【推荐1】Wall Street bankers, investors and economists have for months argued over whether a US recession (衰退) is coming. But for some Americans, the unforgiving economic pain typical during recession has already set in.

Al Brown and his wife faced a tough call in May when reviewing their weekly budget: what’s a higher priority, more food or dish soap? Based in Concord, North Carolina, Brown was the main breadwinner for his wife and their two children. Then in April, he was let go from his job as a global director of business development at software company Cascade. He’s since quit his gym membership and sold various items around his home, including a computer and yard furniture. His 13-year-old son quit the basketball team.

Brown, 37, now spends his days searching the internet for jobs or reaching out to potential connections. After filing over 600 applications, only a handful have produced interviews. That’s a far cry from the labor-market strength described in government figures.

Investors and economists have been expecting a recession since last year as the Fed raised interest rates to control inflation (通货膨胀). That caused companies to focus on profitability over growth, which meant cutting spending and reducing their workforces.

“I think it’s unlikely that I will get another good paying job with great benefits like the one I had,” McCollum, who lives in Cleveland, Ohio, said. More Americans are likely to encounter similar cases, some experts predict.

“As we go through this year, and into next year, there is still going to be this focus on trying to reduce costs, and it is going to result in more unemployment,” said Thomas Simons, a senior economist at Jefferies. “The impact of layoffs, currently concentrated among white-collar workers, will last throughout the economy through a ‘big pullback in overall spending’,” Simons said. “Consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of economic output, so if more Americans are forced to cut back because they were laid off, that might throw the US economy into a recession.”

【推荐2】China’s tea culture has undergone dramatic, changes in recent years. The appearance of new-style teas can be traced back to the cheap roadside milk tea stands of the 1990s. Most of these drinks were made from powdered mixes and contained neither fresh milk nor fresh tea. The base ingredients weren’t updated until the arrival of Taiwan-based brands like CoCo and A Little Tea in the 2000s, leading to innovations such as “cheese tea”. These businesses started the “Milk Tea 2.0” era, transforming the milk tea business from a mixture of small stands into a standardized and fast-moving industry.

But even as the Taiwan-centric “Milk Tea 2.0” revolution was sweeping the world, the seeds of its next evolution were already sprouting (发芽) on the Chinese mainland. In 2012, a 21-year-old man named Nie Yunchen opened a milk tea store in the small southern city of Jiangmen, where he sold milk tea. By 2020, Nie’s HeyTea had 695 stores worldwide; was worth an estimated, 16 billion yuan, and had attracted a large number of imitators.

The new brands made their mark, by offering a more diverse range of tea bases, often with extras like seasonal fruit sparkling water, cream cheese or nuts.

The viability (可行性) of this business model owes much to China’s widespread embrace of high-end consumerism. Jason Yu, general manager of the market research firm Kantar World panel China, told me that “mothers with refined tastes”, urban white-collar workers, and those born after 1990 are the main drivers of Chinas new-style tea market—and, more broadly, the consumer market as a whole. These groups tend to be defined by busywork and home lives, and they see upscale drinks like tea and coffee not only as a way to quench their thirst (解渴), but also as a source of comfort. In this sense, new-style teas are filling a psychological, rather than a physical need. Many tea brands are aware of this and they have sought to associate themselves with healthy and relaxed lifestyle through their marketing campaigns.

Another driver of new-style tea consumption, according to Yu, is the desire among young people to combine consumption with social activity. “The goal of consumption for this generation of consumers is socializing,” Yu, said “You rarely see a person drinking Hey Tea by himself.”

【推荐3】My mother was a cook. Through her I learned to appreciate how a handful of ingredients could create delicious, nutritious meals on tight budgets. And in our home, nothing was ever wasted, as we shopped for food needs as opposed to wants.

I talk about all this because I’m absolutely shocked by the price of groceries. And, as someone who has been writing about the food industry for decades, and having weathered the economic depression when the price was also high—I have never seen things as bad as they are today.

Just recently, I couldn’t bring myself to purchase three small potatoes for almost $7. I saw cucumbers for $3.99 EACH. Some stores had grapes at a ridiculous $6.99 a pound. Add to that the alarming increase in everyday food, like coffee, milk and dairy, no wonder everyone is feeling the pinch(拮据).

I went shopping on the weekend, and came out with $186 worth of food in three grocery bags. I returned two items immediately. I purchased a liter of milk that had been marked down 50%—but I didn’t catch in time that the cashier forgot to ring in the discount, and charged me full price.

As I just feed my husband and myself, I can afford to purchase more organic proteins, like chicken. But I can also appreciate not every family can afford to do so, which is my major concern.

Can the increase of food prices be slowed down or even stopped? With the increasing consumer demand for foods not in season or readily available, plus people looking for fast convenience, I do believe the answer lies within us: We need to take back control over the foods we eat. Stop listening to all the hype (宣传) that convenience is better than cooking creativity, and just get back to basics.

People need to go back to basics, learn some fundamental kitchen essentials and truly be mindful of cooking practices. Just as an old saying goes, if you give someone a fish, they’ll eat for a day, but if you teach someone to fish, they’ll eat forever.

【推荐2】Some of the most attractive pictures to come out of the Alaska earthquake are the photos that show slope (斜坡）failures, in which parts of formerly solid hills caved in，tore or let loose. And if there happened to be a road or building on top of the slopes that failed，the result was horrible.

Slopes can fail without earthquakes, as the result of pouring rain qr w：eathering. But the shaking caused by a quake — particularly a large one like what occurred near Anchorage on Friday — can either speed up the process or create entirely new failures that wouldn't have otherwise happened.

Several slope failures were documented in the Anchorage area in the hours after the earthquake Friday, the most interesting of which was on Vine Road southwest of Wasilla. It’s as if someone came along with a large destroying ball and dropped it on Vine Road, which wrinkled like a broken egg.

Scientists seemed surprised at how many slope failures occurred as a result of the 7.0-magnitude (震级）quake. The center of the quake was deep, at 27 miles below the surface — a key reason why the damage in Anchorage was relatively light. Such an earthquake would be expected to produce shaking over a large area, but probably with reasonably modest top ground accelerations, Friday’s earthquake would certainly be felt, but the surface of Earth wouldn't be moving badly enough to produce widespread landslides.   

Photos from Alaska show a lot of lateral (横向的）spread, in which the ground tears open. Whatever is on top of the ground at the place it tears in half is also torn in half afterwards, like highways or buildings. The buildings surrounding the spread are also at risk of damage because of the force of the ground spreading out away from the tear. There’s also documentation of block spread，in which part of the ground breaks off a hill and slides away mostly perfect.

【推荐3】Angus, Doris, Gabriel and Kamil are some of the 21 names that have been chosen to be given to storms in the UK in the 2016/17 season.

The Met Office, the UK's national weather service, decided to give storms boys' and girls 'names in 2015 in the same way as they did in America.

The Met Office hopes that naming big storms will make people more aware(意识到） of them and how dangerous they can be. Derrick Ryall, from the Met Office, said,“We have seen how naming storms elsewhere in the world raises people's awareness of storms before they break. ”

In the past,the same UK storm could be given different names by different organizations. “We noticed that many organizations during the last couple of winters started giving names to them.Think back to the St Jude's Day storm in 2013,and the so-called(所谓的）Hurricane Bawbag in Scotland in 2011.But it led to confusion(混淆），”a Met Office spokeswoman said.

According to the Met Office, there is a name for each letter of the whole alphabet (字母表），except for Q, U, X, Y and Z. That is the same as the naming tradition used in America. And not all storms will be big enough to get names-only those expected to cause great damage(损失）。

If there are more than 21 storms in a year,the Met Office will start again with another name beginning with “A”。 However, according to Met Office spokeswoman Lindsay Mears, "It's less possible we would get through the whole alphabet in one season. We had 14 storms in the very bad winter of 2013/14, and if the naming system had been in operation then we wouldn't have used the whole alphabet. ”