Updates on BTS, monkeypox, British politics, the asteroid, and more

Korean pop singers to take military leave; asteroid test was successful; monkeypox on the wane

Today's expression: Distance yourself
Explore more: Lesson #518
November 7, 2022:

Today's lesson is a look back at some recent lesson topics. Just months after the exit of Boris Johnson, British politics was plunged into tumult. Just one result: a recent prime minister was compared to a head of lettuce. Plus, learn the English expression "distance yourself."

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Here’s an update on some recent Plain English topics

Lesson summary

Hi there, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English lesson number 518 for Monday, November 7, 2022. This is a great place to upgrade your English with current events and trending topics. And twice a year, I like to take a look back at some recent topics. And that’s what we’ll do today.

We have updates on BTS, monkeypox, the South African nightclub tragedy, the asteroid crash, and more. In the second half of the lesson, I’ll show you what it means to “distance yourself” from someone or something. And we have a quote of the week.

This is lesson number 518, so that means JR, the producer, has uploaded today’s full content to PlainEnglish.com/518. Ready? Let’s get started.

Updates to recent lesson topics

BTS, the most popular band in the world, announced that they were taking a break to work on individual projects. You learned about that in Lesson 484 . Young men in South Korea are required to serve two years in the military, and the oldest band member is approaching 30, the deadline for enrolling in service. There was some question over whether the South Korean government would require them to serve, given how important they are to the economy and public image of the country. But indeed the band announced that all seven members would serve their two mandatory years. Their management company said they would be able to get back together in 2025. That’s forever, in boy-band years, isn’t it?

In Lesson 495 , we talked about monkeypox, another virus spreading quickly around the world. That lesson came out in August, but August turned out to be the peak month for monkeypox in the U.S. Case counts around the world have fallen steadily and the disease appears to be under control. A variation on the smallpox vaccine was distributed to fight monkeypox. That appears to have been effective. A public awareness campaign also worked. But the big reason the virus didn’t spread quickly is that it only spreads under very specific circumstances.

What killed 21 South African teenagers in a nightclub in June? It’s still not known. South African officials privately told grieving families that the teens died of “asphyxiation,” in other words that they suffocated to death. But that doesn’t explain why they suffocated. South Africa charged the tavern owner and two employees with violations of alcohol policy, minor charges that were unrelated to the deaths.

When I researched Lesson 488, I heard someone criticize the government for being sloppy with its investigation. I didn’t know what to think at the time. But here we are five months later and there’s still no definitive, public record of what happened. This is an embarrassment to the South African government and the lack of information only compounds the tragedy for the victims’ families.

The asteroid crash worked. Just a few weeks ago in Lesson 515 , you learned that NASA crashed a rocket into an asteroid, hoping to change the asteroid’s orbit around another larger asteroid. If an asteroid is on a collision course with the Earth, it would be nice to knock it off course, so that it misses us.

But that had never been done before…until now. As you heard in Lesson 515, NASA successfully crashed a device into the asteroid. And just days after that happened, telescopes discovered that the asteroid was in fact knocked off course, by just a little bit more than NASA had been hoping. This was the first time humans have altered the arrangement of celestial bodies. Hopefully it won’t be necessary to move any more objects to avoid human extinction, but it’s nice to know that it’s possible.

In Lesson 513 , you heard that the world’s number one chess player, Magnus Carlsen, accused a 19-year-old American chess grandmaster of cheating in a prestigious tournament. But now Hans Niemann is on the counterattack. He sued Magnus Carlsen for $100 million, accusing the Norwegian of destroying his reputation and career.

British politics has experienced five years of political drama in just five months. In Lesson 489 , you heard that Boris Johnson would resign as prime minister after a series of scandals. His replacement, Liz Truss, took office just days before Queen Elizabeth II died . In her first major political act, she released a draft budget that panicked financial markets; the budget included tax cuts and spending increases that would have further stoked inflation.

Truss’s credibility evaporated on the day she released the budget. The British pound plummeted in value and members of her own party ducked for cover , distancing themselves from her. It was only her seventeenth day in office. The Economist, a British weekly news magazine, said that if you take away the ten days of public mourning for the Queen, Truss lost all her political influence after only seven days in power. That, they said, was the expected life of a head of lettuce, not a prime minister.

That image was all the British press needed to well and truly bury Liz Truss. The Daily Star newspaper put a blonde wig on a head of lettuce and set up a live YouTube stream of the lettuce, asking which would have to be tossed out first: the head of lettuce or the prime minister.

The lettuce won. Liz Truss announced her resignation on October 20. She lasted a total of 48 days, the shortest tenure by far of any prime minister in Britain’s 300 years as a parliamentary democracy. Truss’s replacement, Rishi Sunak, took office on October 25.

Mullets everywhere…

Here are a few that are not exactly updates to stories, just a few notes. In Lesson 498, you learned—well, I learned, too—that carmakers are adding noise to their electric cars for passenger safety. And now everywhere I go, I hear them! I don’t think I ever noticed them before I did that lesson, but now I hear it. The noises I hear, at least, sound like an artificial whirring, like the sound of a machine, but artificial.

It’s a great example of how there’s something all around us, but we don’t notice it until we learn about it…and then we can’t stop seeing or noticing it. The same thing with mullets. That was Lesson 505. I see a mullet every day. That’s not even an exaggeration. Every single day, I see someone with a mullet.

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Expression: Distance yourself