ZD 25.21: Living the Asada Life

Grilling your way into the boom boom summer of 2025.

Cooking over fire is an amazing perk of the summer. PK Grills are amazing, cooking asada-style is a dream and who to follow and read for barbeque advice.

The Distilled Spirit

The Future is Now

🧬 Hacking Working Genes (Rational Optimist Society)
Baby J was born with a rare genetic disorder. She was cured by modifying her genes. Eric Topol agrees that this is a great moment for mankind.

🚂 Substack is the Intellectual Engine (Big Think)
The enlightenment started with letters and secret societies. Maybe this intellectual revolution starts with posts, restacks and back channel chats?

🗣 What Drives Dwarkesh (The Generalist)
Dwarkesh Patel does some of the most important and interesting intellectual work explaining these times. What drives this curiosity?

💤 Sleep Reduction Therapies (Sam Harsimony)
How did sleep evolve and what purpose does it serve?

Economics and Education

👨‍⚖️Indian Judicial Costs (Homo Economicus)
There is a three century-long judicial backlog in India. Decades long court procedures act as a brake on growth, keeping larger and better run companies out.

🥠 China’s Manufacturing Moment (Thomas des Garets Geddes)
China sees artificial intelligence and automation as its key advantage in holding onto manufacturing in the face of gravitational pull to lower cost labor markets.

🏙 A Conversation About Cities (Erdmann Housing Tracker)
We have a lower half of the population, but not a lower half of the housing stock that has evolved to suit them.

🏛 Belle Époque Beauty (Res Obscura)
The world just before cars was closer and more beautiful, the raw newness of the technology made it breathtaking and nostalgia makes life in the fin du siècle era seem better than it was.

👩‍🌾 Mississippi Has Good Schools!?!?!? (The Education Daly)
Apparently the term “thank God for Mississippi” does not carry the weight it once did.

AI Macro View

📺 The Real State of Vibe Coding (More or Less Podcast)
Two veteran technologists and investors discuss the state of vibe coding today. How does the hype match up to the reality?

🤖 AI Panic Hurts Students (Educating AI)
Moral panics about AI destroying critical thinking skills and more are not going to help the current wave of students coming into a world full of AI.

👮‍♀️ Criminalizing Consequences of AI (Tech Law Standard)
Prosecutors are seeking criminal charges in some cases where AI has injured.

📎 Microsoft’s Agentic AI Vision (Every)
Microsoft held a conference and announced their AI vision centered around using tools like MCP to create an AI ecosystem on your PC with your data.

Google’s Big Week

🔍 AI is Rewriting Search (The Strategy Stack)
AI is changing the way search works forcing Google to adapt.

😃 Google’s Human Centric AI Vision (Every)
Google wants to use their pile of data to make your humanity better.

📹 Veo3 is Amazing (Futurism)
In case your feeds have not lit up with it yet, Google’s Veo3 can make realistic video clips with sound. I am not sure if the world is ready.

📉 Google’s Slow Death has Begun (Michael Spencer)
Desktop search is clearly declining and Google is flailing, launching dozens of AI products without clear revenue streams.

AI You Can Use

🧶 The Great Unbundling Of Work (Rahim Hirji)
AI unbundles your work and hollows your expertise. How can you reimagine your role for the new world?

✒ Personal Tech Stack (Agora)
How Matthew Harris uses his half dozen AI tools. Worth stealing ideas from.

🕹 Gamify Your Ideas (AI blew my mind)
One superpower of AI is that you can make ideas 3d and interactive.

The Zeitgeist Grilled 2025

Memorial Day marks the unofficial start to grilling season in the US. Smoking and grilling meat is very important to this author. Here are a few things I have been watching and using that might help you get ready for the boom boom summer of 2025.

The PK Grills for the Kamado Guy

The superpower of the kamado grills is the ability to hold heat. That large ceramic shell heats up and stays hot. It makes for a great environment for long, slow cooks as it gets to 225 and stays there for hours easily. It is amazing when you want to get it really hot for things like bread or pizza. That same size and heft become a challenge for more quick-fired foods where you want to use offset techniques. Round shape and heat ramp-up combine to make reverse sear a bit of a trick.

That is why I now have two charcoal grills — the PK 360 and a Big Green Egg. Both grills are a dead on simple concept. Each has a straightforward design, combining two solid pieces that fit together with a few adjustable air holes, creating a simple yet effective system without overcomplicating things. Temperature control is a similar construct, you have fuel and fire and control the airflow to manage things. Beyond that they are great grills for different problems. The Egg is a big, heavy thermal sink that gets very hot when you cook open. The PK gets used for just about everything else where you want more responsiveness.

PK Buying Tips

Now that you know you want one, here are some tips about buying one of your own.

• Don’t pay full price. PK runs sales a lot, and subscribing to their newsletter can be worth it. Don’t get roped into big accessory bundles; you don’t need too many of them. I, too, am not sure what a griddle cover gets you on a charcoal grill.

• The one accessory you must have is a chimney. For some reason PK does not sell one. The shape of the grill makes lighting slow, a chimney makes lighting the fire almost as fast as heating up a gas grill properly.

• The grill expander rack is also very nice to have; it is the one way to give you more surface at the offset end where you need more surface.

• Surface area is a constraint, the PK 360 is bigger and better than the other options.

Going Asado Style

Across South America, asado means both the act of grilling food and the social gathering around the culinary tradition. The grilling is often slow and deliberate and is typically done over open fires. While the food cooks, you catch up with friends and neighbors.

In this style of cooking, temperature control is achieved by managing the proximity of the meat to the heat rather than controlling the flame using air or fuel supply constraints. Argentinian chef and author Francis Mallmann has been pushing the envelope with what are being called Asado domes. These domes are pre-fabricated structures designed to sit over your fire and give you the framework to hang the food while it slowly roasts. Beyond the domes, Gaucho style grills are also making a comeback. There are a lot of styles to choose from now. Unfortunately, my back yard is a bit too small to take one, but they have hit my “things to buy when I have the space” list. Stay tuned for that review.

Beyond domes, large cuts of meat and open flame are taking off in other ways. Why cook a whole hog when you can cook a whole steer?

Continuing Grilling Education

Meathead is my guiding light for cooking anything over fire and he has dropped a new book. The Meathead Method is a two-part masterpiece. The first section covers lots of important food science and overall techniques for making great food on the grill or elsewhere. A condensed version of On Food and Cooking in many ways. The second half is the recipe book, largely pulled from the website but conveniently all in one place.

Mad Scientist BBQ has become one of my favorite cooking channels on YouTube. He does a very good job of exploring and explaining new techniques and busting myths. Start with the wrap comparison video for an example of earlier work. He asks important questions like adding beef tallow to your brisket and “does rubbing your beef in beef bouillion make your rub obsolete.”

Smoking Dad BBQ does an amazing job exploring different kinds of grills. He is a kamado man first and foremost, not unlike your author, but he has a lot of range beyond that. The overviews and hints about the grills are first rate. If you are thinking of making a major grill purchase I would start on the YouTube channel.

On Substack, The Smoke Sheet is a great to keep up with the trends. Their guide to perfect BBQ bark is a masterwork. It is a handy lo-fi way to track the barbecue scene.

Enjoy the outdoor cooking season!

Musical Coda

The Look

This is how I feel about AI news these days.

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