Feedback is New Scientist’s a popular side view of the latest science and technology news. Items you think readers might find interesting can be submitted to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com
It’s raining cats and dogs
A new unit of measurement has been dropped – and in this case, the slang verb is doubly useful. Reader Alan Baker came across a weather report for CBS News in Austin, Texas, a freezing rain warning. Meteorologist Avery Tomasco noted that Central Texas could see up to half an inch of freezing rain, which of course would turn to ice upon landfall.
Explaining how serious it was, Tomasco explained that “ice is HEAVY” and can easily cause tree limbs to fall into power lines (for example). Even just half an inch of ice, he explained, was a big deal. “On a 30-foot-wide tree, that adds up to more than 7,000 pounds of ice, or roughly 109.5 full-grown golden retrievers,” he wrote.
That is indeed a lot of loving, fluffy dogs. Feedback We’re not sure if this image of over 100 dogs slowly drifting down a tree really helps people understand the dangers of freezing rain, but we won’t argue.
However, we will argue about the phrase “roughly 109.5”. There is nothing approximate about 109.5. On the contrary: it’s a surprisingly accurate number of golden retrievers sitting in a tree, and actually mildly disturbing when you start to wonder what freak accident happened to one of the dogs that caused him to be split in half.
There is nothing to see here
In the ongoing field of AI nonsense, wiping Canada off the face of the map may be one of the biggest. Apparently someone asked the AI ”how many countries end in ‘nada'”, only for it to announce that “There are no countries in the world whose official English name ends in the letters ‘nada’.” The AI went on to clarify that “While the country Canada contains the letter sequence ‘nada’, it ends in the letter ‘a’.”
There is also the small matter of Grenada. To be fair, the answer did have a small print underneath that warned that “AI answers may contain errors.”
We have to emphasize that it comes out for screenshot posted on social media so it could be fake. That said, the logo in the screenshot was that of Reddit, which has an AI-based tool called Reddit Answers. Properly posed feedback told the AI the same question.
We were told: “There are no countries that end in ‘nada’. This question seems to be based on a misunderstanding or a playful trick… The question seems designed to point out limitations or idiosyncratic responses of the AI, rather than seeking a factual answer to country names.” Which is somehow more intelligent than the original reaction, and also useless.
In a fit of pedantry, one of our editors pointed out that our question was phrased a little differently, so Feedback wearily asked the original AI question. The AI stuck to its guns, insisting that “there are no countries that end in ‘nada.'” However, he admitted (and we’ll see if you can spot the problem here) that “there are a few countries that end in ‘anada’ and ‘ada’.”
AI proceeded to offer a few examples. This time it was possible to recall the existence of Canada and Grenada. It also correctly indicated that Granada shares the end, but it is not a country, but rather a city in Spain.
Everything was going so well, but then the AI announced that the next country ending in “ada” was Uganda. Then, just to make sure it made a thorough mess of things, it gave us a “Fun Fact”: that there is a “fictional country from the Marvel Universe” called “Wakanada.” If you are not au fait with Marvel’s stories about the superhero Black Panther, his fictional home country is called Wakanda. We’re not sure what “Wakanada” is, but it sounds like someone tried and failed to pronounce Oaxaca.
The feedback can only offer one lesson from all the shenanigans: when an AI tells you it has a fun fact to share, what follows is likely to be neither fun nor fact.
Life, space…
Like most of the world, Feedback suffered from the 2025 fad of kids waving their arms and saying “six seven” in a singsong voice whenever that pair of numbers went up. Now that the fad has passed, we finally feel able to talk about it.
Of course, the whole point of “6-7” was that it was completely pointless. It’s from a song called “Doot Doot (6 7)” by Skrilla, an American rapper, but it’s not clear what it means in the song. Feedback suspects it’s only there because Skrilla needed something to fill the gap and “la la la” didn’t scan. In any case, the subsequent use of the phrase was often confusing and nonsensical. Feedback Jr, our best and, indeed, only authority on matters concerning the under-20s, assures us that it means nothing.
However, we may have finally found the true meaning of 6-7. This comes to us courtesy of a screenshot of what appears to be an Instagram post, although we were unable to locate the post.
Readers will remember this in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxya supercomputer named Deep Thought thinks for several million years to find the answer to the ultimate question, only to announce that the answer is 42 and that the real problem is figuring out the question.
Hence the Instagram post that reads: “The most important question of life, the universe and everything is ‘what the hell is 6 7’ Unfortunately, the computer misinterpreted space as multiplication.” Now that would be the AI failure to end all AI stupidity.
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