Jessa's absence from the clan's Christmas party has led to speculation about a possible rift within the Duggar family

Pumpkins, witches, black cats – forget it. If you want to slay at Halloween these days, you’ve got to think outside the box. Of course, few of us have the budget or on-call makeup artist to recreate Heidi Klum’s iconic worm get-up, but that’s no excuse not to cause a stir. The internet is awash with weird, wonderful and down-right mind-boggling costume ideas to get your creative juices flowing. And so, with October 31 just a few days away, indy100 has rounded up all the most brilliant and bonkers options to help you secure your place as the belle of the monster’s ball. Pick of the best 1. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce We know you're as invested in this blossoming love story as we are, so get yourself an Eras-style dress and an NFL jersey and prove it. 2. Allan '"There are no multiples of Allan. He's just Allan." So forget Barbie and Ken – don a rainbow-striped flannel shirt and truly stand out from the crowd. 3. Succession's "ludicrously capacious bag" "What's even in there? Huh? Flat shoes for the subway? Her lunch pail? I mean, Greg, it's monstrous. It's gargantuan. You could take it camping. You could slide it across the floor after a bank job." You know what we're talking about. 4. Tanya from the White Lotus "These gays, they're trying to murder me." Gone but never forgotten. 5. ‘Instagram vs reality’ This is both easy to recreate and genius. (Just careful who you ask to be your "reality"...) 6. Bob Ross + painting Euphoria's Lexi inspired a whole generation of Bob Ross costumes. And now they're available on Amazon. Aaand... some weird ones 7. Deer in the headlights Someone came up with this idea and it actually got made. Oh, and it can be yours for a mere £64.99. 8. Spaghetti and meatballs Seeing someone clutching a pair of giant meatballs is not our idea of a Halloween treat. But, hey, if you're into it and you're based in the US, you'll just need to fork out $84.98 to recreate this look. 9. Light plug and socket We would argue that whoever came up with this had the opposite of a lightbulb moment.Though, to be fair, it is pretty creepy. (And can be yours for $31.99 – or around £26 plus shipping.) 10. A pair of trainers Look, we're not trying to be purists and we get that Halloween isn't all about cobwebs and zombies any more but, seriously, what the hell does a pair of sneakers have to do with anything? Honestly, if you think this one is for you, you can pay your £59.99 and jog on, as far as we're concerned. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

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The next time you eat something with your hands, take a moment to notice how it feels on your fingertips before taking a bite. If it’s a burger, are the buns smooth or covered in a smattering of sesame seeds? When you put pressure on them with your fingers, does the bread squish down or is it more of a crumby affair? Then, when you finally take a bite, notice how satisfying it is to sink your teeth through its layers; soft bun giving way to crunchy lettuce or onion, to oozy cheese to, finally, juicy patty. Now think about how different it would be if you had used a knife and fork. Eating with one’s hands is an immensely pleasurable experience. While in the West, the act is usually confined to foods encased in bread or pastry, Indian, African and some other Asian cultures are more adept at using their fingers for dishes that might seem too “messy” or “sticky” on this side of the world. One of my favourite dishes is banana leaf rice, which at its core comprises of rice, vegetables and curry. I mix each element of the dish and use a pinching motion with all five fingers to construct the perfect bite, before sweeping it up in a quick motion and delivering the food to my mouth. I find that it forces me to really consider each bite, from what flavours and textures I want it to contain, to how large a portion I can manage. Up until a few months ago, I never really thought about how often I eat with my hands. Like many people, I associated it closely with Indian meals and always thought that Western culture was too obsessed with polite society to really dig their fingers in. This is still true, to an extent – many South Asians who grew up eating with their hands report being looked at with horror when they attempted to do the same in public here. But, after witnessing my very white British husband happily dig into banana leaf rice when we began dating, and having conversations with friends about the topic, I’ve come to realise that eating with our hands is a much more universal act than I thought. For example, burgers, pizzas, hot dogs and chips are all eaten by hand – unless you’re eating one of those beastly burgers that tower too high and need to be deconstructed. Then there’s things like fried chicken or shellfish, which are simply easier to pick up, pull apart and pry open using your fingers. Foods like Mexican burritos and tacos or Japanese sushi are commonly picked up by hand and devoured. Some people enjoy eating salads by hand, finding it easier to use pieces of lettuce filled with dressing and other ingredients like edible spoons. A surprising proponent of this was Sylvia Plath, who wrote in the third chapter of her 1963 novel The Bell Jar that she observed a poet eating a salad “with his fingers, leaf by leaf”, making it “seem to be the only natural and sensible thing to do”. The more I think about it, the more I realise that my hands are my favourite utensil. No one is delicately picking up crisps with chopsticks or forking a French fry. All manner of flat breads – from parathas and naans to injeras – beg to be torn apart by hands and used to mop up dhal and curry. I would never think of eating a sandwich with a fork and knife, any more than I would for a Taiwanese bao. It just seems wrong. On this side of the world, cutlery has reigned supreme until very recently. Primitive humans have been carving knife and spoon-like implements for centuries, while the fork is a surprisingly modern invention. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, a Byzantine princess debuted a golden fork at her wedding feast in Venice 1006, which disgusted locals who ate using their fingers and knives. One Venetian apparently condemned such a tool and said: “God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks – his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to him to substitute artificial metal forks for them when eating.” There’s perhaps also an aspect of self-consciousness being thrown out the window when we eat with our hands. It banishes the concept of formality and Anglocentric ‘table manners’ Surekha Ragavan Despite the initial rejection, forks became a mainstay across Europe after 1533 when Catherine De Medici, wife of Henry II, hauled a collection of silver forks from Italy to France in 1533. Three hundred years later, the full set of silverware as we know it had integrated itself into everyday life in Europe. Manners-obsessed Victorians then made up all sorts of etiquette rules, from how to hold a fork, to the myriad of different-sized cutleries with very specific purposes – like fish knives and dessert spoons. These became class markers, separating the upper echelons of society with their dinky utensils from the lower classes, who worked too much to care about which spoon went where. But one thing could be agreed upon – eating with one’s hands was considered impolite and vulgar in almost all culinary situations. That is, until about a decade ago when DeBrett’s, the British authority on etiquette and behaviour, declared in their 2012 guide that “table manners are no longer about adhering to a rigid, and outdated, code of conduct”. The experts named foods like pizza and calzone as “acceptable” foods to be eaten using your hands. It also advised such adventurous eaters to create “as little mess as possible”, sit up straight and ensure you “never put your elbows on the table”, proving that some old habits die hard. Bristol-based restaurateur Rashintha Rodrigo, one of the five founders of Sri Lankan restaurant group The Coconut Tree, says he eats almost anything with his hands – even a roast dinner. “I start with a fork and knife but always find myself picking pieces of chicken or potato off my plate with my fingers towards the end of the meal,” he laughs. He also grew up eating rice and curry with his hands in Sri Lanka, and felt self-conscious about doing the same when he moved to Britain. But these days, he finds it liberating. “It’s become more accepted in the past five or six years and more people are curious about it,” Rodrigo says. Surekha Ragavan, founder of Periuk, a digital archive of heritage Malaysian recipes, also finds freedom in the act. “There’s perhaps also an aspect of self-consciousness being thrown out the window when we eat with our hands. It banishes the concept of formality and Anglocentric ‘table manners’,” she says, reminding me of another observation by Plath in The Bell Jar. The author’s liberation is slightly different, though, as she wrote: “I’d discovered, after a lot of extreme apprehension about what spoons to use, that if you do something incorrect at a table with a certain arrogance… nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are original and very witty.” Those who advocate eating with hands often also say it makes the food taste better, but no one seems to be able to pinpoint why. Jose Pizzaro, the acclaimed Spanish owner and founder of the Pizarro group of restaurants, describes it as “the best way to eat”. “It’s a visceral pleasure that’s really hard to beat,” he says. “It creates a sort of magical connection between you and the food. If you’ve never eaten a big, fat, juicy prawn covered with garlic and lemon with your hands, and then go through the ritual of pulling off the legs and the shell and then sucking the brains out – you haven’t lived!” But why is the tactile sensation of touching food so delightful? Some opine that touching your food is beneficial because you can gauge food temperature better with your fingers, and so run a lower risk of burning your tongue. Others claim that your fingers have “healthy bacteria” on them that get transferred into your digestive system when you eat with your hands, but these are difficult to quantify. However, Charles Spence, professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford, believes the pleasure lies in our perception of food, as opposed to any other physical benefits. In his review of how the experience of eating changes when people eat with their hands instead of cutlery, Spence found that having more direct, tactile contact with food appears to “enhance the experience” of eating and drinking. “There’s a lot of sensory input that happens even before we put the food in our mouth,” he says. “Just by using our sensitive finger pads, we almost anticipate how tasty something is going to be before it reaches our tongue.” There’s practicality in using our hands to eat, too. We can determine how ripe a fruit is by squeezing it gently, or figure out if something is going to be soft or crunchy before biting into it. Of course, there are some dishes that are simply not hand-friendly. Noodles, pasta and soups obviously require cutlery to eat, but there’s nothing to stop us from taking more joy in the foods we can eat with our hands. If you’ve never tried handling anything beyond a sandwich or a pasty, I fully encourage you to try something new. Take a leaf out of Plath’s book with your next salad, perhaps, or take the plunge into some rice and curry. It will require practice to develop the skill of eating without dropping rice absolutely everywhere, but I promise you, it’s worth it. Read More Adorable, cuddly… evil? How the Furby took over the world ‘You think it’s going to be a money making machine’: How modern life killed the hobby The dish that defines me: Mallini Kannan’s baked honey-soy salmon 30-minute summer recipes for all the family to enjoy What to cook this week: Tomato tart, sweetcorn pasta and other summery suppers The dish that defines me: Mallini Kannan’s baked honey-soy salmon

The sunny holiday weekend (and its plethora of sales) is nearly here — but that doesn’t mean you have to wait for it to take advantage of its deals. Lucky for you, there are some early bird Memorial Day sales available to shop all over the internet. If you’re in the market for big deals on things like the best mattresses with sky-high reviews or the most coveted Dyson vacuums, then it’s time to make those big purchases for less — especially for anyone who, instead of sale sleuthing, needs to catch up on some WFH e-mails after a long weekend of chillin’ by the pool. On top of premium beds and cleaning gadgets, there are plenty of excellent fashion Memorial Day sales, marked-down sex toys, and more worthwhile steals on offer. We’ve taken stock of all of the best sales you should shop — and listed out all the live promos within our Quick Links section below for fast and easy access to the final [dis]countdown. Go forth and fill your virtual baskets with a bounty of summer staples on super sale — and feel content in knowing that you definitely scored that coveted Satvaa bestselling mattress for the lowest price possible. We’ll just be here, behind this screen, keeping tabs on the best early Memorial Day sales that are available to shop.

Will someone please tell us who the hell owns AI.com and what they're doing with

Daniel Ricciardo will return from injury for this weekend’s United States Grand Prix. The 34-year-old Australian has missed the past five races after he broke his left hand in practice for the Dutch Grand Prix on August 25. However, the PA news agency has been told that Ricciardo, who took part in a Red Bull demonstration run in Nashville last weekend, will be back in his AlphaTauri cockpit for practice at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas on Friday. New Zealander Liam Lawson, who has impressed as Ricciardo’s stand-in, will make way. Ricciardo was due to take part in only his third comeback race when he crashed in Zandvoort. He was immediately taken to the medical centre before he was transported to a nearby hospital with his left arm in a sling. A subsequent X-ray confirmed Ricciardo had sustained a break to the metacarpal on his left hand. Ricciardo was ruled out of the race in Holland and the following rounds in Italy, Singapore, Japan and Qatar. Ricciardo was handed a second chance by Red Bull’s junior team AlphaTauri following his dismissal by McLaren at the end of last season. Despite his injury, AlphaTauri announced last month that they have retained the eight-time grand prix winner winner for 2024 alongside Japanese driver Yuki Tsunoda. Read More On this day in 2009: Jenson Button crowned Formula One world champion in Brazil FIA to review Qatar GP as ‘dangerous’ temperatures prompt driver complaints Lewis Hamilton and George Russell vent anger on radio after collision in Qatar

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