This morning we spoke about the experience of learning or starting to learn something new as older adults and the questiion came up, if or how learning changes throughout a lifetime. One class member assumed, as do many, that it gets slower with age. But is that necessarily true or just one of those negative assumptions associated with aging.
Continue readingAnd in the middle of things stands someone you might only remember from a movie starring Julia Roberts as the main character.
Continue readingGo to Goodreads or Amazon. Check out for yourself. Before you go on reading.
Continue readingI first encountered the term in an article published by Mona Lazar in Medium The Buy Nothing Rebellion: 7 Refusals | Medium. I had before followed TED talks on Minimalism, a predecessor movement, something different, similar or basically the same? I do not know. Maybe it is just a new term for a recurring movement that takes on different qualities over time and generations.
Continue readingSting’s song from 1987 is one of my favorites for sharing with groups. The lyrics are a reference to Quentin Crisp. Quentin Crisp lived from 1909 to 1999, and to understand the lyrics of Sting’s song you need to know that Quentin Crisp was ‘himself, no matter what they said’. He was a young homosexual man in the 20ies and 30ies of the 20th century, and did not hide it. He refused – or maybe just couldn’t – adhere to social norms of gender conformity. In that he was ‘the hero of the day’.
First posted October 2025; last updated August 2026
A summary with frequently shared links
When I browse through all the topics that have dominated throughout the last years, i.e. topics that come up again and again, everything around digitalization definitely qualifies. The range is wide: from the internet in general, to smartphone related topics, and – the newest since ChatGPT abruptly entered the market – A.I.
Continue readingAnd, as every year …
“Words of the Year” (or WOTY) offer a perspective on what interested people in the year past. Some words are chosen by linguistic institutes (like the American Dialect Society – Wikipedia in the US, comparable to the ‘Gesellschaft für Deutsche Sprache‘ in Germany), others by dictionaries that choose according to which words or expressions were looked up most on their websites. Some words reflect social or cultural trends, others refer to news topics or topics that seem to have dominated media throughout the year.
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In my post on everything digital, I mentioned Jaron Lanier and his Ted talk on the history of the internet in which he describes how the internet was developed and conceptualized from the beginning as something that should be available for free to all. This leftist, socialist ideal, he explains, led to the internet having become a huge behaviour modification manipulator and he warns that we should change this.
Jaron Lanier: How we need to remake the internet | TED Talk
In an article Jaron Lanier published April 2023 for The New Yorker magazine, he warns about the dangers of calling digital machines ‘artificial intelligence’ (A.I.). There Is No A.I. | The New Yorker
Continue readingList and comments of what we did starting with our last meeting; with links to materials used.
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The following is the prologue to a very successful book series, and more I do not want to say …
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In a time, when autocratic leadership seems to be mushrooming throughout the world, even in the country many used to consider a reliable torch bearer of democracy, the topic of leadership has become one of utmost importance.
Continue readingMy posts on this traditional new year’s topic build up on each other. The one from 2022 provides the most background information to the topic; 2023’s post lists four sources I focussed on last year.
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As much as I would like to say ‘good riddance’, there were some things I enjoyed in 2024. (And those developments I consider less positive are most likely here to stay for a while, I’m afraid.) So let’s take a little look back…
Continue readingTed Ed videos are short educational videos explaining a various number of different topics in a few minutes. Here I will share a list of those I have already watched or find interesting for future reference.
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This is an evergreen topic: Misunderstood song lyrics, also know as ‘mondegreens’. There are some classic ones everybody knows, and some where you wonder if they are truly mondegreens or not really attempts at humor. Why they are called ‘mondegreens’ and more of them ….
Continue readingI have written about this question in other posts that you find under Reflections and Recommendations on Learning and Teaching
There are quite a few linguists who share their research and insights on the internet in videos or podcasts. I have listed several of them below.
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This year, 2024, Earth Overshoot Day has been calculated for August 1.
Earth Overshoot Day is the day on which we humans have used up all ‘the sustainable amount of biological resources generated on earth’ (wikipedia):
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