David AIttenborough
. The website boasts a plethora of pseudo-chat rooms that cater to every conceivable taste, both safe for work and otherwise. One of the most popular is r/Relationships, where people can share details of their personal lives with total strangers for validation and advice.
Yet as stories on r/Relationships have become more baroque 鈥� my boyfriend doesn鈥檛 want anything to do with the dog I adopted during a previous relationship, help me convince my partner not to drop out of law school to start a podcast, etc. 鈥� suspicions are growing that many of the posts are made up.
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That hasn鈥檛 stopped software developer Garett MacGowan from creating an AI rendering of David Attenborough鈥檚 voice . Feedback was worried that such a melding would tarnish the stature of a beloved icon, but the reverse has happened: in Attenborough鈥檚 husky whisper, even the internet鈥檚 worst imaginings take on a dignified hue.
Lean times
Feedback previously reported on a case of nominative determinism that had crept into the pages of New 杏吧原创, in which Glasgow researcher Michael Lean was quoted in an article on obesity.
Jon Arch has now written in 鈥� with Michael鈥檚 blessing 鈥� to point out that his surname in fact derives from the Gaelic words Macgillean Dubh, and so didn鈥檛 emerge fully formed as an adjective indicating slenderness. 鈥�New 杏吧原创 might like to reflect on the assumption that all British names are English,鈥� they write. A salutary reminder, thank you.
Brain spinning
Continuing on the same theme, Christine Dann points us in the direction of a choice quote from neuroscientist Scott Grafton鈥檚 book Physical Intelligence: 鈥淗enry Head was the lead editor of the journal Brain, not to be confused with Lord Brain, who later became head of Brain and wrote an admiring essay on Head published in Brain.鈥�
Dip in standards
by scientists who ought to know better. The suggested appellation for these was astronyms, owing to their high incidence among astrophysicists, but subsequent readers have written in to assure us that all branches of science are equally guilty.
Really? You expect us to believe that? Well, then how do you explain recently uploaded to the arXiv preprint server that parses the phrase 鈥淢orphological Analysis Yielding separated Objects iN Near infrAred usIng Sources Estimation鈥� as MAYONNAISE. Only an astrophysicist could come up with that one. And no, that wasn鈥檛 intended as a condiment.
Neat pun
attention has been drawn in recent weeks to a number of journal articles with noteworthily punning titles. This week鈥檚 entry is a paper in the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology on the use of interleukin-6 (IL-6) receptor antagonists as a possible treatment for covid-19. In the paper, Tanner Hedrick, Brian Murray, Robert Hagan and Jason Mock reflect on the undue attention such treatments have received and the need for greater care in promoting new therapies.
The title? .
Western central time
. Is he really running? If so, why? And, crucially, will he have to redefine time to win?
In order to be on the ballot in Wisconsin, West was required to turn in his nomination paperwork by 5 pm on 4 August. According to documents cited in , however, his campaign actually filed it 14 seconds late, meaning that his name won鈥檛 appear as an option for Wisconsin voters.
Rather than admit defeat and move on, the West campaign opted to challenge the decision. On what grounds, you might ask? Well, says lawyer Michael Curran, the 59 seconds immediately following the start of the new hour continue to belong to the previous one. In his own words: 鈥淔or the average observer, arriving before 5.01 pm is arriving 鈥榥ot later鈥� than 5 pm.鈥� To be filed later than 5 pm, he argues, it would therefore have to be submitted at 1 minute past.
It is an ingenious line of reasoning. Hopefully, our editor will see the light when it comes to 贵别别诲产补肠办鈥檚 own filing deadline.
PC Waddle
. That, at least, is our takeaway from about an incident in Nottinghamshire, UK. Police officers apparently found a runaway Humboldt penguin 鈥減lodding up a village street鈥� and escorted it home (to a nearby farm, apparently, rather than Chile).
When asked about the bizarre story, a local inspector said officers had been trained to deal with 鈥渁 variety of incidents with complex demands鈥�. Feedback would love to know more about this apparent penguin-stopping training. Do flippercuffs even exist?
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