Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Category: culture

  • Words of Culture, Culture of Words

    Nowhere better can you find the nuances of culture than in the words that are used. Nancy Friedman tracks those at Fritinancy. This year we get a bonus, wordS, not just word.

    My favorite: The Fall of the Broman Empire, on the X-odus of people from Musk’s vanity website. Others include 4B (from Korea), Debank, social tonic (laced with THC), Pretendians. I have a couple of young HENRYs in my family tree. And there is the Hawk Tuah girl.

    I can tell Nancy has been around a while at this game because she is writing on TypePad, a platform that had its heyday many years ago.

  • 100 Heartwarming Stories

    From the BBS, many with short video clips, and most short and simple enough to be used in ELT classes.

  • Rotating Sandwiches

    Rotating Sandwiches

    At least 6, and maybe 8, of these Rotating Sandwiches are not sandwiches. But controversy aside, this is a great resource for language teaching. Besides our yes/no, we can compare, we can guess the prices, we can list ingredients, we can make recipes. I’m sure there is more. Thanks to Kottke for the link.

  • Watch your Ps and Questionable Garbage

    “Under Fukushima’s new rules, if the rubbish remains unsorted for a week, city workers can go through it and try to identify the offenders via items such as mail. The violators will be issued a verbal warning, followed by a written advisory, before the last resort: having their names published on the government website.”

    From BBC.

  • Seaweed for Cows

    Got too much red algae? Feed it to the cows. It reduces methane by 40%.