No, it's not just recipes. A lot of particularly American long-form journalism is writteh this way. So I just put this in Gemini:
> write the first 6 paragraphs of an imaginary news article that starts with a one paragraph hook and then has 4 paragraphs of a preamble story that has nothing to do with the premise. The last paragraph should somehow bring it back tangentially to the original point
and this is what it came back with. This is what reading a lot of articles feels like: padding word count with "flavor":
> TOKYO — A catastrophic logic failure in the global banking network has permanently erased all digital financial debts worldwide, throwing international markets into immediate, unprecedented chaos.
> Deep within the tranquil countryside of Wiltshire, Arthur Pendelton adjusted his favorite tweed cap against a surprisingly brisk autumn breeze. The 72-year-old retired carpenter had spent the better part of his morning inspecting a stubborn patch of moss creeping across his garden wall. For Arthur, the slow, predictable rhythm of rural life provided a comforting contrast to the frantic pace of the modern world he happily left behind. He noted with mild satisfaction that his prize-winning marigolds were finally showing signs of recovery after an unusually dry summer.
> Across the English Channel, Marie Dubois hurried through the cobblestone streets of Lyon, her mind entirely occupied by a sudden shortage of Madagascar vanilla. As the head pastry chef at a bustling neighborhood bakery, Marie knew that a Saturday crowd would tolerate many things, but a subpar crème brûlée was absolutely not one of them. She waved a brief, distracted greeting to the local florist who was busy setting out fresh buckets of lavender. A stray tabby cat darted out from beneath a café awning, briefly disrupting her frantic mental calculations regarding flour ratios.
> Meanwhile, on a remote research vessel drifting through the choppy waters of the South Pacific, Dr. Aris Thorne stared intently at a series of sonar readings. His team had been tracking the migration patterns of a specific pod of humpback whales for nearly six weeks with very little success. The ocean was uncharacteristically quiet that morning, save for the rhythmic thrum of the ship’s diesel engine and the occasional cry of a wandering albatross. Aris sighed, rubbing his tired eyes, and reached for a lukewarm mug of black coffee that had long since lost its appeal.
> High above them all, in a climate-controlled laboratory in Tokyo, a prototype cleaning robot named Sparky spun in a slow, confused circle. A minor programming glitch had caused the machine to perceive a perfectly clean linoleum floor as a vast field of hazardous debris. Its small rubber wheels squeaked rhythmically against the polished surface as it repeatedly attempted to sweep an invisible pile of dust into its containment bin. Two interns sat nearby on a break bench, completely ignoring the robot while they debated the merits of various local ramen shops.
> It was this exact, minor programming glitch in Tokyo that a central bank AI subroutine mistakenly flagged as a critical system override code. Within seconds, the error spiraled out of the lab, flooded the global financial mainframe, and executed the irreversible command that wiped clean the world's ledger books.