‘Roughly 109.5 golden retrievers’: a new way to measure ice

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

Raining cats and dogs

A new unit of measurement has dropped – and in this case the slang verb is doubly appropriate. Reader Alan Baker came across a weather report for CBS News in Austin, Texas, warning of freezing rain. Meteorologist Avery Tomasco noted that central Texas could receive up to half an inch of freezing rain, which would of course turn to ice on landing.

To convey how serious that was, Tomasco explained that “ice is HEAVY” and can easily cause tree branches to fall into power lines (for instance). Even just a half inch of ice, he explained, was a big deal. “On a 30ft wide tree, that adds up to more than 7,000 pounds of ice, or roughly 109.5 fully-grown golden retrievers,” he wrote.

That is, indeed, a large quantity of affectionate, fluffy dogs. Feedback isn’t sure whether this image of more than 100 dogs slowly drifting down onto a tree really helps people understand the risks of freezing rain, but we’re not going to quibble the point.

We are, however, going to quibble the phrase “roughly 109.5”. There’s nothing approximate about 109.5. On the contrary: it is a startlingly precise quantity of golden retrievers to have sitting on one’s tree, and indeed mildly disturbing when you start to wonder what peculiar accident has befallen one of the dogs to cause it to be bisected.

Nada to see here

In the ongoing field of AI bloopers, erasing Canada from the face of the map may be one of the largest. Apparently, someone asked an AI “how many countries end with ‘nada’ “, only for it to report that “There are no countries in the world whose official English name ends with the letters ‘nada’. ” The AI went on to clarify that “While the country of Canada contains the sequence of letters ‘nada’, it ends with the letter ‘a’. “

There’s also the small matter of Grenada. To be fair, the response did have some small print beneath it, warning that “AI responses may include mistakes”.

We must emphasise that this is based on a screenshot posted to social media, so it might be fake. That said, the logo in the screenshot was that of Reddit, which has an AI-based tool called Reddit Answers. Feedback duly asked said 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… It seems that the question is designed to highlight the limitations or quirky responses of AI, rather than to seek a factual answer about country names.” Which is somehow more intelligent than the original response, and also equally useless.

In a fit of pedantry, one of our editors pointed out that our question was worded slightly differently, so Feedback wearily put the original question to the AI. The AI stuck to its guns, insisting that “There are no countries that end with ‘nada’. ” However, it did concede (and see if you can spot the problem here) that “there are a few countries that end with ‘anada’ and ‘ada’ “.

The AI proceeded to offer some examples. This time, it did manage to recall the existence of Canada and Grenada. It also correctly flagged that Granada shares the ending but is not a country, but rather a city in Spain.

It was all going so well, but then the AI asserted that another country that ends in “ada” is Uganda. Then, just to make sure it had thoroughly made a 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 aren’t sure what “Wakanada” is, but it sounds like someone tried and failed to pronounce Oaxaca.

Feedback can offer only one lesson from all this mucking about: when an AI tells you it has a fun fact to share, what follows is likely to be neither fun nor a fact.

Life, the universe…

Like much of the world, Feedback suffered through the 2025 fad of children waggling their hands and saying “six seven” in a singsong voice whenever that pair of numbers arose. Now the fad has faded away, we finally feel able to talk about it.

The whole point of “6-7”, of course, was that it was utterly meaningless. It comes 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 just there because Skrilla needed something to fill a gap and “la la la” didn’t scan. In any case, subsequent uses of the phrase were frequently baffling and nonsensical. Feedback Jr, our best and indeed only authority on matters concerning the under-20s, assures us it doesn’t mean anything.

However, we may have finally found the real meaning of 6-7. This comes to us courtesy of a screenshot of what seems to be an Instagram post, though we have been unable to locate said post.

Readers will recall that, in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a supercomputer called Deep Thought cogitates 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 that Instagram post, which reads: “The ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, is ‘what the fuck is 6 7’ The computer, sadly, misinterpreted the space as multiplication.” Now that would be the AI blooper to end all AI bloopers.

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