Thursday: Yargle.

Today, Julie posted a comprehensive set of polls about chicken wings.  These polls largely came to the correct conclusions.  Flats are far superior, as they have a higher fraction of fat that can be rendered out, with a minimum volume of bone.  They are the messiest to eat, but the twist and extract method immediately tells you if they were cooked correctly (poorly cooked wings do not extract cleanly) and is really efficient.  They should be sauced with a liquid sauce, as a dry rub is insufficient way to transfer flavor.  In addition, since they should be fried, a dry rub is going to be cooked too much.  Blue cheese dressing is the best, as it is cooling against the heat of the sauce.  Plus: ranch is gross.  Finally, I chose carrots as the correct side, as I like carrots more than celery.  "Both" is the technical correct answer, although it's fine to throw the celery away for being crap.  I would go further to suggest that the best carrots are rather thinly cut (< 1cm squares in cross section).

I have associated images available here, which has a detail on the best way to sauce.

Because of all that, I decided to try the wing place by work for lunch.  It turns out that they've gone downhill, too.

Here's why these don't match the optimum described above.

This place doesn't do wings like normal people.  They do what I've heard referred to as "Canadian style," but I can't find much evidence that that's a popular term.  In any case, as shown here, they don't cut the wing parts apart.  This is wrong, as although they claim they "give you the whole wing," nobody eats the wingtip.  It's just not done.  So, you're stuck with more work, an inedible extension, and since they're not great at cooking them, a mess when you try to get the parts apart.  So, the easier option for lunch is to get the boneless tenders.  However, they often come out like this instead of the saucy goodness they should have.  Because they don't use enough sauce (or some other reason), they turn into these lightly shellacked things that have a mostly dry texture.  One thought is that this happens because they over cook and then over blot the tenders, resulting in a piece of chicken that must steal all the moisture from the sauce to not spontaneously convert into desert.  They do have blue cheese, but are never consistent with supplying a side.

The other thing I'm complaining about today:  Google "Whatever that thing when you swipe to the left on my phone, or do a long click drag up from the home key on my tablet because it's an older version of Android, so it's not consistent".  It shows news stories and the weather, and insists on keeping an election bar open that I don't care about.  My first complaint was that it keeps recommending articles from sites I have no interest in visiting.  Yes, Google.  I was quite interested in Gawker.  No, I do not care to read gloating about their shut down from a fucking MRA site.  WTF is wrong with you to even suggest something like that?  Then, after clearing that out, I see this:

Really?

Yes, Google, I am interested in Superman.  That article is using "Superman" as a metaphor.  Somewhere your machine learning has failed to learn.

• Pokemon.
• Vaporeon and Eevee.
• I needed a second Pokemon link, and this was the best I could do.  I feel sorry for those fish.
• Not Pokemon.
• "Ineffectual malicious AI."
• I was going to narrow it down to the chandelier, but really it's the whole thing.
• Evan Narcisse is really doing the best comic book commentary I've seen in forever.  Also: it's unfortunate Dwayne McDuffie died.
• Who is surprised by this?  
• I wasn't super into grad student unions when I was a grad student, but I had a reasonably decent advisor.  That is not universally true, and although there are complications with funding (as it's usually grant based, and that implies some time limits), have pretty much changed my mind on the topic.  Especially with the proliferation of sexual harassment, grad students need to be treated as proper employees, and not people who should feel obligated to ignore things because their advisor is "helping them out".  Your employer is not your friend, and that should be made clear.  "But won't that force people to finish faster?  And what if they don't get enough work done during regular hours?  That's not going to work!"  Yeah.  Change the fucking system.  It's not sustainable or healthy in the current form.