spread over much of the Himalayas and displaced native oak trees while teak has replaced sal, a native hardwood, in central India. Both oak and sal are valued for [...] fertiliser, medicine and oil. Their loss [...] impoverished many [local and Indigenous people]. [...]

India’s national forest policy [...] aims for trees on 33% of the country’s area. Schemes under this policy include plantations consisting of a single species such as eucalyptus or bamboo which grow fast and can increase tree cover quickly, demonstrating success according to this dubious measure. Sometimes these trees are planted in grasslands and other ecosystems where tree cover is naturally low. [...] The success of forest restoration efforts cannot be measured by tree cover alone. The Indian government’s definition of “forest” still encompasses plantations of a single tree species, orchards and even bamboo, which actually belongs to the grass family. This means that biennial forest surveys cannot quantify how much natural forest has been restored, or convey the consequences of displacing native trees with competitive plantation species or identify if these exotic trees have invaded natural grasslands which have then been falsely recorded as restored forests. [...] Planting trees does not necessarily mean a forest is being restored. And reviving ecosystems in which trees are scarce is important too.

Text by: Dhanapal Govindarajulu. "India was a tree planting laboratory for 200 years - here are the results." The Conversation. 10 August 2023. [Emphasis added.]

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Nations and companies are competing to appropriate the last piece of available “untapped” forest that can provide the most amount of “environmental services.” [...] When British Empire forestry was first established as a disciplinary practice in India, [...] it proscribed private interests and initiated a new system of forest management based on a logic of utilitarian [extraction] [...]. Rather than the actual survival of plants or animals, the goal of this forestry was focused on preventing the exhaustion of resource extraction. [...]

Text by: Daniel Fernandez and Alon Schwabe. "The Offsetted." e-flux Architecture (Positions). November 2013. [Emphasis added.]

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At first glance, the statistics tell a hopeful story: Chile’s forests are expanding. […] On the ground, however, a different scene plays out: monocultures have replaced diverse natural forests [...]. At the crux of these [...] narratives is the definition of a single word: “forest.” [...] Pinochet’s wave of [...] [laws] included Forest Ordinance 701, passed in 1974, which subsidized the expansion of tree plantations [...] and gave the National Forestry Corporation control of Mapuche lands. This law set in motion an enormous expansion in fiber-farms, which are vast expanses of monoculture plantations Pinus radiata and Eucalyptus species grown for paper manufacturing and timber. [T]hese new plantations replaced native forests […]. According to a recent study in Landscape and Urban Planning, timber plantations expanded by a factor of ten from 1975 to 2007, and now occupy 43 percent of the South-central Chilean landscape. [...] While the confusion surrounding the definition of “forest” may appear to be an issue of semantics, Dr. Francis Putz [...] warns otherwise in a recent review published in Biotropica. […] Monoculture plantations are optimized for a single product, whereas native forests offer [...] water regulation, hosting biodiversity, and building soil fertility. [...][A]ccording to Putz, the distinction between plantations and native forests needs to be made clear. “[...] [A]nd the point that plantations are NOT forests needs to be made repeatedly [...]."

"Airbnb's destroy communities"

"The rich have unbreakable class solidarity, it's a shame the rest of us don't"

bipoc people have been loudly stating tor a long time that doctors are to bipoc women what cops are to bipoc men.

you go on | a comic

“Close friendship, like any meaningful relationship, doesn’t blossom automatically based on our biological age, as we are often encouraged to think it does. Emotional intimacy grows out of opportunity, time, ritual and shared experience. As with all other kinds of closeness, friendship also requires clear communication and vulnerability.

There’s nothing wrong, Looking, with flat-out asking someone, as you say, “Hey, want to be closer than we are now?” (I’d suggest waiting for the right moment to do this, like when you’re out on one of those intermittent dinner or drink hangouts and it feels like you’re both having a good time.) Other similar prompts include: “I’d love to get to know you better! Would you be into hanging out more often?” or “What do you look for in a friendship?” or “What are your thoughts on being closer friends?”

This kind of conversation can feel awkward, especially when you’re still finding your stride. Most of us are not accustomed to actually discussing the boundaries of friendship in a clear and direct way. Yet the same is true of discussing romantic relationships with potential partners, and any couple’s therapist will tell you that explicit discussion of the relationship is key. When I moved to Toronto in my mid-to-late 20s, I made a habit of point-blank asking co-workers and acquaintances that I thought were cool if they wanted to hang out and become closer friends—and I’ve made some of my closest friends that way.”

“Building deep adult friendships requires a kind of courting—because we can’t always rely on spontaneous six-hour hangouts and all-night drinking (though sometimes we can! It depends on what kind of adult you are) to develop closeness, we have to get creative and thoughtful about the kinds of hangouts we propose. Novelty, beauty, excitement and curiosity are experiences that become rarer for most adults due the rigid demands of life under capitalism. When we use friendship time as a way to bring those feelings back, we invite deeper layers of our friends to emerge.

Coffee, dinner and drinks can be wonderful, but they are predictable and follow well-worn social scripts, often within a very limited amount of time. What happens when, instead, we invite friends to join us on adventures that take us out of our comfort zone, like long walks in nature, cycling day trips, cultural and culinary festivals or volunteer and activist events?

Looking, I encourage you to be bold and creative in your invitations. For most adults, new friendship is an opportunity to rediscover the parts of ourselves that exist beyond work and family. Make the most of that magic; show your potential Scoobies a whole new world, and invite them to show you theirs.