ROBOTS ARE FUCKIN CREEPY but i hate doing dishes, get me one please
Boston Dynamics has a new 55-pound robot with an arm that looks like a head. It gets up after slipping on banana peels and can load your delicate glassware into the dishwasher.
Do they deliberately make these videos unsettling and creepy? Or is that just me? That last scene, where the robot kinda lunges at the guy and then falls over...I might have nightmares about that.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has awarded a transgender man its Sexiest Vegan Next Door award for the first time.
34-year-old Salt Lake City resident and transgender activist Dexter Thomas, who has been vegan for almost 17 years, has worked on bullying of sexual-minority youth and opposed rodeos put on by the Utah Gay Rodeo Association.
“An impressive combination of compassion and commitment to taking action against injustice has secured 34-year-old Salt Lake City resident and transgender rights activist Dexter Thomas the top honors in PETA’s 2016 Sexiest Vegan Next Door contest. Dexter, who beat out contestants from across the U.S., is the first-ever out transgender winner of the contest. He will enjoy a free vacation for two to Maui, Hawaii, courtesy of Humane Travel – a trip he plans on taking with his mother to celebrate her recent completion of months of chemotherapy and radiation.
“Dexter’s deep commitment to exposing the common roots of oppression and advocating for individuals in need, regardless of species, makes him number one on our list,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA encourages anyone who’s inspired by our sexy vegan’s strength and compassion to follow in his footsteps and go vegan.”
On winning Sexiest Vegan Next Door 2016, Dexter said:
“I learned firsthand that people are capable of immense cruelty toward others who they perceive to be inferior to them. When I started to realize that this attitude drives a transphobia, homophobia, sexism, and so on, I also realized it fuels outdated attitudes toward other animals. This is part of what motivated me to go vegan when I was 17.”
Out Trans Man Dexter Thomas In The Running For PETA's "Sexiest Vegan Next Door" – NewNowNext https://t.co/4Z6v9LyFX8
Archer is sticking around at FX. The network announced today that it’s given the animated series a triple renewal, which will keep it on the air for an eighth, ninth, and tenth season. Season 7 wrapped up its run earlier this month, and season 8 will consist of eight episodes and debut sometime early next […]
Senator John McCain on Thursday blamed President Obama for the Orlando massacre, saying he is “directly responsible” for the worst terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.
McCain, who lost to Obama in the 2008 election, made his remarks to press on Capitol Hill. McCain was responding to questions about Democrats’ filibuster on gun control, a move prompted by the deadly mass shooting at the gay nightclub, Pulse, on Sonday.
“Barack Obama is directly responsible for it, because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures,” McCain said.
When pressed by a reporter on the claim that Obama was “directly” responsible, McCain reiterated his point — that Obama should not have withdrawn combat troops from Iraq.
“He pulled everybody out of Iraq, and I predicted at the time that ISIS would go unchecked, and there would be attacks on the United States of America,” he said. “It’s a matter of record, so he is directly responsible.”
Sensing a backlash, McCain then tweeted a clarification, saying, ” I was referring to Pres Obama’s national security decisions that have led to rise of #ISIL, not to the President himself.”
To clarify, I was referring to Pres Obama’s national security decisions that have led to rise of #ISIL, not to the President himself
Despite offering messages and prayers of support for the victims and survivors of last weekend’s massacre in Orlando, House GOP leaders have blocked a vote on a proposal to ban federal contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) (above) filed an amendment to a Defense spending bill that would enforce a 2014 executive order prohibiting such discrimination. Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Richard Hanna were co-sponsors of the amendment.
As an #LGBT American I'm at a loss. Our community suffers tremendous loss, now GOP lawmakers refuse to even allow a vote.
— Sean Patrick Maloney (@RepSeanMaloney) June 15, 2016
.@HouseGOP so committed to discrimination they refuse to even allow vote on my amdt. to prevent discrimination against #LGBT Americans.
— Sean Patrick Maloney (@RepSeanMaloney) June 15, 2016
The Defense bill is expected to reach the House floor this week. However the House Rules Committee failed to green-light Maloney’s amendment for a vote.
Seems like affirming basic protections for LGBT employees of fed contractors would be simple response right? Nope. https://t.co/Lwqqa5Lvxp
Appearing in front of the House Rules Committee, Maloney referenced last year’s racially motivated shooting in Charleston, S.C., that led to increased restrictions on displaying the Confederate flag. “Hate has no place in our flags, in our workplace, or in our country,” he said, “and it should have no place in federal law.”
Maloney told The Hill that allowing an anti-discrimination vote would be “a very positive step to say that discrimination has no place in our law and to reaffirm the president’s actions in this area.”
Maloney (pictured above) first introduced the measure as an amendment to a Veterans Affairs spending bill in May. The amendment at first looked like it would pass until a handful of Republicans switched their votes from “yes” to “no” in order to defeat the measure.
The Democratic congressman then introduced the measure as an amendment to an energy and water spending bill, which passed. But the pro-LGBT amendment caused the entire spending bill to fail in the House.
Following those votes, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) sought to limit the amendments to spending bills in order to keep the appropriations process from being derailed, according to The Hill.
Earlier on Tuesday, House Rules Committee chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) (right) came under fire after he claimed Pulse, the site of Sunday’s massacre in Orlando, was not a gay club. Representatives for Sessions later said he had confused the fact that straight people were at the club for a general nightclub.
Asked Rules Chair Sessions if Orlando shooting changes calculation on LGBT Maloney amdmt. He argued Pulse was not a gay club.
If Oscar Isaac were your boyfriend, he'd know about your penchant for doodling people during long phone calls. You’d leave your notebook open on the kitchen counter and return later to find your sketches surrounded by speech bubbles, giving them fascinating conversations that hinted at rich inner lives.
If Oscar Isaac were your boyfriend, sometimes he’d jokingly call you his “problematic fave.”
As we reported, Cooper on Tuesday held Bondi accountable for her entrenched opposition to gay marriage over the years. Cooper particularly went after Bondi for the argument her office used to oppose same-sex marriage, that allowing gay couples to wed would cause “significant harm” to the state of Florida.
Speaking on WOR’s “Len Berman and Todd Schnitt in the Morning”, Bondi yesterday said she was blindsided by Cooper’s questions on gay marriage and that he “completely flipped and got into a constitutional issue of course.”
She added, “The interview was supposed to be about helping people’s families, not creating more anger and havoc and hatred yesterday. Yesterday was about unity, about bringing people together, about helping people.”
Bondi also suggested Cooper’s line of questioning was inappropriate.
Now, Anderson Cooper is not letting that sit. In a segment on AC360 last night, Anderson responded to Bondi’s claims, blasting the Attorney General for misrepresenting what the interview was supposed to be about and standing by his duty to hold Bondi accountable for working to pass anti-gay legislation while trying to put a compassionate face toward the LGBT community in the wake of Orlando.
Said Cooper:
Let’s be real here. Miss Bondi’s big complaint seems to be that I asked in the first place, in the wake of a massacre that targeted gay and lesbian citizens about her new statements about the gay community and about her old ones.
“For the record, my interview was not filled with any anger. I was respectful before the interview, I was respectful during the interview and I was respectful after the interview. I don’t know Pam Bondi personally, she seems like a nice person actually. I don’t think she has hate in her heart. But what I think doesn’t matter, its my job to hold people accountable. If on Sunday a politician was talking love and embracing quote ‘our LGBT community’ I don’t think it’s unfair to look at their record and see if they have actually ever spoken that way publicly before which I never heard her say.
The fact is, Attorney General Bondi signed off on a 2014 federal court brief that claimed married gay people would pose ‘significant public harm’. Harm. She spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money. Gay and straight taxpayers money, trying to keep gays and lesbians from getting the right to marry. Now look, good people can and do disagree on that issue. everyone has a right to their own opinion thank goodness. But Ms. Bondi is championing right now her efforts to help survivors but the very right which allows gay spouses to bury their dead loved ones – that’s a right that would not exist if Ms Bondi had had her way. I think it’s fair to ask her about that. There is an irony in that.
My name is Peter and I've been a longtime fan of your podcast and comments in the media. I've also been very involved with the Human Rights Campaign and their work to getting the Equality Act passed. I'm 21 and only recently out of the closet. I opened up about my sexuality after the passage of marriage equality last June, and have since then been a very proud gay man.
It seemed that since marriage equality, our community was only going up. Even the passage of HB2 didn't make me cynical about the future that lies ahead of myself as a gay man. But this recent shooting has changed my world completely. Fighting for equality in housing, education, and employment seems like a joke after this massive act of violence occurred.
Anyway, don't know how to respond to this and I'm looking for someone in the community for guidance. Any would be appreciated.
Peter S.
They don’t win — the haters don't win — when they chase us, beat us, or kill us. They win when we stop fighting.
Please don’t stop fighting.
And please don’t despair. Hundreds of thousands of us died in the 80s and 90s when hate, fear, greed, racism, and negligence intersected with a deadly virus. A lot of us then felt they way you do now — that it was over, that it was hopeless, that the coming out and the organizing and the fighting had been for nothing, and that everything we had won up to that point was meaningless. And then we got up off our butts and we showed them — we showed those motherfuckers — that the fight in us was greater than the hate in them. We showed them that we were stronger and smarter than they were, we showed that fucking virus that we were stronger and smarter than it was, and we made it clear to them that we were not going to shut up and die quietly or go back into the closet and die alone.
And we only had each other for a while there — for a long while. For years we fought alone.
Look at who is on our side today — all good and decent people. The President of the United States. The Democratic nominee. A majority of the American public. Look at the rallies, look at the vigils, look at the outpouring of love, sympathy, and support. Don’t look at the killer. Don’t look at the haters. Don't look at the vile comments left by shit people on Twitter and Facebook. Look at the good. Look at the love. Look at the good and loving people inside and outside the LGBT community and take strength from their love and support.
Did anyone else have this guy? How is this the first time I've been reminded of this since childhood even though I've read over 3,000 "you know you were born in the 80s if" listicles?
For something so elementary, mushrooms are shockingly easy to fuck up. It is, usually, an issue of water content: you’re battling liquid leaching from a fungus while trying to cook it in oil, trying to sear or crisp or darken its outsides while its insides gush. (Remember this: crowding leads to steaming!) They rarely taste bad, of course, if you employ enough salt and fat, but you’ve had really good mushrooms before; you know these are not them. You know there’s something you’re missing. You want soft and lush and earthy and you’re only maybe seventy percent of the way there.
Enter: oil poaching. It’s a technique most commonly used to cook fish, whose delicateness benefits from gentle, low-temperature cooking. Duck confit is another classic example, albeit with a different form of fat. But oil poaching may be the easiest way to successfully make your mushrooms great, whether they’re the wallet-emptying farmers market sort or brown buttons from the bodega.
Oil poaching is often employed in Spain’s Basque country, among other places. In her new cookbook, The Basque Book, out this month from TenSpeed press, chef Alexandra Raij includes a recipe for setas confitadas—essentially confited mushrooms, poached slowly in oil until all their squeaky chew is gone.
In the recipe’s headnote, Raij explains that the Basques use this as a way to preserve wild mushrooms, whose season is short but hotly anticipated. The Basques always have large stores of oil on hand, the way cooks in the American south keep bacon fat in a recycled can next to the stove. They use and reuse their olive oil, to poach mushrooms and then potatoes, maybe, for tortilla española. They treat it with reverence but they’re never stingy. Perhaps the most important advice you’ll find in The Basque Book is this: “I strongly recommend buying oil in the largest container that makes sense for your family. You won’t be treating it as a precious thing to be used sparingly, and you’ll end up paying less if you buy it in larger quantities. Use it and then reuse it.” Oh, also: buy the good stuff.
While the mushrooms cook, the oil bubbles gently as though it were simmering; really, those are pockets of water vapor escaping. (Oil doesn’t really boil—not before it smokes, at least.) When the mushrooms are done, they have a sweet, pure mushroom flavor, without the interference of caramelization or herbs. The texture is velvety and juicy, rich but not greasy. The most luxurious fungus you ever did see. This lushness can be attributed to both the spongy texture of mushrooms—which leads to some oil absorption in the cooking process, something that doesn’t happen so much with a piece of fish—and the scientific differences between oil and water. Many cooks favor oil poaching over poaching in water or stock because it makes for gentler cooking, and a more tender result. J. Kenji López-Alt, author of The Food Lab Cookbook, explains it this way: “Water has a specific heat of around 2.25 times that of oil, and is also about 25% more dense, which means that a cup of water at a given temperature (say, 140°F) will have nearly three times more energy in it than a cup of oil at the same temperature.” Less energy means gentler cooking and more tender results. But López-Alt also points out that much of oil poaching’s perceived effect comes from external texture. The piece of fish or chunk of mushroom coated in oil tastes juicier and richer because of an outer coating of oil—”so they actually taste moister than foods cooked in water.”
Depending on how you look at it, treating mushrooms this way is either brilliant (more fat, yay!) or dangerous (more fat, boo!). But the effect—buttery as all heck, so tender it feels young—is pretty unrivaled. And at the bottom of the pot, you’re left with ultra-concentrated mushroom liquid, far sweeter and richer than any stock you could simmer. It’s a scant but luscious potlikker, the sort of thing a host will want to save for herself.
“For me, I have this whole thing about lessons [I’ve learned] from pil pil,” Raij recently explained over the phone. Pil pil is a cornerstone of Basque cooking, and reductive in its simplicity: poach cod in garlic-infused olive oil, and the gelatin from its bones seeps into the oil, turning the latter into a silky sauce. It’s served just like that: rich sauce over a piece of fish, monochromatic and smooth. The dish “totally radicalizes the way you think about food forever,” says Raij. “It’s like you’re recovering everything—kind of like a pan sauce, but way more complex and more elegant.”
Poaching mushrooms in oil—and ending up with mushroom-infused oil in turn—is the sort of thing that can incite a giddiness in home cook. The slippery little results are perfect on garlic-rubbed toast, as Raij suggests in the book, or chopped and tossed with pasta, or laced into a grain salad. They get particularly friendly with an olive oil-fried egg; bonus points if you use your shroom oil for frying.
From here, the possibilities of expansion are a sort of choose-your-own-adventure game. What else could you poach? Egg yolks, apparently, in a rustic version of spherification. Tomatoes, too, which Raij claims turn into a ball of tomato sauce held together by skin. Fish, sure; potatoes, of course. Your byproducts are even more exciting: take that mushroom-infused oil and make it stronger by poaching more mushrooms. Fry an egg in it. Whisk it into mushroom aioli. That cooking liquid left at the bottom of the pot—you can add some vinegar, whisk in some excess oil, and you get a vinaigrette. Resourceful recipes are all well and good; recipes that turn you into a resourceful cook are gold.
Also Paul Hollywood had an affair with his American co-host when they tried to make it happen here.
Why “The Great British Bake Off” Didn’t Translate Into American.
Not for lack of trying.
The most popular television program in the United Kingdom last year was an amateur baking competition, in which the contestants show off their technical skills and creativity with puddings and pastries. “The Great British Bake Off” is a BBC show that PBS began carrying in 2015 under the title “The Great British Baking Show,” and American viewers can’t seem to get enough. In a tent on the lawn of an English manor, Celebrity chef Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry, England’s grande dame of cookbooks, judge the creations; they are as withering as it’s possible to be about rosewater and Victoria sponge. But “American Idol” for cakes this is not. Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, a well-known comedy duo (“Mel and Sue”), leaven the proceedings with color commentary and light innuendo. There are no villains or alliances; the bakers help one another race against the clock. The worst thing to happen on the show was the tossing of a failed Baked Alaska into the trash, in an event now known as “bingate” or the “#bincident.” The show has been so successful in Britain (the most recent season finale drew fourteen and a half million viewers) that it’s inspired spinoffs in seventeen other countries, from South Africa to Ukraine, with varying levels of success and renewal. Curiously, no American version of the show has ever taken off.
CBS tried in 2013 with “The American Baking Competition,” a show very similar to the original in structure, down to the inclusion of Paul Hollywood. But something about the formula was off. Jeff Foxworthy’s jokes were a little too daddish and soft — the “soggy bottom” joke doesn’t quite land in an American accent — and Hollywood’s dynamic with co-judge Marcela Valladolid, a young Mexican Food Network star, was notably different (it was later revealed that they had an affair). The bakes were slightly less ambitious — one of the technical challenges was to make s’mores. Most significantly, there were stakes. The winner received a prize of a quarter of a million dollars and a cookbook contract with Simon and Schuster, whereas the British version has no prize at all but the glory of being crowned the country’s best amateur baker. In “Bake Off,” the contestants got to go home during the week, to see their families and practice their bakes. But in this version, the contestants were deprived of their families and homes until the competition was over. This ratcheted the pressure and emotions up to an especially high pitch, driving some contestants to tearful thoughts of their children their debts. The show ratings were abysmal and the show was not renewed.
ABC gave it another run in 2015 with a Christmas special called “The Great Holiday Baking Show.” This time, Mary Berry judged with pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini, the leather-jacketed bad boy of desserts, and there was no funny business beyond some giggles about Berry’s pronunciation of “tutti frutti.” The producers took great pains to remain so faithful to the British original that they even filmed it all in England, in the same tent using the same ovens with retractable doors (one hopes they were provided a new set of measuring cups). The hosts, married actors Nia Vardalos and Ian Gomez, didn’t quite possess Mel and Sue’s knack for delivering a bad joke and still making it funny. Their commentary was sedate, so their praise came off as a little too kind. Indeed, the most damning thing one can say about “Bake Off” is that it’s sweet TV, the television equivalent of a feel-good Upworthy post that would go viral on Facebook (“This Show About Cakes Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity”). Even the British version came under a fair amount of criticism from viewers who found it tediously nice or evidence of a reversion to “the twee and the gentle.”
It’s not as though desserts are uncharted territory for successful cooking shows in the U.S. — we’ve had “Cake Boss,” “Ace of Cakes,” “DC Cupcakes,” and “Top Chef: Just Desserts.” And it’s not that American bakers are any less technically skilled than the Brits, except perhaps in their French pronunciation (the U.S. version opts for “pastry cream” instead of “creme patissiere” and “choux tower” instead of “croquembouche”). The casting in both versions is conscientiously diverse. But from the tea cakes to the puns, it’s all just very British. One can see how ABC might have hoped for a Christmas show to work, because of the overall animating principle of holiday spirit. The holidays are always a heady mix of nostalgia and traditions wrapped around flour and sugar, but in Britain, the animating spirit is ever thus. Moreover, baking has a strong working-class tradition — Paul Hollywood’s father and grandfather and Mary Berry’s great-great grandfather were all master bakers.
But “Bake Off”’s success has less to do with national identity than with national psyche. The show is a reminder that awfully boring-sounding amateur leisure activities — like knitting or building model trains — can be valuable for a well-balanced spirit. BBC Two is in fact doubling down on “Keep Calm and Carry On” television with somehow even more British-sounding programming like “Great British Garden Revival” and “Great Pottery Throw Down.” But in America, where we talk about lengths in football fields and television ratings in fractions of Super Bowls, our entertainment is oriented more toward competition and celebrity rather than deep pleasure in craft. The Americans on these shows also tended to have a less peaceful relationship with desserts. On CBS, there was a diabetic who couldn’t eat her own treats and not one but two gym rats — a fireman and a sorority sister — who were openly resented by their peers for fattening them up.
The original “Bake Off” captures the quirky, gentle competition of a spelling bee, combines it with the urgency of a cooking show, and adds a pinch of provincialism. But more than that, it’s a show about a hobby, and the status quo, and that is the most British thing of all. In her New Yorker profile of Sharon Horgan, Willa Paskin nails the difference between British and American Television. She’s writing about sitcoms, but the heart of the observation is the same:
U.K. sitcoms tend to be darker than American ones, encouraged by a powerful public broadcasting system whose aim is to serve the varying tastes of taxpayers, not the upbeat preferences of advertisers, and by a national psyche fixated on the immutability of the class system, not on a dream of self-improvement. Americans believe that things will get better. Brits laugh at how things stay the same. To become a hit in the United States, “The Office” not only had to transform the tragic, grating boss into a less tragic, less grating, more well-meaning boss; it had to cast off the message, central to the British original, that work is where you go to waste your life.
To become a hit in the United States, “Bake Off” would have to cast off the message that baking cakes is just a thing to do to pass the time when you’re not wasting your life. The preferred American activity is to watch other people wasting their lives, ideally while they, and possibly we, are wasted. Hence: Vanderpump Rules.
Let Them Bake Cake was originally published in The Awl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Gay people on Nauru – an island republic in Micronesia which hosts a refugee detention center funded by the Australian government – can no longer be jailed because of their sexual orientation following a change to the country’s penal code.
The update also outlaws marital rape and prevents the jailing of people who attempt suicide.
— Scott Cuthbertson (@ScotCuthbertson) May 27, 2016
The new act replaces a criminal code that dated back to 1899 and was based on old Queensland laws. Under that law, a refugee was convicted and fined in April for attempted suicide. Island authorities said the move was designed to “stamp out the practice.”
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, slavery and forced child labor have also been outlawed as have punishments including the death penalty, solitary confinement and hard labor. Abortion is still illegal in Nauru when not part of a “lawful medical procedure”.
haven't watched or clicked or read but i saw oscar isaac
In Ex Machina, Oscar Isaac's Nathan Bateman performs a dance number with one of his AI robots, played by Sonoya Mizuno. It's the scene where I decided I was going to like the movie. Mizuno is a ballerina as well as an actress, but Isaac has no problem keeping up with her as the pair dance to Get Down Saturday Night.
Now, Twitter account @oscardances is showing how you can plug pretty much any song into that scene and the dance still works. Here's Michael Jackson's Thriller:
You know how Libertarians “love” freedom of speech and of the press and of religion and of the right to assemble and of the right to keep their homes free from quartering troops against their will? And you know how Donald Trump wants to spruce up the Constitution a little — you know, just class
This is the CRAZIEST STORY, even in the age of Donald Trump.
Hogan’s lawsuit was not “frivolous”—at least, not in the mind of the judge, who allowed the suit to proceed over Gawker’s many appeals, nor in the minds of members of the jury, who were so disgusted by Gawker’s conduct that they ordered the mischievous media mavens to pay Hogan tens of millions of dollars more than he asked for. And it is not at all clear that Thiel and Hogan did anything to menace to press freedom: As the legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky told the New York Times when the verdict came out: “I think this case establishes a very limited proposition: It is an invasion of privacy to make publicly available a tape of a person having sex without that person’s consent.”
It’s also not clear what policy response Gawker’s outraged defenders would recommend. Put caps on the amount of money people can contribute to legal efforts they sympathize with? That would put the ACLU and any number of advocacy groups out of business. It would also represent a far greater threat to free expression than a court-imposed legal liability for the non-consensual publication of what is essentially revenge porn. If Marshall and others are worried about the superrich harassing critics with genuinely frivolous lawsuits—as, yes, authoritarian characters like Donald Trump have attempted to do—they would have more success backing tort reform measures to limit litigiousness overall than attacking Thiel for contributing to a legitimate cause he has good reason to support.
“It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” he said in his first interview since his identity was revealed. “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest.”
Mr. Thiel said that Gawker published articles that were “very painful and paralyzing for people who were targeted.” He said, “I thought it was worth fighting back.”
Mr. Thiel added: “I can defend myself. Most of the people they attack are not people in my category. They usually attack less prominent, far less wealthy people that simply can’t defend themselves. He said that “even someone like Terry Bollea who is a millionaire and famous and a successful person didn’t quite have the resources to do this alone.”
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Following those votes, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) sought to limit the amendments to spending bills in order to keep the appropriations process from being derailed, according to The Hill.
This lushness can be attributed to both the spongy texture of mushrooms—which leads to some oil absorption in the cooking process, something that doesn’t happen so much with a piece of fish—and the scientific differences between oil and water. Many cooks favor oil poaching over poaching in water or stock because it makes for gentler cooking, and a more tender result. J. Kenji López-Alt, author of The Food Lab Cookbook, explains it this way: “Water has a specific heat of around 2.25 times that of oil, and is also about 25% more dense, which means that a cup of water at a given temperature (say, 140°F) will have nearly three times more energy in it than a cup of oil at the same temperature.” Less energy means gentler cooking and more tender results. But López-Alt also points out that much of oil poaching’s perceived effect comes from external texture. The piece of fish or chunk of mushroom coated in oil tastes juicier and richer because of an outer coating of oil—”so they actually taste moister than foods cooked in water.” 
