【推荐2】What do a picturesque sunrise, a nice cup of coffee, and holiday celebrations have in common?    1    Being open about your feelings can be rewarding. Here are some reasons for sharing your feelings with others.

Expressing your feelings connects you with others. When it comes to relationships with your family and significant others, knowing how to express your feelings is the key to creating intimacy (亲密关系).    2    However, it is that sincere revelation(透露) that enables you to bond with your loved ones.

    3    In a study, after participants expressed their emotions, brain images showed a decrease in the brain activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain associated with feelings, indicating a calming effect on the brain. The researchers concluded that talking through emotions decreases the strength of these emotions.

Sharing your feelings boosts health. According to The New York Times, holding everything inside and not expressing your emotions can be harmful.    4    But choosing to appropriately share them benefits you mentally and physically. By doing so, you can normalize your speaking about emotions and emotional needs. This can help not just you, but also others.

Speaking about your emotions enables you to get help. When you put what’s in your mind into words, you are making that experience or emotion real, instead of ignoring it. That’s a way of recognizing yourself. Moreover, talking about your feelings allows your loved ones to help you. They are naturally concerned about your well-being.    5    

All in all, accept your feelings, even negative ones and learn to manage them. Practice sharing your feelings on a regular basis, and you will benefit a lot.

【推荐2】Whenever I order food for delivery, I play a little game to guess how many sets of tableware(餐具)the restaurant will provide with my meal. Sometimes restaurants will throw in two, three or four sets for just one order. But I rarely need any tableware at all, and the waste goes into the trash or collects dust in a kitchen drawer.

Researchers working with Chinese technology group Alibaba tried a simple approach to this problem. Instead of just wastefully doling out tableware, the company required food-delivery customers in some cities in China to pick how many sets of tableware they wanted to receive.The default (默认设置)was set at zero. The result, published today in the journal Science, was a 638% increase in the share of no-tableware orders. If applied across China, researchers found, the approach would save nearly 22 billion sets of plastic tableware. The study doesn’t cover carbon emissions, but it’s safe to say that the impact would be significant. It struck me as a useful reminder of the many low-hanging fruits across the economy that can cut waste, and emissions.

Nudging its customers cost Alibaba nothing more than a few hours of software engineering time and the impact it brought was immense. The concept of nudging comes from the field of behavioral economics known as nudge theory. It suggests that a slight action can encourage good human behavior without the need for policies that limit choice or economic punishment that raises the cost of bad behavior. To nudge customers to eat better, for example, a restaurant might organize its menu by listing healthy options first and bury unhealthy ones at the bottom. More recently, some big companies like Google have also begun to use nudges to advance climate objectives.

Behavioral economics broadly, and nudges more specifically, aren’t without controversy. Some might think it assigns consumers responsibility for addressing environmental challenges. But there is another way to look at it. In the absence of necessary policy—and policy is needed一companies can help encourage a widespread shift of consumer behavior.

And all of that behavioral change can add up. The International Energy Agency found in 2021 that small behavioral changes in energy consumption such as walking instead of driving and adjusting the thermostat could in total shave off 4% of global emissions. The more that companies can do to facilitate such changes, the better.

【推荐3】Technoference (科技入侵) is defined as everyday interruptions (打扰) in face-to-face interactions because of technological devices. Studies showed that parents use devices for nine hours per day on average. Smartphones are often used during family activities such as meals, playtime, and bedtime—all important times involved in shaping a child’s emotional well-being. When parents are on their devices, they have fewer conversations with their children, and pay less attention to them.

In one study, 172 two-parent families with a child aged 5 years or younger answered online questionnaires about family relationships. Participants showed how often different devices interrupted their activities with their children.

They rated their child’s behavior, such a show often they got upset or how easily their feelings were hurt. The parents also reported their own levels of stress and depression (沮丧), the support they received from their partners, and their children’s screen media use.

In almost all cases, devices were part of parent-child interactions during the day. Technology may serve as a way for parents to deal with difficult child behavior. However, it has its drawbacks.

Electronic device use means parents can’t provide meaningful emotional support and positive feedback to their children, which causes behavior such as crying. But this adds to parents’ stress levels. Parents are likely to spend more time with their technological products, and the cycle continues.

“These results showed that relationships between parent technoference and child behavior influence each other over time,” said McDaniel. “Parents who have children with behavioral problems become more stressed, which may lead to them using technology more, which in turn may contribute to more problems with their children.”

So, it seems like the best solution to a difficult relationship between a parent and their child would be to simply spend more time with each other, and less time on their smartphones or computers.

【推荐1】Housemates make posters to lighten the mood amid the challenges of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. Posters featuring a character that resembles the Disney robot Baymax have been making rounds on the internet and drawing praise from netizens for lightening the mood amid the epidemic.

Made by Chen Mengying, 32, and her American housemate Stacey Klinge, 33, the posters also feature humorous phrases related to lockdown life. The duo (搭档), who live in Tianyuan housing community, say they came up with the poster after realizing how tense the mood in their community had become as it faced lockdown challenges. According to Chen and Klinge, their community, which has been under closed-loop (闭环) management since April 1, has had problems getting access to daily essentials, and this sparked several disagreements between residents and the management. Eager to help lighten the mood, the two sought to spread some cheer using their artistic skills.

Klinge says she was initially confused with her housemate’s suggestion to create a character based on dabai, a Chinese reference to pandemic workers in white protective suits. Chen says she was thinking about Baymax from the animated film Big Hero 6. Seeing how Baymax and the workers both play the role of protectors in their respective worlds, the two decided to use the character for their posters. Their posters, which contain multilingual updates about the latest pandemic measures and announcements for residents, have helped people develop a sense of optimism.

The posters have also drawn the attention of several local media outlets, which have interviewed the two. “I was seriously considering a return to the United States. But I’ve changed my mind after my fantastic experience in the community,” says Klinge. Besides creating the posters, Chen and Klinge have also been volunteering in the community since April 16 and they always focus on positive things at this difficult time.

【推荐2】HONG KONG — At the school where Ko Cheuk-kiu works, there are neither school bells ringing nor students running around the playground. “You look good today. Shall we review the text together?” After greeting her student Hei Hei, Ko, in a light blue uniform, turns on her tablet computer and begins to teach at the bedside.

Founded in 1954, the Hong Kong Red Cross Hospital Schools initially provided services in only one public medical institution. Now, it is a special education institute funded by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, with 26 school units attached to 19 public hospitals. Its services are mainly divided into three fields — general specialty, psychiatry, and homebound teaching programs. The first two provide services for hospitalized students to reduce their difficulties in returning to school, while homebound teaching is aimed at students who need to stay at home to recover for a long period. Teachers are assigned to different hospitals or students’ homes and shift on a regular basis. Depending on the situation, teachers will carry out small group or one-on-one bedside teaching, and each session lasts about 30 minutes.

“Teaching children in a hospital? I was curious and keen to know more about it,” Ko recalls, explaining she first learned about the school from a newspaper report in 2009 when she had just finished her master’s degree in language. Ko, who also studied special education, applied for a teaching position at the school and was hired as a Chinese language teacher.

Teachers in hospitals have to meet students with different medical conditions and face all kinds of challenges every day, but Ko regards these experiences as training, which have led her to have a deeper appreciation of life. Over the years, Ko has received a lot of greeting cards from parents and students showing their appreciation. Looking at these warm words of encouragement, she silently sends her best wishes to the students. “I hope they can soon recover and go back to school, and continue to pursue their dreams,” she says.

【推荐3】From skateboarding to Fleetwood Mac, TikTok users got creative in a pandemic (流行病) year with new songs, dances and shows in 60 seconds or less.

The social media video app on Wednesday shared its list of top 100 videos, creators and trends in America during 2020. “These videos brought joy and inspiration to millions of Americans in the rough year,” said Kudzi Chikumbu, director of creator community at TikTok.

The platform has been widely associated with Generation Z (people born after 1996), millennials (people born in the 1980s or 1990s) and influencers who have started careers based on the shared videos.

The Weeknd's Blinding Lights and Jason Derulo's Savage Love inspired TikTok dance challenges that made them among the top songs used on the app.

For some TikTok creators, the pandemic itself became inspiration to create a connection with other users. Comedian Caitlin Reilly used the app during quarantine (隔离) to make fun of those annoying coworkers for one of the top liked videos. And singer Curtis Roach made an song for the endless days at home with his song Bored in the House.

The second most popular video was an Idaho man named Nathan Apodaca who shot to fame after coolly singing Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, while skateboarding on a highway.

But the most liked TikTok video was awarded to Bella Poarch with 45 million followers, who created a simple but interesting video with a few seconds of well-timed head nods and eye rolls.

While the app might be designed for youth, Chikumbu said that the growth of TikTok this year has pushed it more into mainstream culture. “You're seeing everyone from the teenager to the college students with their parents and then their grandparents all making videos,” said Chikumbu. “And now TikTok truly transcends generations, particularly in this year when people had a lot of time to dig in and not only watch, but try.”