麻豆传媒

Dressing down

Time for elevenses 鈥� and what could be nicer to go with this cuppa than a cucumber sandwich slathered in Miami chef Carly Pii鈥檚 proprietary Pink Sauce?

Pii鈥檚 product launch wasn鈥檛 the smoothest, . A couple of misprints on her labelling left purchasers with a 444-gram bottle that provided 鈥�444 servings鈥�. Just how powerful is this condiment? Too powerful for some: the dragon fruit that lend the sauce its tang and lurid colour act rather like beetroot, and this distressed some unsuspecting consumers, come their next bowel movement. Pii duly adjusted her formula, turning her hot pink concoction into something resembling Pepto-Bismol. But it was the initial packaging for her sauce (which arrived through the post, during a heatwave, in plastic bags instead of bottles) that caused the most annoyance.

Such has been Pii鈥檚 savaging on TikTok (including in which a 鈥渃onsumer鈥� allegedly faked his own death) that a counter-movement has emerged, with champions buying her entire stock. Meanwhile, Pii has been on the case. 鈥淵鈥檃ll gotta stop this negativity,鈥� she said last Thursday, in a YouTube video that lasted a staggering 52 minutes. Now that is what we call a riposte.

Wrapped up in the game

If this is the new face of consumer activism, then no wonder Manchester City Football Club are keeping their supporters close. The Verge on the limited release of the club鈥檚 new smart scarf, sporting wearable fitness tracker-style biosensors to help the organisation 鈥渟hape more curated, customized experiences in the future鈥� and 鈥渟erve as a study in shared passion鈥�.

Giving a data-harvesting project such a fulsome description feels disingenuous to us. Feedback prefers an altogether more charming tale of intimacy from afar, courtesy of . On the morning of 19 May 1845, an expedition led by John Franklin set sail to find the Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The expedition vanished. Five years later, Richard Collinson and others set out to find Franklin and his doomed crew. For all the while they were away, from 1850 to 1855, mysterious ads appeared in the UK in The Times newspaper, written in a code that remained unbroken for 170 years. Now, cryptographers Elonka Dunin, Klaus Schmeh and A. J. Jacobs have used the Marryat Signal Code, used by ships to send encrypted messages to each other using flags, to decode the ads.

They turn out to be tender private messages between Collinson expedition members and their families 鈥� the assumption being that no matter how far they travelled, they would never be far from a copy of The Times. 鈥淒o write a few lines darling, please,鈥� one message reads. 鈥淚 have been very far from happy since you went away.鈥�

Perverse incentive

This is the sort of family sentiment Feedback can get behind; less so the bug (that games company Electronic Arts is even now frantically patching) that has the avatars of The Sims 4 pining for daddy 鈥� and not in a good way, .

A 鈥渨ants and fears鈥� system, introduced with the game鈥檚 newest expansion pack, makes it easier for players to fulfil their sims鈥� everyday desires 鈥� one of which is to kiss and date those closest to them. Unfortunately, the new system is ignorant of the game鈥檚 long-standing prohibitions around intra-family relationships.

So sims have been pining away, unable to comprehend why their nearest and dearest won鈥檛 date them. On Twitter, an Electronic Arts team member has assured us that this 鈥渋s something we know about, we鈥檝e reproduced ourselves, we鈥檙e working on it鈥�, which is a mite less reassuring than perhaps intended.

Illegal move

Then again, the company鈥檚 evident goodwill contrasts markedly with the response Sergey Smagin at the Russian Chess Federation gave a Russian state-owned news agency, after a chess robot seized and broke a 7-year-old鈥檚 finger during this July鈥檚 Moscow Open.

The Guardian that Smagin said the incident was 鈥渁 coincidence鈥�, the child had 鈥渧iolated鈥� safety rules and the robot was 鈥渁bsolutely safe鈥�. (The boy is fine, though he finished the competition wearing a cast.) Sergey Lazarev, president of the Moscow Chess Federation, was more forthcoming to the TASS news agency. Only a little, mind: 鈥淭his is, of course, bad,鈥� he said.

Dead wringers

Feedback advises making robots of more forgiving materials. No sooner said than done, going by 鈥榮 breathless description of the latest in hydraulic gripper technology: the dead spider.

鈥淣ecrobotics鈥� is all the rage, following the publication of a by researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Exploiting the way spiders control their limbs by adjusting blood pressure through an internal valve system (which is why a dead spider鈥檚 legs curl up 鈥� there is no pressure to balance the force of the flexor muscles), the team has been injecting air into euthanised wolf spiders and using them to lift loads 1.3 times their own weight.

Grotesque it may be, but Feedback is even now fashioning a tiny chess set.

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