3 . The list below includes a few of our favorite online writing classes, perfect for writers of all levels.

Catapult

Starting At $15 for a day

Catapult offers one of the most extensive lists of online writing workshops and classes, and many of the instructors are famous authors or literary magazine editors. Our team has taken a six-week writing course, including a one-day editing course, and a creative nonfiction class- all online. With online courses of all lengths and covering various types, it’s perfect for everyone.

Master Class

Starting At $15/month, billed annually (access to all courses)

While you won’t get a workshop component with these courses, Master class is one of our favorite websites for learning about all things, including writing. The instructor list has big names. This is a great option if you want courses you can take at your own pace and videos you can revisit again and again.

One Story

Starting At $55 (three-day)

One Story is a publication bringing people together through reading, writing, and learning about short fiction. In addition to its mission of publishing one short story at a time, it offers affordable online writing workshops and classes throughout the year.

Write or Die Magazine

Starting At $12 for a self-guided course

Write or Die Magazine is offering writers resources, inspiration, and connection. The website has plenty of free things and affordable self-guided classes to help you build a sustainable writing practice and overcome common fears and doubts associated with writing. If you have a serious project in the works, the platform also includes one-on-one coaching.

4 . It’s summer, and school-aged kids are finding all kinds of ways to have fun, from a trip to the pool or playground to playing games with smart phones. As a result, they are also forgetting some of what they learned in school, a phenomenon called “summer slide”. Fortunately, summer slide can be prevented with just a little regular practice of fun.

Encourage reading every day. Make a special event out of a trip to the public library, and let your kids pick out whatever interests them. Give your kids a special treat for every book they finish. Help them set up a reading corner in their room that’s quiet, comfortable and free of various electronic distractions. Best of all, give them the gift of your own example as an enthusiastic reader.

Another way to make reading fun is to share a poem together. Poems by writers like Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein and Maurice Sendak are fun to read aloud, and often have a strong sense of humor that attracts children. Take turns reading them aloud to each other, talk about what they mean, and see if you can memorize your favorites. Then have a contest to see who can write the best poem.

Summer is a great time to visit a learning place together. Children’s museums are specially designed to make learning fun and enjoyable for kids and let them practice essential skills. Or just take a walk together on one of our many nature paths, where your children can use their reading skills to learn about the plants, animals and geology around them. And of course, don't forget the special programs offered by many local public libraries, along with many other learning materials for kids of all ages.

5 . Bartek Ostalowski lost both his arms in a terrible accident in 2006, but that wasn’t enough to kill his dream of one day becoming a professional racecar driver. Finding himself armless at just 20 years old and faced with the difficult task of learning to drive a car on a race circuit must have been quite the shock for Bartek, but he mustered the courage and the drive to push on. In three years, he became a master of driving a racecar with his feet. Today, Bartek Ostalowski is the world’s only professional sport driver who drives using his feet.

In order to deal with his physical limitations, Bartek transformed his racecar according to his needs, adding a new engine, and stronger transmission (变速器). The ambitious Polish driver uses his right foot to control the pedals, while moving on with his left one. The racecar is controlled with the shoulder.

“After my accident, I was looking for a solution. I asked myself if I wanted to race again what would I need to do?” Bartek told the reporter of Business Insider. “I heard about someone in Poland who, like me, had no arms, but he drove a car on a daily basis with no problem. After meeting him, my dream and passion for motorsports were alive and strong, and I made the decision to return to racing one day.”

In 2019, Ostalowski finished in ninth place out of 50 drivers in the Polish Drift Championship, one of the most competitive championship series in all of Europe, and the year before that, he won the international Czech Drift Series, beating dozens of other professional sports drivers.

“Of course I encourage other people with disabilities to get involved in motorsports. It’s a beautiful passion and I think a great form of recovery too. So make your dreams come true,” the Polish driver said.

8 . A few years ago, the scientists Claudia Townsend at the University of Miami and Suzanne Shu at UCLA Anderson School of Management conducted a simple investigation into how aesthetics (美学) influence our investment decisions.

They randomly assigned 255 students to receive an annual corporate report. One of these reports was aesthetically pleasing —     1    . The other report was far less attractive. After leafing through these two reports — both of which contained the exact same factual information — the subjects were asked to estimate the lowest acceptable selling price for shares of the company.     2    .

If investors were rational agents, then the look of the report shouldn’t have mattered —they should be responding only to its content.     3     Townsend and Shu found that subjects given the prettier document insisted on an average selling price of $327.01 per share. Those shown less pretty document, meanwhile, concluded that the company’s shares were worth only $162.41. This research suggests that the design of the annual report can significantly influence our sense of value.

    4    . In recent years, scientists have also looked at how aesthetics impacts our perceptions of trust. Do we find prettier Web sites more trustworthy? There’s no logical reason why that would be the case, of course, but the human mind is full of illogical peculiarity. So far, the evidence suggests that the look of a site is highly correlated with our ratings of trust,     5    . In a paper, researchers showed that our first impressions of a Web site —they showed subjects screen shots for fifty milliseconds, which is too fast for conscious awareness —shaped our subsequent sense of trustworthiness.

9 . Intelligence (AI) is showing promise in earthquake prediction, challenging the long-held belief that it is impossible. Researchers at the University of Texas, Austin, have developed an AI algorithm (算法) that correctly predicted 70% of earthquakes a week in advance during a trial in China and provided accurate strength calculations for the predicted earthquakes.

The research team believes their method succeeded because they stuck with a relatively simple machine learning approach. The AI was provided with a set of statistical features based on the team’s knowledge of earthquake physics, and then instructed to train itself using a five-year database of earthquake recordings. Once trained, the AI provided its prediction by listening for signs of incoming earthquakes within the background rumblings (隆隆声) in the Earth.

This work is clearly a milestone in research for AI-driven earthquake prediction. “You don’t see earthquakes coming,” explains Alexandros Savvaidis, a senior research scientist who leads the Texas Seismological Network Program (TexNet). “It’s a matter of milliseconds, and the only thing you can control is how prepared you are. Even with the 70% accuracy, that’s a huge result and could help minimize economic and human losses and has the potential to remarkably improve earthquake preparation worldwide.”

While it is unknown whether the same approach will work at other locations, the researchers are confident that their AI algorithm could produce more accurate predictions if used in areas with reliable earthquake tracking networks. The next step is to test artificial intelligence in Texas, since UT’s Bureau TexNet has 300 earthquake stations and over six years worth of continuous records, making it an ideal location for these purposes.

Eventually, the authors hope to combine the system with physics-based models. This strategy could prove especially important where data is poor or lacking. “That may be a long way off, but many advances such as this one, taken together, are what moves science forward,” concludes Scott Tinker, the bureau’s director.

10 . Have you ever had the feeling that you can’t think when there is too much noise around? Did you ever think a fish could experience that feeling too? A recent paper published in Science titled “Soundscape (声景) of the Anthropocene Oceans”, combined over 10,000 scientific papers, confirming that undersea life knows that exact same feeling, more often than not. Anthropogenic (人为的) ocean noise, also known as underwater noise pollution, has created a dramatic impact on marine life due to “human-caused” activity within and neighboring our oceans.

Disney Pixar’s animated film Finding Nemo educated us about the ocean, and specifically within the ordinary world of a clown fish. A fact many may not know is that clown fish spend the first part of their lives as larvae, drifting with the current of the ocean until they become strong enough to swim against it. Once they are powerful and strong, they head home in sheltered coral reefs. There is only one drawback — the fish can’t physically see the reef, but they can hear it. The only problem is, if they can’t hear it, will they ever make it home?

Our anthropogenic ocean noise, such as cargo ships, ship and boat propellers, surfing, deep sea mining, etc. are causing destruction of marine life. According to Time, sound is the sensory signal that travels the farthest through the ocean. Anthropogenic noise drowns out the natural soundscapes, putting marine life under immense stress. Altogether, this stress then affects their general health, disrupts their behavior, physiology, reproduction and, in extreme cases, causes death. Marine life can adapt to noise pollution, however, only if they can escape it. This only renders further complications of straying (使偏离) species from their traditional breeding regions or separating them from their families.

Now, what if we told you there is already a solution? Multiple remedies, ideas and designs are currently in the works or already exist to eliminate and reverse the damage of anthropogenic ocean noise. As Time explains, from wind-powered ships to noise-reducing propellers, floating wind turbines and “bubble curtains” that muffle construction noise, the solutions are already available and in some cases, cost-effective. The authors of the paper hope it will catch the attention of policymakers, who historically speaking, have ignored the matter still to this day.

Of all the challenges ocean creatures are battling, luckily sound pollution is the easiest compromise humans can make. Once the noise has decreased, marine life will be able to better manage everything else it is up against.