3 . History has not yet _______ what we will definitively call the postmillennial cohort (2000年后出生的人) that now _______ more than 60 million people in the U.S. These kids and _______ with no concept of life _______ the Internet have so far been called the App Generation and Generation Z. They’ve been referred to as Homelanders, having grown up under the ghost of terorism. They’ve also been _______ the Plurals, for their historic diversity, as well as the Founders, at least by MTV.

Whatever we _______ naming them, marketers and academies are turning their attention to this group, which has billions in _______ and is already shaping the culture. This generation is growing up “totally and utterly connected,” says California State University psychologist Larry Rosen. Experts like Rosen have concerns about these kids’ Google-inspired expectations that everything be _______. They worry about their inability to _______ even five seconds of boredom. And they worry about the demands that come with ________ several identities online, from Facebook to Twitter to Snapchat. “There’s so much pressure on young people, who are still ________ their identities, to present this crystallized, idealized identity online,” says the University of Washington’s Katie Davis.

Historian Neil Howe sees ________ with the Silent Generation, the spoilt, risk-avoiding, “nice” generation of kids who grew up during the Great Depression and World War II, although some marked differences are found. Today’s youths are also coming of age among geopolitical trouble and fears about the economy, he says, ________ schools emphasize an intense far-reaching sensitivity to other kids. He suspects this ________ will be known for being well behaved and perhaps boring the culture by playing it safe. “There are typical examples that occur repeatedly,” Howe says, “even if they go by different ________.”

4 . Today’s youth will drive tomorrow’s growth. Young people have always confused their elders. Today’s youngsters are no different. They have thin wallets but ________ tastes. They long for authenticity while being constantly immersed in an artificial digital world. They ________ convenience and abundance. As they start spending in earnest, brands are trying to understand what these walking paradoxes (悖论) ________ and how they shop. The answers will define the next era of consumerism.

A good place to start analyzing the psyche of young consumer is to consider the ________ that has shaped them. At one end of the scale, today’s 30-somethings came of age in the midst of the global financial crisis of 2007-2009. Their younger peers were slightly ________, beginning their careers in years when tightening labour markets had pushed up wages until the covid-19 pandemic turned many of their lives upside down.

These two big ________ have contributed to pessimism among the young people who experienced them. A study found a widespread ________ among Gen Zs that they would be able to afford to retire. Less than half believed they would ever own a home.

In many ways youngsters’ shopping habits, like their lives, are defined by the “________ economy”. The popularity of social media means there are many new ways of attracting consumers’ eyeballs. Most young shoppers never knew a world without smartphones. More than two-thirds of 18- to 34-year-old Americans spend four hours or more on their devices each day.

These “always-on purchasers” often avoid a weekly shop so that they can have quicker ________ of everything from fashion to furniture. They like subscriptions, often favoring shared access to products over outright ownership, which has ________ online-rental sites and streaming services.

The internet has also changed how the young discover brands. Print, billboard or TV advertising has ________ social media. Instagram and TikTok are where the young look for inspiration, particularly for goods where ________ matter, such as beauty, fashion, and sportswear. ________ physical shops are not entirely out of favor. They can be successful as long as the experience feels personal and, ideally, integrates virtual and physical worlds.

How the young shop is clearly shifting. What they buy, too, is changing. What older generations consider optional, such as wellness and luxury, has become ________ for the young.

More broadly, young consumers claim to be more ________ than previous generations. Some of these values are centered around identity (race, gender and so on). Others stem from things the young care about, such as climate change.

6 . One of the first things that happens when you publicly declare yourself a feminist is that you start getting asked a lot of questions. If you’re anything like me, these probes into your_________ beliefs will leave you a mumbling mess. I have read enough books and academic essays on feminism to _________ a fairly substantial library, and yet as soon as I’m asked to sum it up I started sweating and string together a few _________ sentences before loudly shouting ‘because Beyonce’ and running to get another drink.

To save you from this _________ fate I have put together a collection of the feminist comebacks I wish I’d thought of in the moment. Rip out this page, keep it in your pocket and whip it out next time you’re stuck with a drunk man at a party. Because it will come into _________.

WHAT EVEN IS ‘FEMINISM?’

Great question! It’s actually something I’m really passionate about. Feminism is a centuries-old social movement fighting for the_________ of the sexes. Inter-sectional feminists believe that all people are _________ to the same rights, and they fight to end all discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, skin colour, ethnicity, religion or lifestyle.

THIS FEMINISM IS POLITICAL _________ GONE MAD! CAN’T YOU TAKE A JOKE?

Great question! Thanks for checking! You’re mistaken. I love jokes. I’ve got one for you ...

Knock, knock!

Who’s there?

Annie.

Annie who?

Annie thing you can do I can do for 18.4% less pay!

Ha, ha, ha. But, jokes aside, political correctness gets a bad rap (恶评), but all it really _________ is minority groups asking that they not feel marginalized and hurt by everyday conversation or the media. I love comedy - in fact it is one of my favourite things. But I’m afraid that jokes that offend women, people of colour, disabled people, trans people or others in the LGBTQ community just aren’t _________ to me at all. Let’s chat when you come up with some better material, preferably something that doesn’t offend my friends!

I’M A MAN AND SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE ALL THIS FEMINISM IS MAN-HATING. CAN MEN BE FEMINISTS?

Great questions! I’m sorry that a(n) _________ of the feminist movement in the mainstream media has led you to feel this way. Of course men can be feminists.

The sad fact is that we’ve all been socialized from birth to accept sexism as a part of life and, as a result, women can actually be just as _________ as men. Institutionalized sexism hurts men as well as women. It tells men that they aren’t allowed to show _________, that they have to be successful and powerful in order to succeed, and that they aren’t allowed to like the colour pink!

Feminism is the fight to _________ all these things and also to ensure that women are given fundamental human rights like education and reproductive freedom. Feminists truly believe that if we lived in a world without gender-based oppression, we’d all be so much happier. So even if you’re only joining for purely_________ reasons, we’d love to have you as a part of the gang!

Quoted from Scarlett Curtis’ Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and Other Lies

7 . Facing AI extinction

In a recent White House press conference, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre couldn’t suppress her laughter at the question: Is it “crazy” to worry that “literally everyone on Earth will die” due to artificial intelligence? _________, the answer is no.

While AI pioneer such as Alan Turing cautioned that we should expect “machines to take control”, many contemporary researchers _________ this concern. In an area of unprecedented growth in AI abilities, why aren’t more expects weighing in?

Before the deep-learning revolution in 2012, I didn’t think human-level AI would emerge in my lifetime. I was familiar with arguments that AI systems would insatiably seek power and resist shutdown — and obvious _________ to humanity if it were to occur. But I also figured researchers must have good reasons not to be worried about human _________ risk (x-risk) from AI.

Yet after 10 years in the field, I believe the main reasons are actually cultural and historical. By 2012, after several hype cycles that didn’t pan out, most AI researchers had stopped asking ‘what if we succeed at replicating human intelligence’, _________ their ambitions to specific tasks like autonomous driving.

When concerns resurfaced outside their community, researchers were to quick to dismiss outsiders as _________ and their worries as science fiction. But in my experience, AI researchers are themselves often ignorant of arguments for AI x-risk.

One basic argument is by analogy: humans’ _________ abilities allowed us to out-compete other species for resources, leading to many extinctions. AI systems could likewise deprive us of the resources we need for our survival. Less _________, AI could displace humans economically and, through its powers of manipulation, politically.

But wouldn’t it be humans wielding AIs as tools who end up in control? Not necessarily. Many people might choose to deploy a system with a 99 per cent chance of making them phenomenally rich and powerful, even if it had a 1 per cent chance of _________ their control and killing everyone.

Because no safe experiment can definitively tell us whether an AI system will actually kill everyone, such concerns are often dismissed as unscientific. But this isn’t an excuse for ignoring the risk. It just means society needs to reason about it in the same way as other complex social issues. Researchers also emphasize the difficulty of predicting when AI might _________ human intelligence, but this is an argument for caution, not complacency.

Attitudes are changing, but not quickly enough. AI x-risk is admittedly more _________ than important social issues with present-day AI, like bias and misinformation, but the basic solution is the same: regulation. A robust public discussion is long overdue. By refusing to engage, some AI researchers are neglecting _________ responsibilities and betraying public trust.

Big tech sponsors AI ethics research when it doesn’t hurt the bottom line. But it is also lobbying to exclude general-purpose AI from E. U. regulation. Concerned researchers recently called for a(n) _________ in developing bigger AI models to allow society to catch up. Critics say this isn’t politically realistic, but problems like AI x-risk won’t _________ just because they are politically inconvenient.

This brings us to the ugliest reason researchers may dismiss AI x-risk: funding. Essentially every researcher (myself included) has received funding from big tech. At some point, society may stop believing reassurances from people with such strong conflicts of _________ and conclude, as I have, that their dismissal betrays wishful thinking rather than good counterarguments.

8 . The picture of miseries and sufferings of the Black woman in America may appear, perhaps darker and more depressing than Dante’s (但丁) description of Hell because in the history of human race, the Black woman in America has suffered the most. A close and critical _______ of the history of the Black woman’s life and condition since her arrival in a strange land will unfold very well the long story of her pain and sorrow_______ her mutilated (被切断的) soul. Since her arrival on the foreign shore, the Black woman has been facing the worst kind of ______ and oppression. As a Black she has had to endure all the horrors of slavery and has been the _______ of continually inhumane treatment in all kinds of work, _______ the lowest place on the wage scale and restricted to the lowest-status and the most uncreative jobs. Since times of slavery, Black womanhood has been destroyed, twisted and abused with racial and inhuman _______ by black men and white men and women. In the process, they have lost their genuine “self”, and have developed a(n) ______ in themselves — though as black women, they see themselves with the eyes of white men and women and black men. This has ultimately been responsible for the destruction of their self-confidence and the feeling of being human. They ______ themselves as masters’ belongings.

As a mother she has seen her children sold into slavery. She has seen them left at home without attention while she _______ to the needs of the children of the ruling class. She has seen her children suffer from drug addiction, the _______ of decent education and experience attacks by a racist society, and _______ the prisons of this nation. In addition, besides suffering the common fate of all oppressed people, the African-American women continue to _______ the oppression of woman by men, which existed for long. In the home she becomes “the slave of a slave”. Men may be cruelly treated and subjected to all sorts of dehumanizing treatment on the part of the ruling class. _______, at least they can take out their frustration on someone else, their women.

Thus feminism in America means much more than what it stands for in other European countries, chiefly because it has different role and meaning _______ the Black women. If a feminist is commonly defined as one who is involved in transforming and _______ familiar realities, then Black women are innate (天生的) feminists. Black women writing exhibits and constructs a Black women’s literary tradition that is inherently feminist. Barbara Smith, an influential Black feminist critic, states that the ability of Black women to survive in the face of White America exhibits an innate feminist potential.

9 . I’m pretty good at sticking with things even when they get hard. Bad relationships, unpleasant workplaces, ______ sports — I’ve hung on for months and even years longer than I should have, convinced the situation would ______ if I refused to give up.

After all, isn’t every success story littered with ______? Didn’t Beyoncé lose Star Search, and didn’t Oprah get fired from her first TV job? Quitting is a sign that you lack patience and strong will, or so I was raised to believe.

______, if I look back on all the things I eventually quit, my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. I’ve wasted immeasurable time and energy dragging my heels, determined that I could ______ everyone if I just kept going.

All of us are constantly making tricky choices between going further into familiar territory and ______ to expand our horizons. This is known as the exploration-exploitation trade-off. When we are younger, it’s advantageous to go far on the side of exploration, trying lots of new things because we have plenty of time to ______ later. But as we age, it’s often smarter to double down.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t quit something just because you’ve put a lot of time into it. Economists call this the sunk cost fallacy (谬误): People are more likely to ______ something if they’ve invested a lot of money or effort into it, even when it’s clear that they should ______ their losses and jump ship. This practice is normal and ______, but it’s also unreasonable. If an activity or relationship is making you miserable, that’s important information you shouldn’t ignore.

If you don’t get energy out of doing something, it can be a(n) ______ that this is not for you or that there’s something better you could be doing. Or it could be a sign that you should ______ your goals. Maybe your yogurt startup might not win over investors, but you could still make and sell yogurt at the farmers’ market on weekends.

In fact, dogged persistence in the face of energy-sucking disappointment can ______ depression, and then make you suffer from diseases in the long run.

But the good news is that people can learn to pay better attention to these moments when they’re happening and make ______. The art of quitting isn’t about just letting go whenever there’s an obstacle. It’s about being able to let go when there’s no ______ to success anymore.

10 . Ideally, childhood is a time of growth and learning, preparing for adulthood and also having fun. But for many children around the world, this time is cut short when they are forced to work, sometimes in dangerous conditions. _______, the United Nations (U.N.), some national governments and other organizations _______ June 12 as the annual World Day Against Child Labor.

As of 2020, around 160 million children worked as child laborers, which means that one child in 10 was a child laborer. _______, child labor has decreased over the past 20 years, but in recent years, this progress has stopped. Child labor is _______ from ordinary housework, helping with a family business or (for older children) working to earn pocket money when not in school. Work done by children is _______ as child labor when it harms the child physically, mentally, socially or _______, or when it prevents the child’s education.

About 79 million children are engaged in hazardous child labor. Sometimes this means the work itself is dangerous because of heavy machinery or exposure to _______. Hazardous child labor can also involve harsh conditions, long hours, or _______ to various kinds of abuse.

The primary goal of the World Day Against Child Labor is raising _______ of the issue and encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to ________. Combating (打击) child labor is a complex task. It involves social workers who identify child laborers and take action to provide these children and their families with other ________. But it also involves change in communities as a whole, ________ the social regulations that can lead adults to make their children work.

Child labor and poverty often go hand in hand as parents feel removing their children from school is necessary to earn money for their survival. So, measures meant to fight ________ are also tied to preventing child labor. Ensuring that children have quality educational opportunities is also important. If more opportunities were ________, more parents might give up the immediate benefit of a child’s paycheck to give that child an education.

Child labor is harmful to children and to communities, since it prevents children from growing into healthy, educated citizens who could make a(n) ________ in society. By highlighting the problem and offering a variety of solutions, the World Day Against Child Labor can make the situation a bit better.