Siri Gets Lost in Translation; Bats Invade the E.R.

Sorry, Southerners. Siri doesn’t understand your drawl. The British newspaper The Guardian tested the voice-recognition app with a native Texan and found Siri couldn’t understand critical Texas terms such as “mosey,” “brisket” or “kolaches,” although it understood “crawfish” and lines from the 2004 movie “The Alamo” just fine.

Texas writer Julia Reed came to the same conclusion. “Apparently none of [Siri’s] coders have spent a natural minute below the Mason-Dixon Line,” she wrote in an article for the southern lifestyle magazine Garden & Gun and quoted in The Guardian.

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Mexican freetail bats invaded an East Texas hospital forcing the temporary shutdown of the emergency room earlier this month.

The Associated Press reported Feb. 16 that the Good Shepherd Medical Center in Kilgore had become overrun by “a number of small bats.” The bats are believed to have moved into the building through an area that receives ambulances. Good Shepherd has suspended emergency room services until the bats have been removed, a process expected to take two-and-a-half weeks.

The Kilgore News Herald reported: “Bat-astrophe Averted.”