【推荐1】OAKLAND, Calif.—Facebook said on Thursday that it would allow many employees to work from home permanently.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, told workers during a staff meeting which was livestreamed (现场直播) on his Facebook page that within a decade as many as half of the company’s more than 48,000 employees would work from home.

“It’s clear that Covid has changed a lot about our lives, and that certainly includes the way that most of us work,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “Coming out of this period, I expect that remote work is going to be a growing trend as well.”

Facebook’s decision, the first among tech’s biggest companies, is an obvious change for a business culture built around getting workers into giant offices and keeping them there. Using free shuttle buses, free cafeterias and personal services like dry cleaning, tech companies have done as much as possible over the years to give employees little reason to go home, let alone avoid the office. If other giant companies follow suit, tech employment could start to shift away from expensive hubs (中心枢纽) like Silicon Valley, Seattle and New York.

Tech executives have long believed that person-to-person communication was a big part of the creativity that went into producing popular products. Mr. Zuckerberg long worried that employees who worked remotely would lose productivity.

In March, the coronavirus lockdown forced companies to send employees home. Many tech companies, including Facebook, emptied their offices before local shelter-in-place orders. Now, more than two months later, executives are discovering that their remote workers performed better than expected.

Mr. Zuckerberg said the shift could offer more benefits than inconveniences for the company. Allowing remote work will allow Facebook to broaden its recruitment, retain valuable employees, reduce the climate impact caused by commutes and expand the diversity of its work force, he said.

【推荐2】In the digital age, we rely on technology such as social media in trying to build interesting and varied lives. Social networking sites like Facebook are designed and promoted to make us believe enthusiastically that they are able to open up new experiences for us. There are constant notifications (通知) and updates, attracting us to check-in to find out what is new.

But if we do not use the technology wisely, we can end up becoming overly attached and trapped in a cycle of social media FOMO, a sign of deeper unhappiness. FOMO, or fear of missing out, is a fear that exciting or interesting events are happening somewhere else and that we are not able to join.

People who experience high levels of FOMO have been found to be more likely to give in to desires to write and check text messages while driving, as well as to use Facebook more often directly after waking, while going to sleep and during meals.

When it comes to lasting happiness, it is best not to give in to FOMO, but rather to deal with the cycle of desires that fuel it. Hard as it is, we are better off working toward facing the fearful reality that we cannot experience everything we might like than to get caught in a cycle of checking behaviors that only cause anxiety.

If we have become used to using social media as part of our attempts at living interesting lives, we must admit that it is not easy to change our approach. But change is almost always worthwhile in the long run.

The fact that FOMO is so common in our digital age is a sign that there is something wrong with the way we are pursuing happiness and that we are not as happy as we might think we are. It should warn us that, in our eagerness to use digital technology to try to make ourselves happier, we may unintentionally (无意之中) be bringing on exactly the opposite result.

【推荐3】Day in and day out. Rose, a neat, well-dressed, dark-haired young woman carries out her work at an office in a business park near Cambridge and spends hours studying pictures of children being abused. She watches the images again and again, looking for the tiniest details that might deliver a young victim from hell. They might be as small as the titles of books on a table, the action of making the bed or the images on the posters on the wall—anything that might provide a clue to the place where the child is suffering, and might finally lead the police to the abuser.

How can Rose decide to do such work? And all that for a salary of less than $23,000 a year? She said her motivation in joining the work was to protect the public." When I first started this job, there was anger at the beginning. But when you see what the children have to endure, you know someone has to be there to protect them. If I can play a small part, I will help make a difference."

The 33-year-old woman is enthusiastic about her job. Rose and her team have done what they could to put the children's life back together. They are very proud of what they have done.

The nature of her work has changed her for the better. "I'm a lot more focused on the positive, much more relaxed about the world. I enjoy the good people around me," she says. Rose thinks that her job is a bit like giving blood. Maybe you don't like doing it, but someone has to. She regards it as her duty to help abused children.

【推荐1】It’s the lunch break at Shanghai Xinhua Middle School. No mobile phones can be heard ring anywhere. The common sight of crowds of children chatting on their phones or sending short messages has disappeared.

A grade-2 student said, “I couldn’t concentrate (集中精力) during classes. if the cellphone was with me, I couldn’t help checking if there were messages or missed phone calls. I even played games on the phone sometimes.”

The school leaders say they feel the ban is necessary to keep order in class. They even gave out an open letter to remind parents not to let their children bring mobile phones to school .More than 96 percent of parents say they welcome the school decision. The school is also being flexible (灵活的) in carrying out the plan .Those students who live far from school are allowed to bring mobile phones to contact their parents. But they still have to switch them off in classrooms.

Medical experts have also welcomed the school decision. They say too much dependence on mobile phones can cause many psychological problems in teenage students.

【推荐3】Gardening is popular in many parts of the world. This outdoor activity gives us beautiful plants, pleasant smelling flowers and fresh fruits and vegetables. But it also does a lot of good to our health.

Gardening connects people. When you are gardening, you are outdoors. So it is a perfect chance to meet and spend time with your neighbors. Most people love to talk about their hobbies, and gardeners are no different. They usually enjoy showing people what they are growing. And most enjoy sharing advice and stories about their gardens almost as much as sharing flowers and vegetables from their gardens.

Gardening is a great activity for children. It gets them outdoors and off computers, televisions and cell phones. Gardening is also a great teacher. It can teach a child about where food comes from and healthy eating. It also helps them to understand that the natural resources (资源) are not inexhaustible and the importance of using them carefully.

Then, when you garden, you must move around. All the different movements needed for gardening, like bending and lifting, work small muscles (肌肉) in the body. And you can easily get good exercise when you are digging holes or pulling grasses.

In a study, researches looked at more than 2,800 people over the age of 60.They studied their lifestyle habits, activities and health over a 16­year period. They found that gardening could lower the risk of future dementia (痴呆) by 36%. Gardening requires people do many repeated actions, such as picking off dying flowers. These actions have a calming influence on the brain. The brain is still active but not in the same way when we use computers.

You'll feel wonderful when what you grow in a garden looks, smells, feels and tastes good.

【推荐1】For most thinkers since the Greek philosophers, it was self-evident that there is something called human nature, something that constitutes the essence of man. There were various views about what constitutes it, but there was agreement that such an essence exists—that is to say, that there is something by virtue of which man is man. Thus man was defined as a rational(理性的) being, as a social animal, an animal that can make tools, or a symbol-making animal.

More recently, this traditional view has begun to be questioned. One reason for this change was the increasing emphasis given to the historical approach to man. An examination of the history of humanity suggested that man in our time is so different from man in previous times that it seemed unrealistic to assume that men in every age have had in common something that can be called “human nature.” The historical approach was strengthened, particularly in the United States, by studies in the field of cultural anthropology (人类学). The study of primitive peoples has discovered such a diversity of customs, values, feelings, and thoughts that many anthropologists arrived at the concept that man is born as a blank sheet of paper on which each culture writes its text. Another factor contributing to the tendency to deny the assumption of a fixed human nature was that the concept has so often been abused as a shield(盾牌) behind which the most inhuman acts are committed. In the name of human nature, for example, Aristotle and most thinkers up to the eighteenth century defended slavery. Or in order to prove the rationality and necessity of the capitalist form of society, scholars have tried to make a case for acquisitiveness, competitiveness, and selfishness as natural human characters. Popularly, one refers cynically（愤世嫉俗地） to “human nature” in accepting the inevitability of such undesirable human behavior as greed, murder, cheating and lying.

Another reason for disbelief about the concept of human nature probably lies in the influence of evolutionary thinking. Once man came to be seen as developing in the process of evolution, the idea of a substance which is contained in his essence seemed untenable. Yet I believe it is precisely from an evolutionary standpoint that we can expect new insight into the problem of the nature of man.

【推荐2】Climbing along ropes, Hainan gibbons（长臂猿）can now cross a valley created by a landslide （山体滑坡）. These endangered animals live in the forest on China's Hainan Island. A 2014 landslide had damaged the preferred route that they took through the forest. They could cross by jumping across the gap, catching onto a palm frond（棕榈叶）. But when the frond started to bend, researchers rushed to provide a safer way.

The gibbons were slow to put the new route into use. But they increasingly traveled a bridge made of two ropes across the 15-meter gap.

“When people build roads or other structures in a forest, it can break animal habitats into pieces. This can break populations into smaller groups that may struggle to survive, “ says Bosco Chan, a biologist at the Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden in Hong Kong.

Only about 30 Hainan gibbons remain. Chan and his team were worried about a group of nine that had been affected by the landslide. They wanted to prevent the animals from getting hurt while jumping. So the researchers built a rope bridge.

About 176 days after the bridge went up, cameras caught the gibbons taking to the ropes. "I was very excited when the gibbons first started using it," Chan says. Finally, the team observed the gibbons crossing the bridge about as often as the gibbons had traveled that area of forest before the landslide.

"The Hainan gibbons , use of the bridge suggests that other monkeys may also use rope bridges in such kind of forests," says Susan Cheyne. She works at the IUCN Primates Section on Small Apes. This community of experts works to save gibbons and related species.

The gibbon group's two females and two small youths liked crossing on the bridge. But an adult male never used it and three nearly grown juveniles（少年）rarely did. A baby always made the crossing carried by a female. The bridge provides a temporary solution while trees, including native transplants, grow in to fill the forest gap.

【推荐3】In an era when fashion trends can change in a nanosecond(纳秒), people want to keep pace. They'll wear a look a few times and then move on to the next one. In reality, most people can't really afford this.

To meet this demand, online clothing rental services are growing in popularity. Shoppers can pay money online to rent the clothes they need, says the Fashion United website. The first company to put this idea into practice is Rent the Runway. The United States — based company has hit a $ 1 billion valuation. CEO Jennifer Hyman credits its success to the concepts of the sharing economy. She believes that the clothing rental business and the idea of dynamic ownership is a trend in the young generation. “The millennium generation(千禧一代)，the consumer, is so ready to adopt this behavior.” Hyman told CNBC.

She also points out that working women make up one of the biggest consumer groups subscribing to their services. They want more clothes but they have limited space and ability to purchase new fashion. “Rent the Runway can be a solution for them,” Hyman told CNBC, “where they can dress for the job they want and save money and time.”

Although the clothing rental business has many advantages, people still have some concerns. Journalist and author Elizabeth Cline wrote in Elle that “Renting the clothes is not as sustainable as it seems.”

Take shipping, for example, which has to go two ways if an item is rented—receiving and returning. Cline writes that consumer transportation has the second largest footprint of our collective fashion habit after manufacturing. Then there's the burden of washing, which has to happen to every item when it's returned, regardless of whether or not it was worn. For most rental services, this usually means dry—-cleaning, a high— impact and polluting process. “They can produce hazardous waste and air pollution if not handled correctly, and they're often paired with stain removers that are more toxic than the solvents themselves,” she told the Fashion Platforms website.

【推荐2】Think back to when you were in a classroom, and the teacher set a difficult problem. Which of the two following answers is closer to the way you reacted?

A: Oh no, this is too hard for me. I’m not even going to seriously try.

B: Ah, this is quite difficult but I like to push myself. Even if I don’t get the answer right, maybe I’ll learn something in the attempt.

The psychologist Carol Dweck of Stanford University gave a group of children problems that were slightly too hard. One group reacted positively, said they loved challenge and understood that their abilities could be developed. She says they had a ‘growth mindset’. But another group felt that their intelligence was being judged and they had failed. They had a ‘fixed mindset’ and were unable to imagine improving.

Professor Dweck believes that, for years, children have been praised for their intelligence or talent, but this makes them sensitive to failure. They want to please by getting high grades, without interest in learning. The solution is to praise the process that children, are engaged in: making an effort, using learning methods and improving. This way they will become better and achieve more.

Psychologists have been testing these theories. Students were taught that if they left their comfort zone and learned something new and difficult, they will be more intelligent. These students made faster progress than a control group. In another study, unsuccessful school children were exposed to growth mindset technique for a year. The results were astonishing. They came top in a regional test, beating children from much more privileged background. These children had previously felt that making an effort was a sign of being stupid, but they came to see it as the key to learning.

So, back to our original question, if you answered B, well done - you already have a growth mindset. If A, don’t worry; everyone is capable of becoming better with a little effort and self-awareness.

【推荐3】Many people have heard the story of Nessie, Scotland's Loch Ness monster. Yet, have you ever heard of an ice monster in the American state of Alaska?

An ice monster is what many people thought they were seeing when a federal government agency published a strange-looking video. The Bureau of Land Management put the video on its Facebook page.

The pictures were taken in Alaska, the northernmost part of the United States. While winter has yet to officially begin, weather conditions there already are very cold.

In the video, a fish with ice on its back appears to be swimming. The video was only 20 seconds long. But it was enough to get people wondering what they saw.

One person said it showed a shark that lost its way, someone else thought the video was a prank designed to cheat people. He said the Bureau of Land Management wanted to bring attention to its Facebook page. Other people asked if the video was edited in some way, removing some images or adding others. Perhaps, they reasoned, the bureau was trying to frighten people around the celebration of Halloween. Some people said the ice monster was a large fish: a sturgeon. Someone even suggested the creature was a crocodile. But such an animal could not survive in Alaska, where it does not get very hot, even in summer. Some readers said it was ice moving in the river current, or ice that was frozen to a rope or some other object.

On October 31, the Bureau of Land Management published an update. It agreed with some of the people who commented on the original piece. An expert from the Department of Fish and Game told the bureau the picture looked “really cool”, but it was probably just ice stuck to a rope. The ice caused the rope to float and move in the river's current.

Even though the mystery seems to be solved, some people do not seem persuaded. Others are still wishing it was a “real” monster.