4 . In a video from Visit Iceland, a crew is seen working on making a horse-sized keyboard out of massive blocks of wood. The keyboard is then put outside against the gorgeous scenery for the typing horses to reply to emails. Unsurprisingly, the replies are nonsense, with examples listed as “bpnisi. // hihaihf＝. sf”. “OutHorse Your Email” is Iceland’s latest stunt (噱头) to promote tourism. Visitors can choose a trained horse to type responses to their work emails when they are on holiday.

Due to the pandemic, many workers have transitioned to remote working, finding that the lines between their work and personal lives have become blurred. A survey conducted by Visit Iceland revealed that 59% of people globally now feel as if their boss, colleagues, and customers expect them to reply when on holiday and 41% of people check their work emails between one and four times a day when on holiday. That’s why Iceland is assigning emails to its horses, asking them to make replies.

“When visitors travel to Iceland, we want them to fully experience everything our nation has to offer, from breathtaking surroundings to endless landscapes," said the head of Visit Iceland. "Our OutHorse Your Email service lets them do just that. With our world-first service, we hope to appeal to people to disconnect and take a well-deserved, uninterrupted break.”

Since “OutHorse Your Email” service was launched, it has got a lot of attention from the Internet. “Is it a ridiculous tourism stunt? Sure. But it indeed encourages me to enjoy my trip wholeheartedly,” said Thom Dunn, an online user from Canada. Hunter Boyce from the USA also made a comment, “The service sounds interesting, but I don’t want to drive my boss mad or be fired.”

5 . Do you have a suit or dress in the closet that you haven’t worn for years but are reluctant to get rid of? Maybe you say, “I can’t throw that away because I paid good money for it?”. If you recognize this in yourself, then you are suffering from commitment to the sunk cost fallacy (谬论). It occurs when we feel that we have invested too much to quit. This psychological trap causes us to stick with a plan even if it no longer serves us and the costs clearly outweigh the benefits.

Arkes and Blumer conducted a survey showing that people are influenced by sunk cost fallacy in their decisions. Participants imagined spending $100 on a ski trip to Michigan and $50 on Wisconsin, realizing later they were for the same weekend. They were told Wisconsin would be more enjoyable. When asked which trip to take, 54% chose Michigan despite the reasonable choice being Wisconsin, because they had made a greater initial investment.

Sunk cost fallacy takes place when we let emotions cloud our decisions. Once we’ve invested in a choice, we feel guilt or regret if we don’t follow through. We fail to realize that past costs won’t be recovered. Instead, we base decisions on past costs, ignoring present and future costs and benefits. This may be due to loss aversion (厌恶), where losses feel worse than gains. We avoid losses, making choices based on avoiding the “loss” of our past investment instead of considering the benefits gained if we don’t continue our commitment.

No one can deny the fact that we benefit a lot from perseverance. So our society loves to emphasize perseverance. Never give up! Don’t waste. But only you know the right path for you. Sometimes walking away is the hardest choice of all. You might realize a path you’re on is no longer the right one or never was. That’s a painful realization.

6 . Stacy Dean, an official at the US Department of Agriculture, was inspired by a visit to Watkins Elementary, in Washington, D. C. Students grow vegetables in their school garden. They also roll up their sleeves in the school’s kitchen to participate in a FRESHFARM FoodPrints class, which integrates cooking and nutrition education.

“Who’s next?” asks instructional coach Regina Green, as kids throw vegetables into the pan and the smell of fresh ginger and onions fills the air. “We grew these in our garden,” Jessie Gibson, one of the students, says proudly. Then he measures and pours dry ingredients into a bowl.

“Our family has tried new things because of the program,” says Catie Kelley, whose two children have participated in the FRESHFARM program. “They come home with the recipes,” Kelley says. “It’s fun because it’s things that we don’t usually make at home,” so it has encouraged them to try novel combinations. She says the kids take more of an interest at the grocery store to identify foods they’ve tried in the program.

Dean wants to have the science around healthy eating integrated. A block to scaling up these types of programs is money. The program relies on grants and receives some federal funding, but it’s not enough to expand the program to all the schools that could benefit.

In fact, there are other problems. At a time when diet-related disease is a leading cause of death, and unhealthy eating habits are rooted in US culture, it’s unrealistic to think that a cooking curriculum could overcome such a sweeping, societal problem. “We know from years of evidence that we need multiple things to come together to support healthy eating,” says Angela Odoms-Young, a professor of maternal and child nutrition at Cornell University.

Despite these challenges, programs like FRESHFARM can help kids expand their choices by introducing them to new tastes. At first, many kids are turned off by the bitter taste of greens. But through the magic of cooking, processing the onions, and blending in fresh ginger, kids can be inspired.

8 . Check your drawer, and you may find several electronic device chargers, many of which you no longer use. The European Union proposed a new regulation that would solve this problem by requiring all small electronics (including phones and cameras) to have the one-size-fits-all charging port (端口). All such electronics sold in the EU would need to switch to the USB-C standard within two years.

Officials claim this standard not only increases convenience for consumers but also cuts down on e-waste. Critics claim the move will stifle innovation. The true impact of the new regulation, however, may not be as simple as either side suggests.

“The relative reduction in the amount of e-waste is probably going to be relatively small,” says Callie Babbitt, a professor of sustainability. “But the bigger potential is that this will require producers to think about the design that is user-friendly.”

There are two benefits of this strategy. The first is the direct benefit of no longer having to throw away a charger. The bigger benefit might be more indirect: This is potentially something that might enable a change in consumer behavior. If your charger still works, maybe that’s a sign that the product still works, and you can keep using it. And there might be some indirect benefit on consumers continuing to repair and to extend the lifespan of the products.

How can standardization have this indirect benefit? With standardized components, all the parts are the same. In my lab, we have an enormous bench full of tools of all sizes and shapes—because that’s what’s needed to access the components inside electronics. Without design standardization, a business trying to work in the reuse field has to spend more on labor and costs to do the valuable work.

No single policy can effectively address the problem of e-waste. It will take a joint effort. Policy plays a key role. Producers play a key role. But we also have to change the way products can be repaired. And we have to educate consumers on how to participate in the system.

9 . Linda Brown is a softly-spoken realtor (房地产经纪人) with a passion for helping the homeless. She’s moving mountains by combining her understanding of real estate (房地产) with her kindness-fueled determination to create beautiful permanent homes for disabled homeless people in her community.

In 2020, Mrs. Brown was awarded the Good Neighbor Award. This honor is initiated by The National Association of Realtors in the US. As its website details, working alongside her husband, Dr. David Brown, she has been transforming abandoned mobile homes into villages of tiny homes that offer permanent housing for homeless people who’re disabled.

The wish to help homeless people, and restore their dignity and self-worth, as Mrs. Brown explains, had been a joint mission for some years. As local blogger Aaron Nichols shares, the couple ran a local evening drop-in center for local homeless people called Gardening Tree, for almost a decade. This functioned as a shelter where people experiencing homelessness could grab a bite, shower, do laundry and relax.

But they wanted to do more than that. With local individual organizations’ help, the couple succeeded in raising almost $5 million, which enabled them to transform unused mobile homes and a deserted trailer park into a small village of tiny homes that opened in 2018. They named the shelter “Eden Village”.

As Mrs. Brown revealed in her award acceptance speech about her journey to creating Eden Village, helping homeless people is something personal, “I watched as my homeless friends walked off into the darkness to a hidden, wet and cold camp while we went home to a warm bed. I had to do something.”

Today, Eden Village includes a 4,000-square-foot community center offering cooking and laundry facilities, as well as a medical center and community gardens. Additionally, more sites are being developed thanks to the land donated to the nonprofit founded by the Browns. Eden Village 2 and 3 are at the planning stage. In the next six years, Mrs. Brown hopes to create five similar villages housing up to 200 people experiencing homelessness.