【推荐1】Although social media can be enjoyable and beneficial, online relationships simply cannot replace real life connection. But simply being in the flesh with someone does not make a lasting, meaningful relationship, which got me thinking: what, exactly, does? My search to answer this question took me back more than 2,000 years to Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. What I found couldn’t be more insightful, and it rings just as true today as it must have then.

Aristotle writes that there are three different kinds of friendship:

FRIENDSHIPS BASED ON UTILITY, in which one or both of the parties gain something as a result of the friendship (think: much of the modern “networking” enterprise, or becoming friends with someone because you think they can help you).

FRIENDSHIPS BASED ON PLEASURE, or those centered around pleasant experiences (think: people with whom you can have a good, carefree time).

FRIENDSHIPS BASED ON VIRTUE, in which both individuals share the same values (think: people whom you admire and respect, and with whom you share what you find most important in life).

It’s fascinating that, centuries ago, Aristotle offered that many individual often pursue friendships primarily for utility. And it’s easy to see that some things never change.

Likewise, he wrote, “Those who love because of what is good for themselves, and those who love because of pleasure do so because of what is pleasant to themselves. Yet what one finds useful or pleasurable, is not permanent but is always changing; thus, when the reason for the friendship is done away, the friendship is dissolved.”

It’s OK to have some friendships mainly for utility and pleasure, but it’s important to realize that these fill a different purpose and are likely to have a shorter lifespan than one built upon shared virtue. And it is the friendships based on virtue that are worth protecting and cherishing. But they require considerable energy to maintain -- as Aristotle wrote, “lack of conversation has broken many a friendship” -- but what you get out of these friendships easily outweighs what you put in.

【推荐2】Movie stars might think their lives are private after leaving the acting location, but they ought to know that they have much power over their audience. The power gives them an ability to change people, events, even history, making them to have the responsibility of being good role models.

With time going on, movie stars become celebrities (名人) and in the process get a large number of fans. Some of them follow their deeds, dress, and act like them. In reality, they want to be like their favorite movie stars. If a movie star engages in acts that the society does not approve, those who look up to them, especially the teens, will do the same. Movie stars should be responsible for what they do and say as following the actions is now simpler because of social media. It is important to behave like a role model even when they think no one is watching.

Nobody is perfect, and movie stars also have had their down moments. They may not have been good role models at the time, but they can change the narrative by doing the right things. They can also turn the past shortcomings into positives by opening up about problems and how they overcame the challenges. And their audience can learn to discuss their problems and seek help.

People starring in movies are the target of companies to promote their products or services for a fee. Their celebrity status is a reason enough to think beyond the payment. A movie star should not recommend something that will influence the way teens live negatively. It would be wrong to promote something like sweetened drinks or foods without health benefits. Movie stars face problems like other people, but because of their influence, they have a responsibility to be role models in the public eye.

【推荐3】German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has dismissed concerns that growing Chinese competition is a threat to the local automotive industry, while welcoming Chinese carmakers to Europe’s largest auto show, IAA Mobility 2023, in Munich.

The six-day event officially opened on Tuesday. Scholz said increased competition from China was good for the German auto industry. “Fair competition stimulates business. It is in the interest of consumers,” he said, “as Chinese electric vehicle companies show eased several new fully electric models, out shining some German automotive giants.” Competition should stimulate us on, not scare us.

“The countries that have achieved great prosperity in the course of globalization, the workers there, have no less right and no less claim to the opportunities of modernity than we do,” Scholz said of China.

“In the 1980s, it was said (that) Japanese cars would overrun the market. Twenty years later, it was cars made in South Korea and now supposedly Chinese electric cars,” Scholz, who wore a black eye patch due to an injury from a jogging accident on Saturday, said.

The German chancellor also expressed confidence in his country’s strengths. “There is no question about the international competitiveness of Germany as a car country,” he said, adding that “Germany is still the linchpin of the auto industry and will remain so.”

Jun Jin, an auto industry expert, said the international market provides great opportunities for Chinese EV (电动汽车) makers, given their strength in technology and costs. “But this does not simply mean repeating their China success story; they need to succeed by adopting local practices,” Jun told China Daily.

Chinese companies, he said, still count on exports and have a long way to go before manufacturing vehicles overseas, arranging global supply chains and improving services for local customers.

【推荐1】A man in Laruns, southwestern France, whistling as a form of speech. Like others in the Canary Islands and elsewhere, local people have learned to whistle their language to communicate across long distances. Linguists are studying whistled speech to help understand which sound elements are essential to comprehension.

Whistled speech has arisen in at least 80 languages around the world, especially in rugged, mountainous terrain or dense forest, where ordinary speech doesn't carry far enough.

Whistled speech can be understood up to 10 times as far away as ordinary shouting can, Meyer and others have found. That lets people communicate even when they cannot easily approach close enough to shout. On La Gomera, for example, a few traditional shepherds still whistle to one another across mountain valleys that could take hours to cross.

Whistled languages work because many of the key elements of speech can be mimicked in a whistle, says Meyer.

Learning to whistle a language you already speak is relatively straightforward. Diaz Reyes's Spanish-language whistling students spend the first two or three months of the course learning to make a loud whistle with different pitch. "In the fourth or fifth month, they can make some words," he says. "After eight months, they can speak it properly and understand every message."

In essence, people listening to whistled speech are piecing together its meaning from fragments of the full speech signal. Linguists know surprisingly few details about how the brain does this.

Despite their interest to both linguists and casual observers, whistled languages are disappearing rapidly all over the world, and some have already vanished. Modernization is largely to blame, says Meyer, who points to roads as the biggest factor. “That’s why you still find whistled speech only in places that are very, very remote, that have had less contact with modernity, less access to roads,” he says.

【推荐3】To Swedes, the scent of surströmming (鲱鱼罐头) is pleasant, but to most others, it’s sickening. This contrast highlights the role of culture in shaping our perceptions (见解) of scent. However, researchers now suggest that biology might play a more significant role than previously thought.

Artin Arshamian, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and Asifa Majid, a psychologist at the University of Oxford, noticed from their own previous work that people from different cultures described smells differently. They also knew from past experiments by other researchers that culture was important in determining which sorts of faces people found beautiful. Thus, they expected to see a similar phenomenon with smells.

The researchers conducted a study involving nine diverse groups of people, including hunter-gatherers in Mexico, farmers in Ecuador, and residents of cities like Mexico City and Bangkok. They were presented with ten smells, ranging from isovaleric acid to vanilla extract, and asked to rate them according to pleasantness. The results showed high consistency across cultures, with isovaleric acid universally disliked and vanilla extract mostly enjoyed.

Interestingly, the chemical composition of the smells accounted for 41% of the reactions, while cultural factors only explained 6%. It is quite different in the case of visual perception of faces, where a person’s culture makes up 50% of the explanation for which faces they find beautiful. Meanwhile, the researchers identified an “eye of the beholder” effect in our perceptions of scent. This phenomenon, though less obvious than in visual perception, represents the personal preferences that are shaped by influences outside individual culture, accounting for 54% of the differences in which smells people liked.

This study suggests that our sense of smell may be more influenced by biological factors than cultural ones. It challenges the idea that culture alone determines what we find pleasant or unpleasant and opens up new ways of exploring the biological basis of our senses.