Looking for a hot spot to teach in Central Europe? Look no further than Poland! Poland is a bustling country ready for English teachers. This country is home to a variety of beautiful landscapes in the countryside as well as classic architecture and charm in the more urban areas. Teach English in Poland | Go Overseas
A 'hot spot' can also mean a place where the bombs are falling:
English teacher Olena Chekryzhova, who up to now has been on a more traditional, school-based career. She has spent five months at a frontline battle station in the eastern Donetsk area teaching her countrymen to understand the English of combat manuals, reports Agence-France-Presse. Fighting with English | E L Gazette
From a bunker 105 metres under Kyiv, two entrepreneurial Ukrainians, Oleksii Zinchenko and Maryna Gordiienko, launched Grade University. English underground | E L Gazett
Here's a great story or two from Charlie Connelly writing in the New European:
The joy of texts Are bulging bookshelves really “smug and cultish” – or sources of much-needed tranquility? CHARLIE CONNELLY 9 FEBRUARY 2023 12:00 AM On January 13, the owner of Broadhursts Bookshop in Southport tweeted: “I have just had a customer in the shop who does not have a TBR [to be read] pile, he reads a book and when he finishes it he buys another one and he never keeps them so he has no books at home bar the one he is currently reading. I’m having trouble believing him.” The tweet has received more than a million views and nearly 800 replies, mostly along the lines of “This is deranged behaviour”, “What madness is this?” and “That’s not a bit disturbing.” The tweet has received more than a million views and nearly 800 replies, mostly along the lines of “This is deranged behaviour”, “What madness is this?” and “That’s not a bit disturbing.”... Watching the debate rage – fiercely enough for the Guardian to change the column’s headline to something less confrontational – I couldn’t help thinking about Bruno Schröder. A retired mining engineer, Schröder lived quietly in the small town of Mettingen in north-western Germany until his death in November at the age of 88. He had no close family, his wife had been in a care home for some years and while he was cheerfully polite to neighbours, he kept himself to himself. His unassuming life in an unassuming town would have been unremarkable were it not for the discovery after his death that his modest suburban home had been converted into a personal library containing more than 70,000 books...
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During the week that sees the first anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, BBC journalists Tim Whewell and Nick Sturdee tell the story of how the war has been presented to the Russian people: BBC Radio 4 - Analysis, From Brother to Other
They interview the Russian social anthropologist Alexandra (Sasha) Arkhipova - and she talked about how her fellow Russians are subjected to 'enforced helplessness' - which is basically a feeling of not being able to control things: Learned helplessness - Wikipedia
Most Russians feel helpless - and only very few are showing public opposition - as shown in research Sasha carried out last September:
Participation in street actions that would “not be even
reported in any news coverage,” yet were extremely risky,
only aggravated the feeling of total helplessness among
my interviewees. Thus, while at the beginning of the
war some of them thought seriously about organizing
protest resistance, after participation in several protest
actions, they generally dropped these intentions... RAD291.pdf
Here she's being interviewed by the independent Russian media outlet Eyewitness (formerly TV2):
Tell us about yourself - My name is Sasha Arkhipova, I am a social anthropologist. Social anthropologists are people who study how other people behave, how other people think. To put it very briefly, social anthropology is the science of understanding understanding, of how other people understand. The war is more than six months old. What has changed in the mass consciousness of Russians?
- Well, first of all, the image of the enemy is changing. That is, the war began when we were told that there were some Nazis in Ukraine, who were making all kinds of attempts on our glorious past and on our present, crucifying boys. In addition, we were told that the Americans had built some laboratories on the borders of Ukraine and Russia that were poisoning us and releasing contaminated pigeons. That is, the enemy was not the Ukrainians, the enemy was the Americans with geopolitical interests and the Nazis, zombified by Americans.
Another layer of thinking is the conspiracy theory:
During the Cold War, the Soviets often used conspiracy theories to justify fighting the West. Now the Putin regime is doing the same thing with such intensify that it is entirely appropriate to say that “conspiracy thinking is already its new ideology,” Aleksandra Arkhipova says. The folklorist who writes the (Not)Entertaining Anthropology telegram channel (t.me/s/anthro_fun) says Russian leaders with roots in the Soviet past find the use of conspiracy theories effective when no one believes the official ideology as was true then or when there is no obvious ideology as is the case now (svoboda.org/a/aleksandra-arhipova-konspirologiya-eto-uzhe-novaya-ideologiya-/32138044.html).
As Arkhipova notes, “Putin constantly says that we are not fighting with Ukraine. Ukrainians are a fraternal people. In fact, we are fighting with the West, with the Anglo-Saxons” who want to destroy us in a variety of ways. The Kremlin leader most likely believes exactly that, but at the very least, he appreciates the value to himself of promoting conspiracy thinking.
The best time of day to exercise, conceive and to learn new things, according to science
Are
you having your coffee at the best time of day or going to bed too
late? Science might be able to help plan your day to better optimise
energy and be more productive
If
you’re the kind of person who leaps out of bed and pulls on their
exercise gear for a quick HIIT before work, get ready to feel even
smugger. Scientists this week announced they might be on the way to
finding the ideal time to exercise – and the evidence points to the
morning being most effective in terms of fat-burning.
Researchers
found that genes involved with breaking down fat and thermogenesis (heat
production) were more evident in mice that exercised in the morning —
suggesting it had a bigger effect on their metabolic rate. Professor
Juleen Zierath, a biologist at the Karolinska Institutet, said: ‘Our
results suggest that late-morning exercise could be more effective than
late evening exercise in terms of boosting the metabolism and the
burning of fat.”
So, what about the best time of day for
everything else? While there is no one-size-fits-all answer for every
human, scientific research shows that there are optimal times for many
of us to do everything from nap to learn a new language. But take note,
it’s less about the time on the clock, and when you do things in
relation to your wake-up time.
7am: Best time to be creative
Albert Read, author of The Imagination Muscle: Where Good Ideas Come From (and How to Have More of Them).
7.30: Best time to conceive
Researchers
at the University Hospital of Zurich, Switzerland, analysed 12,245
semen samples from 7068 men, between 1994 and 2015.
9am: Best time for coffee and breakfast
Dr Amy Shah, author of I’m So Effing Hungry: Why we crave what we crave – and what to do about it.
9.30 am: Best time to be productive
Dr Robert Friedland, neurologist and author of Unaging: The Four Factors that Impact How You Age
11am: Besttime to take a break
Psychologist
Dr Emily Hunter found in her study published in the Journal of Applied
Psychology...
12 noon: Best time to go outside for Vitamin D
a study in the International Journal of
Dermatology...
2pm: Best time for a nap
Professor
Carolyn D’Ambrosio, chair of the Sleep Medicine Network
4pm: The best time for mundane chores
Daniel Pink writes, author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.
9.30pm: The best time for a shower or bath
A meta-analysis of 17 studies...
10pm: The best time to study for a test/retain information
Researchers
from Loughborough University Dr Jayne Trickett and Dr Camilla Gilmore
10.30: The best time for bed
Dr
Sophie Bostock, sleep expert and founder of The Sleep Scientist
