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No laughter
It was Feedback's birthday in the last 12 months and Feedback Jr gave us a card that said, “My goal in life is to be as funny as you think you are.”
Still, we persist with our dad jokes, if only because our children's exasperated reactions are so funny. So we were pleased to learn that two psychologists, Paul Sylvia and Meriel Burnett, have taken a scientific interest in dad jokes. They wrote whole article on the topic.
It's called “What's Brown and Sticky? Peering into the inevitable comedic mystery of dad humor with the help of a handful of machine learning models, hundreds of people, and tens of thousands of dad jokes.” The summary begins, if you haven’t guessed, “With a stick, of course.”
The authors have collected more than 32,000 jokes from the r/dadjokes community on Reddit. This dataset is available with the document, so Feedback naturally downloaded it in its entirety. There are such pearls as “How can you tell how old a boat is? Look at its mooring certificate.”
However, this is not just an excuse for puns: this is serious research. Psychologists collected data on how popular jokes were on the site and showed some of them to volunteers. This allowed them to ask the key question: “Who finds these weird jokes funny?” To do this, the commission members were asked questions about their personalities, political views, and so on. It turns out that people the paper calls “culturally traditional”—for example, “more educated” or “more religious”—found the jokes funnier.
A key factor, described as “the most intellectually profound question in the survey,” was whether people were cat or dog people. Both groups found the jokes funnier, as did those who liked both types of pets than those who didn't like either type of pet. What tracks? As the researchers say: “It’s interesting what people who don’t like kittens and puppies find funny.”
Finally, the researchers found that gender and parenthood influence how people perceive jokes. Or as they put it: “In these difficult and uncertain times, filled with distrust of knowledge and reason, it is perhaps encouraging that science has discovered that dads find dad jokes funnier.”
Combination when urinating
Asleep at the wheel as usual, Feedback missed the publication of Jo-Ann Beshear and Gail Ramster's book in June. Designing inclusive public toilets. Luckily, reader Brian Reffin Smith is on the case.
The book's argument is simple: public toilets should work for everyone, but they often don't. “This book provides a critical overview of the design of public toilets in the UK and demonstrates the urgent need to re-evaluate the accessibility and culture of these important spaces,” explains the publisher’s website.
Feedback comes immediately. We have autistic relatives for whom the high-pitched squeal of some hand dryers is enough to cause sensory overload, and who also have something to say about the fluorescent lighting of public restrooms. Although we note that the RRP for the hardback book is £70, which doesn't seem like a lot of money.
However, following Brian's lead, we want to note the subtitle of the book. You can expect something dry and long-winded like: “How to make public amenities accessible to everyone, regardless of gender, ethnicity, disability, or neurodiversity.” But this is, essentially, “Wee people.”
The end is almost near
When you make a big statement and it gets pushed back, there are several ways to respond. Perhaps your critics have made good points, so you add some caveats or otherwise moderate your remarks. Or maybe you decide you've been misunderstood and try to clarify your point.
This is not that kind of story. Last month (October 18), Feedback reported the depressing news that humanity is on its way to extinction in 2339. This was based on a paper by demographers David Swenson and Jeff Thaman, who noted a decline in fertility between 2019 and 2024 and cheerfully extrapolated 300-plus years into the future. This, Feedback suggests, may not be supported.
To our surprise, Swenson contacted us. “Thank you,” he writes, “for recognizing that our paper on human extinction was serious.” This puts to rest once and for all our lingering suspicions that this was all a hoax.
Swanson also sent us a second version of the article. It contains significant updates, perhaps because they added data for 2025. As a result, the extinction of the human species was delayed by almost a century: instead of 2339, we should now go extinct around 2415. So that's a relief.
However, a more significant change is contained in the new title of the article: “Probabilistic forecast of human extinction on a regional basis“You see, the researchers have now broken down their forecast by continent. “Asia will be the first region to experience extinction (2280), Europe will be second (2295), followed by the Americas (2300), then Africa (2360) and finally Oceania (2415),” they write. Guys, buy that beachfront property on Easter Island.
Feedback cannot help but present a third version of the article, which will predict the exact Polynesian island where the very last person will destroy it.
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