Volunteers clad as Superman and Spider-Man sprayed disinfectant against the coronavirus on Indonesia's island of Java, flanking a colleague wearing the winged helmet of local superhero Gatotkaca who shouted, "Wear masks, wash hands and stay alert."

Coronavirus test kits used in Tanzania were dismissed as faulty by President John Magufuli on Sunday, because he said they had returned positive results on samples taken from a goat and a pawpaw.

Dressed as "Star Wars" characters, local officials in the Philippines are out and about to enforce strict quarantine measures while also handing out relief packages.

Chewy and Miley, both two-year-old Schnauzer dogs, are getting their hair cut at a groomer in Bangkok for the first time since the new coronavirus outbreak began in Thailand in January.

A trooper stopping a car with a suspected "impaired driver" on a U.S. highway on Monday was bemused to find a 5-year-old in the driver's seat, the Utah Highway Patrol tweeted.

As Thailand's capital cautiously reopens many restaurants shuttered over coronavirus fears, the feline "employees" of the Caturday Cafe are back at work.

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May is "Homeschooling Awareness Month", parents, which I'm sure you'll find as deliciously ironic as I do... by maybe next August.

Here's one from every home-schooled kid to their parent/teachers right now:

SORRY

Also maybe focus on spelling and grammar this week?

 And here's one from every homeschooling parent to their kids after you all survive the rest of the school year:

 Jejus is so proud of y'all.

If you're feeling left out, don't worry; it's also "Flexible Work Arrangement Week" (BAHAHAHAHAAA) and Mental Health Month, which at the moment go together like two peas in a pod. That's on fire.

“This is fine.”

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”

[...]

I don't actually know what that is, but it sure seems ominous.

I'm glad at least one baker understands the importance of talking things out through all this:

Advantages of cake therapy:

1) Cake doesn't judge

2) Cake always listens

3) Cake tastes delicious when your session time is up

Or hey, let the cake do the talking for you!

If you don't identify with this right now you're either not quarantined with anyone, or yesterday you were the annoying one. :p

Thanks to Kendra W., Jan M., Lesley G., Renee R., Megan W., Leigh M., & Hank C. for proving all snarky house notes should be made using cake.

*****

Speaking of house notes, whether you're feeling snarky or sweet, this listing has funny note options for just about every conceivable situation:

Nifty Note Pads

Each pad has 50 tear-off sheets, and the checkbox options are a riot to read through.

*****

And from my other blog, Epbot:

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out! Gil Thorp, 5/6/20 Finally, the engine of this baseball season plot has been revealed: Mike “The Mayor”‘s wacky […]

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out! Funky Winkerbean, 5/7/20 OK, I am ashamed to admit this, but: I genuinely do not have a handle […]

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out! Mary Worth, 5/8/20 Floatin heads are, of course, a beloved Mary Worth tradition, so well established that they […]

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out! Dennis the Menace, 5/9/20 I guess the flavor of mence that’s supposed to be happening here is that […]

TWH speaks with Jon Sewell, who has just finished his two-decade project to create new productions of Aleister Crowley's Rites of Eleusis.

Continue reading Eleusyve Productions completes cycle of Crowley’s Rites of Eleusis at The Wild Hunt.

In this week's Pagan Community Notes, Pagan Spirit Gathering has been canceled, indigenous shaman and actor Antonio Bolivar joins the Ancestors, Sacred Well announces changes in leadership, and more!

Continue reading Pagan Community Notes: PSG 2020 canceled, leadership change within Sacred Well, indigenous shaman and actor Antonio Bolivar crosses Veil, and more! at The Wild Hunt.

Pagan healthcare providers discuss how they are coping with the stresses of the pandemic and how the power of their spiritual practices sustains them.

Continue reading Healthcare providers share how their Pagan practices nurture them through the pandemic at The Wild Hunt.

NASA added the name of the goddess Artemis to new missions. TWH examines some possible implications of the secretive "Artemis Accords" and how they relate to previous treaties and agreements that pertain to space and celestial bodies.

Continue reading The mysterious Artemis Accords describe US interests in space resources at The Wild Hunt.

Good morning and apologies in advance, as I’m again one of those loathsome (that if, if you were shivering somewhere) people who just returned from the beach, where we went on vacation last week because our kids were off from school and we didn’t see why they should have all the fun. Around me were turquoise waves, glittering with sunlight, lapping gently at the silky white-sanded shore and there were no children having tantrums or whining because this was a magical place — and at some of those things are true. However, as will always happen on vacation, while we had some enviable tacos and aguachiles, I was only a few days in when I started to fiercely miss home-cooked food, most especially this salad I’d made the week before.

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In the first world of first world-liest problems, a problem I would love to be having this very week when I’m shivering again (despite many suggestions of spring on the near horizon) is that when in my life I’ve been lucky enough to decamp to a tropical location for a vacation, and wish to do what one does on tropical vacations — I mean, aside from wearing such buckets of SPF that when I return people comment, “I thought you went to the beach?” — and that is ordering a piña colada. Possibly at a swim-up bar. In a hurricane glass with a tacky paper umbrella in it, a fluorescent maraschino cherry, and a creamy-tart balance that is unfettered vacation bliss with each sip. The problem is that they’re very often…. terrible, tinny and artificially-flavored. I mean, I drink it; I’m not a barbarian. But every time I do (daily, at 4:30pm, please), I vow that when I get home, I’m going to make a real and proper and perfect one to set things right again.

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I hope nobody you know is sick right now. I hope it’s, at worst, a common cold, common boredom bred by self-quarantine, or a stubbed toe because you tried some ridiculous workout video you found online. Or, if you’re me, last week, after yet another thing fell out of my chaotic freezer onto my foot (I don’t even get to blame “fitness”) I decided to, what’s that word, it feels so unnatural to type… organize? Right, that. I decided to sift through the freezer and see what was taking up so much space and I realized that Deb Of A Few Months (let’s be honest: probably longer) Ago did a very cool thing and made an excess of chicken stock and froze it in one-quart bags which meant that “wohoo! dinner is sorted!”

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I’m really enjoying Lukas Volger’s new cookbook, Start Simple: Eleven Everyday Ingredients for Countless Weeknight Meals. It came out two months ago, a positively bizarre time in which we entered and left our homes with abandon, casually hugged friends we were happy to see, and if our nose became itchy, we’d scratch it and not stand paralyzed in panic afterward. What salad days! Volger’s new book wasn’t created with pandemic cooking in mind — what was, really — but it feels just right for right now because each chapter focuses on a staple our local store is miraculously not out of (tofu, tortillas, beans, greens, squash, and more), and the recipes have refreshingly short ingredient lists and unfussy assemblies. Volger’s vegetarian cooking is very doable, the kind of do-ability that comes from the fact that this is clearly the food he cooks for himself at home, so all of the kinks are smoothed out. Everything sounds so good — smoky chickpea salad with olives and lemon and black beans with scallion-lime vinaigrette from the bean section are on my shortlist — you might find yourself wondering why this unwavering simplicity isn’t the goal of every cookbook.

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I know, I know, you don’t need to tell me that there are already four banana bread recipes on this site, plus four additional banana cakes, and that’s probably enough, right? Genuinely, I believed I was done too, that the Banana Baked Goods course at SK University* had been completed. But then a few things happened. After creating the pumpkin bread of my dreams and what I hope will be the last zucchini bread recipe you’ll ever need over the last couple years, it began to bother me that the banana bread recipes on the site lacked what these have: a towering height and a crunchy top that will be hard not to lift off in one giant tile and swiftly coat the underside with salted butter. So, I created one and I’ve been keeping it to myself for over a year because, see above: SK is probably at Banana Bread Capacity. But over the last few weeks of, well, not doing a whole lot else, I can’t help but notice that we’ve all been making a whole lot of banana bread. And I think you might like this one instead.

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My love of french fries is vast and well–documented — preferably in a golden, crisp and glittering-with-fine-salt heap with some aioli, an artichoke or oysters and ice-cold, very dry champagne, outside at a bustling cafe in a life that seems a bit distant right now — so I hope you will take this statement with the utmost gravitas when I say that these crispy potatoes are as good as, if not better, than fries.

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For many years I’ve been fascinated by variations on yeast-free yogurt flatbread recipes (sometimes called yeast-free naan) that follow a loose formula of a cup of yogurt, a couple cups of flour, some salt, fat, and water. Sometimes there’s baking powder, sometimes there’s not. It’s kneaded together as you would a yeasted bread dough and left to rest for about 30 minutes, sometimes an hour, during which a transformation occurs and the dough becomes springy and smooth and very lovely to work with, like a freshly-opened can of Play-Doh. Once rolled thin, they’re pan-fried, and look, they’re fiiine. But they’re never as good as I want them to be.

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My friend David Lebovitz, OG food blogger and nine-time author, wrote a book on the iconic cocktails, aperitifs, and cafe traditions of France, including 160 recipes, that came out in March. It’s the kind of book that makes you feel like you’ve hopped on a plane to fly to Paris to spend long, leisurely afternoons-into-evenings wandering, sipping and tasting this and that, something I had the delight to do almost a year ago in person. The circumstances might be terrible, but it feels like a bit of luck that he’s created a book that allows us to recreate these tastes and the feeling, as best as possible, at home.

David wastes no time dropping us into Paris at dawn, right around the time we’d be stumbling off a too-brief-to-be-restful redeye, where the lights in cafes are flickering on, followed by the coffee machines. Baguettes are picked up in paper sacks that will be served with butter and jam. He explains that cafes are the living rooms of Paris, places where artists and writers have long worked, attracted by the heat that their homes lacked, and the wine, and remain places to meet friends outside your too-small apartment, freeing you from having to clean up before people come over. From café au lait to chocolate chaud (hot chocolate), citronnade (lemonade), into l’heure de l’apero (a time to unwind with a drink before dinner) to the craft cocktail movement of the last decade, the book is a bit of a dreamland, so perfect for those of us who desperately miss wandering right now.

Read more »

Dork Tower is 100% reader supported.  Join the Army of Dorkness today, and help bring more Dork Tower to the world! By becoming a Dork Tower Patreon backer, you get our everlasting gratitude (and also swag, commentary, bonus strips, and more swag), but, critically, you’ll help us reach our next goal – three comics a week! WE ARE […]

Dork Tower is 100% reader supported.  Join the Army of Dorkness today, and help bring more Dork Tower to the world! By becoming a Dork Tower Patreon backer, you get our everlasting gratitude (and also swag, commentary, bonus strips, and more swag), but, critically, you’ll help us reach our next goal – three comics a week! WE ARE […]

Dork Tower is 100% reader supported.  Join the Army of Dorkness today, and help bring more Dork Tower to the world! By becoming a Dork Tower Patreon backer, you get our everlasting gratitude (and also swag, commentary, bonus strips, and more swag), but, critically, you’ll help us reach our next goal – three comics a week! WE ARE […]

Dork Tower is 100% reader supported.  Join the Army of Dorkness today, and help bring more Dork Tower to the world! By becoming a Dork Tower Patreon backer, you get our everlasting gratitude (and also swag, commentary, bonus strips, and even more swag), but, critically, you’ll help us reach our next goal – three comics a week! HINT: […]

Dork Tower is 100% reader supported.  Join the Army of Dorkness today, and help bring more Dork Tower to the world! By becoming a Dork Tower Patreon backer, you get our everlasting gratitude (and also swag, commentary, bonus strips, and even more swag), but, critically, you’ll help us reach our next goal – three comics a week! HINT: […]

Dork Tower is 100% reader supported.  Join the Army of Dorkness today, and help bring more Dork Tower to the world! By becoming a Dork Tower Patreon backer, you get our everlasting gratitude (and also swag, commentary, bonus strips, and even more swag), but, critically, you’ll help us reach our next goal – three comics a week! HINT: […]

  Dork Tower is 100% reader supported.  Join the Army of Dorkness today, and help bring more Dork Tower to the world! By becoming a Dork Tower Patreon backer, you get our everlasting gratitude (and also swag, commentary, bonus strips, and even more swag), but, critically, you’ll help us reach our next goal – three comics a week! […]

Dork Tower is 100% reader supported.  Join the Army of Dorkness today, and help bring more Dork Tower to the world! By becoming a Dork Tower Patreon backer, you get our everlasting gratitude (and also swag, commentary, bonus strips, and even more swag), but, critically, you’ll help us reach our next goal – three comics a week! HINT: […]

Dork Tower is 100% reader supported.  Join the Army of Dorkness today, and help bring more Dork Tower to the world! By becoming a Dork Tower Patreon backer, you get our everlasting gratitude (and also swag, commentary, bonus strips, and even more swag), but, critically, you’ll help us reach our next goal – three comics a week! HINT: […]

 

One virus; 18 ways of seeing the world. Covid Latam is a collective project documenting the coronavirus pandemic as it unfolds across Latin America. Photographers – 9 men and 9 women – are working in 13 countries: Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Cuba and Mexico to document the unfolding story of the pandemic through the Covid Latam instagram account

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Determined to find an uplifting moment every day, the Yorkshire photographer Rebecca Cole has been in search of images that bring spring to her family and friends in lockdown. She has been sharing a daily image with them via Blipfoto for the last six and a half years, but photographing nature has provided a particularly welcome escape in recent weeks

Cutting short our holiday to Cuba as Covid-19 took off, it was an eerie feeling transferring through an emptying Paris Charles de Gaulle airport in the middle of the day with the shutters down on duty free. I wasn’t sure what to expect when we got home but, while life felt uncertain, I knew my wildlife - my haven - would still be there. The countryside around Burley-in-Wharfedale, my home, has become my daily sanctuary, now more than ever.

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The pick of the world’s best flora and fauna photos, including a sunbathing squirrel and cuddling owls

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People including veterans observe Victory in Europe Day amid lockdown

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The photographer Olivia Harris has been seeking out the sun worshippers of London making the best of their front stoops, balconies, window ledges and gardens, and finding out how they are managing under lockdown

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Second member of banned folk group dies in country where few political protest options remain

İbrahim Gökçek died at an Istanbul hospital after almost a year on hunger strike protesting against the detention of his wife, Sultan. She was still in prison, rather than at his side, when he died in intensive care on Thursday, two days after abandoning his strike.

Gökçek, a bass guitarist, is the second member of the banned left-wing folk music band Grup Yorum to die in just over a month after launching hunger strikes over the Turkish state’s treatment of their band: 28-year-old Helin Bölek, a singer, died on 3 April after 288 days of fasting.

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The strange tale of how paradise came to be located in a Victorian semi not far from the town centre

That the Garden of Eden remains absent from travel bucket lists is, perhaps, unsurprising. Unlike El Dorado or Lyonesse, however, its location is no mystery. It even has an address: 12 Albany Road, Bedford. And while the Victorian house is modest in size, its garden does boast a cosy tearoom, and how it came to be there is as surprising as its geography.

More than 200 years ago, religious prophets – spiritual gurus of their day – attracted loyal followers and occasionally courted scandal. One such was Joanna Southcott from Devon, who in 1814, at the age of 64, declared herself pregnant with the new messiah. The baby failed to materialise and Southcott died a short while later, but not before presenting a mysterious locked box to her followers. It was to be opened in a time of national crisis, and would bring peace and prosperity on Earth – but only if 24 bishops prayed over it for three days. Bishops being busy fellows, Southcott’s box remained unopened and passed down through her followers until it came to the attention of Mabel Barltrop.

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Cherished figures from pillar of country’s culture among the dead, as virus hits working-class areas

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Like so many of his neighbours in Madureira – a working-class neighbourhood considered Rio’s “cradle of samba” – Álvaro Silva was a diehard supporter of the local samba school, Portela.

Just a few weeks ago the 76-year-old percussionist watched in delight as the group to which he had dedicated more than half of his life took to the streets for its annual carnival procession.

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Ireland’s 7,000 pubs, 50,000 staff and millions of customers are in crisis. Time for some blue-sky thinking…

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

If it’s a balmy evening and you hear buzzing in the sky over Rathdrinagh, a townland in the middle of Ireland, the odds are that it’s not bees but beer.

Specifically, a drone carrying bottles of beer, and maybe a bag of crisps. “Bottles of Heineken usually, or sometimes a few cans of Bulmers,” said Avril McKeever.

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Cities like Barcelona want to use crisis to allow people to rent properties at decent rates

Airbnb has revolutionised travel and since it was founded in 2008 hundreds of thousands of property owners have used the holiday accommodation platform to make ends meet, make a living and, in some cases, make a killing.

But while hosts, as they are known, are wringing their hands over the collapse of the travel industry and their loss of income, many city authorities are rubbing theirs at the prospect of thousands of holiday lets returning to the traditional rental market. Cities complain that the highly profitable holiday lets have driven up rents and forced out residents with the knock-on effect that local businesses no longer have a community to serve.

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What does the second world war mean to millennials in Europe? We asked for their views

This weekend marks 75 years since the end of the second world war in Europe, and 70 years since the foundations were established of what became the European Union. With the continent facing its biggest challenge since 1945, do the lessons of the war and its aftermath have any resonance for young people? Millennials from around Europe share some of their thoughts and fears.

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We would like you to share your tributes for friends and family who have died

Covid-19 has now claimed the lives of thousands of people in the UK.

Older people and those with underlying health conditions are much more vulnerable to the coronavirus, but it can affect people who are otherwise fit and healthy.

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We’d like to hear from those who attended events between the end of February and early March such as Wolves v Espanyol and Cheltenham Festival

We’d like you to help us document the spread of coronavirus due to some of the mega-events that went ahead between the end of February and the first couple of weeks in March.

Those events include: Wolves v Espanyol Europa League game, Liverpool v Atletico Madrid Champions League tie, Six Nations cup games and the Cheltenham Festival.

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We want to see your photos, videos and audio of what it is like doing your job on the frontline

Staff working for the NHS have expressed concern about the lack of protective personal equipment, with photographs circulating on social media of staff creating their own makeshift items, including with clinical waste bags.

We want to see healthcare workers’ photos, videos and audio of what it is like doing their job.

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