【推荐1】Whether or not you want an electric vehicle in your driveway, you might soon find one showing up in front of your door. All major delivery companies are starting to replace their gas-powered fleets (车队) with electric or low-emission (低排放的) vehicles, a switch that companies say will help fight climate change.

UPS has placed an order for 10,000 electric delivery vehicles. Amazon is buying 100, 000 from the start-up Rivian. DHL says zero-emission vehicles make up a fifth of its fleet, with more to come. And FedEx just promised to replace 100% of its pickup and delivery fleet with battery-powered vehicles by 2040.

Switching to electric vehicles for shorter distances makes a lot of sense for companies like FedEx. Compared to the 18-wheelers that carry packages between states, delivery vehicles — typically smaller trucks — are much easier to electrify, with battery technology providing enough range for many routes. And companies also have plenty of charging time.

Mitch Jackson, an officer for FedEx, calls it the “best situation”. “If you think about it, our vehicles operate throughout the day picking up and delivering our customers’ goods,” Jackson says. “And in the evening, they come back to our stations and they’ll be parked there overnight. Electric vehicles are still expensive up front, but electric vehicles save money on fuel. Because they have fewer moving parts, they’re also cheaper to maintain. ”

One challenge, though, has been getting enough electric vehicles to meet the needs of a large fleet. But automakers are paying attention. A car company accepted Amazon’s big order for little trucks. And General Motors (GM) has started a whole new business, BrightDrop, centered entirely on electric delivery vehicles. A delivery truck may not be as amazing as a flying car, but GM is seeing dollar signs.

“The change is speeding up while COVID-19 is spreading over the whole world. Everybody has gone online to do online shopping. And I don’t think that’s going to go away after the pandemic (流行病),” GM’s CEO Mary Barra says. “You’re going to see a lot more of these delivery vehicles,” she says.

【推荐2】Since the 1920s, a little-known policy called parking minimums has shaped many Americans’ life. In major cities, this meant that any type of building needed to reserve a certain number of parking spaces to accommodate anyone who might visit.

But as the country attempts to cut carbon emissions (排放), we should rethink what transportation and public space look like, especially in cities. Earlier this month, the city of Austin, Texas, became the latest community to undo parking minimums.

“If we want half of all trips to be in something other than a car, then we can’t, as a city, in my opinion, demand that every home or business have at least one parking space for each resident or customer,” said Zohaib Qadri, the Austin city council member who introduced the measure. Reducing dependency on cars was a huge push for the initiative in Austin. Qadri hopes the measure also will lead to a more sustainable city.

The undoing of this law could pave the way for cities to build denser (密集的) housing, increase public transit options, and reduce their carbon emissions, according to Donald Shoup, an engineer and professor. “It isn’t just the housing crisis and climate change; it’s a traffic jam; it’s local air pollution; it’s the high price of everything—except parking,” said Shoup.

Climate change and air pollution are particularly costly outcomes, with both estimated to cost the US billions of dollars every year. Parking spots, meanwhile, can run in the tens of thousands of dollars to construct, with one estimate putting that figure at almost $30, 000 per spot.

But undoing parking minimums does not mean that all parking will disappear overnight. It means that any off-street parking built will not need to meet any minimum standard.

“Austin is the same city that it was two weeks ago,” said Shoup. “It’s going to take quite a while for that city to really get the benefits of their parking space reforms. And so it just removes a roadblock and a barrier to other reforms.”

【推荐3】In Asia, the car is as much a status symbol as it is a means of transport. A car’s design is not the only consideration when a vehicle has to suit the needs of everyone in the family .

This is the case for one particular group of drivers: The sandwich generation, who are stuck between caring for their children and caring for their parents. For them, the ‘family car’ is often shared with everyone from the newly licensed teens to adults with their own kids, or grandparents struggling with physical mobility.

With differing demands of so many people from boomers to Gen Z, your car has to appeal to all — and keep everyone safe in the event of a car accident.

Over 20% of serious driver accidents involving teens were caused by driving too fast for the road conditions. But it isn’t just risky driving behavior that causes teens to be the source of serious road accidents. In fact, according to research conducted by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, most speed-related teen crashes are due to inexperience and a lack of driving skills rather than intentionally risky driving behavior.

It can be challenging for newbie drivers to appropriately judge the proper speed at which to take turns, especially on less-than-perfect roads or driving conditions. Helping them along is Subaru’s Active Torque Vectoring, which makes up for any over-eagerness, ensuring you can take the car through corners in a smooth and safe manner.

For seniors with slower reaction, or having difficulty stretching out their neck to check blind spots, being able to quickly avoid danger can be critical. Subaru’s Blind Spot Detection system will alert you if there’s a vehicle in the neighboring lane. What’s more, Subaru’s EyeSight Lane Departure Warning warns the driver if they start to stray by accident from their traffic lane and endanger other vehicles in the neighbouring lane, while the EyeSight Lane Sway Warning system will remind you should you begin to move back and forth in your lane.

It can be difficult to find a car that appeals to multiple generations. But there are some things you should never compromise regardless of your age or driving experience. And at the top of that list is safety.

【推荐3】On March 18, 34-year-old Lance Karlson was walking on the beach and looking for somewhere to swim in Geographe Bay when he saw what he thought was a stingray (黄貂鱼) leap from the water.

Realizing the creature was, in fact, an octopus (章鱼), he started filming it — just in time for the angry octopus to launch itself at him. He immediately felt a sharp pain across his left arm, followed by a second strike across his neck and upper back. His goggles (护目镜) fogged and the water around him turned dark with what he thought might have been octopus ink as he struggled back toward the shore.       

"I was confused — it was more of a shock than a fright," said Karlson, "I might have hit on its home." Within a minute, a perfect imprint of an octopus tentacle (触手) appeared on Karlson's neck and back.       

A former volunteer lifeguard, Karlson rushed back to his hotel room to find something acidic to put on the wound. All his family could grab was Coca-Cola, which his wife poured over his back and the pain disappeared.

"The pain went away and more than anything since then, it's been more the physical hit that was painful.... The imprint on my neck is more from the physical hit, and I guess it makes complete sense when you look at the video I took," he said.

Karlson said he'd never seen an octopus that close before and watched Netflix documentary "My Octopus Teacher" after the incident to learn more about the species.

"They are beautiful creatures and I really hope this promotes more interest in octopuses as opposed to fear of them. I think this is a fascinating creature with clearly some very strong emotions just like we do as humans," he added.

【推荐1】In the Pascucci household, putting up Christmas lights was always a big day of celebration and a family affair. Every year, Anthony Pascucci, the male head of the family, and his older sister, Connie Pascucci, and Anthony’s son, Anthony Jr., and daughter, Sara, pitched in it.

In 2020, Anthony Sr., 60, tied colorful lights all around their roof until it looked as if the brightness of the lights could counter some of the darkness of the past year with COVID-19. However, just several days after Christmas Eve the pandemic claimed his life.

Sara says the next weeks were the worst of her life. But when she pulled up to the house at the end of a long day, the twinkling Christmas lights brought her a spark of joy. Taking the lights down felt like a final act of closure she wasn’t ready to take. So she kept them up.

One day Sara received an unsigned letter which read “Take your Christmas lights down! It’s Valentine’s Day!!!” Sara was shocked and angry. She decided to post the letter. “I wanted to remind people that we all had a tough year and people should be a little more caring toward each other,” she says.

“I know what it feels like to lose someone and not want to put their things away. It’s very hard,” one man commented. And something strange began to happen. Sara was driving back from work one day when she noticed that Christmas lights were appearing—or reappearing—on neighbors’ houses. The mystery had a sweet explanation: Her neighbors had gotten together and decided, collectively, to hang their lights back up and turn them back on in honor of Sara’s father.

“To see the lights and the block lit up again,” Sara says, “it touched my heart.” A few weeks later, Sara decided she was ready to take down the lights. Sara said it was hard to pack them away—“but not as hard as I think it would have been if we hadn’t experienced all that support and love.”

【推荐3】There’s not a lot of mountain climbing happening in Minnesota. But it was his growing up in Detroit Lakes — visiting national parks with his family — that set Eddie Taylor up to join the first all-Black team of climbers training to take on Qomolangma next year. “I ran track in high school and I ended up going to Colorado and walking on the track team,” Taylor said during a conversation with MPR News host Cathy Wurzer. “Being out here next to the mountains, there’s lots and lots of climbing, lots of mountain areas and lots of rock climbing.”

Taylor is now a high school science teacher and track coach in Colorado and is training with a new group of nine Black climbers who hope to climb Qomolangma next spring. Led by experienced climber Phil Henderson, there are five other Black men on the team with Taylor. Abby Dione and Rosemary Saal finish off the group of nine as the two Black women climbers on the team.

It was a chance meeting with Henderson, the leader of the adventure, at a dog park in western Colorado that set Taylor up for this next adventure. “There’s not a lot of Black people out there in that part of Colorado,” he said. “I was walking my dog and we just ran into each other. We started to chat. And then we actually went ice climbing later on that day and ran into each other again.”

Of the 10, 000 climbers who have climbed Qomolangma, only 10 were Black, Taylor said. The team hopes to not only increase those numbers next year but increase awareness and access ( 接触的机会) to the outdoors for people of color.

“I visited national parks and I learned to ski ( 滑雪) at a young age, but I think that’s not typical for other climbers of color. Just to help inspire that next generation and to show that things are possible for people in our community makes it worth it.”