1 . Nearly half of us make New Year’s resolutions, but less than ten percent of us actually keep them. This can be due to lack of motivation or loss of interest, but it’s time for us to figure out ways to finish what we’ve started.     1                 

Lack of honesty

Are you truly devoted to running a marathon, losing weight, or whatever else you are promising to do? Be honest with yourself. We often find ourselves committing to things because we think we should.     2     You will only be disappointed in yourself. Make resolutions you actually want to achieve and are going to put a plan of action towards.

    3                

While you may have the best intentions with your resolution, you could be putting unnecessary pressure on yourself. Rather than associating the New Year with resolutions or changes you need to make, consider it a time for reflection on things you wish to work on throughout the year.     4              

If your goal was to send out ten resumes (简历) for a new job and you only sent out five, don’t beat yourself up for it. Rather, congratulate and reward yourself for making the effort toward your goal. That will give you the energy to continue working towards your initial (最初的) goal.

Giving up too easily

Whether you get discouraged or simply lose interest, giving up too easily is a big resolution breaker. Many people make their resolutions believing they can accomplish them.     5     To avoid this issue, try to set a standard for comparing throughout the year. By doing so, you can keep yourself on track throughout the year.

2 . Textile(纺织品)waste is a growing problem for our environment. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported the US throws away more than 11 million tons of clothing every year. That is why some small businesses spotting the problem are beginning to recycle in ways they haven’t before.

Create Good Company is a clothing company that tries to produce sustainable clothing and repurpose older clothing into updated fashionable items. Maggie Hendricks, the owner of Create Good Company, said, “If you can improve what you find, why wouldn’t you do that instead of buying new things? It’s a big issue not to create new waste. I would say we are 90% recycled materials.”

According to the EPA, the average consumer(消费者)throws away 81.5 pounds of clothes every year. “Anywhere between 10%-17% of the waste that’s going into landfills(废弃物填埋场)is made up of things like textiles and clothing,” said Danny Katz with the CoPIRG Foundation. “A lot of the clothing that we’re producing doesn’t even get worn, so it’s going right to the landfill or even being burned and contributing to pollution that way. It’s really worrying.”

This is why businesses like Create Good Company exist — to use outdated clothing and turn it into dresses or jackets. “There’s just so much waste and so many big companies that might not think about it,” Hendricks said. “Just standing with other like-minded people who are interested in sustainability is important.”

Another important element Hendricks has focused on is creating these items and selling them at an affordable price. “Sustainability sometimes is green washed in companies and they make things more expensive,” Hendricks said. “That’s not how we become a sustainable world. I think making products affordable is important to me. I want to buy things that are better for the environment without throwing my pocketbook in the fire.”

5 . Schools in US are huge consumers of energy. According to ENERGY STAR, K- 12 schools spend more than $6 billion every year on energy, far more than the amount spent on other resources, and at least 30 percent of this energy is used inefficiently or needlessly.

Realizing that, some schools are seeking measures to save energy in several ways, from low-cost adjustments, such as turning off lights in unused rooms, to large-scale projects, such as turning to green equipment.

As solar energy is becoming a more financial choice for powering buildings, more schools are making the move toward the renewable energy and using solar panels(太阳能电池板)on their rooftops. According to an online solar marketplace EnergySage, schools have their strong points to use solar energy. They often have the kind of enough space, suitable locations that are perfect for setting up solar panels.

In September 2020, a nonprofit Generation180 released its third edition of a study on solar use in US schools. The findings showed that more than 7, 300, or 55 percent, of K- 12 public and private schools used solar energy, the number has increased by 81 percent since 2014.

They also described how solar schools were saving millions in energy bills, and provided several cases to show the increased savings achieved by solar-powered school districts. For ex- ample, an Arkansas school district used its every year's energy savings of nearly $100, 000 to increase its teachers' salaries.

The Interstate Renewable Energy Council, which tracks the number of K- 12 schools with solar equipment and helps schools go solar, says on its website that schools with solar setups have an opportunity to educate students about clean energy, and show them that they are de- voted to do something for students' and the planet's health and future.

Third-party ownership also makes funding for 79 percent of schools to use solar energy possible, meaning a majority of schools don't have to spend large amounts of money but can get the rewards of solar energy.

7 . LOS ANGELES—There are 69,144 people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles, the most populous(人口稠密的) county(县) in the United States, according to the results of the 2022 Homeless Count released by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) on Thursday.

The number marks a 4.1 percent rise from the last count in 2020, said the authority, adding that a count was not conducted in 2021 in the county, home to around 10 million residents, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The results of the count, conducted over three nights in February, also showed 41,980 people were experiencing homelessness in the City of Los Angeles, up 1.7 percent from 2020. The City of Los Angeles is the part of Los Angeles County and also the biggest city in the county.

LAHSA said in a news release that this year’s homeless count results offer a clear contrast(差距) to the results between 2018 and 2020, when Los Angeles County saw a 25.9 percent increase and the City of Los Angeles experienced a 32 percent increase. The authority noted that “Angelenos(洛杉矶人) need more affordable homes and economic help to prevent future increases in homelessness.”

LAHSA said the agency and its partners have made 84,000 housing placements(安置) over the past five years. Thanks to a 62 percent increase in shelter(居所) beds since 2019, more people are in shelter than ever before, said the agency, adding that “shelter is a necessary and key part of our system because bringing people inside protects them from the destructive effects on their health and safety that comes. from experiencing unsheltered homelessness.”

Los Angeles has one of the highest rates of unemployment and homelessness in the United States, according to usabynumbers.com. The website reported in June that the total number of homeless people in the United States is over 553,000, and that’s 170 out of every 100,000 people experiencing homelessness in the country right now.

8 . Quantum ( 量子 ) computers have been on my mind a lot lately. A friend has been sending me articles on how quantum computers might help solve some of the biggest challenges we face as humans. I’ve also had exchanges with two quantum-computing experts. One is computer scientist Chris Johnson who I see as someone who helps keep the field honest. The other is physicist Philip Taylor.

For decades, quantum computing has been little more than a laboratory curiosity. Now, big tech companies have invested in quantum computing, as have many smaller ones. According to Business Weekly, quantum machines could help us “cure cancer, and even take steps to turn climate change in the opposite direction.” This is the sort of hype ( 炒作 ) that annoys Johnson. He worries that researchers are making promises they can’t keep. “What’s new,” Johnson wrote, “is that millions of dollars are now potentially available to quantum computing researchers.”

As quantum computing attracts more attention and funding, researchers may mislead investors, journalists, the public and, worst of all, themselves about their work’s potential. If researchers can’t keep their promises, excitement might give way to doubt, disappointment and anger, Johnson warns. Lots of other technologies have gone through stages of excitement. But something about quantum computing makes it especially prone to hype, Johnson suggests, perhaps because “‘quantum’ stands for something cool you shouldn’t be able to understand.” And that brings me back to Taylor, who suggested that I read his book Q for Quantum.

After I read the book, Taylor patiently answered my questions about it. He also answered my questions about PyQuantum, the firm he co-founded in 2016. Taylor shares Johnson’s concerns about hype, but he says those concerns do not apply to PyQuantum.

The company, he says, is closer than any other firm “by a very large margin ( 幅度 )” to building a “useful” quantum computer, one that “solves an impactful problem that we would not have been able to solve otherwise.” He adds, “People will naturally discount my opinions, but I have spent a lot of time quantitatively comparing what we are doing with others.”

Could PyQuantum really be leading all the competition “by a wide margin”, as Taylor claims? I don’t know. I’m certainly not going to advise my friend or anyone else to invest in quantum computers. But I trust Taylor, just as I trust Johnson.

9 . It seems as if social media platforms have taken over our lives. According to a study, there were over 3.6 billion social media users in 2021. And that number is only expected to grow.

Although social media platforms have helped to keep friends and family connected, there is also a dark side to social media. To put it simply, it is a money making machine. This is partially because of social media influencers. A social media influencer is someone “who can shape audience’s attitudes through blogs, tweets, and the use of other social media”. You may be asking yourself, “Why would they want to do this, though?” The answer is simple: to make money. Social media influencers make money by promoting brands among their followers. In fact, influencer marketing is so profitable that the study reported that the industry is expected to reach $15 billion in value in 2022.

Social media influencers are now being called out because some of their actions have started to negatively impact the environment. One man in particular, who goes by Steve to remain anonymous (匿名的), noticed that some online influencers failed to follow rules when they went to national parks or public places. This included things like leaving garbage behind, or using drones (无人机) to take pictures from the sky.

Because of this, Steve made it his mission to stop social media influencers from hurting the environment with their bad behavior in order to get the “perfect shot”. In 2018, he made the account “Public Lands Hate You” to name and shame influencers who failed to follow the rules made to protect the environment. The account now has over 85 thousand followers.

He hoped that it could help some influencers find the light and right their wrongs. Steve said, “If everybody thought just a little bit more about their small actions and the impact those actions have on the environment and the people around them, I think that a lot of our bigger problems would be much more easily solved.”