【推荐1】Scary movies are something you either really love or avoid at all costs. Generally, people should be running away from things that bring fear.    1     It is a little confusing. According to psychologist Brownlowe, there are a few different reasons behind why people like scary movies.

Some people react differently to things that are scary. A study found that people who like scary movies tend to enjoy really strong feelings like fear. When you’re scared, your brain’s immediate response is to fight or flight.     2     For example, your heart may race and your muscles may tense. It can even cause you to scream or jump. “Believe it or not, for some people, this is a lot of fun,” Brownlowe says.

    3     According to Brownlowe, there’s a good reason why scary movies reduce nervousness. “The experience of your brain calming itself down after watching a scary movie is actually very dazzling,” Brownlowe says. “That’s because the dopamine (多巴胺) release causes an increased sense of well-being.” At the same time, it also feels good to go into an experience that seems scary or “risky” and then come out safe and sound. As Brownlowe says, “    4    To some extent, it can make things that seemed challenging easier to deal with in the future.” For example, some people may find that after watching a Halloween Scare Fest, it’s not as scary to ask their boss for a raise, or to give a public speech.

    5    

Watching a scary movie is an ideal way to get closer to others. A study found that fear-arousing situations, like watching a scary movie, can increase the attraction between two people. Aside from increasing attraction, it can even bring you closer together. Some even think that scary movies touch a deeper part of our collective consciousness as humans. “It draws us closer when we have a shared experience of being terrified of the dark, or ghosts, or killers,” Brownlowe says.

【推荐2】Why Boundaries at Work Are Essential

What is a boundary, you ask? A boundary is a limit defining you in relation to someone or something.     1     If you have informed someone that this is your office space, your desk, or your chair, you have attempted to set physical boundaries.

Letting co-workers know you are not comfortable shaking their hands or hugging them at a holiday party, especially with Covid at this time, is another example of setting a physical boundary. It is often easier to understand a physical boundary. Emotional or mental boundaries may be subtler (更微妙的).     2    

Emotional boundaries are related to our feelings and how something or someone’s behavior affects us. For example, if a boss treats you disrespectfully by yelling at you or a colleague frequently interrupts you in meetings, you are likely to feel hurt, embarrassed, and perhaps angry. Understandably, by having a courageous conversation with both your boss and co-worker about their behavior, the impact it has on you, and your expectations regarding future behavior, you are setting healthy emotional boundaries for yourself at work.

Sometimes we set a boundary that is a combination of both a physical and emotional one.     3     One example of this is being repeatedly asked to work late during the week/weekends or while on vacation. Another example is being required to see too many clients or patients to the point we feel tired at the end of the day and exhausted by Friday. Often, the above workplace demands lead to increased stress and a high potential for burnout (倦怠) over time.

Mental boundaries are related to our beliefs, values, cultural norms, ethics (道德), and standards. For example, you value a workplace culture that treats employees and clients with respect and dignity and acts ethically. After six months, you realize that company leaders are repeatedly behaving in ways not consistent with this.     4     Over time, this may lead to significant stress and physical symptoms within.

    5     Boundaries serve many functions. They help protect us, clarify our responsibility, preserve our physical and emotional energy, and live our values and standards. Learning the skill of boundary setting helps empower us to prioritize our values and well-being and better manage our stress. Identifying, setting, and maintaining boundaries are skills — valuable skills that, unfortunately, we are often not taught in school or the workplace.

【推荐3】The Voynich manuscript (手稿) is a 234-page book filled with writing in a strange language now called Voynichese. It also features many strange drawings of unknown plants, people and charts. Based on the images alone, it seems to have something to do with medicine.

The language in the manuscript appears nowhere else and has become one of the greatest linguistic riddles of our day, Since its discovery, it has attracted researchers, been called a hoax (骗局), and been the subject of a huge number of articles.

By carbon dating the manuscript, researchers are pretty confident that it was constructed in the early 1400s. And through the magic of linguistic analysis, most people agree that the manuscript is not a hoax. Or, if it is, it’s a very, very complex hoax.

A paper published in 2016 by computer scientist Greg Kondrak and his student Bradley Hauer gained a lot of attention. Their theory was based on the idea that Voynichese was made with a substitution cipher (替代密码). That means it was written in a real language, and then each of the letters in that language was replaced by a specific Voynichese letter.

This is where the computing power comes in. By having a computer compare the text of the Voynich manuscript to 380 languages, Kondrak and Hauer ran the substitution cipher through as many languages as possible and determined if the text would make sense. In the end, they figured out that the original language was Hebrew, and they even translated some of the text. There are a few problems with their results, though: they compared the manuscript to modern Hebrew, not 15th-century Hebrew; they had to make “spelling corrections” for it to make sense; and, possibly most egregious (过分的) of all, they got their results using a translating app.

Despite all the innovations in code-breaking over the last century, the Voynich manuscript still rejects our advances. If Voynichese is indeed ever solved, artificial intelligence could very likely play a role.