Questões de Concurso Comentadas por alunos sobre adjetivos | adjectives em inglês

    The Senate approved sweeping deficit-reduction legislation last night that would save about $35 billion over the next five years by cutting federal spending on prescription drugs, agriculture supports and student loans, while clamping down on fraud in the Medicaid program.

     Yesterday's action is part of an effort by congressional Republicans to demonstrate fiscal discipline after widespread complaints of profligate spending on Capitol Hill. ....51.... many Democrats and some moderate Republicans are concerned that the effort may go too far, prominent Republicans in the Senate and House said the cuts were necessary to slow the rate of spending and control a deficit projected to total $314 billion by the end of the fiscal year.

      During a speech yesterday, former House majority leader Tom Delay (R-Tex) repeatedly apologized for excessive spending by Congress, including recent highway legislation that was ....52.... with lawmakers’ pet projects. After noting that House Republicans have voted to cut taxes every year since winning the majority in 1994, DeLay acknowledged, “Our record on spending has not been as consistent, ....53.... .”

(Adapted from washingtonpost.com)

What life in medieval Europe was really like

      A time of innovation, philosophy, and legendary works of art: the realities of the medieval period (500 to 1500 C.E.) in Europe may surprise you. Many know the years before the Renaissance and _________________ that followed as Europe’s “Dark Ages,” a time of backward, slovenly, and brutal people who were technologically primitive and hopelessly superstitious.

     Sure, it would take until the 19th century for the germ theory of disease to overtake the concept of humors and “miasmas” that could damage human health. But the ___________ image of medieval people as slovenly, unwashed, and lacking hygiene is false. In fact, both indoor and outdoor bathing were beloved in Europe. People not only made and used soap at home, but they frequented bathhouses—some public, some private, some merely fronts for brothels.

      A myth persists that during the Middle Ages, the unenlightened believed Earth was flat and worried that ships might even fall off the planet’s edge. That’s patently false: People knew the planet was a sphere as far back as ancient Greece (12th to 9th centuries B.C.), and had relatively complex astronomical and planetary ______________ by the time Christopher Columbus made his voyage to the Americas in 1492.

      The so-called “Dark Ages” is a myth historians have spent years trying to disprove. The myth seems to stem from some authors’ use of “dark” to refer to everything from a 14th-century poet’s complaints about the quality of local literature to a 17th-century historian’s failed attempt to find historical sources from centuries earlier.

(Fonte: National Geographic — adaptado.)

       Artificial intelligence (AI) is arguably the most rapidly advancing technology humans have ever developed. A year ago, you wouldn’t often hear AI come up in a regular conversation, but today it seems there’s constant talk about how generative AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E will affect the future of work, the spread of information, and more. A major question that has thus far been almost entirely unexamined is how this AI-dominated future will affect people’s minds.

         There’s been some research into how using AI in their jobs will affect people mentally, but there isn’t yet an understanding of how simply living amongst so much AI-generated content and systems will affect people’s sense of the world. How is AI going to change individuals and society in the not-too-distant future?

          AI will obviously make it easier to produce disinformation. That will affect people’s sense of trust as they’re scrolling on social media. AI can also allow someone to imitate your loved ones, which further erodes people’s general ability to trust what was once unquestionable.

Internet: < wired,com > (adapted).