【推荐2】A walk around the workplace is also a trip back in time. The office is where colleagues meet, work and bond. But it is also a time capsule, a place where the traces of historic patterns of working are visible everywhere. The pandemic has heightened this sense of office as a dig site for corporate archaeologists.

The most obvious object is the landline phone(固定电话), a reminder of the days when mobility meant being able to stand up and keep talking. Long after people have junked them in their personal lives - less than 15% of Americans aged between 25 and 34 had one at home in the second half of 2021- landline phones survive in offices.

There might be good reasons for its persistence: they offer a more secure and stable connection than mobile phones, and no one worries that they are about to run out of battery. In practice, the habit of using them was definitely lost during the pandemic. Now they sit on desk after desk, rows of buttons unpressed, ring tones unheard.

Landline phones were already well on their way out before covid-19 struck. Whiteboard charts have suffered a swifter reverse. These objects signal a particular type of pain- people physically crowded together into a room while a manager sketches a graph with a marker pen and points meaningfully to the top-right-hand corner, giving requirements never to be satisfied. This manager is still making graphs but is now much more likely to use a PowerPoint. The crowd is still being tortured but is now much more likely to be watching on the screen. The office still has whiteboards, but they are left in corners and the charts on them are slowly yellowing.

Real archaeologists need tools and time to do their painstaking work: brushes, shovels and picks. Corporate archaeology is easier: you just need eyes and a memory of how things used to be. But you also need to be quick as more and more work places are revamped for the post-pandemic era. Now its time to take a careful look around the office: you may see something that will soon seem outdated.

【推荐2】Ghosting — or the “art” of suddenly disappearing and without a trace like a call, an email, or a text from someone’s life — is an old phenomenon and is becoming more common nowadays in social and professional settings. Social media and digital devices give us a zillion (大量的) more ways to reach out to each other, and we also have a zillion more ways to avoid each other. Ghosting may feel like the least messy way to handle a break-up. But is it a good idea for you and the one involved?

Jenny Mollen is a 40-year-old actress and author who once ghosted a friend she no longer wanted to see. She told the New York Times that she didn’t know how else to end it. “If you disappear completely,” she said, “you never have to deal with knowing someone is mad at you and being the bad guy”. However, the person being ghosted still feels anger and sadness, plus confusion and upset at the loss of contact.

Some experts say that people today are actually becoming inept when handling difficult conversations. Social psychologist Sara H. Konrath found that college students had few skills associated with emotional intelligence. For example, it’s difficult for many teens to think from another person’s perspective.

The reason may be simple: less practice. They prefer digital communication to keep contact, and can choose ghosting as a way to break up. However, facial expressions, gestures, and tones of voice convey things that text messages and even calls cannot. People gain a deeper understanding of each other when they talk face to face. And this is especially important and helpful when the topic is a hard one. If you are in situation where you want to escape, calm down and reflect. You definitely have better ways than ghosting.

【推荐3】Have you ever thought about what happens to people’s assets (资产) when they die? That’s where wills come in.

Traditionally, wills were only made by the elderly. Many young people think they don’t need wills if they don’t have kids or houses yet. But in recent years, this perception has started to change.

A while paper released by the China Will Registration Center in March revealed that more people in their 20s and 30s are now getting wills in China, reported China Daily.

The Daily Mail also reported that more young people are writing wills thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the UK, only 18 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds had wills in 2019, compared to 27 percent in 2021.

In a recent interview with The Telegraph, Emily James, 22, said the main reason she wrote a will was the pandemic. “In the current climate, you can’t really get away from death — it’s something my generation has never been faced with so distinctly before. The death count is broadcast every day, and most people know someone who has been affected by the virus, which starts to make you think and want to plan for your future.”

Apart from the pandemic, public knowledge of notable people’s health conditions, like the British royal family, has led to more people writing wills. The highest number of wills written on a single day in 2021 was on Feb 18, following the late Prince Philip’s admission to hospital, according to data from Farewill, one of the UK’s biggest death planning companies.

Farewill’s data also show that the legacies people leave in their wills are reflections of current society.

Music and pop culture collections were among the top things included in wills. The most common pop culture collections mentioned were Disney, Star Wars and Harry Potter memorabilia (纪念品).

The pandemic increased people’s likelihood of including a gift to a charity in their will. Furry friends are also not forgotten. Farewill’s data show nearly one-fifth of the people were making wills to ensure their pets were well looked after, with a total of 37 percent of will writers including plans for their pets.

【推荐2】In the ever-changing world of women’s artistic gymnastics, there has been a gymnast for more than three decades: Oksana Chusovitina.

The 48-year-old had said with certainty that her final competition would be the Tokyo 2020 Games. With no fans in the stands to honor her legendary career (职业生涯) , judges, coaches and other athletes did their best to give her a party worthy of all she’d given the sport. After she thanked them through tears in her eyes, she told media that was her swansong.

However, just a few months after the Tokyo Olympics, Chusovitina said that she would return to training, dreaming of one final medal at a major competition —the Asian Games—for Uzbekistan. “I just can’t finish my career without a medal for my motherland,” she said on her Instagram story.

Chusovitina first competed in the 1992 Olympics as part of the Unified Team and won a team gold medal there. Though she represented (代表) Uzbekistan in the 1996, 2000 and 2004 Olympics, her second Olympic medal came some 16 years later in the 2008 Olympics. Chusovitina, then representing her third nation, Germany, where better medical treatment was provided for her sick son, got the silver medal.

And now, her story continues. The historic eight-time Olympian has started her ninth trip to the 2024 Paris Olympics. At the first two World Cup stops of the season she won bronze medals. “Thank you all so much for the support,” she wrote on Instagram. “First start, first medal.”

“More to come,” added the gymnast, whose motto is “I’d rather try today than regret tomorrow”.

【推荐3】Glaub and Parker settled in to their new home on 22nd Street, and for the first two years a few letters trickled in from kids or parents asking “Santa” (圣诞老人) for gifts they could not otherwise afford: toys, coats, a doll. Then in the months leading to Christmas 2010, they were deluged. Every day, they’d open their mailbox to find it so full of letters to Santa that they had to empty the mailbox in time for another big bunch of letters. They responded to as many as they could, writing notes, even buying gifts. But they could only do so much.

Glaub, of course, is not Santa. He runs a Broadway marketing company. But one night, when he and Parker threw a 1960s-themed Christmas party, a solution appeared. Guests, dressed in mod outfits and hippie beads, noticed the hundreds of letters Glaub and Parker had yet to act upon and asked about them. That’s when Glaub and Parker realized they didn’t have to fulfill all these letters themselves. “People want to help.”

And so was born Miracle on 22nd Street, a community-based volunteer organization that responds to children’s letters to Santa with season’s greetings and gifts for kids. Working with other nonprofits that help those in need, they invited families from around the country to go online and request gifts and Christmas toys for their children.

Letters typically request popular items, but some letters are heartbreaking. One child wrote: “Dear Santa, For Christmas, I want my brothers to get better. My younger brother has a hard time walking and has to use his wheelchair. I wish he could play like me. I also wish my baby brother could eat like me and not have his feeding tube. I know these are not real presents, but this is all I want this year.” That’s a tough ask. But Miracle on 22nd Street did send the children gift cards and a kind note.

Last year, Glaub and Miracle on 22nd Street helped more than 800 families. Glaub no longer dwells on why the letters come to the apartment. Putting in the long hours to help the families is what it’s all about for him. “It wouldn’t be Christmas without it,” he says.