Anna Wiener’s chronicling of Silicon Valley is truly a gift and her piece on **moderating Hacker News** is such a perfect exploration of one of the tech industry’s cultural landmarks. You should also absolutely **pre-order her book**.

Not really related except in a tertiary kinda way that probably only makes sense to me is **this essay** by Jia Tolentino, who also has **a book you should definitely buy**. Tolentino is going to be co-hosting **an event with Mike Isaac** next month, ostensibly about Uber (**buy Mike’s book too**?) but I’m hoping is really just a Silicon Valley dunkfest. I’ll be there!

Building new things is very hard and building new media things is damn near impossible. Pacific Standard always shone brightly to me, especially as a new media thing on the west coast, so **the news that it’s very suddenly shutting down** is a true shock. **Longform has a collection** of just some of the amazing stories they produced.

Unfortunately related: **ten journalists on why they left the news biz.**

From the desk of @phillygirl, my personal twitter curator (and total hottie): Summer Streets offers **a vision of Manhattan without cars**! It’s not even totally carless, just one damn street.

My fandom of any and all things sports is casual at best, even for my professed favorite Carolina Tarheels and Chicago Cubs. My lifetime average for baseball game attendance is roughly one a year, and yet this piece on **the single family responsible for the mud rubbed on every major league baseball** is just gold.

I cringed my way through this brief **history of the rabbit corkscrew** with a mix of shame, derision, and self-recognition. Why the hell did we all have those stupid things?! 

One of my first actual online jobs was at one of the **longest running digital libraries** (we called it *metalab* back then, the 90’s were a crazy time, kids). So **this latest attempt to make e-books better** called to me.

Sunday Supper: Dry-brined, grill-roasted, butterflied chicken

This is a variation on one of my all-time favorite main courses (not to mention a personal culinary white whale): the roast chicken.

I’ve tried every well-known technique and plenty that have thankfully been forgotten. When the world has ground me down, roasting a chicken is a near-certain way for me to reclaim some of myself. When I have a Sunday afternoon to while away, I prefer knowing there’s a roaster in a nearly too-hot oven. When I have access to a grill, I will absolutely cook that bird over a grate.

This works best if you can start a day ahead of time. First step is to remove the backbone completely. There was a time when the internet was all a tizzy about the silly name, the less said about that the better. You can use a chefs knife here to just cut through the rather thin bones that attached to the chicken spine or, if you’ve got sturdy kitchen shears, I find those work even better. Flatten the fowl as much as you can but putting it skin side up and pushing down on the breasts — you might hear a satisfying (or blood curdling) snap of collar bones. I’ve butterflied hundreds of chickens and every time — every. single. time. — I think about how this is almost certainly how aliens will have their way with me when the time of reckoning comes.

Now, the dry brine. Me, I stick with **Russ Parson’s technique**, which he **fully admits to borrowing** from Zuni Cafe’s Judy Rodgers: measure out a tablespoon of kosher salt for every 5lbs of bird (roughly the average size of your average chicken, so we’re talking a tablespoon of kosher salt for every bird on hand), pat the bird dry with paper towels, then salt it all over. Use a little bit — let’s call it a fifth — on the underside, reserving the rest for the outer, which is to say, skin side. If this is your first dry brine, you will think it’s too much salt, just trust the process here (there’s actual science at work, not to mention osmosis, to which I will leave adventurous cooks to google).

Consider aromatics at this point as well: grated lemon zest is nice. Might I recommend some za’atar dusted across the skin (I’m putting za’atar on damn near everything these days). Put your chicken on a plate or a tray and leave it in the fridge overnight, preferably uncovered to help the skin dry out.

About an hour and a half or two before you want to eat, start your grill (give yourself an extra half hour if it’s charcoal). Set it up in the two stage configuration, where one side is quite hot, the other is, well, cooler. On a gas grill, this means one set of burners is medium to medium high, another set is low. For charcoal, just move all the coals to one half of the grill.

Put you butterflied chicken on the cooler half of the grill, skin side up, with the legs facing the hot side. Why? Because you want the legs to hit a higher temperature (I aim for the gams to finish around 175ºF) and that’ll let the white meat cook a bit more slowly. 

Periodically check in on things, but don’t baby it. Tend to any flare ups from the fat rendering over the fire. When the temperature of the breast is about 120ºF, flip the entire bird over — a combination of a big-ass spatula and some grill tongs works well here. Let it cook another ten minutes or so until the breast hits 150ºF. 

Remove from the grill, flipping again so the skin side is up, and maintain your cool demeanor. Pour another beer. Carve this bird by removing both legs, separating the drumstick from the thigh, then remove and halve the wings (as a reward for your hard work, feel free to just devour the flats), then work the breast off the ribcage and split in two. 

Everyone will love this and you will never have to suffer the indignity of someone suggesting a “beer can chicken” ever again.

A final, departing editor’s note: I’m still playing with the format — is this working? There are a few Amazon affiliate links up there — is that cool or needy/douchey/creepy? Let me know! And also: cook that chicken, seriously.

Be well and be kind,

Jim

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