The Invention of a New Pasta Shape | Hacker News Reader

The Invention of a New Pasta Shape

kottke.org

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The year is 2045. 35 percent of humanity's GDP is invested in improving pasta technology. The current record-setting pasta is being extruded through a bronze die which had been cast into a void produced by activated charcoal formed around transformer-derived non-euclidean topologies. A one-quarter-inch pasta has three square miles of surface area.

Pasta foam? Sounds like it would fall apart. What's it made of? How would you cook it? Sounds like AeroGel. Does it have aerospace applications?

Extrusion is soooo 2032. Here in 2045 we direct nanobots to assemble our 3D-fractal pasta to atomic precision. Look for it under the brand name FractalDente™.

Not much progress has been made on precise cooking instructions though. The more accurately the cooking time is measured, the longer it takes.

Asympastote.

Mandelbrotini™

Do we still throw it against the wall to see when it's done?

Or will it make the wall collapse to a point?

It's done when it travels back in time exactly 13 seconds.

Klein bottle shaped pastas can be constructed and blur the distinction between extruded noodles and filled pastas.

Getting hungry thinking about it.

Paging @CliffStoll on aisle Klein.

> Klein bottle shaped pastas can be constructed

Can they though? At scale? With what mechanism?

Slightly damp glutinous starch isn't as great a material as you might imagine.

3d Pasta printer

if you want non-orientable surfaces you'll need a 4d printer.

Sounds like you could sell it as an NFT!

And ravioli/tortellini are no longer filled, but grown whole.

Not by 2045, at least not likely. The theory that for every thing you might want to manufacture, an infinite universe must contain a planet where it grows naturally is older than most people on hn, but I doubt that we'll find planet Raviolon that soon. How would you even start a serious SETP Project without a smelloscope? (scheduled for y3k)

> How would you even start a serious SETP Project without a smelloscope?

Obviously by using for the characteristic emission spectra of sodium, associated with pasta cooked in well-salted water. Unless of course you're looking for naturally uncooked pasta.

Welp, time to go read the Myst series again.

The most popular pasta meme, "Il Spaghettio", currently holds three of the Internet's 8000 congressional seats, and instances of it are commonly made from synthetic cruelty-free wheat, mainly for the purpose of worship.

In 2054, multiple scandals erupted over influence from at least two clandestine NFT-holding polls. Improper influence led to reforms starting with RFC 451323, which first described the Memetic Transparency Protocol.

Of course, the FSM holds the other 7997 seats, due to the rise of post-apocalyptic religious zealotry, combined with the use of directed microwave energy to systematically purge the old guard.

They said I was crazy when I stocked my panic room with 3d print stock (steel, of course) and emp-hardened colander designs. FOOLS! Who’s crazy now?

Cruelty-free wheat makes me wonder what the normal stuff tastes like.

This whole thread is sounding like a Better Off Ted episode[1]

[1] https://youtu.be/HnXfLGcENnI

That show was too good for this world. The Veridian Dynamics commercials were just perfect: https://youtube.com/watch?v=S4e37QsJNuE

So you are joking... but 3d printing allows us to manufacture new and different parts because 3d printing is ADDITIVE and "milling" is REDUCTIVE (removing?).

There is one technique where you have gell filled with aluminum particles. You then use lasers to heat up specific areas. It melts/fuses the aluminum and burns off the gell. In the end you have cast aluminum in any shape that is as hard as if you had milled it from a solid block.

Maybe we'll have custom 3d printed pasta that matches your tooth alignment to fully max out toothability.

It will be called "protesi" - Italian for "dentures".

> "milling" is REDUCTIVE (removing?)

FYI, the word you are looking for is "subtractive"

https://formlabs.com/eu/blog/additive-manufacturing-vs-subtr...

Thanks!

Not usually a sci-fi fan but this is a plot line I can get behind

s/pasta/battery/g

Nothing even close to jovian french fries: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/12/scienceshot-french-f...

Presumably GPT-23 was put in charge of the world economy and told to maximise the utilization of open sauce.

Great pasta transformer.

If you swap "pasta" with "keyboards", you'll get 2021 :D

Just the other day, I saw a prototype of a maglev-mounted keyboard. Vibration dampening is the trend these days, and going over the top (with questionable objective returns) is rather common.

But then how could it click?

I'm still waiting for the day the Space Cadet keyboard makes its long-overdue comeback. How am I supposed to use Emacs with a measly three modifier keys?

I’m expecting to see a website called “this pasta does not exist” anytime soon.

It’s a shame that we have such powerful AI (and of course blockchain) tech which hasn’t been applied to pasta yet!

Finally a use for NFTs

Non Filled Tortellinis?

In place of pasta, I come with offerings of ramen: https://twitter.com/knjcode/status/1102771002222637056

Nah! i'll stick to the old and tried - pasta extruded by the black hole event horizon.

What difference is there between people and pasta in the eye of a black hole?

Both are definitely subject to spaghettification :-D

replace GDP with electricity and pasta with bitcoin and you'll be pretty close

Wait until they manage to fabricate Gabriel's Horn [0] pasta, a shape with finite volume but infinite surface area. Pour a cup of pasta sauce in there and you are set.

Might take an new universe and infinitely thin sauce to do it though.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel%27s_Horn

If you pour a cup of pasta sauce in there, does it just disappear?

I bet some kinda 3D printed dough mesh would be the most saucable shape

> 35 percent of humanity's GDP is invested in improving pasta technology.

The remainder of the GDP is spent on crypto-mining.

We need more minerals!

BREAKING NEWS

Massive Fire Raging at Pasta Factory in San Bixenino

March 20, 2045

A massive fire is raging out of control at the MegaFoodGrpInc Pasta factory on Foodstuffs Avenue this evening. Fire department officials report being hampered by the presence of eldritch inter-dimensional entities, as well as water supply problems related to non-functional fire hydrants in the area.

San Bixenino FD spokesbot XJa32l/14 reports that mutual aid has been called in from all over California, and fire-fighting operations are now in a defensive mode.

/14 adds "These new exotic materials they are using in foodstuff remodulation today burn longer and hotter than ever before. We've cautioned them about buying supplies from Nyarlathotep before, but they just don't listen."

No bot or firefighter injuries have been reported so far.

The year is 2083. The state of the art in pasta technology is to use artificial intelligences whose sole purpose is to produce functions that define a pasta’s shape as a function of time to produce variable surface area. Cheap three dimensional pasta is now eaten almost exclusively by basic income households.

Italian expat here.

Probably not many know of Marille (it's been basically forgotten by Italians, too), the first example - the first that I know of, at least - of "pasta shape deliberately designed to hold more sauce".

It was a sort of celebrity stunt by Voiello (quite a name in Italian Pasta, based in Neaples) who hired Giugiaro Design to create a new pasta type: https://www.italdesign.it/project/marille/

[Sadly, it did not work so well in the market: the point where the three "folds" met tended to remain undercooked, being way more thick than the rest].

This looks so cool. I notice that the pasta is symmetric in the “z” index dimension. As if it were a cylinder and the z was along the length of the cylinder. I think each pasta could be cut such that there is an arc making the thicker folds less long in that z direction that could make it cook more evenly! I could try to draw something if this needs further clarification. Manufacturing this might add many issues however!

In the end it was a commercial flop - albeit not critical: both Voiello and Giugiaro Design are still thriving in their respective fields.

I know someone who was working for Giugiaro at the time and allegedly the design studio had piles of that stuff lying around for whoever wanted to take home... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I posted a new story about Marille: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26529212 which has better images on how the pasta looks like.

Something is unsettling about the cross section in a way that I can't quite put my finger on. I think that would keep me from buying it.

It looks vaguely phallic from the wrong angle. Not sure if cooking would help.

In a non-euclidean, vaguely Lovecraftesque way, you mean? I never actually ate this stuff, but I am sure it was not that type of catastrophe when it was released to the public.

Planet Money just did a 25 minute podcast with the inventor on the business side of making the pasta, including getting the patent, manufacturing the die, and finding a pasta maker who would agree to produce a limited run:

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/979274990/the-new-shape-of-pa...

Talking pasta shapes you can't get around Legendre's seminal Pasta by Design. It is the reference book when it comes to the mathematical analysis of your favourite noodle form.

https://www.amazon.com/Pasta-Design-George-L-Legendre/dp/050...

It even has the invention of a new (back then) pasta shape. Here is what the New York Times has to say about it:

"Mr. Legendre has even designed a new shape — ioli, named for his baby daughter — which looks like a spiral wrapped around itself, a tubelike Möbius strip."

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/science/pasta-inspires-sc...

One of their advertising points is using right angles and varying thicknesses to produce different textures... so while parts will be aldente others mushy I guess. Sounds a lot like marketing attempting to pass off a bad feature as a positive

I like my veggies in curry to be cut in uneven sizes because of this reason. Some pieces are still a little hard and crunchy, some are soft, gravy like.

I think this is an underexplored idea. I often do it with onions, both putting some in early and putting some in very late. It's a cheap way to get "two" vegetables in your stir fry or chili or something for the effort of one.

One time I was cooking pasta, to mix with some left over, home made meat sauce in the fridge.

After I started the pasta, I realised there was no enough sauce. So I added fresh crushed tomatoes, which had only enough time to warm up, and not really cook much with the existing sauce.

I discovered that tomato having two flavours in the sauce, lets both flavours complement each other.

It seems like there are many possibilities, with more and less cooked things together.

It's common to see an ingredient "divided"* in recipes and used at different times. Though I wonder if there's a name for this specific technique. I do it too with garlic or bell peppers.

* https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-does-divided-mean-in-a-re...

It's amazing with garlic! I know it's not for everyone, but I actually love the "sharp" taste of fresh, rawer garlic.

Training set / test set

Overfitting is when you optimize all ingredients except for sugar and salt away

I do it with potatoes when roasting them. I cut irregular wedges so all pieces will have a crispy pointy bit and a thicker mushier end.

Here are the rest of the points for anyone who doesn't make it to the product page:

- Longer cut than most short shapes provides more fork insertion points, improves forkability

- Bucatini half-tube + ruffles create a "sauce trough" for max sauceability

- Bronze die extrusion creates a rougher surface, further boosting sauceability

- Right angles (rare in pasta shapes) resist bite force from all directions, maximize toothsinkability

- Slight variations in thickness + ruffles = multiple textures in each bite (which sensory scientists call "dynamic contrast")

> forkability

> sauceability

> toothsinkability

Today I learned that that suffixal semantic satiability exists

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation

"al dente" isn't really a quality _part_ of a piece of pasta can have. If the whole thing is al dente... that's just undercooked.

The entire appeal of cooking it that way is having the variance in texture in the same piece. It absolutely makes sense to design a pasta shape that optimizes for that. In fact a lot of pasta shapes already do, whether or not it was intentional.

I thought the point of cooking pasta al dente is that it doesnt get mushy when combined with sauce where it continues to cook a bit longer.

Not really. I mean you want to cook it differently and slightly less if you're going to finish it in the sauce but that's a different thing.

Al dente is specifically undercooking it a bit because you prefer that texture over the fully cooked texture. If you pull it a little early then let it fully finish in the sauce it's not what I would consider al dente.

as an Italian, according to my personal understanding, "al dente" means the point where pasta is cooked but not yet overcooked (it starts becoming softer).

The meaning of cooked and overcooked depends a lot on personal taste, but generally al dente it's when it's still elastic but not mushy, like if you apply pressure with the border of a fork, it goes back to the original shape when you relieve the pressure and doesn't fall apart.

But that's simply the help visualize it and it's not even applicable to all kinds of pasta, practically we taste the pasta while it's still cooking and decide if it's all dente or not based on our experience.

Usually when pasta cooked the exact amount of time specified on the package it should be "al dente", but you shouldn't trust it and start tasting it a couple of minutes before that point.

Anyway not all pasta makes sense al dente, fresh pasta or stuffed pasta like ravioli or tortellini for example cannot (and shouldn't) be cooked al dente.

and start tasting it a couple of minutes before that point

As a lazy person, I continue to be disappointed pasta scientists and designers have done little to make that part easier and less work.

Easier ways of cooking pasta probably run into other issues. If you’re boiling the pasta it’s not hard to be there and pick a piece up, and really you can boil pasta in any vessel.

It’s different, from, say, a rice cooker, where all rice more or less gets cooked the same way with varying times, you can definitely screw up cooking rice in a pot, and you don’t, say, need to reserve rice water for anything. Also rice cookers keep rice warm for hours on end in a manner that doesn’t detract from the taste or dry it out, but I don’t know that that would work for pasta.

If you’re boiling the pasta it’s not hard to be there and pick a piece up

You say this but we're deep in a thread with terms like 'saucibility'. Surely if pasta science can address a problem that's also neatly solved by simply adding more sauce, it can spare a few mighty braincells on 'standing by a pot for two minutes frantically fishing out and tasting hot undercooked noodles'. Maybe every packet of pasta can come with a couple of noodles on teabag strings.

restaurants use pasta cookers[1], they use brands of pasta that they already know and don't need to taste it (also because it's a system that doesn't scale) they already know the cooking time.

Of course is not a science, sometimes it's not gonna be perfect, but on average it is

consumer models also exist, but are quite expensive.

My girlfriend bought a Cookeo[2] (it's an electric multi-cooker for different kinds of food, including pasta) and after a few failed attempts we have been happy of the results. It's quite cheap.

p.s. tasting pasta while cooking it at home is kind of a ritual here in Italy

[1] http://ifea.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Italgi-pasta-c...

[2] https://www.moulinex.it/COTTURA/Cookeo/c/Cookeo

So I may be navigating that Cookeo website wrong, but 150-250EUR is very expensive. I have a rice cooker that costs that much, but it's a high-end brand. You can get a pretty good mid-range rice cooker for $40 and a serviceable one meant for college students runs $20 USD.

Had he started later in the day, Piet Hein might have written,

  There's an art of knowing when
  Never try to guess
  Cook until it's soft and then
  Ninety seconds less

Beautiful. Thanks for the mock Piet Hein.

Eh it is just an excuse to snack while cooking.

To me the essential question is, do they taste it repeated times with the same spoon, double dipping it and getting their germs in there the way I see it on TV shows? Also, given your opening credentials, username noted with confusion.

Though it's not desired obviously, when testing pasta you're retrieving it from boiling water. Germs aren't a huge concern.

Beyond that, reusing spoons to taste test is more often done on fictional shows. Cooking shows usually either use different spoons or pour a bit on a saucer and drink from that.

Finally, ignoring all the other ways Afro-Italians exist, some Italian islands are technically part of Africa.

> some Italian islands are technically part of Africa.

Not aware of this. Maybe you’re thinking of the Pelagie islands, which are very close to North Africa?

Yes, geologically they are part of the continent of Africa. I think Pantelleria is also part of Africa, but there's still some debate there as it's existence may predate Europe and Africa's breakup.

It’s boiling water. What do you think will survive? The only reason not to do it is to maintain the habit so you don’t contaminant other things.

I know you’re right in theory but I’m slightly grossed out anyhow

Usually when pasta cooked the exact amount of time specified on the package it should be "al dente", but you shouldn't trust it and start tasting it a couple of minutes before that point.

Where did this idea come from?

I used to believe this too and did exactly as you suggest. But I always left it in longer.

So I started following the timing on the pack. It always works for me for normal dried pasta.

I never look at the timings, I just taste at regular intervals after the pasta starts feeling "right" under the fork.

How much the pasta cooks after you drain it varies a lot depending on what you do to it after. For packaged dried pasta, I find the time on the box is only right if I rinse the pasta after draining it (or am doing a dish that involves adding a lot of room-temperature sauce); I'm too lazy to do that, so I subtract a minute if I'm using an already warm sauce.

I think you guys agree, because I (mostly) agree with both of you.

You cook the pasta al dente on purpose, to avoid mushiness with the sauce later. But the finished product isn't al dente--it was a temporary state.

I didn't realize anyone preferred the texture and would preserve it, but that makes sense.

This variance in texture is the main feature of traditional Chinese "knife-cut" noodles (刀削面 dāo-xiāo miàn) [0]. The chef cuts each noodle from a block of dough, letting it fall directly into hot water [1]. The noodle is fat (chewy) in the middle and tapered (soft) at the ends.

[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=刀削面&t=h_&ia=images&iax=images

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt7AP0Ll2-4

Have never tasted it in my life and it already looks delicious. I love thick, flat noodles. I undercook fettuccine and ensure they stick together but I wonder if that would provide the same experience.

came here to say that the thikness of those junctions would make the cooking uneven

Hot take: I prefer eating pasta to eating sauce. A bit of sauce, sure, but “maximum saucibility” makes me think you should just grab a spoon and eat sauce.

I think it has more to do with the pasta taking in a lot of sauce, rather then it holding a lot of sauce. To make a good Italian pasta dish: Take out the pasta a bit earlier out of the water and poor it into your sauce. The pasta will take in some sauce and get al-dente in the sauce. The pasta shouldn't bath in sauce but just be enough to give your pasta lots of flavor. Don't wash your pasta after cooking, because that will close its pores and hinder it from taking in sauce.

> Don't wash your pasta after cooking

Does anyone do that...? Why would you wash something you just boiled?

To stop it from cooking. If you take it out at exactly the texture you want, it will be mushier than you want if you don't wash it with cool water.

I prefer the oily pasta “sauces” like pesto or butter and herbs. I think those still benefit from sticking more fat to them

My Sicilian uncles prefer their pasta with a thinner sauce. My (German) grandma made very thick pasta sauce, and I was not a fan. (She also sweetened it, I found it gross. Sorry grandma. There were German dishes she made that I absolutely loved.)

I’m somewhere in between but my reaction was similar - I actually don’t prefer pasta that holds too much sauce. My penne is ... totally fine. But tastes obviously vary.

Looks interesting but, I’d guess, less fun to eat than fisarmoniche, which was designed 600 years ago.

Yes, it looks like they just dissected the fisarmoniche into thirds:

https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-fisarmoniche-pasta-close-u...

Are those the same as the more common radiatori, or are my eyes just not seeing a difference? (Maybe the fisarmoniche are bigger?)

The fisarmoniche have a wiggle in the fins, whereas the radiatori don't.

Which is in turn less fun to eat than SpongeBob macaroni.

If you eat pasta with a spoon, you don't have to worry about getting enough sauce. And you also won't have the pasta fall off your fork because you didn't poke it hard enough. Just be aware that you may look uncultured.

Nice hack

This is neat! It kind of looks like a ziploc.

https://cockeyed.com/science/eyeclops/eyeclops_ziplock.shtml

That was fascinating, thanks.

unless I see numbers, I'm not buying the "maximum sauceability".

This feels like an ad, I'm not sure why it's on the homepage.

Here's some numbers for you: 2, 10, 17, 3.14. Satisfied?

That’s Numberwang!

This is the 2nd Numberwang reference this week!

Mitchell and Webb trying to viral market their decade old shows?

I think that's the real reason behind COVID. REMAIN INDOORS.

Ew. Looks like a sea slug.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_slug#/media/File:Glossodor...

Do you also think spaghetti looks like worms?

Vermicelli translates loosely to "little worms."

they do not, because that's not what their name means

spaghetti = little strings

vermicelli = tiny worms

Where do you think vermi in vermichelli came from?

It looks like waterfalls, hence the name: cascatelli.

Unsurprisingly the sea slug uses its ruffles for the same purpose of increasing surface area [0], albeit for photosynthesis instead of sauce carrying:

> This slug, like other Sacoglossa uses kleptoplasty, a process in which the slug absorbs chloroplasts from the algae it eats, and uses "stolen" cells to photosynthesize sugars. The ruffles of the lettuce sea slug increase the slug's surface area, allowing the cells to absorb more light.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_slug#Diversity_in_sea_slug...

I'm suddenly curious how sea slugs would taste with some marinara.

This is counterintuitive to me -- if more surface area means more light absorbed, why are solar panels flat instead of ruffled? Or are they not as flat as they look?

Not gonna lie, it looks delicious but has kind of an H.R. Giger vibe.

The pasta. Not the sea slug. Though all sea slugs looks like they were made during evolution's goth phase.

I always thought that the "fun-shapes" macaroni had better mouth-feel than plain elbows. Apparently that is due to the right-angles and the term-of-art is "Toothsinkability".

Radiatore are currently my reigning favorite, especially for mac and cheese. This looks like it has less overall surface-area-to-volume than radiatore, but is better for holding thicker sauces vs the thin fin gaps in radiatore.

I've switched to fusilli from elbows for mac & cheese because it holds more sauce. But radiatore looks good for that too - I'll have to try and find some in my area.

The secret to good mac and cheese is to make it in a cookie sheet, so it is mostly sourdough cubes and crusty cheese, with just a bit of noodles underneath. Gemelli noodles. Also chopped soft green chilis and nutmeg. But you knew that part.

> Sauceability, Forkability, Toothsinkability

I like how even pasta creators argue about which ilities are most important.

Looks like a variation of lanterne: https://www.alamy.com/lanterne-pasta-image2466309.html

Related to this, we did a project last year where we algorithmically generated gripper fingers based on the object it needs to lift. https://fit2form.cs.columbia.edu/ https://www.youtube.com/embed/utKHP3qb1bg

Given we have an appropriate simulation engine, I can imagine the same idea being extended to the pasta shapes.

He didn't account for "storability": what happens 1) as the pasta sits in the collander awaiting saucification, and 2) what happens after a few days in the fridge.

Structural integrity is important for this condition, so I think the ruffles may help, but I think the main shape needs more corrugation to hold up under compression.

1. Time from colander to sauce is under a minute for me. How long is it for you that this matters?

2. Make exactly the amount of pasta you need for the meal. No leftovers to store.

That 2. contradicts the common knowledge that it is impossible to make the right amount of pasta.

I'm pretty sure the right amount of pasta for me is an infinite quantity.

As long as you follow the ancient proverb that melius abundare quam deficere, and the pasta is actually good, you'll never get it wrong - people will just clean up any surplus. A hungry person will easily eat 80g to 100g, so I typically make 100g per person.

1. That's great, I'm happy for you that you cook so quickly. Sometimes the pasta sits in the collandar for a little while depending on how many things are being cooked at once, and how they are arranged.

2. That's great, I'm happy for you that you've dialed in your cooking to make exactly the amount you need. I like to have leftovers for several days.

3. Not everyone is you.

I am firm believer that lettuce only exists to service a transportation vehicle for more delicious sauces. As such I enthusiastically support this effort to invent a better pasta transportation vehicle.

Ordered a box for their next batch. Shipping was $10 which kinda stings. Still cheaper than ordering a bunch of pasta from DoorDash.

Has anybody already mentioned "reginette" here?

https://pastidea.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/762-TRAFILA-...

Looks like good competition for radiatori.

I can see that easily becoming my number two favorite pasta shape. I'm afraid, however, that tortellini must remain on top for me.

Agreed. Tortellini's hard to beat. Kinda cheats, though, given it's prefilled. Same with ravioli.

Tortellini has infinitely better mouthfeel than ravioli though.

True. More surface area.

Whether concave or tubular, thick or thin, al dente, mushy, crisp or in-between,

All pasta tastes better cooked in water

That is salted to taste like the sea

Is there scientific proof that a bronze die makes better pasta? The myth is repeated here that it boosts 'sauceability'. Even if the die roughs up the pasta (why does only bronze do this?), I cannot imagine how this could make a difference after cooking.

The best pasta shape is medium shells, but I just bought a 5 lb bag of cascatelli so we'll see.

The link to Instagram re. the development of the past shape goes to a sports media account.

To me the shape resembles a part used on railroad tracks, specifically the improved flair.

Do they make CAD files available so you can mill your own bronze die and make it at home?

I think maybe skip a step and just 3D print the pasta? Because what I want are one way check valves that let sauce in and keep it there.

I don't think you want what you think you want...

Pasta with a one way valve would lead to long distance sauce spraying as you stab one with a fork or bite into it...

If they fit whole in one's mouth, then they'd probably have a satisfying "pop" when you chew 'em.

Maybe a viable vegan alternative to roe?

It actually matters what shape of pasta you use for which food.

But even if it is technically better than the traditional models I think it has a low chance of going widespread enough to become the go-to pasta for any specific sauce though.

They immediately reminded me of tripes. We have a dish of tripes with paprika-cream sauce with pasta, usually gnocchi is used but these cascatelli would be interesting combination.

This is what the world needs, now more than ever - the eccentric inventor tilting at windmills. And the criteria for a good pasta looks perfect! Who can argue with toothsinkability?

With a well defined sauce, fork, and tooth model, generating new pasta shapes via genetic algorithms isn’t such a crazy idea I suppose.

This is why we need AI. Look out adtech here comes big pasta.

So I LOVE the idea of this

But is it just me, or does it look a bit like eating a bowl of caterpillars?

I maintain the best pasta is two pieces of fettuccine stuck together.

one thing i keep wondering is that while we have several different pasta shapes (and invent new ones) there is pretty much only one pasta flavour (with a few minor variations)

meanwhile in china, most noodles there have the same spaghetti like shape, but they come in many different flavours, rice, wheat, potato, sweet potato, you name it

i am wondering why that is...

Chinese noodles also come in many shapes. When it comes to food and China compared to other cultures, one can always point out how China is like a continent and has a long culture. It’s like several times the size and age of many other places.

every time i look at the noodle shelf in a chinese supermarket i am reminded of that fact

Chopstick are better suited for eating noodle shaped noodles. However in China there is a lot of variation on that form and also there are many shapes of filled pasta.

good point. although the common chinese way to put the bowl to your mouth and use the chopsticks like a shovel works with almost anything.

i associate the filled ones more with dumplings than with pasta, but i guess it can be argued either way.

Would have been a lot more fun if someone did a new pizza shape

Where I used to live, there was a pizzeria that did a few things, like Pizza Pie [0], pizza with 'volcanic crust' [1][2], and they seem to be doing a pizza fondue [3] now

[0] https://www.instagram.com/p/wsDdAdM0Nx/

[1] https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/14/e4/10/50/...

[2] https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/14/e4/10/6f/...

[3] https://www.instagram.com/p/BzR5Q-QhDXW/

For whatever reason, this reminds me of that guy that salted a steak all weird and people lost their minds. This was right after Trump was elected and there were riots... general chaos in the world. Yet, some dude salting a steak egregiously was the big thing for a while.

I want this pasta shape to blow up just the same. I mean hell, spending 3 years on a new product is interesting and I hope the folks involved gain some sort of fulfillment from this. I won't lie though, the absurdity is what I want to see.

Maybe this says something about the human condition? To ignore chaos we try to find order or control somewhere, anywhere. Salt a steak unnecessarily, buy tons of toilet paper, redefine ownership with NFT and make a brand new pasta shape... because real problems are hard to deal with.

I mean, it wasn’t that much chaos, for most people. If you’re in the middle of a riot, sure, but otherwise? Trump’s election was dramatic but it was hardly show stopping.

Ended up stopping the show pretty hard for half a million people.

I always wonder on what basis people conclude that the USA would have better COVID numbers than Europe if the Democrats had been in charge of the federal government.

I mean, we have better COVID numbers than Europe already. But I guess I mean better than that.

Regarding the general sentiment at the time. For the most part, if the average person never watched the news, they wouldn't know who was president at a given time. Hell, in the past 2 months, following CNN, it's hard to tell if Trump isn't still president. They talk about him so much and spin it that he still has so much influence, I have to consciously remember Biden is president.

"The invention of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a new star" -- Brillat-Savarin

As an astronomer, I'm definitely going to remember and use this quote. <3

Am I the only one who hate pasta ?

3d printing pasta.. possible?

Ooh, Octopus Nigiri pasta.

When will YC fund this?

i don't even like pasta

I never thought of pasta as a gourmet delicacy. It's cheap and somewhat nourishing though full of carbs. This new shape sounds kind of interesting but it's $4.39 a pound in 5 pound bulk bags. Normal pasta is $1 a pound at Trader Joe so I'll stick to that.

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