27.02.19 Criticism sounds more convincing when you wrap it up in the term borrowed from the metalanguage of linguistics:

He is also wary of any claims that Trump has a carefully plotted out foreign policy: “I think it’s an oxymoron: foreign policy under Trump. I really am not kidding.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/27/trumps-special-envoy-to-venezuela-will-lie-when-needed-claims-raymond-bonner

The oxymoron takes a swipe at Abrams’ appointment to Venezuela, that was likely to be rubber-stamped by the president rather than Trump’s requesting Abrams personally.

21.02.19 Linguistic fever around the ambivalent term “pansexual” illustrates 50 shades of perverts in the Western world for whom one may find a cozy place under the generalizing epithet  “queer-ass motherfucker”:

Last year, “pansexual” briefly became the online dictionary Merriam-Webster’s most searched word of the day after the singer Janelle Monáe defined herself as a pansexual and “queer-ass motherfucker”.

The singer Demi Lovato, meanwhile, identifies as “sexually fluid”, or “having a shifting gender preference”, while other labels for being neither exclusively straight nor gay include “heteroflexible” and “questioning”.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/14/the-pansexual-revolution-how-sexual-fluidity-became-mainstream

17.02.19 Putin’s Plan to Double Down on Venezuela, Syria and Ukraine Could Be Sending Russia Into Bankruptcy

Neglecting equivalence (doubl down = удваивать ставку, играть по крупному, идти "ва-банк") may take a toll on translation:

Newsweek (США): путинские усилия в Венесуэле, Сирии и на Украине могут довести Россию до банкротства

There is a better variant:

Игра «ва-банк» в Венесуэле, Сирии и на Украине могут довести Россию до банкротства

13.02.19 Do you sound really English? That's the question that is always the greatest challenge in the classroom. Good teachers are identifiable through their students' attitude to pronunciation.

11.02.19 Trump's State of the Union: Five takeaways from speech

By Anthony Zurcher

The number of take-aways - 5 - is popular with different analysts, but the contents of the take-aways changes illustrating the ego-centric nature of communication.

7.02.19 Even something as clear-cut as English may have obscure origins and not so clear-cut history. What we understand as English has its roots in 5th-Century Germany and Denmark, from where the Anglian, Saxon and Jute tribes came. As the Roman legions withdrew around 410AD, so the Saxon war bands (what Rome called ‘the barbarians’) landed and an era of migration from the Continent and the formation of Anglo-Saxon England began. The word “English” derives from the homeland of the Angles, the Anglian peninsula in Germany. Early English was written in runes, combinations of vertical and diagonal lines that lent themselves to being carved into wood and were used by other closely related Germanic languages, such as Old Norse, Old Saxon and Old High German. 

3.02.19 Olivia Bland, a 22-year-old from Manchester looking for a job in communications, knows how a job interview is supposed to go. A handshake, a few questions about strengths and weaknesses, some CV inspecting and a pleasant send-off. “They’re usually casual,” Bland says, “and definitely not two hours long.”

But earlier this week, an interview she had with tech firm Web Applications UK left her in tears. In a viral tweet, she alleged that chief executive Craig Dean degraded and humiliated her about everything from her music taste to her parents’ marriage. Bland was offered the job but declined, likening Dean’s behaviour to that of an abusive.

1.02.19 Ambivalence of the anticipated feedback is generated by the ambivalence of figurative use.

Fighter, warrior, hero - some of the terms you might see used to describe people with cancer.

But according to a new survey, for some with the illness the words are seen as inappropriate rather than uplifting.

The UK poll by Macmillan Cancer Support of 2,000 people who have or had cancer found "cancer-stricken" and "victim" were also among the least-liked terms.

The charity said it showed how "divisive" simple descriptions of cancer can be.