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Continue readingWho is James W. Harrow?
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Category Archives: Things to talk about
The Buy Nothing Rebellion
I 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 reading“An Englishman in New York” and some thoughts on pronouns
Sting’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’.
Everything digital: From ‘Internet’ to ‘AI’
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 readingDon’t call it intelligent – the suggestive influence of metaphorical concepts
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 readingLeadership
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 readingTopics and images of 2024
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 readingMondegreens and ‘We didn’t start the fire’
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 readingEarth Overshoot Day, or: What is your ecological footprint?
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):
Continue readingPlastics
(Sequel to the Gapminder post)
Triggered by the gapminder question tile ‘Plastics in Oceans’, I created a lesson around the topic of plastics based on the text below.
History and Future of Plastics | Science History Institute
Continue readingGapminder and SDGs
Update 2025
Anna Rosling Rönnlund: See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income | TED Talk
Some years ago, I watched a TED talk given by the Swedish statistician and physician Hans Rosling and his son. Hans and Ola Rosling: How not to be ignorant about the world | TED Talk.
I also started reading his book ‘Factfulness’.
Continue readingWords and their origins: Often not what you thought
The Case of Soccer and Football
The European Championchip is in its last week, the English team is still playing and it is high time that I write my football/soccer related post before the tournament is over and football talk will rest for two years before it resumes with the World Cup 2026. Taking place in North America and Mexico, there will probably then be more soccer talk than football talk, at least among the hosts.
Why DO Americans call what (almost) everyone else calls football ‘soccer’? And why do they call a game pretty obviously hardly played with any feet ‘football’. American football comes across as a (rougher) version of rugby, so why wasn’t it called American Rugby?
Continue readingLetting go of New Year’s resolutions
In the podcast below from National Public Radio, Gregory Warner describes how he went from being obsessed with New Year’s resolutions to letting go of them. ‘Goal disengagement’ is the term; liberating yourself from old and repeatedly newly set goals, especially when, year after year, they remain unfulfilled.
Continue readingAre you an extrovert or an introvert?
The article and quiz ‘Are you an extrovert or an introvert (and why it matters) (link below) is related to a TEDtalk from 2012 by Susan Cain; Quiet: The Power of Introverts. This issue has forcefully come up again during corona times in connection with how people feel about having to work alone from home.
In relation to this, the BBC article Why introverts excelled at working from home deals with the question what kind of personality types are supported by which kind of work. Or in other words: do ‘traditional’ office jobs favor louder, more visible and extroverted people at the expense of introverts – whose time has now come?
How would we like to work?
During the pandemic, the topics of work-life balance, healthy work environments, satisfying work etc. came even more into focus than they had before. Work environments underwent dramatic changes in various lockdown situations. Whereas in many jobs or professions, employees and workers had no choice as to continue going to their respective work places, others, especially office workers, experienced working from home as a new normal.
Towards the end of the pandemic or the emergency situations, discussions intensified about how people wanted to work in future: which changes induced by the pandemic situation would they like to keep, where would they like to go back to how things were before – if at all – and what was truly missed.
Continue readingBicycles
How to get cars out of inner cities? Watch Janett Sadik-Khan’s TED talk about an experiment she initiated as trafic commissioner in New York City.
Continue readingYoung Russians fleeing country
Adapted from New York Times, October 5, 2022
Below you find an adapted and abbreviated version of an article from the New York Times reported by Andrew Higgins. He describes the situation of many young Russian men who are trying to escape their home country in a desperate attempt to evade being pulled into a war they do not support.
Continue readingWhat is a week?
In the UK and several other countries, research institutes and companies are trying out different ways of working. One such project is the trial run of a four day week instead of the traditional five. Below you find an adaptation of the text from The Guardian, supplemented with a little gap-filling exercise.
One of the research institutes involved in this project is the thinktank Autonomy. On their website you find a little video titled Change the Week.
Continue readingGuess the movie
I’ve been going through my collection of material – something I do every once in a while – and came across these little film synopses you find below. In the past, each of my course participants would get one to read out loud and for the others to guess. Simple little exercise, but I’m always relieved that there is at least a little common cultural ground we share, even if only some classic movies we all seem to have seen.
Continue readingGreen Cities
Tim Bowen from onestopenglish created a Guardian Weekly lesson on How to Get Cars out of Cities.
With one of my groups, we never got past the warmer question that asked us to put a list of six cities into a ranking order of ‘greenness’. The discussion triggered by this task was about why these cities had made the list, who had come up with the ranking and, most importantly, what were the criteria for being considered a green city.
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