My parents immigrated to the U.S. from Guangdong, a province in southern China. The jobs they found in hot kitchens and clothing factories came with long hours, leaving them no time to learn English. So I spent most of my childhood, in Brooklyn, speaking Cantonese, the only language my parents understand. But as I continued my education, I gradually, or deliberately avoided using Cantonese. And as a result, Cantonese avoided me. As it slips from my memory, I also lose my ability to communicate with my parents. For years I have to rely on translation apps and online dictionaries for most of our conversations.

Actually, we speak on the phone only once a week and the conversations are much the same: “Have you eaten yet?” my father asks in Cantonese. Long pause. “No, not yet. You?” I reply. “Why not? It’s so late, my mother cuts in. Long pause.” Remember to drink more water and wear a mask outside.” she continues. “OK. You too.” Longest pause. “We’ll stop bothering you, then.” At age thirty-two, I feel like someone they know instead of their daughter.

On my mom’s sixty-fourth birthday, at the peak of the pandemic, I became increasingly aware of the limited amount of time together. Did I really want to spend the rest of our lives with a language barrier between us? I made it a goal to relearn Cantonese, and, ultimately, rebuild the relationship with my parents. I take Cantonese classes. I watch Wong Kar-wai movies. I repeat Maggie Cheung’s words over and over until I get the tones just right. But, most of all, I call my parents and try to have more meaningful conversations with them, no matter how challenging it gets. Though Cantonese no longer feels natural for me to speak, it will always be my first language---even if it takes a lifetime for us to know each other.

The spiders have long, scary legs. Some spiders even bite. But Spider-Man is another story. He might help people see spiders less negatively, a new study finds.

After Menachem Ben-Ezra, a proud fan of the Marvel films and also a psychologist, saw the movie Ant-Man and the Wasp(黄蜂), he walked out with a sudden scientific idea that he should measure people before they went into the theater, and afterwards to see if the fear of ants would be reduced or changed.

Ben-Ezra and his colleagues asked 424 people questions, about one-quarter of them about spiders, such as “Did you find them scary?” “Did seeing one make your hearts race and palms sweat?” A second group received similar questions, this time about ants. The last two groups got the same questions about other insects. Afterward, everyone watched videos. Group one got a Spider-Man movie. Group two saw Ant-Man and the Wasp. Groups three and four watched unrelated video---wheat waving peacefully in the breeze.

After viewing the movie, Ben-Ezra again asked the participants how they felt about spiders, ants or other insects in general---and found the ant and spider exposures seemed to make people insensitive and less afraid. Between 3.5 and 6.1 percent of people experience such a phobia(恐惧症) of spiders. Phobias can stop people from traveling, working and enjoying their lives.

Ben-Ezra hopes that their movie research might help people with phobias. But they caution that people with phobias shouldn’t just run out and watch movies and expect their fear to go away. “What we did is only the first step in a very long road,” Ben-Ezra says. “We didn’t say you’ll be cured. We don’t have evidence for that.” But eventually, presenting people’s fears in a positive context---such as a superhero movie---might help people surmount their fear or disgust. After all, if spiders produce Spider-Man, maybe they’re not so bad.

On Sept 15, 2021, the night sky in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, lit up and the rumble (隆隆声) of engines of a 70-meter-tall Falcon 9 rocket set off car alarms. Atop that rocket was a group of four civilians in a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft prepared to make history.

This is the first mission to Earth’s orbit crewed (当工作人员) entirely by tourists, or those not professionally trained as astronauts. For three days, the four civilians aboard the spacecraft traveled in orbit around Earth as part of the mission dubbed (被称为) Inspiration 4. The name of the mission itself is fitting.

In late 2020, the mission leader Jared Isaacman, a billionaire tech entrepreneur, announced that he would like to fund a spaceflight that differed from other billionaire space journeys. His would be part of an effort to raise funds for St Jude Children’s Hospital.

“He knew he would be using those seats to carry out his mission objective of inspiring humanity while raising money for children’s cancer research,” Scientific American wrote. In addition to Issacman, the crew included 29-year-old Hayley Arceneux, who is not only a childhood cancer survivor, but a current St. Jude physician assistant; Sin Procotor, 51, a geologist and community college teacher; and Chris Sembroski, a 42-year-old lifelong space fan who got his seat through an online raffle (抽奖活动), CNN reported.

This particular Dragon spacecraft did not visit the International Space Station, but it did reach 590 kilometers above Earth. This is “higher than the current orbit of the Hubble Space Telescope, an altitude that humans haven’t reached since the Hubble servicing missions during the space shuttle program”.

While there is certainly a long way to go before SpaceX achieves its goal of ferrying civilians to Mars at an accessible price, this mission is definitely making its mark on space travel---all for a good cause. According to CNN, at a press briefing on Sept 14, Sembroski told reporters that joining the Inspiration4 mission felt like “we’re writing the rules, we’re breaking a couple of them that NASA used to demand...We get to kind of do things our own way.”