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Crisis of Confidence - by Kevin Baker

artificialbureaucracy.substack.com · 1,195 words · saved by 1 readers

Avoidance Machines, Part 2

Cast iron cookware inspires endless, and usually insipid, debates online. How do you season it? What’s the best kind of oil to season it with? How do you clean it? Should you use soap? A nearly indestructible slab of metal has, in the minds of many people, become a focal point for anxieties about precision, optimization, and the life-ending catastrophe of potentially making a mistake. I always skim these threads with the same lurid, semi-intellectual sense of fascination with which I might read Daniel Paul Schreber’s memoirs or—more to the point—OCD forums. The constant checking, the…

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