The Sundarban
Josie Ford
Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre tales, out of the ordinary marketing claims, confusing instructions and additional
The year in daft
Being a New Scientist reader, you are most definitely savvy sufficient to realise that slay-of-year roundups are written weeks ahead of time. This hiss summation became as soon as drafted on 1 December, exquisite as Feedback became as soon as making prepared to exhaust 24 days conserving off listening to Wham’s Final Christmas and in search of to persuade Feedback Jr to create their mind up on what they favor for his or her major present. Anything else radically foolish that would possibly perhaps comprise took region after that date will must wait till subsequent year.
Genuinely, 2025 has been wealthy in the total things Feedback is drawn to. We realized about curious proposals esteem nuking the seabed to slay native weather change, a notion that went straight into our Produce No longer Recommend pile. There became as soon as also an strive to make a if truth be told irritating robotic. This became as soon as a motorised arm that would possibly perhaps faux to hand you an ice cream cone, simplest to coast it away on the final 2nd in a differ of supposedly provocative ways. Remarkably, americans didn’t belief it.
To bring some instruct to the chaos, we hereby present Feedback’s 2025 slay-of-year awards, which we’re going to call the Backsies unless somebody writes in with an even bigger suggestion. The judges (that’s us) selected the courses and winners thru a rigorous course of that positively didn’t involve Post-it notes and darts.
Excellent scientific acronym
In some unspecified time in the future, Feedback would prefer to peruse a peruse peek the amount of time and vitality human society spends coming up with ingenious and/or compelled acronyms. We suspect it is a drain on global productiveness reminiscent of two flu seasons and a World Cup final.
Feedback invited contributions on this subject after finding out about “a machine-finding out mannequin that can predict a chemical’s taste in conserving with its molecular constructing”, named the Taste Diagnosis and Recognition Transformer, or FART. We weren’t prepared for the following onslaught of acronyms, which ranged from a hydrography mission known as Administration Of Rivers Discharging into Ocean Nation-states (MORDOR) to two devices on NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover known as Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) and Broad Attitude Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering (WATSON) – despite the incontrovertible truth that that one is dishonest.
Regardless, the judges (ourselves) were unanimous that this award be given to the geneticists who came up with “a capability for estimating mutation rates and current demographic history from very magnificent samples”. They known as it “Diffusion for Rare Ingredients in Variation Inventories which will be Tremendous”, or DR EVIL. Groovy.
Excellent outdated current technology
One of the afflictions of the fashioned world is americans thinking they’ve invented something current when, in actuality, they’ve merely rebranded something outdated. There became as soon as a standout winner right here: Ugmonk, a firm that has produced a “minimalist, paper-essentially based mostly completely to-quit manager“. The draw is meant to replace online process-administration programs, so that you might perhaps work offline with out the distractions of social media. It consists of some index cards that relaxation on a block of wood.
Excellent extrapolation
No contest: demographers David Swanson and Jeff Tayman take this one for his or her paper noting a little decline in human fertility between 2019 and 2024, after which extrapolating the total intention to the extinction of the human species in 2339 (or, with exquisite one extra year of data, 2415).
Excellent use of AI
The narrate of affairs right here became as soon as different. Unending, never-ending different. We were tempted to provide this prize to Anthropic, which let its AI Claude bustle a vending machine in the agency’s office. Claude started by asking customers to pay money to a bank memoir it had hallucinated. It then pretended to be a human being carrying a blue blazer and a crimson tie. On the different hand, this became as soon as an in-house experiment, so is disqualifed.
As an different, this award goes to AI music. The most eminent unsuitable AI band to this point, The Velvet Sunset, sound esteem the cursed savor little one of Coldplay and the Eagles. There’s something unutterably most provocative about this. After being expert on pretty noteworthy all recorded music, the AI is generating the blandest place of music it is that you might perhaps imagine to think.
And in the slay…
Let’s slay with something foolish and rather coarse. On extra than one instances in 2025, Feedback found ourselves facing the Scunthorpe narrate of affairs: the truth that many completely innocuous words own letter strings which can be, in determined contexts, offensive – and the considerations this causes for online moderation programs.
We obtained onto this after listening to of a Virgin Money chatbot objecting to the observe “virgin”. From there, we realized of a pupil unable to location up an electronic mail memoir as his surname became as soon as Peacock, and of an incident afflicting researchers finding out sperm whales.
On the different hand, our favourite example concerned a pc server at a bank that refused to talk with a French server named for the Asterix personality Petitsuix, as it contained the observe “titties”. We are selecting this one because of reader Slash Brown, who suggested us the story, and who urged that a bank with this kind of poorly-bustle server became as soon as at chance of journey, erm, bust.
Received a story for Feedback?
You would possibly perhaps possibly also send tales to Feedback by electronic mail at strategies@newscientist.com. Please comprise your house take care of. This week’s and past Feedbacks will be considered on our web page online.
