Preview: To salt the pasta water…

a reflection on "useless" daily rituals

I love the weird bends of our behavior that come about from taking our made up rules too seriously. This phenomenon seems to me like the opposite of desire paths. Rather than an unconscious breaking of our rules for convenience, it is the choice to do something the most inconvenient way.

This thought is an old friend in my mind, but only shows itself in the midst of specific, peculiar familiarities. Like when I have to look up a recipe online. I have to scroll through a lot of spam and AI garbage, and then find the directions I need scattered within what appears to be someone’s diary entry or a blog post about life with no central focus.

I’ve been told this is the result of written copyright not covering food preparations, so these lifestyle blogs or whatever have to go through this song-and-dance of hiding the information you need to keep it for themselves, even in the process of sharing it with you. This arguably makes finding what you want more difficult than it should ever need to …