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1/15/2024 (#27 this year)
This is the first English News of 2024! Welcome back! Did you have a good wintervacation? Hopefully, you rested a lot, ate a lot, and had a lot of fun. Did you make any
new year resolutions1? I hope you can be successful2 with them. I have just decided totry and do more of the things that make me better and healthier, and less of the things
that make me worse and unhealthier. I don’t know how well I will do, but just thinking
about it and trying is good enough. Nobody can be perfect. I have a feeling that 2024 isgoing to be a great year. What do you think? So much is going to happen, so many
exciting things. We’re going to have a great time.
10 differences

13-Year-Old Beats Tetris
Do you know the game Tetris? I’ll put a picture of it for you. Maybe you
have played it. I think everybody in my generation knows it. It was one of themost popular games in the world when I was growing up. If you have neverplayed it, here is an explanation8. Different shaped blocks come down fromthe top of the screen. You can turn the blocks around as they move down thescreen. You have to fit9 them into the other blocks already on the screen. If
you make a line of blocks across the screen, that line disappears10 and all of
the blocks move down one space. You get points. If you cannot fit the blocks
in and they pile up and reach the top of the screen, you lose. When you getenough points, you move up to the next level. As the levels get higher, theblocks come down faster and faster until a human can’t keep up. AI can beatit, but a human can’t. Until a 13-year-old boy called Willis Gibson managed todo it. And, what happens at the end of the game? It freezes. The game code
was not designed to go so high and when Willis reached level 157, the gamecrashed11. He is the first person to ever achieve this. Do you want to try? Youcan find versions of the game online and there is probably an app for yourphone. It is fun, but frustrating12.

Last week’s answer

Something you didn’t know about Tetris
1. Tetris was made in 1984 by a Russian computer programmer called Alexey Pajitnov.
His job was to make games to test the power of Soviet3 computers. He also wanted
to show people computers were easy to learn.
2. The name Tetris comes from the Greek word “tetra”, meaning 4 and “tennis”.
3. Pajitnov was in the Soviet Union4 and he couldn’t sell his game. He had to give therights5 to the Soviet government6. The Soviet government then sold the rights of thegame to Nintendo. Pajitnov didn’t make any more from the game until the rights
returned to him in 1996.
4. The Tetris theme song is a 19th century Russian folk song7.

1.new year resolution 新年の抱負 2.successful 成功する 3.soviet ソ連の 4.Soviet Union
ソビエト連邦 5.rights 著作権 6.government 政府 7.folk song 民謡 8.explanation 説明
9.fit 入れる 10.disappear 消える 11.crash クラッシュ 12.frustrating イライラさせるOne thing we can do to help the environment

World record
Here is a world record that I didn’t think was possible. Two French pizza chefs, Benoit
Bruel and Fabien Montellanico, have broken the world record for the most types ofcheese on a pizza. How many types of cheese do you think there are? If I asked you toname cheeses, how many could you name? 3? 5? See how many you can name before
you read on. … … How many did you get? Well, in their world record, they put 1,001
different types of cheese on a pizza! 1,001!! They used 2g of each variety, which means
they had 2kg of cheese on the pizza. They put the hard cheeses at the bottom and thesoft cheeses at the top so everything wouldn’t slide1 off the pizza when they cooked itin the oven. 940 of thecheeses were French,and the rest were fromother countries. If theyhadused
morecheeses from othercountries, they could
have made a pizza withthousands of varieties!
Wow! I would love totry them.

Life is really simple , but we insist on
making it complicated . Confucius#12 Stop Using a Plastic Sponge
I started doing this over the winter vacation and I have not been successful
yet. My shower sponge was a regular4 sponge from the hundred yen shop.
It was old, so I needed to get a new one. I realized5 that cheap sponges are
made of plastic, and my sponge will become a source of microplastics. Idecided to stop using plastic sponges. I wanted to buy a sea sponge6, but
I realized that they are animals, notplants. I don’t feel good washingmyself with a dead animal, so I have
tried something else. There aremany sponges made from thefibers7 of different plants. I bought asponge made of plant fiber first.
Plant fiber is sustainable8, but thesponge wasn’t very good. It was likea ball of string9 and I couldn’t get
any foam10 from it. It hurt a lot touse. Then I bought a sponge madefrom bamboo fiber and somethingcalled polylactic acid11, which is aplastic made from plants, such as
corn or sugar cane. It behaves verymuch like a plastic, but it isbiodegradable12. It does have someproblems, and it is not perfect, but
it is better for the environment thanmy plastic sponge. I will let you
know.

23–

1.slide 滑る 2.simple 簡単 3.complicated 複雑 4.regular 普通の 5.realize 気が付く 6.seasponge 海綿 7.fiber 食物繊維 8.sustainable 持続可能な 9.string 凧糸 10.foam 発泡体
11.polylactic acid ポリ乳酸 12.biodegradable 生物分解可能