【推荐1】Earlier this month, British supermarket chain Morrisons announced that it would be removing “use by” dates on most of its milk. The idea behind this is to discourage people from throwing milk away based on a date, rather than sniffing (闻) and looking at it to determine whether it’s still safe for consumption.

The fact is that significant amounts of food get wasted every year by people blindly following expiration dates, rather than their senses. What makes matters worse is that most dates don’t mean much, anyway. They’re assigned somewhat randomly by food manufacturers that are not held to any regulatory standards for what determines a safe date nor what expertise (专门知识) is required to make such a judgment call—so it makes sense that they’d be too cautious.

What I find amusing, however, is that many people seem to be horrified by this approaching absence of “use by” dates.

In fact, I never look at expiration dates when I shop. To me, it’s as if they don’t exist. To be clear, I am not an absent-minded shopper. I pay close attention to both packaging and price. Despite having a full cart at checkout, I could tell you the exact price of every item in it. Any time I see a clearance rack (清仓货架) at the store, that’s usually where I go first because it’s exactly the stuff I want to buy—the cheaper, the better! If there’s any heavily discounted product that I’d normally use, I will certainly take it. Often, I’ll mentally adjust my weekly menu plan on the spot, based on what I find.

The handful of times I have looked at expiration dates have been for short-lived items like prepackaged salad greens. What I’ve found, however, is that the dates mean little. Even a package that claims to be fresh can still have rotten yellow leaves at the bottom, which turns me off. Therefore, the expiration date means next to nothing, but my visual assessment, combined with my intention for when I plan to eat it, is far more useful.

Food is your friend. Food is not out to kill you!

【推荐2】Everyone fails from time to time. We try to learn from our mistakes and move on, leaving them behind. But one museum is doing quite the opposite. It’s a showcase (展示)for failures, both famous and forgotten.

Inspired by the Museum of Broken Relationships in Croatia, Samuel West, a psychologist from Sweden, decided to make our silly mistakes public. He founded the Museum of Failure in 2017. Now the museum is hitting the road, with a traveling exhibition in Shanghai from Jan 18 to March 17. The Museum will display over 100 “failed” products from big-name companies such as Nokia, Apple and Coca-Cola.

“I really hope you see that these mega-brands (大牌)that everybody respects screw up too,” West told The New York Times. “I hope that makes you feel less apprehensive (惴惴不安的)about learning something new.”

West’s opinion isn’t new. The famed German-American physicist Albert Einstein once said, “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” This idea has even been embraced (接纳)by big companies in the US. Silicon Valley, for example, is the home of some of the worlds most innovative tech companies. A common slogan is, “Fail fast, fail often.”

However, there are reasons for this. The best companies are those that encourage failure, embrace out-of-the-box thinking and allow employees to make mistakes and see what happens,wrote Simon Casuto of Forbes.

This may lead to carelessness and a lack of effort. Some people are skeptical of this so-called “culture of failure”. They are worried that if failure becomes “a badge (奖章)of honor”，as Wired magazine put it, it may even be seen as “uncool” when someone tries to reduce the risk of failure.

“Sometimes people hide behind failure, when they could have prevented it,” wrote Anna Isaac of The Telegraph.

So it’s important that you set apart the two kinds of failure — the kind that shows laziness or incompetence and the kind that takes you forward. The key is whether you’ve learned something from your mistakes.

【推荐1】As you get older, you’ll meet a wider range of people from diverse cultures. If you haven’t met many people from different backgrounds, it can be hard to know how to respect their culture.     1    

One of the best ways to understand other people’s cultures is to first consider your own. Most of us don’t realize that our customs and beliefs might seem strange to someone else. Don’t think of your own way of life as the only normal one and everyone else’s to be strange.     2    

Maybe you’ve recently met someone from a different culture, or you’re curious about how different people live. When you meet people from a different culture, ask them about their lives. Also, you can read books, watch movies or listen to radio shows.     3     The more you learn, the more likely you will get used to greeting cultural differences with curiosity rather than doubt.

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Differences between us are what make life so interesting, so just accept the differences between yourself and your friends from different cultures. The best way to respect people from other cultures is to strike a balance between curiosity and appreciation:     5    . Also, learn how to just silently observe and appreciate the differences that make us unique.

【推荐3】How can you recognize a British, a German, and a Frenchman, apart from their accents and names?

There are ways people dress, but they are very complex and would take a lot of time to explain. Some items of clothing are just more popular in some countries than in others. For example, Germans often wear sandals (凉鞋) with their socks on, which is something a Frenchman would normally never do. In Berlin, where I live, people don’t really dress as smart as they would in Paris or London. The Germans have a reputation for not caring so much about their outward appearance — as long as the clothes are comfortable, they’re happy! They also seem to love sportswear more than people anywhere else.

The French cannot queue, while the British just seem to love it. French people are always late, British people are always on time and the Germans are always early.

French people use their hands a lot more when they speak, and take a lot more time to say something. French people care a lot how things are done or said. The British do care how things are done and said, but only in a context of politeness. The Germans just care how things are done. The French and the British seem to care more how things look, for example, food products and packaging.

When it comes to food, for example in a restaurant, a Frenchman would never think of ordering beer with a meal, which is something tally normal for a German or a British.

I find the Germans the cleanest and most disciplined in public space. The French are the worst and the British somehow in between.