【推荐1】Four Music Festivals in 2023

Splash House—June—Palm Springs, California

When; June 9-11, August 11-13, and August 18-20

For the last 10 years, Splash House has been redefining the summer festival scene, offering a boutique (精品) festival experience in the heart of Palm Springs, complete with pool parties. To celebrate the 10-year milestone, Splash House 2023 is returning this and summer for its second triple-weekender (三周的周末游客) season on June 9—11, August 11-13, August 18-20.

Elements Music and Arts Festival—Long Pond, Pennsylvania

When: August 10-14

Elements Music and Arts Festival is the Northeast’s premier boutique festival experience, featuring artists like Chris Lake, John Summit, Skrillex, Elder brook, and LSD ream. It’s the ultimate carefree weekend event where music, community, art, camping, and adventure converge (集中) in to take over the small community of Long Pond, Pennsylvania.

Lightning in a Bottle—Buena Vista Lake, California

When: May 24-29

Taking place Memorial Day Weekend at Buena Vista Lake in Southern California, Lightning in a Bottle hosts a series of top music, creative art and immersive(沉浸式的) environments, and educational classes and workshops. The lineup this year includes ZHU, Tale of Us, Diplo, REZZ, The Glitch Mob, and more.

Heatwave Music Festival—Chicago, Illinois

When: June 10-11

Produced by Auris Presents, Chicago’s leading force in live music events, the Heatwave Music Festival takes over the entire city with a fully immersive, pop-art inspired event. The festival features headlining dance music acts like Tiesto, Slander, and more.

【推荐2】Unique Birthday Traditions

The editors of our international editions share traditions reserved for counting yourself one year older.

Lithuania

“In my native country, it is customary for the birthday person to sit in a decorated chair and to be lifted up by the party guests,” says editor Eva Mackevic. “How many times the chair is raised will correspond with his or her age.”

Japan

In Japan, when a child turns one, a ceremony called erabitori is held, where the birthday child chooses from a selection of items spread out around that represent the potential future. When a person turns 20, a coming-of-age celebration will be held on the second Monday January.

The Netherlands

When someone turns 50, a large doll will be placed in the birthday person’s garden or by heir front door; men have an “Abraham” doll, women a “Sarah”, based on a Bible passage.

Australia

A child’s first birthday is often celebrated with balloons and specially made “fairy bread”. Some families in Australia also mark the age of 21 with a souvenir “key to the door”, representing the young adult’s privilege to come and go from the family home as they please.

Germany

“In Germany, when unmarried men turn thirty, they are supposed to sweep the stairs of the local church or town hall,” editor Michael Kallinger says, “while women have to deal with the door handle.” This public act is meant to embarrass the person and motivate them to marry.

【推荐1】Are you planning to eat out tonight or are you going to stay in to save the pennies (省钱)? A meal out at a good restaurant or even a pizzeria can cost you a small fortune, so cooking for yourself makes financial sense. But with the rise in food prices, it’s important to be a wise shopper to keep your food bill in check.

These days our supermarket shelves are packed with tempting food items, from the daily staples, like bread and milk, to the exotic, like mangoes and kiwifruits (猕猴桃). There’s also the option of buying ready meals — convenient food that comes at a price. However, if you’re feeling hard up (拮据), there are things you can do to make the money you spend on food go further.

According to the BBC Food website, it’s all about changing your habits. It claims that cooking fulfilling and tasty meals on a budget is easy. It suggests a number of “tricks” such as using cheaper cuts of meat, “choose small amounts of meat with less expensive proteins” and “transform small quantities of leftovers into a heavy meal”.

A favorite entertainment of mine to help when money is tight is to stock up on items that are on special offer-such as BOGOF deals(Buy one, get one free).However, this is more of a problem when it comes to perishable (易腐烂的)items like fresh fruit and vegetables. In the UK, about 39% of household food waste is fruit and veg. So it’s a good idea not to stock up on too much of these things. Store them carefully and make the most of them in all your recipes.

Food waste is a big problem generally, so shopping carefully can also reduce the amount we throw away. And in Edinburgh in Scotland, it’s possible to reduce waste and not break the bank by visiting a recycled food shop, which has been set up to prevent extra food from shops ending up in the bins (垃圾桶).

Of course, the biggest thing you can do to help your cash flow is to cut back on take-away coffees and lunches.

Cooking your own meals is usually healthier for you and your finances.

【推荐2】The World Wildlife Fund states that up to 100 million sharks and rays are caught each year across the world, both on purpose in targeted fisheries and by accident, as bycatch. As a result, shark populations are in rapid decline. Sharks grow relatively slowly and produce few young, so they are easily harmed or influenced by overfishing.

Robert Enever of Fishtek Marine and his team developed SharkGuard, in response to the dramatic declines in shark and ray numbers. They based it on shark deterrents that are currently used successfully to protect surfers and changed it to be used in tuna fisheries, where bycatch of sharks and rays is significant. The novel equipment is fixed to a hook on a line, and it produces a small electric field which sharks and rays can pick up with their electroreceptors and this, hopefully, will keep them away from the hook.

The experiments took place off southern France, during July and August 2021. Eleven separate fishing trips were made and 18,866 hooks were used, half of which carried a SharkGuard. The results, presented in the journal Current Biology, showed that SharkGuard hooks greatly reduced the number of blue sharks and oceanic stingrays caught, while having no big influence on the catch of bluefin tuna.

With its effectiveness proved, there is still some way to go before fisheries could start using the equipment. Firstly, there is the limitation of the batteries. Each SharkGuide needs to be changed every 65 hours of use. The developers are working to solve this problem, so users could “fit and forget“ them, while still protecting sharks and other sea animals.

Now, the researchers are calling on fishers and companies experiencing high shark and ray bycatch to contact Fishtek Marine.