Spy kids
WHILE many suspect the world is mired in some kind of futuristic dystopia, Feedback finds itself unable to ascertain exactly which writer’s fevered imagination we find ourselves stuck in. The latest cause for reassessment comes with the news that German parents have been told to destroy their children’s My Friend Cayla dolls over hacking fears.
The internet-connected dolls can listen to queries from children and search for an answer online, but weak security protocols mean the devices could also be hacked to spy on unsuspecting families, or communicate with children.
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Importers the Vivid Toy group said it was upgrading the chips to enhance security. Feedback thinks it may also want to update the My Friend Cayla website, which among many selling points boasts: “It’s amazing what she knows!”.
“”You know what uranium is right? This thing called nuclear weapons and other things, like lots of things are done with uranium, including some bad things.” President Trump offers the White House press corps a science lesson”
Enhanced screening
A SMALL outbreak of fruitloopery was confirmed in the UK recently, following news that Andrew Wakefield had spoken at a screening of his documentary Vaxxed at Regent’s University London, organised by the Centre for Homeopathic Education (CHE).
Readers may recall that the UK was declared free of Wakefield in 2010, after the General Medical Council found him guilty of serious professional misconduct and Wakefield relocated to Texas.
His reappearance on these shores was cause for consternation. Newspapers piled on the epithets: he was “disgraced anti-MMR doctor” in The Telegraph, “MMR fraud doctor” to The Independent, while The Times went with “disgraced MMR fraud doctor” for their front page.
A freshly inoculated Regent’s University says it has cut ties with the CHE and would be screening client events more carefully. As ever, prevention is better than cure, thinks Feedback.
Put a sock in it
THE art world is renowned for two major commodities: great works of art and entertaining rivalries. One example of the latter erupted after Anish Kapoor, the British sculptor best known for his mirrored pieces such as Chicago’s Cloud Gate (better known as “The Bean”), secured exclusive rights to use Vantablack, a carbon-nanotube material said to be the world’s blackest black.
Cornering the market on a pigment is scarcely new. Legend has it that artist Lucian Freud was so enamoured of the creamy lustre of lead white that he bought the UK’s entire remaining stock when it was banned for being toxic. However, Stuart Semple, another British artist, was so incensed by Kapoor’s palette grab that he produced what he called the world’s pinkest pink, which you can only buy on the express condition that Kapoor is not allowed to use your purchase.
Somehow Kapoor got his hands on some. Or rather, just the one finger – yes, that one – which he daubed in the pink paint, posting the result on Instagram. Semple is now working to put Kapoor in the shade by developing a new pigment to rival Vantablack.
Perhaps some of the materials engineers among our readers could find a way to make a true blacker-than-black of their own, and donate the gloomy pigment to the world?
Hue and cry
THE pound sterling has shrunk in recent times, and Feedback doesn’t just mean its drop in value against other currencies in the wake of Brexit. A new series of plastic banknotes are being introduced, which promise to be smaller, stronger and better able to survive a wash cycle (tumble dryers, on the other hand, appear to shrink them rather catastrophically).
Unfortunately, it turns out that the polymer notes incorporate traces of beef tallow, making them unfit for consumption by vegans and vegetarians, whose ire was aroused. The Bank of England says it will not be withdrawing the fatty notes from circulation, but will endeavour to replace the offending ingredient with coconut oil in future iterations.
Evidently caught off guard, the Bank that “at the same time, however, [we need] to understand whether the use of plant-based alternatives would raise its own concerns.”
Those with an intolerance beware: from here on in, British banks may contain traces of nuts.
Greasing palms
A FURTHER note on life cycles of urban clutter: Kate Belcher writes to inform us that we “have omitted an essential stage in describing the metamorphosis of unsecured bicycles (11 February); before turning into large mattresses, there is an intermediate stage when they have turned into shopping trolleys”.
Trolley problem
A MORE grounded take on where missing socks go: Brian Plowman writes that his 95-year-old grandmother is a keen collector of rainwater, maintaining water butts around her bungalow “wherever there’s a sloping surface”.
After mentioning the missing sock problem, Brian was told to use spare socks on the entry pipe for his own water butt, to stop moss and other detritus trickling in and creating an evil sludge at the bottom. The mucky stocking-filler can then be easily removed and the sock rinsed, or replaced entirely.
“Spookily enough, the regularity of finding single socks for the water butt has matched the level of receiving new socks each Christmas,” says Brian.