What if鈥�
January ticks along apace, but Feedback still hasn鈥檛 quite recovered from Christmas. Not the indulgence in food, wine and song, mind, but a festive press release issued on behalf of the operator of a network of electric vehicle charging points, which haunted our holiday season like the ghost of Christmas nonsensical. 鈥淏rits cook enough turkeys to travel the world over 10,000 times in an EV鈥�, it was titled.
This raises the urgent question of why a large number of turkeys should be a prerequisite for circumnavigating the globe in an electric vehicle. Thankfully, the message goes on to clarify that it is concerned with the amount of power being used to cook the UK鈥檚 Christmas dinners, and not the biomass of domestic fowl per se.
鈥淚f everyone was to cook their turkey in an oven that cooks it instantly at the exact same time in the UK there would be issues, especially considering the estimated combined capacity of around 90 GW,鈥� said Chris Burghardt, managing director for Europe at ChargePoint. 鈥淭he thing is, they don鈥檛!鈥�
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Similarly alarming hypotheticals have been nagging us ever since. What would the energy implications be if we all had robot chefs powered by quantum computers, and chose to eat lab-grown turkeys while sitting in hot tubs and watching films on 88-inch ultra-high-definition TVs? What if Father Christmas charged his electric drone-sleigh and Rudolph鈥檚 LED-nose at the same time? What if the Queen鈥檚 speech were broadcast directly into Feedback鈥檚 brain using transcranial direct-current stimulation? Fortunately, these things don鈥檛 happen, but if they did鈥� well, there would certainly be issues.
High-flyers
Feedback isn鈥檛 above admitting to the occasional mistake. Especially when it happened in the dear, dim past of a bygone year like 2019. After all, the Feedback of 2019 was weak of judgement and loose of syntax; 2020鈥檚 Feedback is older, wiser, a new product fit for a new decade. By the end of it, we may well have become an AI.
So we are happy to report that on 7 December 2019, a date that will live in infamy, Feedback made the unforgivable boo-boo of mixing up satellite orbital paths. While passing judgement on Spelfie, an app that lets you take self-portraits with the help of passing spacecraft, we claimed that the photographs would be shot from 36,000 kilometres up.
We are grateful to the keen eyes of Bryn Glover and Dave Hardy for pointing out that the satellites in question are closer to 600 kilometres overhead. This is closer up than we usually like our photographs to be taken.
We鈥檙e SEO confused
A new frontier has emerged in the long-standing conflict between economy and ecology. Brands that have appropriated the names of animals are increasingly deploying search engine optimisation specialists to secure the top-ranked spots in Google results.
In Feedback鈥檚 neck of the woods, at least, a squid is now a cashless payment card. It should not be confused with an octopus, which is a many-armed investment vehicle. A dolphin is a games console emulator and a shark is a vacuum cleaner. Elephants supply a range of car insurance quotes, while zebras offer 鈥渆nterprise-level data capture and automatic identification solutions that provide businesses with operational visibility鈥�. No, us neither. An eagle, meanwhile, is a nightclub in Vauxhall, London. Actually, we had that last one bookmarked, but you get the point.
Feedback is deeply troubled by this assault on common meaning. With animals unable to learn the dark arts of SEO for themselves, are they doomed to disappear from human awareness as soon as they slip onto the second page of results?
Stiff upper forehead
Feedback has never been much of a risk-taker. Our idea of a daredevil exploit is trying to sneak a series of uncapitalised brand names past our ever-vigilant subeditors. But a hunger for adrenaline seems to be a prerequisite for modern life. How is one supposed to build an Instagram following without diving off a zip line into a shark-infested canyon?
Pausing for a moment to wonder how all those vacuum cleaners got down there, we are intrigued by a paper in the journal Emotion that suggests a way to lower our risk-averseness without the traditional need for liquid courage. The paper, 鈥淒isrupting facial action increases risk taking鈥�, was based on the premise that, just as it is almost impossible to smile without feeling one鈥檚 mood improve, preventing one鈥檚 facial muscles from registering anxiety will lead to greater risk-taking.
Having watched one too many old-school war films over the festive period, Feedback wonders whether the researchers have discovered the scientific basis for that supposedly most British of virtues, the stiff upper lip. But no: the method involves attaching inflexible medical tape to the forehead. That鈥檚 right, readers: instead of getting plastered to overcome your fears, get plastered. The results were surprisingly positive. 鈥淲hen these facial responses are disrupted,鈥� the researchers concluded, 鈥渢he decision-maker feels freer to take the risk鈥�. Having slapped 12 sticky notes onto our face, we can confirm that we feel ready for anything. Even a showdown with the new scientist subeditors.
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