Living in Russia

More Interesting Experiences in Russia

nside a dimly lit cave, a group of people sit huddled around glowing amphoras. These vessels are no ordinary pottery; they're meticulously painted with images of legendary wrestlers, engaged in eternal combat. The flickering light from a small fire casts these images onto the walls, animating the wrestlers in a primitive, captivating dance of shadows.



The cave's inhabitants watch these images, interpreting the epic battles as the ultimate expression of wrestling. They debate the techniques, celebrate the victories, and mourn the defeats, all from the moving images on the amphoras. To them, these representations are the entirety of wrestling—there is no world beyond the wrestlers on the pottery.


Nikostratos, ever the curious and skeptical cat, notices a sliver of light peeking through a crack in the cave wall. The murals and their tales don't satisfy his curiosity. One day, driven by a particularly pungent smell of the outside world—a mix of fresh earth and sweat—he finds a loose stone and wiggles his way through the crack.

Everything Zenified 

Wrestling, skeptical Cats, and Allegory of the Cave

🎧🌯
Escúchanos a Belem (de Chihuahua) y a mí (de Coahuila), hablar de comida, de salsita, de guisos, de burritos y algo más de acá de México.


Hablando Al Chile

Hablando de algunas comidas mexicanas norteñas 🎧🌯

CHISTES MEXICANOS

ACAPULCO.

It's polite to explain why you are unable to accept an invitation or offer.
For example:
I'd love to but I'm busy, I'm visiting my sister this weekend. 

Everyday English with Teacher Alyse

Not Accepting an Invitation

Learn about the Christmas holiday and some adjectives and nouns with it!

English Syndicate

Learn English through Stories - A Christmas Story

Hi! This is the final introduction podcast. Maybe, at this point, you are tired of listening to me talking about myself, but I guarantee you that you find this really interesting and challenging! In this podcast I talked freely like when I chat with my friends. I didn't use my dialect, but used well-known-not-standard-Japanese! For those who study mainly from textbooks or articles, it will be even surprising!

たつきのにほんご

Introduction (Native level)

There are many types of dairy alternatives on the market today, often made from things like nuts and soybeans.

But have you heard they're now making butter from air?

A US startup called Savor is working on a range of dairy alternatives made using something that exists all around us: carbon.

Fats are made from chains of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Savor's process involves taking carbon — from, say, carbon dioxide — and adding heat and hydrogen to create chains that are combined with oxygen from air.

This results in fat molecules, like the ones found in dairy and other animal products.

Now, regular butter is about 80% fat — the rest is mostly water. So to make butter from its synthetic fat, Savor just adds water, as well as an emulsifier that keeps the liquids from separating, and rosemary oil for flavor and beta carotene for color.

What does it taste like?

"I couldn't believe I wasn't eating real butter," Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates wrote in a blog post earlier this year. Gates is one of Savor's investors.

He wrote that "it tastes really good — like the real thing, because chemically it is."

Savor has already run informal taste tests with small groups of people, and is working to get regulatory approval for its product in the US.

But why butter?

A 2021 study estimated that food production makes up about 35% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions — and Savor estimates that about 7% of greenhouse gas emissions are just from producing fat.

But Savor's process, Gates wrote, doesn't release any greenhouse gases. He added that it uses no farmland and "less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does."

Savor is focusing on butter to start with partly because its high price point makes it easier to compete on cost. But the startup later hopes to develop other products like milk, ice cream, cheese — even meat.





Practice Listening, Reading & Comprehension

US Startup Makes Butter from Carbon Dioxide

Why Does The Queen Appoint New Prime Ministers?