Honestly, watching american and English news is kind of like watching a few dogs look at a steak on a fire that's absolutely scorching hot, going to pick it up, burning themselves and then going back again.
After a few minutes, more dogs join, and by the hour mark there are dozens of dogs constantly burning themselves over and over again.
In this metaphor, you can assign any group you like to any part of the metaphor. The liberal media is the fire, corona virus is the steak, politicians are the dogs.
Conservative politicians are the meat, true-believers are the fire and the average person are the dogs.
Russian twitter bots are the fire, government handouts are the meat and the aliens living on pluto are the dogs.
My point being that this whole thing is stupid and everyone is dumb. One day we're going to look back at this and a lot of people are going to think, 'what the fuck was I doing back then?'
Actually, who am I kidding. No one is going to reflect on themselves.
In less stupid news, I've had a massive, MASSIVE infestation of aphids.
It is genuinely amazing how many of these bastards there are. I noticed the first one a couple of weeks ago, and they annihilated both my pots of pansies within the week. Apparently spraying them with milk is supposed to stop them. It dries out, coats them and the plant in a kind of oily, crustiness that they can't escape.
Needless to say, that didn't work.
I was then given some kind of foul vinegar looking stuff that they use here for this purpose. It's organic, which is to say it's a concoction of roots and leaves and some pretty gnarly stuff by the smell of things - but it's safe to consume. So I tried milk for a week, then this stuff for a week.
The aphids won.
Around that time I was given a bunch of welsh leeks, some melon seeds, a watermelon plant and a bunch of other small things to try out.
I didn't think aphids would go for anything with big thick stems and whatnot, on account of them being tiny bastards with, presumably, small mouth pieces.
I was wrong.
They went after the leeks, but the leeks won. They went after a few of the smaller plants I was given and were driven back.
But.
They found the melon.
Now, I've tried growing melons a couple of times, and they've always succumbed to aphids and then disease.
No more. I drew my line in the sand.
First of all, it's in my hydroponics system (a pipe with water in it) so the plant is weaker to bugs and whatnot than it would otherwise be (side-note, this is because I haven't figured out the right nutrient/acidity balance yet) so I needed to act fast.
First of all, I sprayed it down with the black goop. Then I realised it's a tiny plant so I should just crush them in my hands. So I did that.
Now my hands are covered in something and aphids. I re-sprayed the plant down with the black stuff. Then after that dried out, I sprayed it again with full-fat milk.
I must admit, it didn't smell great the next day.
And the aphids were still multiplying.
So I kept doing this over the course of a few days, to no avail. Their pace of production far outstripped the killing potential of my bare hands.
Honestly, I wasn't sure what else there was to do. I had to leave for a few days, and didn't expect there to be much left.
However.
I returned to this new enemy formation, and not a single aphid in sight.
I was confused and worried - what new tricks had they discovered while I was away?
I tried searching online but this is the one weakness of google. Searching for 'bastard bugs on me damned leaves' doesn't yield much.
I kept searching though, and found this:
I just went outside and confirmed that the troops look almost identical to this. There were a few, so I've moved one to a separate planter to begin his attack there.
Hopefully they have enough to eat to get big and strong, and continue the fight well into the future.
Vive la ladybird!