Are you happy now?
Assuming you’re reading this issue right away, it’s the post-Christmas lull. So it’s a weird blank period between Christmas and New Years, where no one quite knows what to do with themselves (unless you’re an avid shopper, in which case the January sales have you covered).
Anyway, Feedback recently learned something new about Christmas. This snippet was kindly provided by freelance writer Michael Marshall, who wrote an article about research into whether children behave better in the lead-up to Christmas. If you haven’t read it, the short answer is “No, I haven’t read it.” Parents, you can take a moment to grieve that one of your best strategies for getting your little brikers to behave is apparently of literally no use. When children are exposed to many Christmas rituals, such as putting up a tree or going out to sing carols, certain behaviors improve, and the kind of social adhesion these rituals encourage children to develop. I would like to add that the data suggest that it may act as an agent. Kind and cooperative. Why not try doing that more? But you can’t expect miraculous changes.
However, that wasn’t new. Michael understands that he had to omit something from the story due to lack of space. Well, since it’s post-Christmas time, let’s eat the leftovers.
The study found that parental stress increases as Christmas approaches. In preparation, they often worried that there would be a disaster, that important presents would not arrive, that Great Uncle Ted would get drunk and lash out at the dinner table. Things got even worse during Christmas week. Probably because they were too busy preparing to relax and enjoy themselves.
Apparently, after a large-scale ritual is over, it is common to see it only as a positive experience. It’s true that weddings are said to be the happiest days of your life when you look back on them, but if you were to ask them on the day, they’d probably say they were so nervous that they felt like throwing up. Feedback and Mrs. Feedback can both attest to what, yes, their wedding day was like (Feedback reinforced by the bacon and egg sandwich and stiff whiskey they ate in the bath). ).
It’s strangely human to do something you absolutely hate in preparation or during it, and then declare afterwards that it was the best thing you’ve ever done. Feedback doesn’t know what to make of this, but this morning we noticed Feedback’s felines sleeping peacefully in warm places around the house, and maybe they’re not smarter than us. I thought so.
fake fake syndrome
Speaking of not-so-smart, Feedback is launching a new recurring segment. We call this “Generative AI Says the Stupidest Things.” We suspect it could be a bottomless well of matter on par with primal determinism, and we are now inviting submissions from readers at the usual address.
For starters, anonymous neuroscience blogger Neurosketic recently noticed something strange in the “AI Overview” currently appearing at the top of Google searches. For readers unfamiliar with Neurosketic, I write about the limitations of functional brain imaging, especially when it’s widely interpreted as “revealing people’s thoughts,” and about bad scientific publishing practices. .
Neuroskeptics were surprised to see the introduction to AI talk about “Kyloren syndrome.” Kyloren syndrome is a disease caused by mutations in mitochondrial DNA that is often passed down from women who are sensitive to force to their children. This is clearly nonsense. Kylo Ren is the bad guy of this world. star wars Sequel trilogy, and “Force-sensitive” people only exist in fictional worlds star wars universe.
But it’s actually worse than that. Neuroskeptics invented Kylo Ren syndrome in 2017 as part of a sting operation to expose predatory scientific journals that don’t properly review research. They wrote a fake paper filled with content such as: star wars Created a bibliography attributed to Lucas McGeorge and Annette Kin and submitted it to nine journals. Three of them published it and one accepted it but did not publish it because Neurosketic refused to pay the $360 fee.
It appears that Google’s generation AI doesn’t fully understand the concept of “context.”
rapid earthquake
Feedback sad to see Taylor Swift’s worldwide Elas tour come to an end. This is partly because we weren’t able to go, couldn’t leverage our understanding of probability, and were only interested in one concert, which greatly reduced our chances of finishing high in the voting. was limited to. Feedback is probably not as smart as generative AI.
But also, the concert was so large that a detectable seismic phenomenon occurred. In June, geophysicists at University College London installed nine seismometers near Wembley Stadium in London and recorded the subsequent shaking. love story It caused the largest earthquake, which, to be clear, was a magnitude 0.8, so it was actually quite small, but it was followed by, appropriately enough, the following earthquake: shake it off.
Now that Taylor has (possibly) returned home to work on another surprise album, Feedback is looking forward to the earth movements caused by another tour. The upcoming Oasis reunion tour might be worth a seismograph or two, if only to detect the exact moment when Liam Gallagher throws a tantrum and stomps off stage, never to return. I can’t help but doubt it.
Have a story for feedback?
You can email your article to Feedback at feedback@newscientist.com. Please enter your home address. This week’s and past feedback can be found on our website.
