1 . Huang Yang is a native(本地人)of Zibo city in Shandong Province who works outside his hometown. He recently returned home for a visit and wanted to have some barbecue(烧烤). But he failed to find seats in four different restaurants.

“A barbecue restaurant owner told me to come back on Monday, so as to leave the weekends to out-of-town visitors. Another restaurant owner told me that they had run out of meat. I’ve been eating barbecue for over 20 years and this is the first time I’ve heard something like that,”Huang said.

Thanks to social media recommendations, Zibo barbecue has become popular overnight. The small city was crowded with visitors on weekends for a taste of the mouth-watering dishes. Most visitors are young people, who share online their experience of traveling to Zibo to experience the city’s barbecue culture, drawing even more visitors.

Behind Zibo’s sudden fame(名声)are the efforts and services of the local government. To promote Zibo-style barbecue, Zibo has provided two dozen “special barbecue trains,” where local officials would serve tourists themselves. Zibo’s tourism officials have been promoting the city’s food and attractions and sending gifts to tourists on the barbecue-themed trains.

At the city’s train station, volunteers have been working at train stations to offer help. Buses are ready to take visitors from train stations straight to barbecue restaurants.

Another key to the success, according to Peng Han, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the Ctrip Research Institute, is that before Zibo became popular on the internet, the city had developed mature(成熟的)tourism products and service standards. For example, the barbecue-themed train services, bus services, barbecue map, the youth hostels that offer discounts for college students and the strict requirements for local tourism businesses were not achieved overnight, Peng noted.

Although Zibo is still enjoying the great fame, the local government has begun to make longer-term plans.

As the home of the Shandong businessmen and having origins(源头)in the Silk Road, Zibo will work to develop its historical and cultural resources into cultural brands, noted Wang Shenghua, a senior tourism official in Zibo.

2 . Teenagers need eight to ten hours of sleep per night. However, in adolescence (青春期) changes to the body’s sleep cycle make it difficult for teens to fall asleep early. Many cannot fall asleep until 10:30 p.m. or even later and most of them will feel sleepy if they have to get up too early.

Scientists recommend that both middle and high schools begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m. Later school start times support the natural needs of teenagers and increase their sleeping time.

Here are some other benefits of later school start times:

More time for a healthy breakfast

When running late in the mornings, students are likely to go without breakfast. With an empty stomach, one finds it difficult to focus (集中) in class. When they are always in a hurry, students may form unhealthy eating habits.

With extra time before going to school, students can eat a well-balanced breakfast and focus more on learning.

Fewer behavioral (行为的) problems

Teens experience mood changes as a common result of this special period of life. Less sleep may cause worries, stress and unhappiness.

When they get enough sleep, students are calm and peaceful and their moods do not change suddenly. They’re less likely to feel worried, unhappy or get angry. For parents, children with more sleep are easier to live with.

Better performance (表现) in study

Sleep loss hurts attention, memory and brain development. Students with less sleep have difficulty paying attention in class and are likely to have lower grades. Students with enough sleep can be more energetic during the day and more willing to learn. They are also less likely to fall asleep in class and more able to understand what they learn.

In conclusion, starting school later helps students get a better night’s sleep. It improves their chances of eating, behaving and performing better.

3 . In the rush of day-to-day life, we don’t always have the time to slow down and move at our own speed. Even on vacation, we always try to visit, do and taste as many things as possible in a new place or many places.       

“I’ve heard countless times how tired people are when they come back from their vacation and feel like they ‘need a vacation from their vacation,’ and that’s because many times we pack so much into a very short time,” said travel blogger Esther Susag. “We want to see everything, do everything, and not waste a minute.

There is, however, another method that many experienced travelers suggest: slow travel. But what exactly is slow travel, and how do you take full advantage of this kind of trip? Below ,travel experts break it down.

As the name suggests, slow travel generally needs travelers to slow down and enjoy each moment, rather than rushing to check off the list items. “Slow travel may mean different things to different travelers, but I define (定义) it as staying in one place for longer and going deeper into the local culture,” said Paul Jacobs, general manager and vice president of Kayak North America. “It’s taking the time to make real connections with locals instead of packing a schedule full of tours.”            

For travel expert and author La Carmina, slow travel allows people to stop and smell the roses-quite directly. “It’s about being fully present in the moment and experiencing the sights, sounds and sensations (感觉) around you completely “letting the experience develop at its own speed and without expectations,” she said. “To me, slow travel doesn’t have a strict definition or certain things to do, but rather focuses on the feeling of being a visitor to a place.”

Slow travel is becoming more and more popular now, because it can do good to us in many ways.

4 . Since 1992, people have been talking about “Dunbar’s number”, the supposed upper limit of the number of people with whom a person can maintain stable social relationships. Named for British scientist Robin Dunbar, its value, rounded from 148 to 150, has permeated both professional and popular culture.

The Swedish taxation authority keeps offices under 150 people as a result of it, and the standard facilities of the W. L. Gore and Associates company are based around the concept. Dunbar’s number was cited in the bestselling book Tipping Point, and it also has a fair amount of academic influence, the original paper having been cited 2, 500 times.

Despite its fame, Dunbar’s number is probably wrong, according to a new study.

Less well known than the value of Dunbar’s number is how he came up with it. The value of 150 is determined by looking at the ratio (比率) between the size of a certain part of the primate (灵长类动物) brain and the average size of groups they form. These ratios were then applied to data on the human brain, and the average value of roughly 150 relationships was determined.

In the new study, the researchers did similar calculations but with updated information on the size of monkey brains and social networks. When the researchers applied Dunbar’s exact same methods to their new data, they found that the value was between roughly 5 and 292 people. This is far too wide a range to be of any use.

Additionally, the researchers noted the fact that human brains often work differently than those of our nearest evolutionary (进化的) cousins, as evidenced by our ability to create things. The idea that we would process social information exactly like other primates do is a bold and largely unsupported claim.

So, is there a new Dunbar number? Well, this isn’t the point of this study. The researchers end their paper with: “It is our hope that this study will put an end to the use of ‘Dunbar’s number’ within science and in popular media…”

6 . One recent report found that adults in the US check their phones, on average, 344 times a day — once every four minutes — and spend almost three hours a day on their devices in total. The problem for many of us is that one quick phone-related task leads to a quick check of our email or social media feeds, and suddenly we’ve been sucked into endless scrolling (滚屏).

It’s a vicious circle. The more useful our phones become, the more we use them. The more we use them, the more we lay neural pathways in our brains that lead to picking up our phones for whatever task is at hand — and the more we feel an urge to check our phone even when we don’t have to.

What we do know is that the simple distraction of checking a phone or seeing a notification can have negative consequences. This isn’t very surprising; we know that, in general, multitasking harms memory and performance. One of the most dangerous examples is phone use while driving.

In another recent study, researchers asked participants to either put their phones next to them so they were visible (like on a desk), nearby and out of sight (like in a bag or pocket), or in another room. Participants then completed a series of tasks to test their abilities to process and remember information, their problem-solving, and their focus. They were found to perform far better when their phones were in another room instead of nearby — whether visible, powered on or not. That held true even though most of the participants claimed not to be consciously (有意识地) thinking about their devices.

The mere proximity (靠近) of a phone, it seems, contributes to “brain drain”. Our brains may be subconsciously hard at work in controlling the desire to check our phones, or constantly monitoring the environment to see if we should check our phone (eg, waiting for a notification). Either way, this diverted attention can make doing anything else more difficult. The only “fix”, the researchers found, was putting the device in a different room entirely.

7 . In Australia, like many places around the world, about 95% of the people use Google when they search the Internet for new and recently changed web pages. Because so many people turn to Google’s site first before ever going to a news website, news is a big money-maker for the company.

Australia is considering a bill that will charge Google for showing links to Australian news web-sites which are upset that Google is making money by showing links to articles on their own sites. In recent years, as large technology companies have gotten richer, many news sites have lost money. One way Google makes money is by showing ads on these search pages.

Many people were shocked at the idea. That’s because the Internet is built on links. Since the Internet began, links have always been free. When it comes to copyright(版权), it’s against the law to use someone else’s articles or pictures without their permission. But it has always been legal for anyone, including big companies, to link to any other web page on the Internet, without paying anything.

Tim Bermers Lee is the man who developed the ideas that led to the Internet. He says Australia’s bill ruins the free linking that is so important to the Internet. He thinks the bill should be rewritten.

Google agrees. The company says it wants to work out an agreement that’s fairer to Australian news sites, but that it can’t pay for links. Google points out that it has about 450 agreements in different parts of the world where it pays for the right to show the results of its searches.

Google says if the bill isn’t changed, it will have to stop its work in Australia. Many people worry that once some groups are forced to pay for links in one part of the world, other governments will create similar laws. They’re concerned that in the end, the Internet will be less free, open, and useful for everyone.

9 . You’ve probably often read about quiet firing on the Internet. According to a recent LinkedIn News survey of 20,000 + workers, 87% believe quiet firing to be real, with only 13% denying its existence. 48% of the employees have seen it happen in their workforce, and 35% claimed to have been subject to it themselves.

Quiet firing describes the practice of gradually freezing an employee out until they are left with no choice but to resign. Employers quietly fire out of fear of having tough conversations with employees. Rather than risk a worker growing angry at being fired, these employers gradually make the employee want to leave. Sometimes there are also financial considerations that matter. Employees who hand in the notice will not get a severance package (离职金). Still, companies often replace them with fresh and inexperienced workers who get much less salary.

So, how can you tell when it’s happening to you? A sign of quiet firing could be that you’re not getting new assignments that are taking the organization to the next level. Your workload is actually increasing, but it swells to the point of becoming unmanageable. A crucial sign is that you’re getting the cold shoulder and the boss is not making an effort to interact with you.

If you are doubtful that you are being quietly fired, first determine whether the treatment is directly relevant to you or applicable to all employees. Lack of promotions or failure to give feedback (反馈) might mean mismanagement rather than quiet firing. If you are being quietly fired, ask managers about the cause. Or, talk about your current role and where you want to be, and ask for clear instructions. If you do not see significant progress on the timeline, then perhaps start networking and job hunting to find another opportunity.

10 . Imagine that as you are boarding an airplane, half the engineers who built the plane tell you there is a 10 percent chance the plane will crash, killing you and everyone else on board. Would you still board?

In 2022, over 700 top academics and researchers behind the leading artificial intelligence companies were asked in a survey about future AI risk. Half of those surveyed stated that there was a 10 percent or greater chance of human extinction from future AI systems.     1    

The fear of AI has haunted humanity since the mid-20th century, yet until recently it has remained a distant prospect, something that belongs in sci-fi more than in serious scientific and political debates.     2     It is even harder to grasp the speed at which these tools are developing even more advanced and powerful capabilities. But most of the key skills boil down to one thing: the ability to manipulate (操纵) and generate language, whether with words, sounds or images.

In the beginning was the word.     3     From language emerges myth and law, goods and money, art and science, friendships and nations—even computer code. AI’s new mastery of language means it can now hack and manipulate the operating system of civilization. What would it mean for humans to live in a world where a large percentage of stories, melodies, images, laws, policies and tools are shaped by non-human intelligence?     4    What happens when the same thing occurs in art, politics, and even religion?

    5    We are surrounded by culture, experiencing reality through a cultural prism (棱镜). Our views are shaped by the reports of journalists and the accounts of friends. What will it be like to experience reality through a prism produced by non-human intelligence? The time to reckon with AI is before our politics, our economy and our daily life become dependent on it.