In his "autohagiography" The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, the occultist provocateur Aleister Crowley made passing reference to his own "glacial curry" — The weather made it impossible to do any serious climbing; but I learnt a great deal about the work of a camp at high altitudes, from the management of transport to cooking; in [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/12/how-to-make-curried-rice-the-a.html

Back in March and April, we were all hopeful. But now, as we segue past Memorial Day into the onset of fall and with the winter season fast approaching, the reality is setting in. Masks are a part of our lives now. And they will remain that way for the foreseeable future. Even as we [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/12/with-summer-gone-time-to-stoc.html

I knew an idiot in junior high school who so wanted to impress some girls that he removed his own braces with a pair of pliers. What a waste of his parent's money. A few years later, in 1985, another bright young mind was also desperate to get his braces off but thought better (or [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/teen-forced-dentist-to-remove.html

The Australian insurance company Budget Direct created this nifty graphic of every Motor Trend "Car of the Year" winner in the United States. After the Plymouth Volare (1976), my eyes glazed and interest waned. They created similar graphics for awards in Australia and the UK. "Award-winning cars: Every Car of the Year Winner" (Budget Direct)

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/poster-of-every-motor-trend.html

Archie McPhee, sellers of curios, realized that any PayPal transaction containing the word "tardigrade" — that being the name of the adorable tiny space-surviving creatures they sell ornaments of — would be blocked. "We've contacted them and they told us we should just stop using the word tardigrade," Archie McPhee wrote on Twitter. "We changed [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/paypal-wont-run-transactions.html

The US Customs and Border Patrol in Cincinnati, Ohio announced that they've intercepted more than 2,000 fake driver's licenses and 1,600 "ID-making materials" coming through a single express courier hub just this year. Meanwhile, college freshman across the country bow their heads in sorrow. From Cincinnati.com: The counterfeit licenses, which came in 343 shipments, originated in [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/us-customs-agents-have-already.html

Don't look now&but the PS5 and Xbox Series X are literally just weeks away. For gamers, the years-long wait for the premium next-generation gaming systems from the Big Two is going to make the 2020 holiday season one of the craziest we've ever seen.   And considering that exploring and understanding every square millimeter of what [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/this-premium-pro-gaming-headse.html

Researchers have transformed ordinary red bricks into batteries by injecting gases that enable the material to store electricity . Developed by chemists at Washington University, each brick costs only $3 but, at this point, just lights up an LED bulb. From Scientific American: The brick-battery relies on the reddish pigment known as iron oxide, or [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/turning-bricks-into-batteries.html

Beijing is strongly against a Trump-forced sale of TikTok's U.S. operations by Chinese owner ByteDance, and the government of China would rather that TikTok shut down all operations in United States, Reuters reports on Friday. China has previously characterized the forced sale to a U.S. based buyer as "theft." ByteDance has been in talks to [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/china-wants-tiktok-shut-down-i.html

Enjoying sex and food is not a sin and church leaders who tell you that are "overzealous," says Pope Francis. From the New York Post: "Pleasure arrives directly from God. It is neither Catholic nor Christian nor anything else; it is simply divine," he tells [author Carlo] Petrini in the book "TerraFutura: Conversations With Pope [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/pope-god-says-sex-and-food-ar.html

Officials have signed an agreement to buy 50 million doses, plan to distribute in November

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/brazil-state-of-bahia-to-test.html

When you grind coffee beans, you want to use a burr grinder, not a blade grinder. Burr grinders break the beans into uniformly sized chunks, unlike blade grinders, which flay the beans into pieces of widely varying size. I've had my Capresso Infinity Conical Burr Grinder for over 10 years and it's still working like [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/why-conical-burr-coffee-grinde.html

Donald Trump, who is definitely not a drug user at all and has never been reported as a habitual user of stimulants to this very day, casually accuses Joe Biden of using performance enhancing drugs in this wacky news clip from the year of our hellscape 2020. DARVO'd Trump, "I think there's probably, possibly drugs [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/donald-trump-definitely-not-a.html

"Put your damn mask on!" from r/funny This swan doesn't like it when people don't wear face masks.

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/swan-teaches-no-masker-a-lesso.html

Kurdish journalist Oktay Candemir was arrested on Monday for making fun of an upcoming Turkish TV series about a 13th-century Ottoman sultan. From .coda: Authorities didn't find it funny and Candemir now faces up to two years in prison. He was briefly placed under house arrest and, while his case is pending, remains subject to [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/journalist-in-turkey-arrested.html

It is wonderful to have room temperature butter around to put on the baked goods. This butter bell is the crock that makes it happen safely. Simply fill the bell with warm butter and put about 1 1/4 cm of water into the crock. Place the bell in the crock when you are not using [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/i-am-fond-of-my-butter-bell.html

The French political cartoon website Charlie Hebdo says Al Qaeda has issued death threats to the staff, after republication of the infamous Mohammed cartooons. SITE Intel Group and AFP have also reported about the threats on Friday, and say they were published in Al Qaeda's magazine, One UMMAH. An image from the cover of the [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/al-qaeda-threatens-charlie-heb.html

Wow. As Natasha Bertrand said on Friday, someone should maybe follow up on the last part of this paragraph from Charlotte Alter's piece for Time, "How Conspiracy Theories Are Shaping the 2020 Election—and Shaking the Foundation of American Democracy." This is straight-up crazypants stuff, but people are talking about killing themselves if Joe Biden wins, [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/russian-military-disinformatio.html

To be fair, it does appear to have a ticket.

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/piglet-walking-on-a-ball-sneak.html

Punk-rock magic absurdist Zabrecky is at it again, and this time he's got Puddles Pity Party joining him! Saturday the 12th of September will see two shows of this new 'Magic Extravaganza.'

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/saturday-september-12th-liv.html