Why You Procrastinate (It Has Nothing to Do With Self-Control) If procrastination isn’t about laziness, then what is it about? Mar 25, 2019, The New York Times 🌟外刊原文库持续更新中，加V:HLSHW666 进群获取 If you’ve ever put off an important task by, say, alphabetizing your spice drawer, you know it wouldn’t be fair to describe yourself as lazy. After all, alphabetizing requires focus and effort — and hey, maybe you even went the extra mile to wipe down each bottle before putting it back. And it’s not like you’re hanging out with friends or watching Netflix. You’re cleaning — something your parents would be proud of! This isn’t laziness or bad time management. This is procrastination. If procrastination isn’t about laziness, then what is it about? Etymologically, “procrastination” is derived from the Latin verb procrastinare — to put off until tomorrow. But it’s more than just voluntarily delaying. Procrastination is also derived from the ancient Greek word akrasia — doing something against our better judgment. “It’s self-harm,” said Dr. Piers Steel, a professor of motivational psychology at the University of Calgary and the author of “The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done.” That self-awareness is a key part of why procrastinating makes us feel so rotten. When we procrastinate, we’re not only aware that we’re avoiding the task in question, but also that doing so is probably a bad idea. And yet, we do it anyway. “This is why we say that procrastination is essentially irrational,” said Dr. Fuschia Sirois, professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield. “It doesn’t make sense to do something you know is going to have negative consequences.” She added: “People engage in this irrational cycle of chronic procrastination because of an inability to manage negative moods around a task.” Wait. We procrastinate because of bad moods? In short: yes. Procrastination isn’t a unique character flaw or a mysterious curse on your ability to manage time, but a way of coping with challenging emotions and negative moods induced by certain tasks — boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond. “Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem,” said Dr. Tim Pychyl, professor of psychology and member of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa. In a 2013 study, Dr. Pychyl and Dr. Sirois found that procrastination can be understood as “the primacy of short-term mood repair … over the longer-term pursuit of intended actions.” Put simply, procrastination is about being more focused on “the immediate urgency of managing negative moods” than getting on with the task, Dr. Sirois said. The particular nature of our aversion depends on the given task or situation. It may be due to something inherently unpleasant about the task itself — having to clean a dirty bathroom or organizing a long, boring spreadsheet for your boss. But it might also result from deeper feelings related to the task, such as self-doubt, low self-esteem, anxiety or insecurity. Staring at a blank document, you might be thinking, I’m not smart enough to write this. Even if I am, what will people think of it? Writing is so hard. What if I do a bad job?

Trump was the subject of an apparent assassination attempt at his Florida golf club, the FBI says Sep 16, 2024, Associated Press 🌟外刊原文库持续更新中，加V: HLSHW666 进学习群获取 Donald Trump was the target of what the FBI said “appears to be an attempted assassination” at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday, just nine weeks after the Republican presidential nominee survived another attempt on his life. The former president said he was safe and well, and authorities held a man in custody. U.S. Secret Service agents stationed a few holes up from where Trump was playing noticed the muzzle of an AK-style rifle sticking through the shrubbery that lines the course, roughly 400 yards away. An agent fired and the gunman dropped the rifle and fled in an SUV, leaving the firearm behind along with two backpacks, a scope used for aiming and a GoPro camera, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said. The man was later stopped by law enforcement in a neighboring county. It was the latest jarring moment in a campaign year marked by unprecedented upheaval. On July 13, Trump was shot during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and a bullet grazed his ear. Eight days later, Democratic President Joe Biden withdrew from the race, giving way for Vice President Kamala Harris to become the party’s nominee. And it spawned new questions about Secret Service protective operations after the agency’s admitted failures in preventing the assassination attempt this summer. The man who was detained had a calm, flat demeanor and showed little emotion when he was stopped, according Martin County Sheriff William Snyder.

Harris targets Trump for falsehoods on abortion and immigration in fiery debate Presidential candidates meet for first time in contentious face-off as moderators fact-check Trump’s statements Sep 11, 2024, The Guardian 🌟外刊原文库持续更新中，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群获取 Kamala Harris and Donald Trump sparred on Tuesday in a contentious presidential debate that repeatedly went off the rails, as Trump pursued bizarre and often falsehood-ridden tangents about crowd sizes, immigration policy and abortion access. The Philadelphia debate marked arguably the most significant opportunity for both Harris and Trump since Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race in July, and the event began cordially enough. Harris crossed over to Trump’s podium to shake his hand and introduce herself, an acknowledgement that the two presidential nominees had never met face to face before Tuesday night. But the cordiality did not last long. After delivering some boilerplate attack lines about the high inflation seen earlier in Biden’s presidency, Trump pivoted to mocking Harris as a “Marxist” and peddling baseless claims that Democrats want to “execute the baby” by allowing abortions in the ninth month of pregnancy. That false claim was corrected by both Harris and the ABC News anchor Linsey Davis, who joined her fellow moderator David Muir in fact-checking some of Trump’s statements throughout the evening. Harris then segued into a stinging rebuke of Trump’s record on abortion, criticizing him for nominating three of the supreme court justices who ruled to overturn Roe v Wade in 2022. “One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” Harris said. “And I pledge to you, when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe v Wade, as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it in to law.” Despite broad public support for Roe v Wade, Trump boasted about his role in reversing it and applauded the supreme court’s “great courage” in issuing its ruling, while he dodged repeated questions about whether he would veto a national abortion ban as president. Trump seemed to trip over himself even when moderators offered questions on his strongest issues, such as immigration. When asked about Biden’s handling of the US-Mexico border, Harris pivoted to discussing Trump’s campaign rallies. “I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch,” Harris said. “You will see during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about [how] windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you, the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you.” The tangent appeared to be a blatant attempt by Harris to bait Trump into squabbling over attendance at his rallies instead of discussing immigration policy – and it worked. Trump began attacking Harris with baseless accusations that her campaign was paying people to attend her rallies while celebrating his own events as “the most incredible rallies in the history of politics”.

How to Age Well Nov 1, 2017, The New York Times 🌟外刊原文库每周持续更新，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群获取 Getting older is inevitable (and certainly better than the alternative). While you can’t control your age, you can slow the decline of aging with smart choices along the way. From the foods you eat and how you exercise to your friendships and retirement goals — it all has an effect on how fast or slow your body ages. Keep reading for simple ways to keep your body tuned up and your mind tuned in. And the good news is that it’s never too late to get started. Eat Small changes in your eating habits can lower your risk for many of the diseases associated with aging. Lose Just a Little Bit of Weight Small changes in body weight can have a big impact on health risks. Losing just 5 percent of your body weight has been shown to reduce your risk for diabetes and heart disease and improve metabolic function in liver, fat and muscle tissue. That means a 200 pound person can reap big health benefits just by losing 10 pounds. While we’d all love to shed all of our extra pounds, it’s a lot easier to start with a 5 percent weight loss goal and keep it off. Avoid Processed Meat Processed meats like hot dogs and sausages have been salted, cured or smoked to enhance flavor and improve preservation. A number of studies have found associations between eating a lot of processed meats and poor health. A Harvard review found that eating one serving a day of processed meats like bacon, sausage and deli meats was associated with a 42 percent higher risk of heart disease and 19 percent increased risk of diabetes. But there was no increase in risk associated with eating unprocessed red meat. Notably, the culprit in processed meats wasn’t the saturated fat or cholesterol — both whole cuts of meat and processed meats contained the same amount per serving. The big differences were the levels of sodium and chemical preservatives. Processed meats had about four times more sodium and 50 percent more nitrate preservatives than unprocessed meats. Other research has implicated processed meats in a higher risk for colon cancer. Eat Blue (And Other Colors) While you shouldn’t plan your health around any one “super food,” there’s a lot to be said for eating blueberries. In one review of the eating habits of 187,000 male and female health workers, eating three or more servings of blueberries a week was associated with a 26 percent lower risk for diabetes. Another study found that eating the equivalent of a cup of blueberries a day lowered blood pressure. Most of us can’t eat a daily cup of blueberries. But the lesson is to add darkly colored fruits and vegetables — blueberries, cherries, spinach and kale — to your diet. They are loaded with nutrients, fiber and carotenoids. They will also fill you up so you’re less likely to binge on junk food.

Does Money Buy Happiness? Actually, Yes Feb 12, 2024, Forbes 🌟外刊原文库每周持续更新，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群获取 Sometimes, ideas become accepted knowledge even though they are not based in fact. Prime examples are that the only human-made object that can be seen from space is the Great Wall of China, that lemmings periodically engage in mass suicide, that heat escapes mostly from our heads, and that we only use 10% of our brains. None of those are true. Another notion that has become accepted wisdom is that making more money increases happiness, but only to $75,000; that’s also wrong. Research suggests there is no $75,000 happiness threshold for most people — higher income does indeed correlate to more happiness. The $75,000 Study It’s oddly satisfying to think that rich people aren’t any happier than the middle class. This belief is supported by a widely publicized 2010 study led by Daniel Kahneman and his Princeton colleague, Angus Deaton — both winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics — which concluded that happiness only increases with income up to $75,000. After that, they claimed, additional income doesn’t impact overall happiness. Based on survey data from 450,000 Americans, the study examined the relationship between income and the concepts of “emotional well-being” and “life satisfaction.” Emotional well-being is how good or bad we feel in the moment — it’s a proxy for our level of happiness (I’m going to refer to emotional well-being as happiness in this article). Life satisfaction is a broader concept; it’s whether we think we’re living a good life and are satisfied with our life circumstances overall. Kahneman and Deaton found that happiness increased with income, but only to a point — there was no further progress beyond about $75,000 ($108,000 in today’s dollars). They theorized that the plateau occurs because satisfying basic needs is challenging at lower income levels, and those daily challenges negatively impact happiness. Lack of money is associated with stress, poorer health, less leisure time, and greater emotional pain. But once people make enough to move beyond meeting their basic needs and can afford things like a house and a car, take vacations, and gain financial security through savings, making more money doesn’t move the happiness needle. The authors’ theory is that above $75,000 of income, happiness is driven by things like the quality of one’s relationships, health, and leisure time, and money isn’t a factor. In contrast to happiness, Kahneman and Deaton found that life satisfaction increased steadily with income with no plateau. In other words, the more money people make, the more satisfied they are with their lives. This makes intuitive sense because making more money positively correlates with achievement and career success, and that sense of accomplishment can boost satisfaction with one’s life.

How to Strengthen Your Happiness Muscle Psychologists call it reward sensitivity. And simple steps can help you boost your drive to seek out positive emotions and enjoy life. Aug 19 1, 2024, The New York Times 🌟加V: HLSHW666 进外刊学习群，群内持续更新外刊原文库 We’ve all experienced it: the urge to withdraw and duck experiences we know we’ll enjoy — even when a mood boost is what we need most. We skip the birthday party. We cancel lunch. They just don’t seem worth the effort. And then, more likely than not, we feel worse than we did before. So how do you find the motivation to get out there, especially when you’re feeling low, stressed, tired or lonely? One proven strategy is to strengthen what psychologists call your reward sensitivity. Our drive to seek out happiness is a muscle that we can develop. So is our ability to relish experiences. And almost anyone can learn to amp up their reward sensitivity by training themselves to notice and savor their positive emotions. That’s even true for people with depression and anxiety who struggle to experience pleasure, a condition called anhedonia. Of course, all of us have trouble pursuing pleasure sometimes. I recently took my young sons to the beach for the weekend. Hours before our getaway, I learned a friend had died. Numbed by the news, I was in no mood to have a good time, even though I wanted to make things special for my family. It’s part of my job as a therapist to teach people how to manage their emotions. And as I tell my patients, it’s possible to honor legitimate sources of pain and still recognize that moments of brightness improve our well-being. The research-backed strategies below, which I use in my practice, helped me to make the most of our trip. Reward sensitivity and mental health. When it comes to mental health treatment, doctors and therapists tend to focus on easing their patients’ negative symptoms — they want “to take away the bad,” explained Alicia Meuret, a professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University. Yet most of us don’t just need to reduce pain, we also need to boost joy. In fact, improving positive emotions can be a higher priority for patients than containing their depressive symptoms. And research shows that treatments based on this idea can be effective.

Mark Zuckerberg Will Never Win The Meta CEO will never satisfy his critics. He keeps trying anyway. Aug 30, 2024, The Atlantic 🌟外刊原文库每期更新，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群 Mark Zuckerberg seems to enjoy playing politics. The only problem is that he doesn’t appear to be any good at it. This week, the Meta CEO wrote a letter to Representative Jim Jordan in response to an inquiry about Meta’s content-moderation policies. Jordan, an Ohio Republican, and the House Judiciary Committee have been investigating supposed collusion between President Joe Biden’s administration and technology companies to censor free speech online. In his letter addressing these concerns, Zuckerberg wrote that in 2021, senior White House officials had “repeatedly pressured” Meta to censor content related to COVID-19, “including humor and satire.” He also noted a separate instance from October 2020, when Meta had temporarily demoted a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop after initial guidance from the FBI that there may have been a Russian disinformation campaign about the Biden family in the lead-up to that year’s presidential election. In the letter, Zuckerberg notes that the article turned out not to be part of such an operation, and that “we shouldn’t have demoted the story.” Zuckerberg also made it clear that Meta had not been forced to remove any material: “Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down,” he wrote. Jordan and the House Judiciary treated the letter as a revelatory confessional, despite the fact that it has been widely reported that Meta sparred with the Biden administration over COVID-19 misinformation-takedown requests. (Internal Meta correspondence was published in The Wall Street Journal and was also a key component of a recent Supreme Court case concerning the federal government intervening in social-media-moderation decisions.) Similarly, Zuckerberg and Meta previously expressed regret about the laptop story and the decision to suppress it.

How to get rich (Taylor’s version) Think you know the story of how Taylor Swift took on the music industry? The reality is more complicated July 24, 2024, 1843 Magazine from The Economist 🌟群内持续更新完整外刊原文，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群 Is there anyone on Earth who hasn’t heard of Taylor Swift? To the delight of millions and the chagrin of more it has become difficult to avoid her. Between March 17th 2023, when her money-printing Eras tour began, and February 11th 2024, when news sites live-blogged her flight across the Pacific to watch her beau play in the Superbowl, the New York Times published more than 1,000 pieces that mentioned the singer, only slightly fewer than those that mentioned Joe Biden, the president of the United States. When I pick up my phone, social-media algorithms bombard me with clips of Swift performing in a sparkly gold leotard. When I put it down, I overhear conversations about her. On a train from Washington, DC, to New York earlier this year, a cluster of young women were debating whether the government had rigged the biggest American football game of the year so that “Taylor’s boyfriend” would win. Like many others, I’ve found myself marking time with the milestones of her career. Her album “Folklore”, which she released in July 2020 to universal acclaim, offered a welcome respite from lockdown boredom. In November 2021, the day after I got engaged, she released a re-recording of “Red”, one of her early albums. My fiancé and I listened to it as we made hummus and baked a cake for a party we were hosting that evening. And yet a mere five years ago I was largely immune to her charms. I liked her biggest hits, but I had never listened to an album from start to finish. (I’m not alone in my newish enthusiasm: at the end of 2019 there were around 80,000 members of the Taylor Swift subreddit. Now there are 2.8m.) The brilliance of “Folklore” played a part, but it was when Swift began to re-record her old albums that I really got hooked. Fans will be familiar with the reason the singer remade her old works. In 2005 the preternaturally gifted teenager from Pennsylvania was signed by Big Machine Records, a Nashville-based label owned by Scott Borchetta. Swift recorded six albums with them. Under the terms of her contract, Big Machine kept the rights to the “masters” (the original recordings) of her albums. As Swift grew more successful, she became frustrated that she didn’t own these. Although she got modest royalties from her songs, she wasn’t earning as much as she would have if she had owned the masters outright. And she didn’t have full control over how her songs were used.

Blockbuster Chinese video game tried to police players - and divided the internet August 25, 2024, BBC 🌟外刊原文库持续更新中，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群获取 An anthropomorphic monkey and a campaign against "feminist propaganda" set the video gaming community alight this week, following the release of the most successful Chinese title of all time. Many players were furious after the company behind Black Myth: Wukong sent them a list of topics to avoid while livestreaming the game, including “feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse”. Still, within 24 hours of its release on Tuesday, it became the second most-played game ever on streaming platform Steam, garnering more than 2.1 million concurrent players and selling more than 4.5 million copies. The game, based on the classic 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, is being seen as a rare example of popular media broadcasting Chinese stories on an international stage.

Black Myth: Wukong is an epic saga that’s both confounding and spectacular to behold Confusion, conflict, and celestial beings Aug 16, 2024, Polygon 🌟获取完整外刊原文，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群 There was a moment, roughly 20 hours into my near-40-hour playthrough of Black Myth: Wukong, when things finally clicked. A few chapters prior to that point had left me scratching my head, baffled at the introduction of various minor characters, adversaries, and concepts. But at that moment halfway through, when things finally became clearer, I couldn’t help but smile. I was hooked, and there was no going back. Black Myth: Wukong, made by China-based studio Game Science, is an action role-playing game inspired by Journey to the West. It, along with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, and Dream of the Red Chamber, is one of the great pillars of Chinese literature. To adapt the story of Journey to the West, a timeless classic with characters and themes that have remained influential throughout East Asia, is already a daunting task. Thankfully, Game Science has managed to pull off the impossible, weaving together a narrative that’s intricate, original, and, at times, thought-provoking. The hardest part about writing this review of Black Myth: Wukong is that the review embargo stipulates that we’re not allowed to divulge too many details about the game’s plot outside of a couple of chapters. Suffice it to say, you play as the Destined One, a monkey warrior tasked with retrieving relics that have been lost. You set out on your own odyssey — perhaps not “to the West,” but through six chapters of action and world-building. As a Filipino, I consider myself more of a Romance of the Three Kingdoms buff, though I briefly read Journey to the West ages ago during my high school years. Nevertheless, I did appreciate the campaign’s inclusion of numerous characters and plot points, as well as Buddhist teachings and Daoist philosophy, from the novel. These are either shown in detail, relayed in poems, or mentioned in passing, some of which made me go, “I understood that reference.”

Can we finally reverse balding with these new experimental treatments? Male pattern baldness could soon be a thing of the past, with new hair loss treatments beginning to show tantalising results Sept 26, 2023, New Scientist 🌟获取外刊原文，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群 I’LL level with you: a part of me didn’t want to write this story. When I first realised that I was losing my hair, I found it important to mention it often in conversation. I was so embarrassed about it that I was trying some sort of reverse psychology. But I soon realised that if there was one thing less attractive than my balding head, it was how much I was talking about it. I am joking, of course: there is nothing wrong with being bald. Still, for me, the prospect is terrifying. My hair is a big part of my identity, so to lose it is crushing. I’m not alone. By the age of 50, between 30 and 50 per cent of men have begun to experience male pattern baldness. Despite there being plenty of handsome hairless men out there – I’m looking at you, Thierry Henry – studies suggest that people tend to perceive bald men as less attractive and less friendly. And we don’t need science to tell us that this can be deeply upsetting. So although I have dialled down the discussion of my growing bald patch, I have been quietly digging into the science of hair loss – and what I found is worth shouting about. It is common knowledge that some treatments can slow hair loss. What is less known is that as we are coming to understand the reasons why male pattern baldness causes people to lose their hair, we are finding new strategies to restore it. There may soon be a way to not just slow balding, but reverse it. In a field where tales of miracle cures are ten a penny, it is important not to overpromise. Still, there is a sense that the science of hair is advancing at breakneck speed. “People are now starting to get excited that we’re reaching a tipping point,” says biologist Maksim Plikus at the University of California, Irvine. What is baldness? There are many reasons why people lose hair from their heads. It can happen suddenly after an infection or chemotherapy. Sometimes, people can lose patches of hair through an autoimmune condition called alopecia areata. But the most common type is androgenetic alopecia, or male/female pattern baldness. In men, we know that the condition, in which hair loss begins around the crown and forehead, is related to male sex hormones, but we don’t understand the exact trigger. The female version tends to cause an overall thinning that rarely progresses to total baldness. It is also thought to be caused by sex hormones, but again the mechanics elude us. Through the ages, people have looked to a variety of unlikely remedies for baldness, from donkey hooves in ancient Egypt to fresh air and exercise in Victorian England. A quick look online and the modern-day choices are just as bamboozling: scalp rollers, caffeine shampoo, laser combs, microneedling, to name a few. The latest trend is rosemary oil, with TikTok full of young men exhorting its powers. (Personally, I’m not minded to try it, on the basis that I don’t want to smell like a roast potato.) Some of these treatments may do limited good for some people, but there is little scientific evidence that they slow or reverse balding. Those that do can have side effects and don’t always work for everyone

The Olympics Are a Giant Money Sink. So What? The benefits of staging the games go beyond profit-and-loss accounting. June 11, 2023, Bloomberg 🌟获取完整外刊原文，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群 You can’t blame Britons for looking back fondly on the 2012 London Olympics. It was possibly the last time the country did anything really well in the eyes of the world, an unqualified sporting success and an optimistic celebration of openness and diversity. After a decade marked by Brexit, public health failures, economic crisis and rising anti-immigration rhetoric, it’s small wonder the games retain a warm glow for many. But were they worth the money? The model of using the games to regenerate a deprived area of east London served as an inspiration for Paris, which will host the competition next summer. Parallels are already building between the two, with the French capital seeing inflated budgets, complaints of high ticket prices and, most recently, suggestions of backtracking on commitments to social inclusiveness. Last month, the president of the French National Olympic Committee resigned after 18 months of internal conflict. The question of whether staging the Olympics is worth the money is nigh on impossible to answer. Doing a cost-benefit analysis is like trying to nail jelly to the wall. The last host city to record an operating surplus was Los Angeles in 1984, so all games since have been money losers in the narrowest sense. But a more realistic assessment of whether the wider economic impact justifies the cost is confounded by the issue of what to measure. The cost of building Olympic stadiums and accommodation for athletes is straightforward enough, but what about the panoply of associated infrastructure, particularly if some or all of this was planned in any case? What to include on the benefit side is just as fraught. Separating economic activity generated by the games from investment and spending that would have happened anyway is an inexact science, to put it mildly — and the further out the estimates go, the more speculative the exercise becomes. Most studies showing large anticipated gains for host nations are better regarded as promotional documents than objective analysis.

Why US politicians are picking on Chinese Olympic swimmers * As with Washington’s routine attempts to challenge all things Chinese as well as global multilateral agencies, its row with the World Anti-Doping Agency is par for the course Aug 6, 2024, South China Morning Post 🌟获取完整外刊原文，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群 Despite the excessive scrutiny and outrageous record numbers of testing, some sour grapes competitors, commentators and coaches still insinuate, with zero evidence, that Chinese swimmers at the Paris Olympics could be doping. According to World Aquatics, the international governing body for swimming, China’s 31 swimmers in Paris have been tested an average of 21 times by various anti-doping agencies since the start of this year, compared with six times for their American rivals, according to an NBC News report. But that’s not all. From last year, Qin Haiyang had the dubious distinction of being the world’s most tested swimmer at 46 times. Others most tested include Zhang Yufei (43 times), Li Bingjie (42), Yu Yiting (31), Liu Yaxin (29), Pan Zhanle (29) and Yang Junxuan (27). They cleared all the tests. If that’s not clean, I don’t know what is. Even Hong Kong’s Siobhan Haughey was tested 17 times. Many of their Chinese fans have cried foul. They may be right, but I am glad the swimmers were excessively tested. Imagine what those self-righteous – or is it racist? – Western critics would say if the Chinese swimmers were only tested with the same frequency as others. I can just see the headlines! Otherwise, Pan’s training team must be doping geniuses. Having passed so many tests, he smashed his own world record in the men’s 100-metre freestyle. Some prominent people in the sport still went online to hint that he must have doped. You just can’t win, even if you do win – when you are Chinese.

Misinformation, abuse and injustice: breaking down the Olympic boxing firestorm August 5, 2024, The Conversation 🌟获取完整外刊原文，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群 In a preliminary women’s under 66kg boxing match at the Paris Olympics last week between Algerian Imane Khelif and Italian Angela Carini, a powerful punch to the face resulted in Carini withdrawing after 46 seconds. Carini dissolved into tears, crying “this is unfair”, and “I have never been hit so hard in my life”. Almost immediately, journalists and commentators jumped to Carini’s defence, raising questions about International Olympic Committee (IOC) policies and making many false assertions about Khelif’s gender identity. The backstory In the face of harmful inaccuracies and widespread online hate speech it is important to outline some of the basics. Khelif has identified as female since birth and lived her entire life as a woman, including throughout her sporting career. She is not transgender. She did not go through puberty as a male and then transition later. Her passport marks her identity as female, thus meeting the IOC criteria for gender classification of boxers.

Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business People are seeking help from AI-generated avatars to process their grief after a family member passes away. May 7, 2024, MIT Technology Review 🌟获取完整外刊原文，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群🌟 Once a week, Sun Kai has a video call with his mother. He opens up about work, the pressures he faces as a middle-aged man, and thoughts that he doesn’t even discuss with his wife. His mother will occasionally make a comment, like telling him to take care of himself—he’s her only child. But mostly, she just listens. That’s because Sun’s mother died five years ago. And the person he’s talking to isn’t actually a person, but a digital replica he made of her—a moving image that can conduct basic conversations. They’ve been talking for a few years now. After she died of a sudden illness in 2019, Sun wanted to find a way to keep their connection alive. So he turned to a team at Silicon Intelligence, an AI company based in Nanjing, China, that he cofounded in 2017. He provided them with a photo of her and some audio clips from their WeChat conversations. While the company was mostly focused on audio generation, the staff spent four months researching synthetic tools and generated an avatar with the data Sun provided. Then he was able to see and talk to a digital version of his mom via an app on his phone. “My mom didn’t seem very natural, but I still heard the words that she often said: ‘Have you eaten yet?’” Sun recalls of the first interaction. Because generative AI was a nascent technology at the time, the replica of his mom can say only a few pre-written lines. But Sun says that’s what she was like anyway. “She would always repeat those questions over and over again, and it made me very emotional when I heard it,” he says. There are plenty of people like Sun who want to use AI to preserve, animate, and interact with lost loved ones as they mourn and try to heal. The market is particularly strong in China, where at least half a dozen companies are now offering such technologies and thousands of people have already paid for them. In fact, the avatars are the newest manifestation of a cultural tradition: Chinese people have always taken solace from confiding in the dead. The technology isn’t perfect—avatars can still be stiff and robotic—but it’s maturing, and more tools are becoming available through more companies. In turn, the price of “resurrecting” someone—also called creating “digital immortality” in the Chinese industry—has dropped significantly. Now this technology is becoming accessible to the general public.