The Sixers ruled Joel Embiid out for their game Thursday night in Utah.
January 2024
Storm guard Kia Nurse and No. 4 pick traded to the Sparks for 2026 first-rounder
This will be the third consecutive year that Kia Nurse has played for a new team.
Tennessee v. NCAA: Could the death penalty be involved?
Dan Wetzel, Ross Dellenger & SI’s Pat Forde devote today’s episode to Tennessee’s lawsuit against the NCAA after reports that the University of Tennessee is under investigation for NIL violations.
Use This Homemade Seasoning Mix for Better Popcorn
The next time you make popcorn, treat yourself to some flavor. I insist. Pop a big bowl of the crunchy stuff and dust your favorite bespoke popcorn seasoning over the whole thing. I’m not talking about that silly bottled powder at the grocery store. Why buy overpriced popcorn salt when you can make an endless variety of flavors right at home? It’s so easy and quick there’s really no reason not to try it. Let’s get poppin’.
Barring dietary restrictions, eating plain popcorn seems like forcing yourself to nosh on packing material (you really should use it as packing material). You don’t need loads of butter or oil to add flavor, you really just need salt and seasonings that are pulverized down into a fine powder. The super-fine particles get caught in the irregular hooks, crags, and ditches of each popped kernel, delivering well-balanced flavors in every handful. Here are two ways to do it.
Use a mortar and pestle
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
This is my favorite tool because the mortar and pestle allows you to make a single serving, or a whole lot in one go. I always start by adding the largest ingredients first. The salt is likely one of them, and it’s possible that you’re only sprinkling on salt, so go ahead and add that to the mortar bowl. In my recipe below, I use sea salt and nutritional yeast flakes. Those are the two chunkiest components so they go in first. If you’re using dried herbs, you’ll add them at this step.
Use the pestle to grind down the ingredients with firm pressure in a circular motion around the bowl. I probably did this 15 to 20 times around until I was happy with how fine the salt and flakes got. It took maybe as many seconds to do this. If you’re unsure about how fine the powder is, look at the powder at an angle under a light. You’ll see the light catch some of the salt crystals. If they’re too big, or there are a lot of them, give it all another round of smashing.
Add any other dried, powdered seasoning you like. This is a great time to add seasoning blends, like steak seasoning, or garlic seasoned salt. I used some of Trader Joe’s Everything but the Leftovers Seasoning Blend which incorporates a ton of other ingredients to make a seasoning that tastes like Thanksgiving dinner. Popcorn flavored as Thanksgiving sounds like the right move to me. (It’s never too early to prepare my tastebuds.) Using the same motion, grind down the seasoning mixture until it becomes a fine powder. Your popcorn seasoning is ready to go.
Use a spice grinder or blender
A spice grinder, coffee grinder, or food processor can pulverize your popcorn powder too. The only qualm I have with these is that you might have to make quite a bit of powder in order for it to catch on the blades. Even then, sometimes the grind can be uneven. Add the ingredients in the same order: blend large pieces first, then add the ground seasonings. Blend until you have a fine seasoning mix.
The recipe below makes a cheesy, savory mix with just a bit of heat. My recommendation is to go light on the cayenne. That little minx’ll catch you the wrong way if you add too much. Then you’ll come back here coughing and leaving cranky comments. I don’t want that. Be safe.
Almost Doritos-flavored Popcorn Seasoning
Ingredients:
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1 teaspoon sea salt
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1 tablespoon nutritional yeast flakes
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½ teaspoon Everything But the Leftovers Seasoning Blend
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¼ teaspoon paprika
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Pinch of cayenne
With a mortar and pestle, grind the sea salt and nutritional yeast until you get a fine powder. Add the other seasonings and grind them all together a few times until you have a homogenous, fine seasoning powder. Sprinkle the powder over your popcorn and toss it to get a more even coating. Save the remaining in an airtight container until your next bowl.
PBT’s Week 15 NBA Power Rankings: Clippers take over top spot, Knicks rising fast
Detroit also climbed out of the cellar of the rankings (beating the Thunder and Hornets last week).
Domas reveals he started strict diet before Kings’ 2023-24 season
Kings All-NBA center Domantas Sabonis revealed he began a strict diet this past offseason ahead of the 2023-24 NBA season.
Jaylen Brown advocates for ‘Raise the Age’ bill at State House
Celtics star Jaylen Brown voiced his support for the “Raise the Age” bill during a visit to the Massachusetts State House on Wednesday.
An Orioles legend is about to be an Orioles part-owner
Cal Ripken Jr., the face of the franchise for several decades, was one of nine people named as part of the team’s new $1.7 billion ownership group.
Cal Ripken Jr., Grant Hill, Michael Bloomberg part of Orioles’ new $1.7 billion ownership group
The former face of the Orioles is now a part-owner of the Orioles.
LG’s Smart Washer and Dryer Uses AI to Make Laundry Less of a Chore
I’ve always been sure there were easier ways to get the laundry done. While it’s not the head-to-tail solution I dream of wherein I throw my clothes to the floor at the end of the day and they magically regenerate clean and on hangers in my closet the next, the latest iteration of smart washing machines from LG do alleviate a surprising number of pain points. I tested the Smart Washer with TurboWash® 360° and AI DD® Built-In Intelligence (currently $999, regularly $1299), and its mate, the Smart Electric Dryer with Sensor Dry & Steam Technology (currently $899, regularly $1199). That’s a mouthful, but the important part is that these new models use the LG ThinkQ technology as well as AI DD® Built-In Intelligence.
Well-designed machines
Though most people tuck their washing machines away, you won’t need to do that with this pair. They have sleek, beautifully simple faces on the brushed metal frame. When off, you see the interface as a simple round dial with a black face, and a minimized drawer for the detergent bay on the washer. There are no rounded corners on the machine, everything is sharp mitered edges intersecting circles for the doors and dials. These machines are on the taller side, each standing almost 40 inches tall. Once stacked, they’re tall enough you might strain to reach the top dial. If you’re shorter, one benefit of the connectivity of these machines is that, through the app, you can ask the machines to ignore the dial on the dryer, and use the washing machine controls for both machines. When on, the digital interface uses contemporary fonts, colors, and even seasonal pictures in a pretty high resolution. Turning the dial or pressing a button brings the machines to life; otherwise, there are no lights to bother you. Rather than buzzing when a cycle is complete, the machines offer a selection of classical tunes. Once a month or so, you’re sent new tunes and graphics to choose from. For winter, I had an animated snowman greet me and play Vivaldi’s “Winter.” While I expected to be bothered by the noise and overall cheeriness, instead I was kind of delighted by a washing machine set that seemed to interact with me.
ThinkQ makes controlling your machines from the couch possible (mostly)
The machines pair seamlessly with ThinkQ, LG’s smart appliance app. It immediately picked up the machines and connected and led me through a two-minute setup. The app will prompt you to remotely turn the machines on and off, and configure your wash or dry cycle and then send that cycle to the machine. What it won’t do is allow you to remotely start the machine, even if the door is closed. You can activate “remote start” for each machine, which would allow you to do so, from the physical control panel, but remote start isn’t a perpetual state: You have to deactivate it to open the door after a cycle, and reactivate if after. Essentially, this means you have to go up to the machines to turn on remote start; once there, you might as well just start the damn thing. This is probably a safety feature, but I wish i could sign a disclaimer that I have neither cats nor children who’d climb inside my machine. My main complaint with the app—and it’s not a deal breaker by any stretch—is that although LG integrates with Google Home and other smart assistants, it doesn’t do so in any way that is particularly helpful. If you’d like to use your machines in automations, you can’t. At most, you’ll see the machines in your smart home dashboard, and that they’re on or off.
A much more efficient process
Remote start aside, streamlined UX is at the heart of these machines, and where it’s clear LG has worked to try and make laundry as painless as possible. This starts with the detergent: Instead of adding pods and sheets or softener to every load, the detergent bay holds about a quart of detergent and softener, and will dispense it automatically. So far, I’ve only had to refill it every few weeks and it’s meant being able to store my drippy bottles away and eliminate use of dryer sheets altogether. There isn’t a reservoir for bleach, which would have made it a perfect trifecta. Once you place laundry in the machine, you can configure a wash and dry to the usual specifications regarding heat, length, level of agitation, dry time, etc, or you can simply activate AI wash, where it simply figures it out for you. While the dryer has occasionally required a little more time, the AI wash has done an admirable job of sensing the load and treating it appropriately. All of this translates to tossing laundry in, hitting one button and walking away.
Reminders that aren’t judgmental
Where these machines really shine is when the cycle is over. I have never been a person who consistently moves the laundry as soon as it’s done. I know there are people who, like me, forget about their laundry or ignore it until they need to run another wash. If this is you, LG has you covered on two fronts. First, the app will, after a period of time, send you a non-accusatory or shame-y reminder that clothes don’t benefit from this kind of prolonged wait time, and will continue to remind you. They also offer you the ability to activate KeepFresh, which essentially tosses the laundry around occasionally to, yes, keep it fresh, until you get back to it. KeepFresh works in both the washer and dryer, so your clothes don’t get deeply wrinkled while you wait for motivation. All of that said, KeepFresh doesn’t keep going forever, and I missed the quick rinse option that previous machines had. At best, LG has a quick wash, but it is an entire cycle, rather than a short rinse. This was how I previously had solved the problem of leaving laundry in the washer too long.
Steam cycle is one of the best features
In case you do get wrinkles, one of the most fantastic features of this dryer is the steam cycle. I was blown away with how effective it is. If you’re someone who has uses the dryer to get out wrinkles rather than iron, you are going to love this functionality. As a test, I used the most wrinkle-prone laundry I could find—thin cotton cloth napkins, tablecloths and sheets. Ten minutes in a steam cycle and they looked pressed, with no curling corners or creases.
Where smart appliances could go next
I have almost no complaints about these machines—they cleaned very effectively, held an accurate amount of laundry for their size, and efficiently completed washing cycles. Mostly, they made me think about ways smart washing machines could get smarter. At CES this year, Eureka introduced a wash tower where a robot vacuum was integrated into the footprint. At the same time, we’re seeing a new fleet of robot vacuum/mop combos that you actually pipe into your water line so they can fill and empty themselves. The next leap in smartness for these machines might be how they work with other home appliances, and even how they can use that AI to ensure the water from all these devices are safe and offload the gray water to house plants.
Bottom line: it doesn’t cost much more to get a smarter machine
These machines are not dramatically more expensive than machines without connectivity or AI. Do you need any of these features? No. You don’t even need a washing machine—people got by before they existed. But I, for one, welcome every single tiny iteration that makes our lives easier.