I was lucky enough to test into the best high school in the city. But then came my 1: Am I good enough? It was a question that 2 me through my first month, even as began to settle in, even as I got used to the early morning wake-ups and moving between buildings for class.
I knew I had to work to ground myself. My earliest strategy involved keeping quiet and trying to 3 my new classmates. Who were these kids anyway? How did they learn in school? All I knew was that they were the smartest kids in the city, obviously. 4 wasn't I as well? Hadn't I landed here because I was smart like them? The truth is that I didn't know. This 5 was like a deadly cell that threatened to divide and divide again, unless I could find some way to stop it.
Fortunately, my first round of grades turned out to be 6, and so did my second. Over the course of my first two years, I began to build the same kind of 7 I'd had at my previous school. With each little achievement, my doubt 8 took leave.
I loved any subject that involved writing and labored through math. I had classmates who were always a step or two ahead of me, whose achievements seemed effortless, but I tried not to let that get to me. I was beginning to understand that if I put in extra hours of studying, I could often 9 the gap. I wasn't a straight-A student, but I was always 10 and I made progress.
Gary is a children's book author. He first became (interest) in cartoon art when he was a child. He enjoyed writing stories about his characters and sharing (they) with others. However he was quite disappointed when the adults praised his cartoon works just out of politeness. (improve) this awkward situation, Gary started writing funny stories. He (know) even polite adults could not pretend a laugh.
Saving nature is at the very heart of what we do as WWF. We protect wildlife many reasons. It is a source of inspiration. It boosts a sense of wonder. It is fundamental to the balance of nature. In our work, WWF focuses on saving populations of the most (importance) species in the wild. Finally, by protecting species, we save this beautiful and irreplaceable planet is called home.
Schloss and her partner set out to find out people like certain colors more than others. Their studies suggest that color preference (cause) by how someone feels about objects of that color. For example, people often like blue it reminds them of clear skies and clean water. On the other hand, people tend to shy away from brown because they are reminded of the food that has gone bad.
Explore your world—Mirthy
Online events to help you discover, learn and connect
Who is Mirthy?
Mirthy is one of the most popular websites for online events and already loved and trusted by more than 45,000 people. It was designed to create an inclusive community where people can learn share and connect with others through a variety of events that are active, sociable, and uplifting. It's all about fulfilment and wellbeing.
There are some online events each month to try, from craft workshops (手工工坊) to fitness sessions. For example, according to our event calendar, this week you can attend gardening classes and singing lessons. So whether you have a desire to get fitter or to pick up a new skill—signing up for classes and events with Mirthy could be just what you have been looking for.
How does it work?
Sign up via the online registration form at Mirthy.com. Then you can take a look through the calendar of upcoming events and see what takes your fancy.
Once you register for an event you will then receive a link on email ready for you to join the live event. If your plans change and you can't make it, you will receive a link for a 7-day replay that you can watch at a time that is convenient for you!
Best of all, it's completely FREE to join
Join Mirthy for free today and you can enjoy any 4 events every month, for free! If you're up for more, then you can either select and book additional events on a pay-as-you-go basis, normally for £2.99 each, or you can upgrade to the Premium membership giving you full free access to all events for only £4.99 per month.
If you choose to go for the Premium membership, there's no contract. You simply upgrade your membership and you can cancel anytime.
It was a week after my mom had passed away and I didn't know how to go on with life. So when I received an email from a friend about a race benefiting cancer research, I ignored it. I seemed too close to the heart, as cancer was the disease that had taken my mother away from me.
But something about my friend's words—"I can help organize the whole thing"—stuck with me I felt obliged (有义务的) to agree. In the weeks to come, I managed to re-enter the world of the living I checked our team's website daily, feeling proud each time a donation ticked up our total. I knew my mom would have wanted it that way. She was the type who never got defeated. It was this very spirit that helped me get by.
When the race ended, I noticed the runners all had one thing in common: There were big smiles on their faces. They made it look so rewarding and effortless. I wanted in.
So I enrolled in another race two months later Considering I could barely run a mile, it was ambitious. But my friend and I made a training plan so I wouldn't come in last. I followed it religiously and didn't let anything get in my way.
Running up and down the city's hills, I was flooded with memories. I had lived there after college and my mother had visited often. I passed Bloomingdale's, recalling the time she and I had gotten into a screaming argument there.
I was about to beat myself up when I remembered what Mom had said after her diagnosis of cancer. "I don't want you to feel guilty about anything." Her paper-thin hands had held me tightly. A weight lifted from my shoulders.
When the race day arrived, I gave it my all for my mom and for all she had taught me and continued to teach me. As I ran, whenever I felt like slowing down, I pictured her cheering me on.
Crossing the finish line, I was filled with her love and a sense of peace.
Over millions of years humans have responded to certain situations without thinking too hard. If our ancestors spotted movement in the nearby forest, they would run first and question later. At the same time, the ability to analyze and to plan is part of what separates us from other animals. The question of when to trust your instinct (直觉) and when to think slow matters in the office as much as in the savannah (草原).
Slow thinking is the feature of a well-managed workplace. Yet instinct also has its place. Some decisions are more connected to emotional responses and less to analysis. In demanding customer-service or public-facing situations, instinct is often a better guide to how to behave.
Instinct can also be improved. Plenty of research has shown that instinct becomes more unerring with experience. In one well-known experiment, volunteers were asked to assess whether a selection of designer handbags were real or not. Some were instructed to operate on instinct and others to deliberate (深思熟虑) over their decision. Instinct worked better for those who owned at least three designer handbags; indeed, it outperformed analysis. The more expert you become, the better your instinct tends to be.
However, the real reason to embrace fast thinking is that it is, well, fast. It is often the only way to get through the day. To take one example, when your inbox floods with new emails at the start of a new day, there is absolutely no way to read them all carefully. Instinct is what helps you decide which ones to answer and which to delete or leave unopened. Fast thinking can also help the entire organization. The value of many managerial decisions lies in the simple fact that they have been made at all. Yet as data explodes, the temptation (诱惑) to ask for one more bit of analysis has become much harder to resist. Managers often suffer from overthinking, turning a simple problem into a complex one.
When to use instinct in the workplace rests on its own form of pattern recognition. Does the decision maker have real expertise in this area? Is this a field in which emotion matters more than reasoning? Above all, is it worth delaying the decision? Slow thinking is needed to get the big calls right. But fast thinking is the way to stop deliberation turning to a waste of time.
It all started when I typed a perfectly reasonable prompt (提示词)into one of several apps on the market that can create an image based on text. "Skull space laser dinosaur starship explosion," I wrote. The app processed for a few seconds, and returned four images, one of which was strangely accurate: a dinosaur-looking skull screamed out of an empty space, trailing fire. It looked like an illustration from the art magazine, and perhaps art from the magazine influenced its creation.
Text-to-image AIs identify images by looking at the text that people have used to describe those pictures online. When the app got my prompt, it studied images that random people had described as "dinosaur" or laser and soon then used what is called a diffusion model (扩散模型)to add a bunch of random chaos to those pictures. Once they were suitably completed, it "upscaled" them, removing noise and sharpening focus. Its work is so good that an artist using it recently won first place for digital images at the Colorado State Fair.
But there are major ethical (道德的)issues raised by the success of such AIs. The biggest has to do with those training data sets. Reporters recently discovered that the data set used by Text-to-image AIs contained images of violence. Some companies are working on ways to prevent the public from seeing images based on offensive and illegal pictures in the data set. A representative of the companies also noted that the images in its data set are "already available in the public internet on publicly available websites".
But even if this problem is fixed there is still the question of all the other pictures online that are being transformed into AI-generated masterpieces. As many artists have pointed out, their works are being used without payment. The image-generating algorithm (算法)creates illustrations and even movies by using data sets stocked with art stolen from artists who post their works online.
Some AI researchers argue that their algorithms aren't stealing from artists so much as learning from them just as human artists learn from each other. But a more ethical approach would be for companies to acknowledge their debt to artists and create a model of voluntary collective licensing, much like what radio stations first did in radio's early days. Back then, musicians created groups like BMI to collectively license their music to radio stations—then BMI would pay artists based on how often their songs were played. Perhaps artists and art institutions today could form a "collecting society" that would allow companies to license their artwork for data sets.
To create ethical AI systems, we need to acknowledge the people whose work makes those systems so magical. We can't simply snarf up every image online-we need humans to manage those data sets and we need to pay them to do it.
It won't sound like a big surprise when I tell you that kindness plays an important role in a person's wellbeing. It can lead to changes like higher self-esteem (自尊心) and lower blood pressure. Even just witnessing acts of kindness can make us happier.
"From giving away a cup of hot chocolate in a park to giving away a gift in the lab, those performing an act of kindness consistently underestimated how positive their receivers would feel, thinking their act was of less value than receivers perceived it to be," states a study.
Yet, why is there this difference between what we think someone will feel from an act of kindness versus what they do feel? Why do we underestimate the impact we have on others?
Many of us don't have a real sense of our value. It's been estimated that as many as 85 percent of people struggle with low self-esteem. This "voice" tends to shift our focus inward assessing our every move, and having bad effect on our relationships.
Unlike a conscience (良心), this inner critic doesn't motivate positive behavior. I encourages us to hold back feeding us thoughts like, "Don't stick your neck out": "No one wants to hear from you"; and "You're going to make a fool of yourself."
One wonderful way to fight against our critical inner voice is through acts of being kind to others. We must also try to see ourselves through the eyes of the people we affect. The degree to which we're able to do that will help determine our own happiness along with the happiness we light up in others.
A. However, the work doesn't stop there.
B. People may lower the value of their own kind comments.
C. We all carry around a "critical inner voice" that tends to put us down.
D. Instead of seeing what we have to offer, we may think of ourselves as a burden.
E. This misunderstanding suggests that people devalue their own actions in relation to others.
F. Instead, it turns us against ourselves, making us underestimate our beneficial effect on others.
G. Yet, people may not truly know the impact that even the smallest of kind acts can have on another person.
Before ending upon a supermarket shelf, an avocado (牛油果)has produced 1.3 kilograms of carbon into the atmosphere. Its production alone consumes 60 gallons of water. Despite this, the fruit will often be thrown away as household waste.
Household food waste is the result of mismanagement. Much of the waste is avoidable and the food may have been eaten had it been better managed. To reduce household food waste, a growing number of food retailers decide to remove date labelling (标签), such as the "use-by" or "best-before" date, from some fresh food items.
Past studies have confirmed the importance of date labelling. Almost 60% of western European consumers surveyed said they "always" check date labels while purchasing. But date labelling has long come under criticism because failure to truly understand date labelling often leads to unreasonable decision making. Indeed, consumers commonly don't accept edible (可食用的), but date-expired (过期的)food.
The removal of date labelling is therefore a promising start. Without date labels, information that may affect consumers' understanding of what is edible, is removed. Instead, consumers are encouraged to sense-check fresh food items.
In the case of an avocado, the advice given to consumers is that when ripe, it should have a "pleasant and slightly sweet aroma (气味)", while the skin should be "dark green or brown". Information is also provided on how an avocado should look, taste, and feel when "overripe". It is hoped that a better informed consumer will be less likely to blindly throw away food due to an expiration date.
ØIf consumers can be better informed, they will not accept edible, but date-expired food.
注意：1）词数100左右；
2）开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
Dear Jim,
……
Yours,
Li Hua
