Feedback is New Scientist’s popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com
NDCs TBC
Everything’s a bit quiet in the fun world of international climate negotiations at the moment. The last big news was November’s COP29 meeting in Azerbaijan, which was a roaring success – for the fossil fuel companies promoting their wares on the sidelines. Then came Donald Trump’s return to the White House as US president. He promptly ordered the country to withdraw from the Paris Agreement that governs international climate action. Negotiators could be excused for being a bit shell-shocked.
Nevertheless, the wheels of the climate bureaucracy grind on. This year, Paris Agreement signatories are required to submit updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are essentially a list of promises to take action to deal with climate change. The deadline was 10 February, and most countries missed it. Climate strategist Ed King noted in his newsletter that “three small, hilly countries with lots of sheep” (the UK, New Zealand and Switzerland) had managed to submit theirs, but that we would have to “wait till later in 2025 for China, India and the EU”.
No rush folks; you take your time. It’s not like half of Los Angeles just burned to the ground. Have a cup of tea, put your feet up, live your best life. It’ll be done when it’s done.
The V-word
Reporter Matthew Sparkes draws our attention to the experience of one David Birch, who went online with Virgin Money to discuss some savings accounts, asking its chatbot: “I have two ISAs with Virgin Money, how do I merge them?” The chatbot responded: “Please don’t use words like that. I won’t be able to continue our chat if you use that language.”
It seems the online assistant had been programmed to avoid certain words and phrases that had been deemed discriminatory or otherwise offensive, including “virgin”. After Birch posted angrily about this on LinkedIn, there was some media coverage and Virgin Money apologised and withdrew the chatbot (which was an outdated model anyway).
This was yet another example of a recurring problem in online discussions: context is crucial. It is certainly possible to use the letter string V-I-R-G-I-N to be insulting, but it is also the name of a multinational corporation. Tools that simply filter for certain letter strings are liable to block a lot of innocuous messages, while also missing abuse that doesn’t rely on obvious slurs.
The problem goes back to at least 1996, when AOL refused to allow residents of Scunthorpe in England to create accounts. The town’s name contains a letter string that many people find offensive – hence the term “Scunthorpe problem” for such technological mishaps.
The “virgin” incident is just the latest example. The Wikipedia page for the Scunthorpe problem is a treasure trove of inadvertent potty-mouthed humour and, more importantly, surprises. You will probably be able to guess the issues faced by promoters of a certain mushroom with a Japanese name, but we defy readers to anticipate why the New Zealand town of Whakatāne, a software specialist and even a London museum fell foul of similar context-blind controls.
Readers are welcome to submit their own stories – but Feedback can’t guarantee our email filters will let them through.
Is it finally happening?
On 26 January, the website of the Daily Express newspaper issued a major alert: “Yellowstone warning as supervolcano could be ‘gearing up to explode’“. Good gravy, we thought. Could it be that the supervolcano under Yellowstone is going to cease its perennial rumbling and finally let rip, blanketing North America in ash and blotting out the sun?
Upon closer inspection, the story was merely reporting the existence of a short YouTube documentary entitled What If the Yellowstone Volcano Erupted Tomorrow? This was released on a channel called What If in March 2020. Feedback felt, and readers may agree, that this did not entirely justify the Express‘s headline.
Still, it does fill pages. Feedback found a half-dozen articles from early January on exactly this theme, with headlines like “Yellowstone crater movement sparks fears of supervolcano explosion as scientists assess risk“. This noted that some scientists had found “movement deep in the crater” and that this was alarming, before quietly noting that the main source was a paper in Nature that used a new imaging technique to determine that the volcano doesn’t contain anywhere near enough magma to erupt. Others said this study “sparks new debate on where and when it will erupt“, which is certainly one way of interpreting a study that says no eruption is imminent.
Lurching further back in time: on 23 July last year, there was a small hydrothermal explosion in the Biscuit Basin area of Yellowstone, essentially trapped steam blowing out debris as it escaped the ground. Cue the headline “Is Yellowstone going to erupt?” This was handily answered by a geophysicist, who explained that volcanoes only erupt if “there is enough eruptible magma… and pressure”, and that “neither condition is in place at Yellowstone right now”.
We tried to go further back, but after the 50th article with pretty much the same headline, Feedback’s brain broke. At this point, there have been so many stories proclaiming a Yellowstone eruption is imminent, we’re not sure we will believe it even if we see it go off on live TV.
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