Fruitloopery on demand
WHETHER it be micellar water or chakra-charging crystals, the practitioners of alternative lifestyles strive to offer novelties that will lubricate the wallets of the worried well-off.
Few do it with as much aplomb as Goop, the Hollywood lifestyle brand of Gwyneth Paltrow. The queen of yoni balls, moon-dust smoothies and ashwagandja (us neither) has continually stayed one step ahead of her satirists, dreaming up ever more bizarre concoctions that are set against a backdrop of quasi-spiritual wellness advice.
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But automation comes for us all eventually. Witness the birth of Goob, the computer-assisted lifestyle magazine from Botnik.org. By training a predictive text generator on a library of material from Goop, Botnik was able to produce an even more adventurous brand.
Goob subscribers can browse products such as Chicago Dad Soothing Mortgage Advice Salve (鈥済et back to the realm of your own essence鈥�) and 鈥淐ancer Gossip Jeans鈥�, all wrapped up in bold headlines such as 鈥淚s the soul more supple when you鈥檝e been divorced? We asked two dogs for some advice.鈥�
鈥淧olice were called to Oberlin High School in Louisiana last month after students expressed concern during a maths lesson that the 鈥�
In the interests of balance, Feedback trained the program on material gleaned from 快猫短视频 itself. Stay tuned for the upcoming feature 鈥淥ur multiverse is great: the laws of physics don鈥檛 wash out.鈥�
The shape of water
WATER, water everywhere, so how to make your heavily marked-up version stand out from the crowd? Faced with the inconvenient truth that plain water is an ideal thirst quencher, marketeers have plumbed for ever more exotic ways to dress up the bottles 鈥� and occasionally their contents.
Following in the grand tradition of hexagonal water, alkaline water, iceberg water and sacred geometry water (all seen on these pages) comes Frequency H2O, offering a drink said to be infused with frequencies of love, the moon or 鈥渞ainbow鈥�.
Spotted by Hamish Bowden and Asa Wahlquist, the tipple was named best bottled water at the Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting .
The company claims to employ a 鈥渢rade secret two-stage kinetic energy process鈥� and the resulting water is 鈥渋nfused with a blend of Solfeggio, sound and light frequencies.鈥� For those who are wondering, solfeggio is not a water-soluble mineral but a way of teaching the major scale, as immortalised by Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music when she sang Do-Re-Mi. How this ends up inside a plastic bottle of water remains unclear.
Feedback is reliably informed that this process 鈥渆nlivens the molecules producing noticeable texture, softness and ultra-hydrating taste, feel and effect鈥�.
Those who wish to gulp down some love can pick up Frequency H2O for around A$3.30 per litre. Feedback will be drowning our disbelief with something stronger.
Slug saviour
THE Lowy Institute, an esteemed Australian think tank, has published a paper on the serious topic of Chinese president Xi Jinping鈥檚 anti-corruption drive.
鈥淭he corrupt trade in beche-de-mer had been of low priority because there were larger fish to fry,鈥� writes Graeme Lindenmayer, 鈥渦ntil an unrelated report from a Chinese environmental scientist happened to reach Xi鈥檚 attention.鈥�
Lax enforcement of fisheries was seriously depleting the stocks of this highly valuable animal, says Graeme, spurring the president into action. Or, as the Lowy Institute titled the paper: 鈥溾��.
Frozen wasteland
NORTH America鈥檚 tallest peak has a big problem: a mountain of excrement, left by the 1100 or so climbers who attempt to reach the summit each year.
The Associated Press reports that an estimated 100 tonnes of solid human waste has been deposited on Denali in Alaska since 1951 and is inching down the Kahiltna glacier toward the meltwater river below.
Dumped in biodegradable pouches, it was believed that the faeces would decompose over time. But research by glaciologist Michael Loso found that the waste 鈥� and most likely the bacteria within 鈥� survives its trip down the mountainside intact. Loso predicts the mid-century sewage will start to appear at the bottom of the glacier in about seven years.
New rules have been proposed by Denali National Park authorities which will require climbers to relieve themselves of bagged faeces at two fixed locations to keep the mountain pristine. Feedback hopes that Alaska鈥檚 climbers will be happy to carry out their duty, so to speak.
The birds and bees
FEEDBACK is soliciting creative scientific theories cooked up by your enquiring childhood minds (24 February).
Luce Gilmore writes: 鈥淎s a boy, I learned about the deadly, disease-spreading tsetse fly. Not much later, I read that human eggs are fertilised by sperm, 鈥榝rom the testes鈥�, though how the two came together was left unexplained.鈥�
Luce misread testes as tsetse, and so for a while 鈥渂elieved that women were pollinated at night, by flies鈥�.
You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week鈥檚 and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.