by Laozi, about 2,500 years ago. New translation by Ken Liu.
Do by not doing, and there is nothing that cannot be done.
The text is short, and contains enigmatic phrases that have been interpreted over the millennia. Ken Liu writes mostly science fiction, and very well at that. Over the pandemic he found himself unable to write and looked back. His will to write returned but he held off to finish a new translation with notes, along with stories from contemporaries to fill out the understanding.
It’s helping me too. Thanks to Kottke for the recommendation.
I just discovered Curipod, a lesson creator with AI feedback built in. It looks like a valuable tool more suited to language learners than Kahoot. I like the flexibility of customization while there is a good lot of lesson templates. For now, it looks like short writing sessions can set a scene for discussion.
Oh, and most of the functions are available for free. Sadly, if you want feedback to student writing in a non-English language (something my students would actually read), you have to negotiate school or district pricing, which I have not looked into yet.
This TTS (Text to Speech) tool from Kokoro (early development) is an early look at what I will probably use to create short listening passages from content my students create, or that I create. It works really fast (60x live speed, this clip took less than 5 seconds).
Here is the Text:
It was late autumn in Cedarville, the kind of day where the air smelled like wood smoke and the leaves were all shades of orange and gold. I had just run into Nakayama at the old diner by the train tracks—the one we used to hang out at after football games in high school. Nakayama was still the same as ever, wearing that beat-up denim jacket and grinning like life was one big inside joke.
“Didn’t expect to see you here,” I said, sliding into the booth across from him. He had a cup of coffee in front of him and one of those little plates with a half-eaten slice of pie.
“Yeah, well, life’s funny like that,” Nakayama said. “I was just passing through, thought I’d stop in for old times’ sake. You still living here?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Figured someone should stick around and keep an eye on the place. How about you? Still playing music?”
Nakayama shrugged, looking out the window at the empty street. “Not really. You know how it goes. Things don’t always pan out the way you think.”
I’m a regular reader of Future Perfect, a Vox column that had its start with the Effective Altruism movement. I know Sam Bankman Fried took a lot of people’s money using EA as a mask for his intentions, but I think Vox and Future Perfect have recovered.
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.
