> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://davidnunez.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Tastes Like Chicken - URL: https://davidnunez.com/tastes-like-chicken/ - Published: 2026-11-05T20:06:05.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-05T22:16:24.000Z - Description: “There is no way you will ever be able to write something so straightforward that Elon Musk will understand it the way that you intend it.” (Ted Chiang) - Author: David Nuñez - Tags: broadcast, bricolage ### **A game I'm playing** [**Borderline**](https://www.habibicode.org/borderline?ref=davidnunez.com) erases the borders of a country or a state and you draw them from memory. It takes about one state to learn how much of your mental map has been running for decades on nostalgia and rapid decay of spatial awareness. Every line every player has ever drawn is consolidated on [The Drawn Maps](https://www.habibicode.org/thedrawnmaps?ref=davidnunez.com). The world map holds 385,349 drawings. The ink piles up into a crisp border where players agree and dissolves into fog where they don't. You are looking at what all of us, together, think the world looks like. Parts of the map are smudged. Boundaries are fuzzy. Indeed. I grew up in Texas, where kids see the outline of the state branded on everything from belt buckles to novelty food products. We still get it wrong when we try to draw it... except the panhandle. We can all do the panhandle. I think that's the box where Lubbock and Amarillo live. ![H-E-B's Texas-shaped tortilla chips. Even the chips nail the panhandle. Image: H-E-B](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/11/Pasted-image-20261105141844.png) H-E-B's Texas-shaped tortilla chips. Even the chips nail the panhandle. Image: [H-E-B](https://www.heb.com/product-detail/h-e-b-texas-shaped-white-corn-tortilla-chips/127886?ref=davidnunez.com) ### **A search engine to lose your afternoon** [**Arkivism**](https://arkivism.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) searches millions of public-domain images from the Rijksmuseum, the Met, the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, NASA and more than a dozen other collections. You describe the picture in your head, in plain words, and it comes back with paintings, photos and prints that match. A "More like this" link under each one sends you off down a trail of lookalikes. Everything it returns is public domain or CC0, so you can download it and use it for whatever you like. I have a lot of questions about what it costs to run millions of images through an AI model so you can search them by vibe, but it's fun. I asked for [a man losing an argument with a goose](https://arkivism.com/explore?q=a+man+losing+an+argument+with+a+goose&ref=davidnunez.com) and got Sancho Panza fighting an ostrich. I asked for a [potato that tastes like chicken](https://arkivism.com/explore?q=potato+that+tastes+like+chicken&ref=davidnunez.com) and got a potato on a pamphlet about bacterial wilt and soft rot. ### **The potato I need in my life** According to [Food & Wine](https://www.foodandwine.com/row-7-poulette-potato-12147524?ref=davidnunez.com), researchers at Cornell crossed a rare French heirloom potato with one of their own breeding lines in 2014 and spent more than a decade on it. Chef Dan Barber's team tasted the result and declared that it tastes like roast chicken. They named it the Poulette, French for a young hen. Texas solved this years ago from the other direction. [Chicken-fried steak](https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/the-best-little-old-chicken-fried-steak-in-texas/?ref=davidnunez.com) is a cow treated like fried chicken... always with "gravy." That is if by "gravy" you mean excess grease and flour slurried into a delicious, but artery clogging sludge (i.e. "roux"). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/11/image.png) Everything's bigger in Texas, Crazy Gals Cafe in Burnet via [r/austinfood](https://www.reddit.com/r/austinfood/comments/1oajztm/im%5Flooking%5Ffor%5Fthe%5Fbest%5Fcountry%5Ffried%5Fsteak%5Fi%5Fcan/?ref=davidnunez.com) ### **An essay for your next walk** Melanie Challenger wrote [an essay in Aeon](https://aeon.co/essays/the-more-we-rely-on-tech-the-more-we-deskill-our-bodies?ref=davidnunez.com) arguing that leaning on GPS, phones and AI may be deskilling our bodies. One study she cites followed 13 GPS users for three years and found their spatial memory declined faster than other people's. Her summary of the whole problem: "In surrendering to a quick technological fix, we are, moment by moment, doing less sensing, navigating, remembering, walking, choosing, and attending." That may also explain the fog on the maps in item 1\. I've written about [apps that want you to go outside](https://davidnunez.com/some-apps-want-you-to-go-outside/) and about [GPS sending people into the desert](https://davidnunez.com/the-one-star-is-for-the-auntie-annes/). Kiko, my puppy, has read none of this. He navigates the neighborhood by nose and has an opinion about every tree on the block. I read it as a nudge to leave my phone in my pocket on our walks and let him lead. ![F1BFA9E5-896D-4380-B72E-32598F12C316_4_5005_c](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/11/F1BFA9E5-896D-4380-B72E-32598F12C316_4_5005_c.jpeg) Kiko and I discussing politics as we walk to my polling station earlier this week. ### **A video I'm making** I'm working on a YouTube video. It's about the [ninety-ninety rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety%E2%80%93ninety%5Frule?ref=davidnunez.com), which Tom Cargill at Bell Labs came up with and Jon Bentley made famous in a 1985 column: the first 90 percent of the code takes the first 90 percent of the time, and the last 10 percent takes the other 90 percent. I am somewhere in the second 90 percent and have been there for the last month. The next video will be about irony. ### **A quote I'm chewing on** > "There is no way you will ever be able to write something so straightforward that Elon Musk will understand it the way that you intend it." Ted Chiang, talking with [Charlie Jane Anders](https://buttondown.com/charliejane/archive/ai-stories-in-the-age-of-ai-hype-a-conversation?ref=davidnunez.com) [Anders](https://www.charliejaneanders.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) asked him how to write science fiction about thinking machines without feeding the hype that Silicon Valley is about to build one. He started with the general case, "There's no way to write fiction and guarantee your readers will understand it correctly." Read the whole interview if you write about the future at all. Chiang has a lot to say about doing it without selling the hype. It has me rethinking how I write about the future myself, so more on that to come. / David **Listening:** "[The Final Countdown](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw&ref=davidnunez.com)," Europe, 1986\. Turn it up for the last 10 percent of anything. **Reading:** Simon Willison on [how good AI got at making fun video games in October](https://simonwillison.net/2026/oct/28/vibe-game-development?ref=davidnunez.com). He built several with Claude, none with more than four hours of his own work, and wrote: "The thing I find both exciting and shameful about this is that I have got interesting results from so little creative input." Same.