BBS on the cheap

WordPress is working again. Hallelujah!

And hallelujah equally for the absolutely superb shave I got—experience and result—using inexpensive tools.

I washed my beard as usual with my Jlocke98 mix (1/4 c Dr. Bronner Rose liquid soap plus 2 tsp emu oil), then rubbed the Arko stick against the grain all over my wet, partially rinsed beard. I like to use shave sticks as shave sticks.

Then I began brushing my face briskly with the Ecotools Bamboo Finishing Kabuki, a make-up brush that serves admirably as a shaving brush and costs about $7.50 in the cosmetics section of many drugstores. The lather I achieve by brisk brushing with the Ecotools is somewhat different than my regular lathers: it is somewhat stiffish, as with whipped cream that is whipped into stiff rather than soft peaks. The vigorous brushing that produces this excellent lather also feels extremely good to my face because of the softness of the Ecotools. Even when I bear down some and brush at speed, it feels soft and pleasant to my face.

The the $2 Sodial razor, holding a Kai blade, gave me a perfect shave in three passes with no problems at all: just superb smoothness. A splash of Irisch Moos on that, and I’m feeling good.

The issue of cost is relevant: according to a listicle in this post:

#1 The lowest earning 23,303,064 Americans combined make 36 percent less than the highest earning 2,915 Americans do.

#2 40 percent of all American workers (39.6 percent to be precise) make less than $20,000 a year.

#3 According to the Pew Research Center, the top 7 percent of all U.S. households own 63 percent of all the wealth in the country.

#4 On average, households in the top 7 percent have 24 times as much wealth as households in the bottom 93 percent.

#5 According to numbers that were just released this week, 49.7 million Americans are living in poverty.  That is a brand new all-time record high.

#6 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined. . .

The full list is 21 items, but if you look at #2 and #5, for example, you can see why inexpensive shaving equipment that can do a good job might be important to a lot of people. I’m posting this because of some snark directed at the Ecotools and Sodial, presumably by those who can afford better tools. Better tools are better, but these tools do a perfectly good job and are pleasant to use.