This week’s open thread is brought to you by Britain’s recovering wild otter population (I sent this link to Lauredhel on Monday, and Rebekka found two more links during the week). I for one salute our new otter overlords.
This is probably the most gorgeous video of otters in the wild I have ever seen, beautifully edited to accompanying music by people who own a B&B nearby (fair warning on the ad at the end, but such lovely work deserves a bit of linkjuice, especially as their booking page has a disability statement – why don’t we see more of those?).
Tal-y-llyn (Lake Talyllyn) is in southern Snowdonia near Cader Idris. The otters apparently returned to the lake after decades of absence only in the last few years, and this video was shot over ten days in February this year. The B&B’s blog says they are still seen around the lake as of mid-September.
Here’s a less gorgeous but more informative video from the UK’s Environment Agency about the cheering report on increasing otter numbers and how the river rehabilitation work they do encourages the rebuilding of ecosystems which can support otter families.
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: environment, Life
Hoyden About Town 
Metaphorically crunching on the popcorn while the Howard and Costello spatfest plays out. Here’s Laurie Oakes’ contribution.
Having my US Citizenship Hooray party tomorrow night. Yay for being dual and with two passports.
So if anyone just happens to find themselves in Flagstaff, AZ on Saturday, drop on in.
I may have to make fairy bread.
Oops. Wasn’t keeping an eye on all my indicators what with hols and all. Sorry about the bandwidth exceeded message. Just needed to reset some stuff.
The Environment Agency has a transcript for that second video: Word document but it’s only the script of what the guy says (he’s talking all the time!), no image description.
The first video is so gorgeous! The swimming (gambolling? hunting?) otters remind me of what made people imagine the Loch Ness Monster (which was part of the Glasgow display at the end of the Commonwealth Games, otherwise I might not have thought of it). The editing to the music is wow!
Thanks for finding a transcript, Susan.
I visited Talyllyn briefly many years ago on a trip through Snowdonia – I think we just stopped there to have some sandwiches and coffee. Beautiful, beautiful place, even on the very cold and windy day we were there. They’ve got a lovely narrow gauge railway running steam locomotives there too.
Hey all!
I’ve been in my own world for the past two months, I feel horribly guilty about it all. Mostly it’s me needing space to adjust to the new relationship I’m exploring, as I’m very unused to having a boyfriend/girlfriend. But I check Hoyden and I’ve been following things, I’ve just been a bit out of it.
Hopefully I’ll get my crap together soon. *sigh*
@Nacey that’s understandable, new relationships require adjustment. I hope things are going well! 🙂
I’ve just come back from my last trip to Brisbane before I move back in December (YAY!) Saw Pat Benatar and The Bangles up there on Wednesday night; they were amazing; watching The Bangles reminded me how long it’s been since I’ve seen a group of ladies rockin’ it on stage, which is sad. But they were great, and still fabulous. Also, Pat Benatar is amazing and she and her hubby are adorable.
Oh, things are going really well! I’m ridiculously happy!
OH MY GOD, you saw Pat Benatar? And the Bangles? EEP! Music-nerd-gasm!
I’m actually talking about forming a woman rock group with a friend of mine. It’s been a dream of mine to rock with my cock out, so to speak, but being a woman it’s been hard to do because people tend to act weird about it. But it’s something I want to try and to succeed at.
Yay! I’m glad things are going well!
YES THEY WERE AMAZING OMG :DDDD
Oooh, that would be awesome. When I was younger I had aspirations of that nature, but idk, my singing voice has always been more ‘nice’ than ‘rock out’, which discouraged me. Though years of smoking probably ranks it further towards ‘shot to pieces’ these days /o
See, my voice is best suited to Jazz, but I also can get a bit of a Heart/Wilson Sisters sound out of my voice, which can go well with a strong rock sound. I’m also inspired by Nina Hagen, who randomly dropped operatic singing parts into her music whenever she felt like it. It’s like, rock and roll is what I want it to be. It’s being subversive and rebellious with my own messages. Whether it’s successful or not, well, it remains to be seen, but it’ll still be a catharsis for me, and hopefully other people will get something out of that.
I guess I’m hungry to create something different and exciting. 🙂
Oooh, that sounds awesome! I would totally listen to that! 😀
I have a persistent headache 😦
And being confused by comments on another blog about first, second and third waves of feminism. There are waves?
I am counting down the days until I get to go on holidays (33 days! well, 32 if we’re not counting the actual day) I am undecided if I want to lug my macbook with me, though. Hmm.
@Julie,
It’s one way at looking at the history of interaction between feminist theory and feminist activism, although the terms tend to be US-centric in usage – other nations have not necessarily followed the exact same progression. Broadly: first wave = suffragists, second wave = “women’s lib”, third wave = intersectionality and feminisms.
I hope that we haven’t and it’s just one more example of the online amplification effect.
The Goverment has opened a new website called The Line. ie, he/she crossed the line, and what to do about it.
When did we become such a society where it’s not okay to tell your friend that you’re worried about them?
I was a bit disturbed to read the comments to one post. A woman is concerned that her friend is being controlled by the friends new flame; being told what to wear, who to associate with, etc. But most of the comments from others seem to be telling her she is a busybody and jealous and shouldn’t interfere in her friends life.
This weekend I turned 40 and performed two songs in front of a room full of people including a panel of judges (it was a workshop run by my teacher, my daughter Caitlin sang too, much better than I did). The latter (on Sunday) would have gone better if the former hadn’t involved 5 hours of karaoke and a 3am bedtime on Saturday night. But I had awesome fun in both cases 🙂
I’m reminded on Twitter that it’s submission time of the month for the Down Under Feminists Carnival.
I have a cranky because I have a cold again. It was given to me by my FIL when he and my MIL came to babysit for us so we could go to a party. (I got sick after the party) So since they were doing us a favour I can’t even be cranky without seeming ungrateful which is making me more cranky. Going to count my blessings now and blow my nose.
In some ways I wish there was an edit/delete button. Because sometimes I agonize over my response to a post, post it anyway… and then realise the language is a bit strong/not what I meant to say/people will think, etc. *sighs*
Anyone know what’s happened to Alas, a Blog? It has just been coming up blank since – well, about a week or two ago. Even Google cache is blank.
He did sell that domain name to somebody else after all – maybe they forgot to renew it.
You’re lucky I can’t sleep right now. His webhosting service was apparently sabotaged by an ex-employee who decided to take down all the pirated and other illegal content sites it was hosting – which was mostly tubes and torrents. A number of non-tube/torrent sites such as amptoons/alas were collateral damage. Apparently Barry has a backup of the site and is working out how to restore it on another host.
Barry tweeted a NSFW link to a forum discussion about the server sabotage to explain to somebody else why amptoons was down. (nb it’s NSFW because users on that forum have sig links, including animated gifs, to their commercial gay porn websites).
Thanks TT. I kind of suspected as much, but my google fu couldn’t find the story. Amp’s domain thing was very ill considered. Ya lie down with dogs…
Ayup, an early morning metaphor fail. If it was a disgruntled employee, it wasn’t anyone to do with the pr0n sites which caused the trouble, except that it would have probably been the target. The whole “sell your feminist / LGBT rights / progressive cartoon site to a pr0n merchant” thing was bound to end in tears.
Excellent juxtaposition in the paper today. On one page, an investigative article about men who don’t watch porn. “Porn is bad” the article says, “We all agree that porn is bad”. On the opposite page, a full-sized ad for diamonds featuring a lady going “Ooh diamonds, yes diamonds, I open my mouth slightly and look half-drugged for diamonds; you should probably buy some diamonds, because love is proven by the purchase of diamonds.”
And I am hired by the VEC for the Victorian election! Hooray! More money! I am going to buy such good Christmas presents this year.
@tigtog, I’ve been on that railway – my dad is obsessed with (of all things) Welsh narrow gauge steam railways. Not at all weirdly specific, no.