【推荐1】To find out what’s involved in the process of reproducing human voices, I approached Speech Morphing, a natural language speech synthesis(合成) company, about creating a digital double of my own voice.

Given the complexities of speech synthesis, it’s quite a shock to find out just how easy it is to order one up. For a basic conversational model, all I have to do is record myself saying a few hundreds of phrases for roughly an hour. The phrases seem very random: “That’s what Carnegie did. ” “I’d like to be buried under Yankee Stadium with JFK.” And so on.

But they aren’t as random as they appear. “We choose spoken words that will produce a wide enough variety of sounds across a range of emotions, such as sadness and anger, to feed an AI training system. It then teaches itself the specific patterns of a person’s speech,” says Speech Morphing founder Fathy Yassa.

Yassa says there are around 20 tones to choose from, and some of these can be used interchangeably, or not at all. “Not every tone is needed for every client,” he says. “The choice depends on the target application and use cases. Banking is different from reporting and broadcasting.”

The possibilities for my digital double are almost limitless. At a training session with Speech Morphing, I get to hear my digital voice double. Her voice comes at me through a pair of speakers connected to a laptop. The laptop has software into which whatever text I want it to say is typed. The software includes tools to make adjustments to the tone, speed and other vocal features that might need to be adjusted if my digital double doesn’t come out sounding exactly right.

“We can already make you sound sad. We can also make you act like you’re reporting and broadcasting now,” Yassa says. “We can make you sound like acting in the theatre, eventually, though we’re not yet there. It is too advanced.”

【推荐1】M-U-R-R-A-Y-A is the word that pushed Zaila Avant garde, 15, to victory in the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee. The annual event took place in July, 2021, in Florida.

After correctly spelling Murraya, which is a type of flowering tree, Zaila became the first Black American contestant ever to win the national title. She is the second Black winner, after Jody-Anne Maxwell of Jamaica, who won the bee in 1998.

Since 1925, the Scripps spelling bee has promoted literacy. Competing in the event helps students improve their spelling, increase their vocabularies and develop self-confidence.

Zaila, who is from Harvey, Louisiana, put in a lot of work to become the top speller. She studied for two years. ”I worked with a tutor and studied some days up to seven hours,“ she said.

In addition to being an award-winning speller, Zaila enjoys juggling, playing basketball and inspiring other students. ”Whether I’m studying for spelling bees or playing basketball,“ she said, ”the main motivation for me is to inspire others.“

In the months following her spelling bee win, Zaila made several television appearances. She was also named the 2021 SportsKid of the Year by Sports Illustrated.

The rising star is not finished. She has big goals for the future. “I’d like to play basketball at Harvard, play in the WNBA, become a head coach in the WNBA, and work for NASA,” she said.

Zaila’s parents introduced her to basketball when she was a young child. After receiving a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records on her eighth birthday, she set her sights on becoming a record holder. “When I looked in the book,” she said, “I decided that I wanted to be in it.” Now, at the age of 15, Zaila holds three world records.

【推荐2】In living memory, no world leader has been as widely identified with a particular animal as Queen Elizabeth with her dogs. They are seen with her on so many occasions that they have become a key part of her public image.

They are more than her public image, though. In a life that is full of rules, they provide an easy way for the Queen to break the ice with strangers. She also gets from them unlimited amounts of true love and affection, unaffected by the knowledge that she is a queen. Whenever possible, the Queen feeds the dogs herself and leads them on daily walks. Her husband, Prince Philip, has referred to these chores (杂活) as his wife’s private “dog moments”.

When the Queen was young, the dogs kept her company, too. During WWII, she and her sister Margaret were moved to Windsor Castle in secret while their parents stayed at Buckingham Palace to face the bombing with the public. Through the war’s long days and nights, they could be relied upon to comfort them. Jane, in particular, was Elizabeth and Margaret’s childhood strength.

On her 18th birthday, the Queen was given a two-month-old baby dog, Susan. They soon became inseparable. In 1947, hidden under blankets in the carriage, Susan rode with the Queen as she left with Prince Philip for their honeymoon in Scotland.

Susan became such a public figure that, when Elizabeth gave birth to her first baby—Charles, The Mirror asked readers to advise the Queen on how to keep Susan from growing jealous (妒忌的) of the infant. One of the answers read: “First, hug Susan all the time. Second, let Susan have a bowl of milk when you are nursing the baby.” A year later, Susan produced two babies—Sugar (who belonged to the infant Prince Charles) and Honey (who lived with the Queen Mum).

In the minds of dog fans, Susan remains the most significant figure. This is not because she was the Queen’s dog. It is because her genes have been so long-lived—Susan is the common ancestor of all the Queen’s dogs.

【推荐3】Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine, who rose to fame during Hollywood’s golden age as the star of several Alfred Hitchcock classics, died from natural causes at her home in Carmel, northern California on December 16, 2013 aged 96, US media reports said.

Born in Japan to British parents, Fontaine moved in 1919 to California, where she and her elder sister—screen idol Olivia de Havilland—were to shape successful movie careers. Fontaine and de Havilland remain the only sisters to have won lead actress honours at the Academy Awards. Yet the two sisters also had an uneasy relationship, with Fontaine recording a bitter competition in her own account “No Bed of Roses”.

Fontaine began her acting career in her late teens with Largely less important roles on the stage and later in mostly B-movies in the 1930s. It was not before famous British film director Hitchcock spotted her a decade later that her career took off.

Greatly surprised by her expressive looks, the suspense (悬念) master cast Fontaine in his first US film, a 1940 adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier novel “Rebecca”. She received an Academy Award nomination (提名) for her performance as a troubled wife. A year later, Fontaine finally won the long-sought golden figure, for her role as leading lady in “Suspicion” opposite Cary Grant becoming the first and only actress to earn the title for a Hitchcock film.

Although her sister, Olivia de Haviland, preceded her in gaining Hollywood fame, Fontaine was the first of the sisters to win an Oscar, beating Olivia’s nomination as best actress in Mitchell Leisen's “Hold Back the Dawn”.

The dislike, between the sisters was felt at the Oscars ceremony. “I froze. I stared across the table, where Olivia was sitting. ‘Get up there!’ she whispered commandingly,” Fontaine said. “All the dislike we’d felt toward each other as children all came rushing back in quickly changing pictures…I felt Olivia would spring across the table and seize me by the hair.”

Olivia did not win her first Oscar until 1946, for her role as the lover of a World War I pilot in Leisen’s “To Each His Own”. Fontaine later made it known that her sister had slighted her as she attempted to offer congratulations. “She took one look at me, ignored my hand, seized her Oscar and wheeled away,” she said.

The sisters were also reportedly competitors in love. Howard Hughes, a strange businessman who dated the elder de Havilland for a time, offered marriage to Fontaine several times. “I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she'll undoubtedly be extremely angry because I beat her to it!” Fontaine once joked.

As her film career fruited in the 1950s, Fontaine turned to television and dinner theatre, and also appeared in several Broadway productions, including the Lion in Winter. Anything but the ordinary lady, Fontaine was also a licensed pilot, a champion balloonist, an accomplished golfer, a licensed decoration designer and a first-class cook.