At a neighbor’s pool the summer after sixth grade, Charley yelled those famous last words, “Hey, watch this!” As he dove into the pool, I froze. It wasn’t the deep end!

Charley was hurt bad when he hit the concrete bottom of the swimming pool. The paramedic said he might have broken his back and could lose the use of his legs. His life would change forever. I didn’t see Charley for over a month after he was carried away in the screaming ambulance.

When I went to visit Charley in the hospital, his “Hey, dude, how’s it going?” was greeted by a grunt.

Looking small and pale, Charley growled,

“I can’t walk—how do you think I feel? I wish I was dead!”

“Bro, you’ll get well! You’re tough.”

“No, the doc said I won’t.”

“Aw, man. That suck!” And the conversation died right there.

I didn’t go back after that. I just didn’t know what to say. When Charley got out of the hospital, I went over to his house a few times and played video games, but it just wasn’t the same. Not only was my friend’s body damaged, so was his spirit. I wanted to help and be a good friend but didn’t know how now.

Charley came back to middle school in the fall, but he had a tough time all year. I pushed his wheelchair to help him get to class on time. But Charley had to find someone else if I was at ball practice. Or he could just be late. I wanted to help my friend to make it all better but knew I couldn’t.

One day Charley dropped his cell phone. As he tried to lean down and pick it up, he tumbled out of his wheelchair. I helped him get back into his chair. Though Charley wasn’t hurt, he was so embarrassed that he didn’t talk to anyone the rest of the day. Charley become sadder and sadder, and I spent less and less time with him as the year passed. Since then, I didn’t see much of Charley because I didn’t have time for video games.

However, I was shocked right before eighth grade started to see Charley sailing down the sidewalk with a big black dog by his wheelchair.

At the sight of this I ran over to my friend Charley and wanted to talk about the dog.

When school started again, I felt much more comfortable with Charley accompanied by the big black service dog.

Last Sunday morning, my parents and I were going on a vacation in Sydney, where my grandparents lived, to celebrate my birthday. Actually, celebrating my birthday in my grandparents’ home had been a family tradition. As a result, their neighbors, warm-hearted and friendly, were familiar with me. Sometimes, they even came to the house and brought me birthday gifts in person.

We took the subway there as usual. When we got off the subway, I found I had lost my bag. The bag was memorable to me because it was given by my parents when I became a senior high school student. It also had some valuable items inside, including an expensive watch a birthday gift from my grandparents.

I couldn’t help but cry because the bag meant so much to me.“What’s the matter. Lily?” my mom asked. I told her that I might leave the bag on the subway. Hearing that, she comforted me and said. “We have plenty of time. Let’s talk to the staff (工作人员).”

Instantly, my parents reported the situation to the staff at the subway station. A kind worker smiled to me and said. “If someone found it, they would hand it in.” He asked us to wait patiently for a while, and then he called for help．After half an hour, the worker didn’t give us any information. I started to become anxious and lose hope. My father said. “No news is good news.”However, the worker finally apologized to us and let us wait for the information on the recovery of the missing bag at home. We had to go to my grandparents’ house first.

In the afternoon, while I, together with my grandparents and my father, was preparing for a birthday party, I heard my mother talking to someone on the phone about my lost bag. My heart was beating violently, and I was expecting something extraordinary to happen. Sure enough, my mother got me to answer the phone, “Good news, Lily. The call is just for you, from the kind worker. He said a girl called Beatrice had sent the bag back.” I felt amazed that the girl’s name is the same as my friend’s in Sydney.

I took the phone, and then the voice of the worker who had helped us at the subwaystation came from it.

My family and I were dancing happily when someone knocked at the door.

Excitement and danger always coexist. Even Rogers had just taken a turn on his mountain bike in April 2020 when he was stopped short by the sight of a woman sitting on the side of the trail. She was cute and had long brown hair and big expressive eyes. What he didn’t know then was that she was also in pain.

Sydney Linden, 28, bad been jogging down Adobe Jack Trail in Sedona, Arizona, when she jumped over a rock and her leg overextended on the landing. The pain was instant. Her right leg collapsed and she hit the dirt hard. Linden tried to stand but collapsed. She wasn’t sure if she had tom her ACL (韧带), broken her leg, or something else. All she knew was that the pain was a 15out of 10.

Linden dragged herself to the shade, “like an animal preparing to die,” she says. She’d called a friend, but after 30 minutes, her friend was lost. That’s when she saw the mountain biker.

Rogers was trying to play it cool. “I didn’t want to be strange,” he says, “so I was just going to casually ride by — at a slower speed.” But Rogers, 33, an active-duty airman, sensed her sufferings and asked if be could help. Linden explained her dilemma. That’s when he noticed the swelling under her leggings. She needed a hospital — now.

Leaning on Rogers, Linden tried to hop along, but the pain was burning. She’d never make it to the trailhead (登山扣) this way. Rogers had another idea. Ho abandoned his bike on the side of the trail and, after a brief discussion, lifted her over his shoulder. Then they began their way over the rocky area and bushes. Although it was spring, the Arizona sun beat down wildly.

Misfortune never came alone.

Linden was eager to thank Rogers, but he left without any information.

8 . In the days before the Internet, critical thinking was the most important skill of informed citizens. But in the digital age, according to Anastasia Kozyreva, a psychologist at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development, and her colleagues, an even more important skill is critical ignoring.

As the researchers point out, we live in an attention economy where content producers on the Internet compete for our attention. They attract us with a lot of emotional and eye-catching stories while providing little useful information, so they can expose us to profit-generating advertisements. Therefore,we are no longer customers but products, and each link we click is a sale of our time and attention. Toprotect ourselves from this, Kozyreva advocates for learning the skill of critical ignoring, in which readers intentionally control their information environment to reduce exposure to false and low-quality information.

According to Kozyreva, critical ignoring comprises three strategies. The first is to design ourenvironments, which involves the removal of low-quality yet hard-to-resist information from around. Successful dieters need to keep unhealthy food out of their homes. Likewise, we need to set up a digital environment where attention-grabbing items are kept out of sight. As with dieting, if one tries to bank onwillpower not to click eye-catching “news”, he’ll surely fail. So, it’s better to just keep them out of sightto begin with.

The next is to evaluate the reliability of information, whose purpose is to protect you from false and misleading information. It can be realized by checking the source in the mainstream news agencies which have their reputations for being trustworthy.

The last goes by the phrase “do not feed the trolls.” Trolls are actors who internationally spread false and hurtful information online to cause harm. It may be appealing to respond to them to set the facts straight, but trolls just care about annoying others rather than facts. So, it’s best not to reward their bad behaviour with our attention.

By sharpening our critical ignoring skills in these ways, we can make the most of the Internet while avoiding falling victim to those who try to control our attention, time, and minds.

The bird must have only just been hatched (孵化) when I spot it. Its mother had disappeared, leaving it alone and shivering in the face of the north wind. I decided to take it straight back and build it a new home.

I hung an empty flowerpot (花盆) and it was in this pot that the bird was to have its new home. When Dad got home, he immediately discovered the new addition to our family. Without saying a word, he turned around and left the house. After some time, he returned and I saw that he had a handful of grass and pine needles. Obviously, Dad thought the nest I had made was far too rough and so he had decided to decorate it himself.

“A bird born at this time of year won’t survive the winter.” In spite of this prediction on the bird’s future, Dad very carefully fashioned the nest himself. Soon I found “NuoNuo” (Dad had named him) had started to grow feathers.

Dad probably realized that he had been a little cruel in his prediction. You see, he had already started training Nuo Nuo to walk. As you know, Nuo Nuo lived in a flowerpot, not a cage or anything. It was obvious that Nuo Nuo didn’t realize he was a bird. He perhaps thinks he was one of the family. But it is not enough for a bird to walk, it must fly as well. Dad soon began attempting to make him learn this new ability, but it was not an easy task. After all, nobody in our family had mastered the art of flying. We didn’t even have wings. How could we ask Nuo Nuo to do something that we had no means of doing ourselves?