Hallowe’en Photo Festival of Fun and Fundraising

Today, we have a pair of beautiful early-autumn landscapes by our very own Giliell.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

 

Hallowe’en is fast approaching, so don’t forget to send in your photos. Maybe you have some pictures of people in costumes or spooky decorations. Perhaps it’s photos of snakes, spiders, scorpions, or other creepy crawlies. If you’re not into any of those things, you could send us your pretty pictures of the fall landscape. Our address ([email protected]) is always in the left sidebar underneath the colourful percolating head and if you click that link it will open up an email form for you to use.

 

 

 

 

A Soap Opera

I’ve wanted to make soap for a long time now. What stopped me so far was the lack of a safe work space. I am not going to handle NaOh in my kitchen with the kids running around. But with the workbench finally set up I got myself a “starting kit” for soap making and tried my first batch.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

I did everything by the book, prepared my stuff, and still managed to grab a bottle of bergamotte scent instead of lavender. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise. For one, my oils turned the colour pretty yellowish, the purple didn’t look that nice, and for a pure lavender soap it would have been ugly. But with bergamotte in the mix, the yellow “makes sense”. Second, while I used the amounts of essential oil specified in the recipe, the lavender does come off really strong. If I’d used 20 ml of lavender, it would have overpowered everything and probably made the soap unusable.

I let it rest for two days, and it was still too soft to take out of the moulds. Re-reading everything I came to the conclusion that the freshly made soap cooled too quickly as my work shop is quite cool. The next batch will get taken to the kitchen and wrapped thoroughly so it can cool more slowly.

My book also offered a dirty trick for dealing with too soft soap, which is to freeze it for an hour or so. That worked fine, but somehow turned the purple pink. I’m curious to see if it will turn purple again. It’s now off to drying and should be ready in time for Christmas. Yeah, this year’s Christmas presents will smell nice.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Degupdate: A New Sand Bath

We decided to get them a different sand bath on our recent trip to Ikea, because the big round plate was less than ideal. I hoped that a higher rim would prevent “spills” but it merely slightly reduces them. Anyway, the degus really like it. They need sand baths to keep clean and prevent/get rid of parasites and they obviously also quite enjoy them. They also like digging a lot.

I decided to shoot a short video, because it’s just over-cute.

Here’s some more pics. Estelle almost dares to take treats from me, and she is now ok with putting her front paws against my leg. She will come out more quickly, at least as long as the rest of the room is quiet.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Estelle, being unsure, deciding to wait for Candy to take the treats and bury them. Given that Estelle is the larger of the two, I’m pretty sure she gets her share of treats.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Estelle, trying the bath

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Candy, stealing all the treats.

Hallowe’en Photo Festival of Fun and Fundraising

It’s October, which means that means that Hallowe’en is just around the corner.  The bloggers here at Freethought Blogs will be hosting a Hallowe’en Fun and Fundraising event to show off our talents, including fall photography, and you’re invited to play along. There will be other events happening on Hallowe’en Day so stay tuned to hear about those, but the Photo Festival starts now, so you’ll want to tune in often to see what our fellow bloggers are doing with their cameras.  I’m pretty sure there will be spiders, but who knows what else could turn up. But wait, we want to see your photos, too. All of the photos will be posted under the title above, so they’ll be easy to find.

PHOTO submissions should be sent to affintysubmissions@gmail. com (the address is always in the left sidebar under the percolating head, and the link there will open up an email form for you). If you’re able and so inclined, you can donate to the cause at our PayPal at FtB Defense Fund.

As soon as we have the schedule for the Hallowe’en Day event, I’ll point you to it, but for now, why not pick up your camera and go outside and see what you can find. They don’t have to be current photos. You can search through your stash, too, but fall is a gorgeous time of year, so why not get outside while you can. It won’t be long until Winter arrives, dragging Covid with it, which means a lot of isolated indooring. Ugh. Don’t waste this opportunity to get out for a walk before that happens.

Today, the Photo Festival of Fun starts with a submission from our regular reader, Avalus, who has sent in a deadly dragonfly to start things off. It looks to me as if this guy is camouflaging while waiting for an unsuspecting fruit-eating bug to happen by, so he can gobble them up. Wham! Avalus then tortured the berries by making them into jam, so this harmless-looking photo is anything but.

Dragonfly with Blackberries  © Avalus, all rights reserved.

 

How’s Your Second Wave Going? Covid and the Myth of Individual Responsibility

As about everybody with the expertise to do so predicted, Covid is back with a vengeance and Europe is in the firm grip of a second wave.

I absolutely have no clue what France is doing, because their new cases are just through the roof with 27k new cases yesterday, or Spain, or what is keeping Italy relatively stable. What I do know is that currently the narrative is that the second wave is caused by irresponsible individuals. And sure, we are all fed up with the people who don’t wear their masks, and the SNP MP who took the train home despite having Covid, and the Kids who party like there was no tomorrow (well, probably they’re right). Yet, in the end, the tale of the reckless individual who endangers all of us is just that: a tale, mostly to deflect from the complete failure of our governing bodies.

The media are, of course, helping. 12 infected at an illegal party, or 25 infected at a completely legal wedding makes for good headlines. As does “most transmissions occur in the personal sector” while only mentioning in the small print that 30-50% of transmissions are unknown. Transmissions in your private life are easy to follow. Contact tracing will work well when the people you infected with Covid are your spouse and teenage kid. Contact tracing will not work at all when you infect 2 people at the grocery store and one on public transport. Our daily life will force us into close contact with many people, often with not enough protection. At school I’m in close contact with up to 200 people a day, usually with no masks, no air filters, no distance. At least so far it seems that the concept of “tracing and isolating” after a positive test is working, there have been few spreads within schools or among the families, but it shows again why the spread outside of schools and workplaces is going on and on: There’s no contact tracing and isolation for people who shopped together at the supermarket. How’s the cashier supposed to know whether they got the ‘Rona at work or in an elevator where somebody sneezed?

The current discourse is nothing but to deflect from the abysmal failure of the people in charge to implement safety standards that will really keep people safe, but as long as we’re happily blaming one another they’ll get away with it.