1 . Conscious (有意识的) living is not just a trend.     1     It is about being intentional with everything you do — your words, actions, beliefs, habits, and choices. Accepting conscious living takes some effort, but it is worthwhile. Here are some ways you can achieve this goal.

●Be conscious about your time.

Time is the most precious thing because there is no way to live a moment again.     2     If you waste your precious hours doing negative things, you will regret it later. The first step for living consciously is to be wise about your time. Be selective about things you spend it on, and allocate (分配) it for positive activities.

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You cannot achieve them unless you understand your needs and intentions. It is easier said than done because most people fail to make an effort to know themselves. Spend time thinking over and knowing your strengths and weaknesses. Once you know yourself better, you can create a plan to work towards becoming more patient, honest, and forgiving.

●Learn to be grateful.

Gratitude takes you a long way towards conscious living. It opens you up to a happier and a fulfilled mindset. Most people are unhappy because they see only the negatives in life. However, everyone has something to be grateful for. Writing a gratitude journal is a good start for counting your blessings.     4    

●Believe in yourself.

It is the key to making the right choices, yet not regretting the wrong ones.     5     Spending time alone and thinking deeply are effective measures that enable you to identify the inner voice. Care for it and follow it to make it stronger down the line.

Conscious living is a skill you need to learn as you go, so be willing to make the effort and master it. You will absorb it soon and be a happier person in the long run.

2 . In 1959, Handler changed how toy dolls were made when she introduced “Barbie” to the world. With her mature figure, Barbie was one of the first “grown-up” dolls to hit the retail market.

Handler wanted to create a toy that was different from the baby dolls that dominated little girls’ toy boxes. She wanted a doll that girls could project their future dreams upon and allowed for limitless clothing and career choices. Inspired by paper dolls of the time, Handler, to much disagreement, made sure Barbie had the body of a grown woman.

“My own philosophy of Barbie,” Handler wrote in her autobiography, “was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a woman had choices.”

There’s even a Barbie for cancer patients — Brave Barbie — a partnership between Mattel and CureSearch that sends a bald (光头的) Barbie to families affected by cancer. “Gifting my daughter a Barbie who suffered from cancer was tremendous,” Michelle, a cancer survivor said, “We would play with that Barbie together and I’d heartbreakingly watch her pretend to take the doll to the hospital for chemo (化疗), or place its long wig on top of its head and tell the doll ‘It’s time to be beautiful again.’”

Bald Barbie was super brave and went on awesome adventures after chemo. Sometimes she felt sick and needed to sleep, but would feel much better after a rest. Bald Barbie always beat the cancer and went on to live a long and happy life with her family. That Barbie became so much more than a plastic doll — she was a means of communication and a coping mechanism during an extremely distressing time for little families.

3 . Gang (团伙) tensions were rising at Southwood High School. Some community activists held a(n) ________meeting with parents and the principal. A group of the fathers ________ decided it was time to make their ________ known on campus.

That’s how Dads on Duty was born with its goal - make sure the kids are ________. Around 40 men organized into six-person shifts, with two shifts on campus every day. They ________ the day after the meeting. These people ________ their own schedules and commitments without complaint. Some of them are fathers of kids at the school, while others are not but expect the youth in their community to know they have a(n) ________ village behind them.

Now, anyone who wants to enter the school with ________ will have to avoid energetic papa bears, big smiles and many dad jokes. It’s hard to be a tough guy when somebody’s uncle has just ________ you into checking your shoelaces for countless times, only to find that they are not, in fact, untied.

Since Dads on Duty arrived on campus, gang battles have ________ declined. “The school has been ________, you can feel it,” said one student. Another told the Washington Post, “They ________ all the kids like we’re their own children.”

The dads aren’t meant to ________ security guards. If they do see a(n) ________ may occur, they get security on the scene as soon as possible. Their presence is meant to be more ________ than reactionary.

5 . In August, Jason M. Allen’s piece “Theatre D’opéra Spatial” — which he created with Al image generator Midjourney — won first place in the emerging artist division’s “digital arts photography” category at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition. The definition for the category states that digital art refers to works that use “digital technology as part of the creative process”.

Allen’s award-winning image has led to debates about what, exactly, it means to be an artist and whether AI can truly make art. “It felt bad for the exact same reason we don’t let robots participate in the Olympics,” one Twitter user wrote. “This is the literal definition of ‘pressed a few buttons to make a digital art piece’,” another tweeted.

Yet while Allen didn’t use a paintbrush, there was plenty of work involved, he said. First, he played around with phrasing that led Midjourney to generate images of women in elegant dresses and space helmets, in an attempt to mix Victorian-style costuming with space themes. Over time, with many slight changes to his written prompt (提示符), he created 900 different versions of what led to his final image. Then he improved its resolution through Gigapixel AI and finally had the images printed.

Allen is glad the debate over whether AI can be used to make art is attracting so much attention. “Rather than hating on the technology, we need to recognize that it’s a powerful tool and use it for good so we can all move forward,” Allen said.

Cal Duran, one of the judges for the competition, said that while Allen’s piece included a mention of AI, he didn’t realize that when judging it. Still, he sticks by his decision to award it first place. “I think the AI technology may give more opportunities to people who may not find themselves artists in the conventional way,” he said.

7 . As a child, I was proud of my southern origin. My own voice reflected my family’s past and present-part northern Mississippi, part Tennessee, all southern. There was no sound I loved more than my grandmother’s accent: thick, sweet, warm.

While growing up, I began to realize outside of our region, southerners were often dismissed as uncultured and ignorant. I was ready to leave behind my tiny town in West Tennessee, starting a new life and jumping at big chances in some far-off cities. In that embarrassing space between “teen” and “adult”, my accent was a symbol of everything I thought I hated about my life in the rural South. I feared it would disqualify me from being a noted magazine writer. I would have to talk less “country”. So I killed a piece of myself. I’m ashamed of it, but I’m more ashamed that I tried to kill that part of someone else-change Emily’s accent.

I met Emily in college. She was determined to work for the student newspaper, which was where I spent most of my waking hours, and we became friends. She, unlike me, accepted her roots. Early in our friendship, her mother asked where I was from, assuming it was somewhere up north. Then I felt my efforts paid off and even wanted to ignore the mistake.

Emily is two years younger and she cared about my opinion. I advised her to be more like me and hide her signature Manchester accent. I stressed that throughout our college years, often by making fun of her vowel (元音) sounds. I told myself I was helping her achieve her dream of working as a reporter. Now, I see that it was actually about justifying my hiding part of myself.

Grandma Carolyn used to tell me, “Girl, don’t forget where you come from.” Now I truly understand that. Many things have faded from memory, but this sticks in my mind with uncomfortable clarity. Now that I am grown and have left the South, it’s important to me.

9 . Adapting to technological advances is a defining part of the 21st-century life. Just two months after being launched in November 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has already reached an audience of over 100 million people. While ChatGPT threatens to change writing and writing-related work, the Mesopotamians, who lived 4,000 years ago in a geographical area centered in modern-day Iraq, went through this kind of far-reaching change before us.

Ancient Mesopotamia was home to many of civilization’s early developments. Its people were world leaders in adapting to technological and cultural changes. They invented the wheel and agriculture, and pioneered advances in mathematics and urbanization. These breakthroughs are reflected in cuneiform(楔形文字)literature，one of the oldest known forms of writing.

In its literature, Mesopotamians don’t present cultural and technological advances as consistently beneficial.They often represent new technologies being controlled in the service of human conflict and mostly serving the interests of those with high social positions. In some ways，the representation of new technologies in its literature echoes(映现)contemporary concerns about AI: fears of increasing social inequalities and its potential use in information war.

In recent years，AI—the newest form of writing—has been used to decipher(破译)the oldest: cuneiform literature.In broader fields,the boundaries of how AI may be used haven’t been clearly explained.In January,for example, a top international AI conference banned the use of AI tools for writing scientific papers.

Humans have been struggling to invent, use and adapt to technology since our earliest civilizations. But the technology and resulting knowledge are not always evenly distributed. Knowing how we adapted to changing technology in the past helps us more fully understand the human condition and may even help us prepare for the future.