Ripped from the Headlines: November 2023: This Week in Words: Current Event Vocabulary for November 4–November 10, 2023

Taylor Swift's rerecording of a 2014 album debuted at number one on the Billboard chart this week and sold 1,653,000 copies in the U.S. 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is her sixth blockbuster album, selling more than a million copies in one week, and her 13th number one hit. Swift is now more than halfway through her plan to remake the six records in her back catalog whose masters were sold by her former record label. Before the 1950s, blockbuster meant a powerful bomb.

The Food and Drug Administration said it will ban a kind of oil that's found in some citrus sodas. Animal studies have shown that brominated vegetable oil, an ingredient in several store-brand orange and lemon-lime carbonated drinks, can cause thyroid, liver, heart, and neurological problems. The additive has already been banned in California, Japan, and the European Union. It's used to keep the fruity flavors in citrus drinks from separating and floating to the top.

The climate crisis has created a dilemma in many U.S. cities: whether or not to build new homes in places that are considered risky. It's a difficult choice between adding much-needed housing and refusing to build where there's real danger of wildfires, flooding, and drought. It's a particular quandary in areas with both severe housing shortages and a history of climate disaster. In Greek, dilemma means "double proposition," from roots meaning "two" and "premise."

In the Philippines, where divorce is illegal, a new campaign is describing the choice to end a marriage as a human right that's just as important as education or health care. While many Filipinos split from their husbands and wives and live entirely separate lives, they are unable to legally divorce due to entrenched religious and cultural pressures. Divorce is from a Latin root, divortium, "separation."

Researchers say that AI chatbots fabricate information between three and 27 percent of the time, a behavior experts call hallucination. Google's chatbot bizarrely claimed that the James Webb Telescope took the first photos outside the solar system, and Microsoft's Bing insisted it was Billie Eilish, not Rihanna, who performed at this year's Super Bowl. The Greek root of hallucination means "wander in mind."

Rats are able to imagine, according to scientists who have been studying animal brains for more than a decade. Their latest experiments involved giving rats the power, through virtual reality, to mentally transport themselves to a specific place using only their minds. The researchers could observe as the rats manipulated mental maps of their environment to think about places other than where they were physically at that moment. Imagine is from a root meaning "an image."

Since it was devastated by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the flood-prone city of Hoboken, New Jersey, has invested in water-absorbing infrastructure. These improvements have included rebuilding the city's sewer system to collect and slow water during storms and redesigning many roads to redirect the flow of rainwater. It's being described as a climate success story ever since a September storm that flooded much of New York City left Hoboken mostly unaffected.

Two amusement park companies announced a plan to merge, creating a business worth more than $3.5 billion. When Six Flags and Cedar Fair join forces, they will have a combined 27 amusement parks, 15 water parks, and nine resort properties in North America. The merger will create a company that consolidates expenses and covers a larger geographic area. The original meaning of merge was "plunge or sink in," from a Latin root meaning "immerse."

Colleges are hoping to build on the momentum that began during last spring's NCAA women's tournament, which set viewership records. Interest in women's basketball grew throughout the season, which ended with an unprecedented 9.9 million people watching the championship final. Schools including LSU and Iowa have already sold out their season tickets, and their players are scooping up high-paying endorsement deals, signs the enthusiasm may continue to grow.

Dozens of birds will be renamed, after the American Ornithological Society voted to remove all human monikers. The organization announced it will change the names of bird species named after people, part of a larger effort to make birding more welcoming and diverse. Some of the old names are associated with slavery and racism, and the new sobriquets, like Thick-billed Longspur, will give birders the chance to celebrate aspects of the birds themselves.

An enormous lake that appeared in the middle of California's Death Valley National Park is slowly beginning to recede. The salty body of water, which is two miles wide and four miles long, resulted from torrential rain during Hurricane Hilary in August. The temporary lake, surrounding green vegetation, and colorful blooming flowers, currently form a fleeting desert oasis. The root of oasis means "dwelling place."

Hundreds of homes were reduced to rubble this weekend by Nepal's worst earthquake in a decade. The 5.7-magnitude quake struck a remote village in the Himalayas, killing more than 150 people and destroying entire houses near the epicenter. Many residents whose homes had collapsed into piles of rocks and logs were still sleeping unsheltered or in tents days after the disaster. Rubble comes from the Anglo-French robel, "bits of broken stone."