【推荐1】More and more comments sections are being shut down online.

Autumn Phillips had had enough. On Aug. 19, the executive editor of the Quad- City Times in Iowa, and Illinois, US visited her website, qctimes.com, and saw a story about a man who had been shot to death. When she got to the readers’ comments sections at the end, she was shocked by what she saw. Below the story was a growing number of comments—a racist remark about democratic votes, a negative comment about police …So Phillips decided to do something she had been thinking about for a long time: she shut down the comments sections.

Phillips was not alone in making such a move. Last week, NPR announced k too was closing its online comments sections. The decisions don’t mean that the news outlets are no longer interested in what their audiences are thinking. Both stressed their eagerness to hear from readers and listeners on social networks. But both agreed that comments had deviated from their original intention. And so they had.

In early days of digital journalism, comments were seen as a key part of this new media, a wonderful opportunity for strengthening the dialogue between news producers and their audiences. It was a welcome change, given that for long many news organizations were far too separated from their readers. Much more back and forth conversation seemed like healthy and welcome evolution. Sadly, that’s not the way things turned out. Rather than a place for exchanging ideas, comments sections became the home of ugly name-calling, racism and anti-women language. Besides their poisonous quality, comments seem out of place today.

“Since we made the announcement, I’ve received an outpouring of responses from our readers,” she says. “I’ve heard from parents whose children were hurt by our online comments. I’ve heard from people who said they wouldn’t send in letters to the editor because they were attacked so fiercely by comments, and wasn’t worth it.”

【推荐1】Empathy can give purpose to our lives and truly comfort people in distress, hut it can also do great harm. While showing an empathetic response to the tragedy and trauma of others can be helpful, it can also, if misdirected, turn us into what Professor James Dawes has called “emotional parasites.”

Empathy can make people angry — perhaps dangerously so — if they mistakenly perceive that another person is threatening a person they care for. For example, while at a public gathering, you notice a heavyset, casually dressed man who you think is “staring” at your pre-teenage daughter. While the man has remained expressionless and has not moved from his spot, your empathetic understanding of what he “might” be thinking of doing to your daughter drives you into a state of rage. While there was nothing in the man's expression or body language that should have led you to believe he intended to harm your daughter, your empathetic understanding of what was

Probably “going on inside his head” took you there, Danish family therapist Jesper Juul has referred to empathy and aggression (攻击性) as “existential twins.”

For years, psychologists have reported cases of overly empathetic patients endangering the well-being of themselves and their families by giving away their life savings to random needy individuals. Such overly empathetic people who feel they are somehow responsible for the distress of others have developed an empathy-based guilt.

The better-known condition of “survivor guilt” is a form of empathy-based guilt in which an empathetic person incorrectly feels that his or her own happiness has come at the cost or may have even caused another person's misery.

According to psychologist Lynn O’Connor, persons who regularly act out of empathy-based guilt, tend to develop mild depression in later-life.

Psychologists warn that empathy should never be confused with love. While love can make any relationship-good or bad — better, empathy cannot and can even hasten the end of a strained relationship. Essentially, love can cure, empathy cannot.

Rehabilitation and trauma counselor Mark Stebnicki coined the term “empathy fatigue” to refer to a state of physical exhaustion resulting from repeated or prolonged personal involvement in the chronic illness, disability, trauma, grief, and loss of others.

While more common among mental health counselors, any overly empathetic person can experience “empathy fatigue”. According to Stebnicki, “high touch” professionals like doctors, nurses, lawyers, and teachers tend to suffer from empathy fatigue, Paul Bloom, Ph.D., professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale University, goes so far as to suggest that due to its inherent dangers, people need less empathy rather than more.

【推荐2】Central Library: Seattle, Washington, United States

Designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and American designer Joshua Ramus, it is modern and fashionable and has tourists from around the world paying visits and taking tours.Tours began in 2006, two years after its opening.The library holds various art exhibitions, book signings and other events, while visitors can stop by the Chocolate cart for a coffee and scan through the gift shop anytime.

Trinity College Library: Dublin, Ireland

The oldest library in Ireland, founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I, it is the largest single library in the world, also known as the Long Room, which contains more than 200,000 of the library's oldest books.The Long Room houses one of the oldest harps(竖琴) in Ireland.Dating back to the 15th century, the old harp is the model for the symbol of Ireland.

Geisel Library, University of California: San Diego, United States

At first glance, it looks like a spaceship.Architect William Pereira, who helped design actual space launch facilities at Cape Canaveral in Houston, Texas, designed the library in 1970.It has been featured in sci-fi films, short stories and novels.The library hosts “Dinner in the Library”, which invites readers for cocktails, and also a special speech from distinguished authors.

TU Delft Library: Delft, The Netherlands

The library at the Delft University of Technology was constructed in 1997 and has more than 862,000 books, 16,000 magazine subscriptions and its own museum.The building itself exists beneath the ground, so you can't really see the actual library.What makes it interesting is the roof, which is a grassy hill.The roof covers 5,500 square meters.And it has become one of the most striking and greenest structures in the area.

【推荐3】Can you imagine there being a community where boys and girls growing up together can finally speak different languages? In Ubang, Nigeria, it really happens. It’s not exactly clear what percentage of the words in the men’s and women’s languages are different, but there are enough examples to make sentences sound different when they’re spoken by the opposite sex. For “clothing”, men use the word “nki”, while women say “ariga”; “kitchi” means “tree” for men, while women say “okweng”. These are not just some slight pronunciation differences, but totally different words. “It’s almost like two different lexicons (词汇表),” a language expert, Chi-Chi Undie said. “There are a lot of words that men and women share in common, but there are others which are totally different depending on your sex. They don’t sound alike, and don’t have the same letters. They are completely different words.”

Interestingly, both men and women are able to understand each other perfectly in Ubang, as both boys and girls grow up around their parents and get to learn both languages, but by the age of 10, boys are expected to speak in the male tongue. It seems that there is a stage when the male will discover he is not using the rightful language. When he starts speaking the men’s language, you know the maturity is coming into him.

No one really knows how or why the double-language tradition of Ubang began. Chi-Chi Undie believes the two languages are the result of a “double-sex culture” where men and women operate in two separate spheres (范围) and live in separate worlds that rarely come together. However, she admits this is a weak theory, as the double-sex culture is present in many parts of Africa, where there are no different languages for men and women.

Today, with English words constantly entering the lexicon of young Nigerians, Ubang’s two languages are in danger of being lost forever. Worse still, neither the male language nor the female language is written down, so they both rely on young people to pass them down to the next generation.