These beautiful photos capture how a remote island community safely shepherds its rare seabirds to the ocean.

The Azores hosts three-quarters of the global population of Cory鈥檚 shearwaters, which nest in burrows and clifftops around the Atlantic archipelago. Chicks stay in their nests all spring and summer until they have grown big enough to attempt their first flight, seen in the image above.

Once ready, the young birds take flight by night to avoid predators, using the moon and stars to navigate to the ocean. But it isn鈥檛 just predators these birds should be wary of, photographer Andrea Zanenga discovered when he visited Corvo. The tiny Portuguese island has just 430 human inhabitants, but is home to the world鈥檚 largest colony of Cory鈥檚 shearwaters.

During their fledging window in late October and early November, the young shearwaters are easily confused by artificial lights. The seabirds can鈥檛 take off from ground level, so if they crash, they remain stuck on the ground, vulnerable to attack or starvation.

鈥淭hese are young birds, 3 months old, and most of them are doing their first flight,鈥� says T芒nia Pipa, a marine biologist at the Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds.

鈥淭hey get lost. If you have a point with light pollution, they see it as guidance and go to that place, and get disorientated.鈥� On the worst nights, Corvo residents might find dozens of stranded birds on the streets of the island鈥檚 only settlement, Vila do Corvo.

An Azores-wide campaign known as SOS Cagarro was launched in 1995 to rescue fallen shearwaters. Volunteers join night walks to spot stranded birds and place them in artificial nests (above).

The birds are released the following day from nearby clifftops.

But the residents of Corvo have gone one better. For five nights during the peak fledging season, all public lighting in Vila do Corvo is switched off from 9pm until midnight to help the birds navigate safely out to the ocean.

Corvo is the only island in the Azores to operate such a self-imposed blackout, leaving it free of light pollution. 鈥淲hen you see this sky with a lot of stars, you feel a little bit smaller,鈥� says Zanenga.

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

Pussycats on parade

Some topics appear to be catnip to Feedback鈥檚 readers, and one of them is cats. In our 23 September edition, we described a study in which pet cats were fitted with accelerometers. This revealed that they spent the lion鈥檚 share of their time doing absolutely nothing, with 20.1 to 41.4 per cent of their time spent sitting down and a further 34.8 to 52.9 per cent devoted instead to lying down.

We suggested that these cats were a tad slothful, and might even be edging towards idleness.

We received some feedback on this opinion. Reader Jack Haley sent us a lengthy text 鈥渃ourtesy of Google AI鈥� (put a pin in that; we鈥檙e coming back to it), recounting the experiences of , a geologist in Australia who took part in a in the 2010s.

The results, as outlined in Haley鈥檚 text, were startling: 鈥淪quid, a heavier ginger tabby, was mapped taking regular nighttime strolls to the local high school and a nearby shopping center. Semi, a black- and-white cat, went much further, venturing a staggering three kilometers away from home.鈥�

Furthermore, 鈥淪tudies like the Cat Tracker project have shown that roughly 40 per cent of cats whose owners believe they are indoors or close by at night actually range over a hectare or more, frequently engaging in secret, long-distance neighbourhood explorations.鈥�

Curious, Feedback put our exploring paws on and eventually found that the was launched from the University of North Carolina before being in Australia (and there鈥檚 now a Cat Tracker 2.0). Its final results were in 2020 in Animal Conservation. 鈥淲e worked with citizen scientists to track 925 pet cats from six countries, finding remarkably small home ranges,鈥� the feline watchers wrote. The average range was 鈥�3.6 hectares鈥� (0.036 square kilometres) and in the sample only three cats ranged over more than 1 square kilometre.

Readers may notice some subtle differences between how the AI framed the results and how the scientists did. Technically, if you think about it, the AI did get the core facts right, and yet, Feedback still thinks cats are quite lazy.

Meanwhile, assistant news editor Sam Wong sent us a study titled 鈥淲ealth, health, cats and Toxoplasma gondii: An ecological correlational study of subjective well-being across 93 countries鈥�. This found that 鈥渘ational happiness was positively associated with cat density鈥�.

They mean 鈥減opulation density鈥�, of course, but Feedback is also pretty sure that cats with greater physical density have significant effects on the happiness of their human attendants. One of ours can contract until she has a density approximating that of a neutron star when she wants to sleep on one of her humans.

Raging hellfire

A lot of lectures suffer from a dire lack of relatability. What, a prospective audience might wonder, does the evolutionary divergence of Cambrian lophotrochozoans or a drag-induced skin effect in a Bose-Fermi mixture have to do with my life?

No such relatability limitations affected a on 8 October at Utah State University by Miranda Judson, a graduate student in philosophy at Arizona State University. The organisers noted that a announcing it had unexpectedly gone viral 鈥� and it鈥檚 no wonder.

The talk was titled 鈥淲elcome to Hell: A theodicy鈥�. The subtitle went on to clarify that 鈥淭his talk argues that the evidence of our world is such that the probability we鈥檙e in hell is surprisingly high. If we鈥檙e in hell, we鈥檇 expect to see the evidence we actually do see鈥�.

Alas, the talk wasn鈥檛 streamed online, and Judson doesn鈥檛 appear to have yet published a paper on it. But honestly, given the general state of things, we feel it wouldn鈥檛 be too difficult to fill in the blanks. We鈥檒l report back if we learn more, hopefully not via the medium of a demonic voice in our head.

Bedtime tales

Speaking of evidence that we鈥檙e in hell, readers may have heard of the AI engineer telling his wife that he doesn鈥檛 need to read to his kids at bedtime because he can just train an AI to do it for him. If you haven鈥檛 heard of this, well, now you have.

The engineer in question is Alvin Sng, who works for a company called Factory. Sng the following on X on 7 October: 鈥淢y wife: Can you read our baby a book? Me: I can just play an audiobook from my phone. My wife: But then it won鈥檛 be in your voice. Me: I can train a voice model.鈥� His conclusion was: 鈥淧arenting hits different when you work in AI.鈥�

Feedback isn鈥檛 going to dunk on this, because a large proportion of the people with access to the internet already have, and at this point it鈥檚 too easy. However, we will note that Sng has since deleted the post, and on 8 October : 鈥淥k, enough jokes for a while. I鈥檒l go back to reading bedtime stories for now.鈥� The replies to this post suggest that people don鈥檛 believe he was joking.

The trouble is, of course, that the claims routinely made by AI bros are so over the top that it is hard to differentiate a parody from the real thing. The internet adage Poe鈥檚 law describes this phenomenon for extreme views, which are frequently so ridiculous that any parody must be clearly marked as such.

Perhaps we need a corollary, something like: 鈥淲ithout a blatant display of humour, it is utterly impossible to parody antisocial AI hype in such a way that it cannot be mistaken for the genuine article鈥�. We could call it Sng鈥檚 law.

Got a story for Feedback?

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.

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

To boldly cook

Various Trekkies in the New 精东传媒 office have pointed out to Feedback that this year is the 60th anniversary of the venerable sci-fi franchise Star Trek (TV columnist Bethan Ackerley even wrote a whole article about it). Naturally, its corporate owners have marked the occasion by cancelling all the television shows still in production. A movie is currently in development, but since that has been continuously true ever since the last cinematic release in, er, 2016, it seems best not to hold one鈥檚 breath.

In the absence of, say, a special episode where the characters in a current show are inserted Forrest Gump-style into an episode of the original programme, fans must make do with what they have, and what they have is apparently an expensive range of Star Trek-branded cookware, one item of which was briefly sent into space.

For some reason, Star Trek has partnered with Le Creuset, makers of distinctively orange cookware. One can now buy a , including various casserole dishes emblazoned with trekanalia, a mug with a handle shaped like one of Spock鈥檚 pointed ears, and a spoon rest in the form of a Vulcan salute. A small prize, also, to whoever came up with the idea of the .

To draw attention to this new range, Le Creuset hired a company called , which describe themselves as 鈥渢he industry leaders in filming products, items, and bespoke activations in space鈥�. Sent Into Space used a balloon to take a Star Trek casserole dish to an altitude of 35 kilometres, which isn鈥檛 a sentence Feedback ever expected to write. One can, if one so chooses, this event on the Le Creuset YouTube channel, which is a thing that exists.

Chief subeditor Kelsey Hayes learned of this after being sent a promotional email about it. She notes that 35 km is 鈥渨ell below the K谩rm谩n line鈥�, which is one standard definition for the edge of space and is somewhat arbitrarily set at 100 km altitude. So, it鈥檚 a matter of debate whether the cookpot went to space or just really high.

Feedback will say this: we prefer this stunt to that time Elon Musk sent a Tesla Roadster into space. That car is now orbiting the sun and will litter the solar system forever. In contrast, the Le Creuset cocotte was parachuted back to Earth.

Happily, the landing took place in an isolated field. As Kelsey says: 鈥淚magine getting beaned by a Le Creuset Dutch oven dropped from 110,000 feet.鈥�

Hey good-looking

Feedback is always keen on a new scientific acronym, and this one is new to us: self-assessed physical attractiveness (SAPA). As the name suggests, it refers to a person鈥檚 opinion of their own hotness. And according to a recent , a person鈥檚 SAPA can be linked to a host of other traits.

In the journal Evolutionary Psychology, two researchers report asking hundreds of volunteers to rate their own attractiveness and then answer questions to see what correlated with SAPA. 鈥淧articipants rated their attractiveness on a 0鈥�100 scale,鈥� which Feedback finds immediately baffling because how do you choose between, say, 76 and 77? Surely 1 to 10 would do.

This one was sent our way by assistant news editor Alexandra Thompson, who flagged a key line in the abstract 鈥� 鈥渉igher self-rated attractiveness was associated with being male鈥� 鈥� and simply said 鈥淟OL鈥�. We must tell you that higher SAPA was also associated with holding a university degree, greater optimism, being more religious, having a liberal political orientation and being able to tolerate ambiguity. In contrast, 鈥渃ognitive ability showed a small negative association with SAPA鈥�.

It seems to follow that the people with the highest opinion of their own attractiveness are men who have university degrees despite lacking cognitive ability. Upon having this realisation, Feedback had a flashback to our days as an undergraduate, and we can see the truth in it.

The researchers also did personality tests, but since they used the DISC test invented by the creator of Wonder Woman, which is decidedly non-evidence-based, we won鈥檛 bother about the results.

The point of all this is to try to understand the dynamics of our society. The authors write: 鈥淭here is a vast literature on the beauty premium, which suggests that, in males, and possibly more in females, physical attractiveness is a considerable asset in all competitive situations such as mate selection.鈥�

Feedback cannot quite get over how many people think of dating as inherently competitive. Our experience is that the main obstacle to securing a healthy adult relationship isn鈥檛 competitors who are more attractive, but rather one鈥檚 own devastating personality flaws.

Maybe that鈥檚 because Feedback is so ridiculously good-looking.

Monks gone wild

Our mission to explore the world of unfortunate tech-induced abbreviations and truncations is ongoing. Duncan King tells us that, in the 1970s, his job included teaching students how to use the Science Citation Index, an index of thousands of leading journals.

Duncan explains that the index used a KeyWord In Context system. However, on occasion this led to peculiar side effects. Notably, an entry that was supposed to read as 鈥淎therosclerotic tendencies in monks鈥� would be split by the format, appearing instead as 鈥淎THEROSCL EROTIC TENDENCIES IN MONKS鈥�.

Got a story for Feedback?

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.