【推荐1】Stephen Hawking, the world respected Oxford physicist, who died at the age of 76, once said he felt “lucky” his motor neurone diseasc (MND) did not prevent him from doing his lifelong research on the origins of the universe. “I have been so lucky that my disease has not been a serious block, indeed it has probably given me more time than most people to search for knowledge.” he once said.

The author of the 1988 bestseller A Brief History of Time was given only a few years to live when he was diagnosed (诊断) with MND as a 22-year-old student in 1964.

MND is the collective name for a group of diseases that affect the nerves (神经) in the brain. The progressive disease kills more than half within two years and about ninety percent within five years of diagnosis. There is no cure for MND and no treatment to halt the progression of the disease at the present time. However, it is possible to live with it for many years.

The disease affects the muscles that produce movements like walking and talking, and damages parts of the nervous system which leads to muscle weakness. MND most commonly happens to people in their 50s and 60s. However, it can affect people of any age, as in Prof Hawking’s case.

Experts believe that Hawking’s rare slow-progressing form of MND and its early onset were likely to be factors in why he was able to live with the disease into his seventies. Leo McCluskey, a medical director, said his excellent care and the variation (变异) of his disease are likely to have prolonged his life. “The common way people die is of breathing failure. And the other thing is swallowing muscles’(吞咽肌) becoming worse. If you don’t have these two things, you could probably not live for a long time — even though you’re getting worse. What’s happened to Hawking is just surprising. He’s certainly an outlier,” he said.

【推荐2】After talking about it for years, I finally got to visit Puglia in 2021. Not for a week or two but an entire month. I sure am glad that I married a half-Italian.

A little background, my husband’s father’s family is from Salento in Puglia and they even have a place to stay there on the beach. I have heard about this place ever since I got married. I ended up visiting it six years after being married.

Honestly, it wasn’t my first time in Italy. I was in the Trentino region before but most of the Italians told me that “the real Italy only starts from the south of Rome”. Anyway, I was all set to have a very “average” experience in the south of Italy in every sense but I was in for a surprise. That’s because I have visited a lot of amazing beaches and islands. Moreover, I have also visited countries that are known for their amazing food and I thought I’d find Italian food very “plain and basic”, but I was wrong. I didn’t expect to love it so much.

If there’s one country that’s so culturally powerful that everyone has to experience it at least once, it has got to be Italy. In terms of culture, family, food, art, architecture and music—they all play an important part individually and wholly. Italians take pride in their culture.

It is hard to describe how it is to experience a new culture. I come from a country where culture plays a very visible part and I felt something similar in Italy. Even if you arrive in Italy with a closed mind, over time the country will win you over because you can’t help but fall in love with it.

【推荐3】At some point in the stretch of days between the start of the pandemic’s third year and the feared launch of World War III, a new phrase unfolded itself before us, a mysterious foretell of an age to come: people were going “goblin mode”.

The term embraces the comforts of depravity(堕落): spending the day in bed scrolling endlessly through social media; pouring the end of a bag of chips in your mouth; leaving the house in your pajamas and socks only to get a single Diet Coke from the store.

First appearing on Twitter as early as 2009, “goblin mode” represents a direct departure from the “cottagecore” influence of early pandemic days, a standout trend of 2020 that thrived under the wistful ethos of making the best of what many people assumed would be only a few boring weeks at home in 2020.

But as the pandemic wears on endlessly, and the chaos of current events worsens, people feel cheated by the system and have rejected such goals. “The trend sets an unrealistic standard for people to think that if they aren’t waking up early to exercise, their lives are not put together”, one blog indicting “cottagecore” culture reads.

Most people tweeting about goblin mode characterize it as an almost spiritual-level embrace of our most debased tendencies and call it a logical progression into nihilism(虚无主义)after years of disappointment. However, Marnell, an author who has been tweeting extensively in recent weeks about entering goblin mode, says there is “healthy goblin mode and destructive goblin mode”. For her, it represents a certain air of harmless mischief. “It is cool to be a goblin,” Marnell says. “Everyone is so perfect all the time online, it is good to get in touch with the strange little creature that lives inside you.”