【推荐1】Some of us love to buy a little treat every now and then. Others? They can’t help but order something nearly every day of the week. However, there was a different kind of package about to arrive at this door as this woman’s birthday meant one thing: a wonderful cake.

Emily and Mac have been together for the last 19 years and have been married for 12. Although Emily admitted the pair have a strong relationship, she said that Mac hasn’t always been the best at buying gifts. Apparently, he doesn’t usually plan any surprises.

Mac soon realized there were more and more parcels turning up at their door, and there was only one person to blame: Emily. It looks as though her online spending habits had gotten out of control. Little did Emily know, but this was the start of a grand idea.

Emily came home to find a new package on her doorstep. Only this time, it wasn’t an Amazon box, but a birthday cake! Emily was completely fooled by the cake thanks to the realistic packaging tape and posting note, but soon realized the truth when she cut into the side.

In fact, Emily was so impressed with the creation that she wanted to meet the bakery behind the cake. That was none other than the Sweet Dreams Bakery of Dunn. Amazingly, the cake cost only $50, but the thought behind the design meant everything to Emily.

Sometimes, it can feel as though our partners are never listening to what we have to say. However, they occasionally notice things about us that even we didn’t realize. Emily’s online shopping might have seemed normal, but it was the start of the greatest cake design she’d seen.

【推荐3】The input Dad has on my career is incomparable. My earliest memories are of Dad sitting in the kitchen playing the guitar, listening to his favourite song by his favourite singer, and encouraging his little girl to poke (戳) keys randomly on the piano. Even watching Top of the Pops, he would get so passionate about music in it. We weren’t a religious family, but there was something spiritual about Dad’s connection with music.

Music also became a source of comfort for me. I failed to do well academically at school and had no friends. Being at school consumed so much of my emotional energy. Instead of going to school to learn stuff, I felt as though I was simply trying to get people to like me. Things were better, but the only time I truly felt happy was when I was at home listening to music with Mum and Dad or writing songs on the piano —and the older I got, the more powerful music felt.

Dad was always my biggest supporter. When I started giving live performances at the local bar, he was the one who drove me there and back. Freeing up that time wasn’t easy for an actor. His job might mean three weeks in the Czech Republic or working with George Lucas on The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones in Hollywood.

Dad has been involved with some amazing stuff, but Daddy Pig is the one that’s had the biggest impact all over the world. When I was flying to Australia for my first tour, I was trying to find something to watch on the little screen and I noticed they had Peppa Pig. If I’m missing home and family, I always put it on. Daddy Pig is a fairly real version of my dad —he loves chocolate cake, he’s funny and usually breaks things when he’s trying to mend them. Mum and Dad were friends with one of the producers of the show and I often wonder if he looked at my dad and thought, “That’s him …that’s Daddy Pig.”

【推荐1】For nearly a century, TIME has named a Person of the Year — the individual or group who most shaped the previous 12 months. Few individuals have had more influence than Elon Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too. In 2021, Musk emerged not just as the world’s richest person but also as perhaps the richest example of a massive shift in our society. From Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to Facebook turned Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, at a time of rising protest over ever deepening inequality, our lives and many of the basic structures are now shaped by the pursuits, products and priorities of the world’s wealthiest people.

Musk’s largest impact so far has been with Tesla. 2021 was the year that electric vehicles finally came into the mainstream and that Tesla became a trillion-dollar company, one of only a handful in the world. It’s a market that Musk almost single-handedly created, seeing long before others the demand for clean transportation that the world’s climate crisis would eventually motivate.

We don’t know how fully Tesla and the ventures Musk has yet to think up will change our lives. At 50, he has plenty of time to write the future, his own and ours. Like it or not, we are now in Musk’s world. For creating solutions to an existential crisis, for representing the possibilities and the risks of the age of tech giants, for driving society’s most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is TIME’s 2021 Person of the Year.

【推荐3】If you picnic in a Texas park, chances are you’ll encounter fire ants — a kind of pest that can deliver painful bites. This invasive (入侵的) species, like many others, is not only annoying but also destructive.

An invasive species is any kind of living thing that isn’t native to an ecosystem and causes harm. Sometimes non-native species are imported by accident, like in the 1930s when ships from South America inadvertently took fire ants to North America. Other times non-native species are imported deliberately. Some types of Asian fish that were originally imported to the U.S. from China to clean fish farms escaped and entered rivers. Green iguanas were brought to China, as pets, but irresponsible owners released them.

Non-native species have even been imported for emotional reasons. A man once released dozens of European starlings (八哥) in New York in an effort to bring all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s writings to America. Today, millions of starlings cause over $800 million in damage to U.S. agriculture every year. Invasive species’ global economic influence is also enormous. The U.S. government assesses that invasive species cost the American economy over $120 billion every year.

Invasive species can damage their host habitats by unbalancing local ecosystems. They often lack natural enemies in their new environment and out-compete native species for food and other resources. They also might feed on local species. Invasive species can also carry diseases for which local species have no immunity (免疫力). This can result in the loss of an entire native species.

Invasive species are among the leading threats to native wildlife. About 42% of threatened or endangered species are at risk due to invasive species. Unless people take serious action, the economic and environmental costs of invasive species will become disastrous.