A stroll down memory lane: perhaps you remember back when we would remove the Nintendo video game cartridge, blow on it, and put it back into the gaming console to resume our game. This widely-known-pre-internet tactic would often work wonders to reset a finicky machine so we could continue enjoying the game.
In hindsight, this tactic could have been a placebo, but it gave us a brief time out, a sense that we were in control of what was happening, and reset-then-resume, regardless of the game’s ultimate outcome.
