You are not for everyone, and that's okay

语篇导读： "我"努力让每个人都喜欢"我"，但一个朋友的离开让"我"认识到了问题所在。

I grew up a people pleaser. Before I made any decision, I used to carefully weigh up how it would affect others and their thoughts of me. As a kid, it worked out pretty well. As an adult ... not so much. The constant need to have everyone like me wasn't answered, again and again.

It started out through middle and high school when I was figuring out my interests. In my heart, I felt one way. In person, I obviously tended to do whatever I thought was "cool." Before long it got to the point where every decision in my life involved me heavily weighing what other people would think. I had many different versions of me ready to please everyone and anyone.

The journey to my own self-discovery came in something unexpected in the last few months — when a friend pulled away from me. Knowing that there was someone who did not like me really upset me.

It wasn't until I was talking to another friend, and she pointed out that there were most likely a great number of people who didn't like me, that I realized something. I'd spent so much time trying to get everyone to like me that I never figured out what's actually best for me. Surprisingly, I figured out that it's a good thing to drive people away! That may sound strange, but let me explain:

The world is full of people who, no matter what you do, will not like you. But it is also filled with people who will love you fiercely. You are not for everyone, and that's okay. As you drive people away, you only get closer to your people. Those who love you, who want to be close to you, who truly value you, are one step closer.

You are not for everyone, and that's not just okay, that's amazing.

Many Brits sign up to learn High Valyrian

语篇导读 电视剧《权利的游戏》中的人工语言风靡英伦，学习者的数量甚至超过了懂苏格兰盖尔语的人数。

When watching Game of Thrones, not every fan will need to look at the subtitles (字幕) as Queen Daenerys Targaryen addresses her army.

Nearly 100,000 people in the UK have signed up to learn the Game of Throneslanguage High Valyrian on Duolingo, the language learning app — more than the number who understand Scottish Gaelic, which stands at 87,056. Those fans will now be able to expand their learning with a new version of the course that claims to have enough words for them to be able to conduct a full conversation.

David Peterson, the creator of the Game of Thrones language, wrote and voiced the course which has more than 2,000 words. The linguist (语言学家) has been creating languages for TV for more than a decade. To teach the cast, he recorded himself saying their lines in the languages on his phone and sent it to them so they could perfect the pronunciation.

A few words of the language were written in A Song of Ice and Fire book series by George R. R. Martin, but Peterson has had to expand it from 56 words. The starting point was "valar morghulis", a phrase that crops up frequently and means "all men must die". From there, Peterson built phonology (语音体系) and grammar, going as far as creating words from High Valyrian into Dothraki.

Peterson says he has no plans to create a standard to decide if a word is valid. He prefers the example of Johannes Aavik, who created a dictionary of 2,000 Estonian words in 1919. "These were just brand new words that he made up out of thin air. People started using some and now they're part of the language."

Made-up languages go back much further than Aavik, according to Dr Dimitra Fimi, a lecturer in fantasy and children's literature at the University of Glasgow. "The problem was these languages were unusable. They tried to define (给下定义) the universe," Fimi said.

Newly discovered Thomas Jefferson letter

语篇导读：美国开国元勋之一——托马斯·杰斐逊的一封亲笔信出现在世人面前，一段尘封的历史被揭开。

A letter written by Founding Father Thomas Jefferson that had been lost to historians for over a century has surfaced.

The letter, which is priced at $80,000, is up for sale at the historical document dealer Raab Collection.

Written in the final year of Jefferson's life, the letter shows his view on how America would change human history. Part of a long-time correspondence with politician Edward Everett, Jefferson wrote the letter on July 21, 1825.

Specifically, Jefferson, the third president of the United States, highlights the importance of the Battle of Bunker Hill, which was fought on June 17, 1775, during the early stages of the Revolutionary War.

"I am very thankful to the Bunker Hill Monument Association for the honor they have done me in electing me an honorary member of that institution. The occasion (the first great battle of the Revolution) forms an epoch (时代) in the history of mankind, well worthy of the splendid ceremonies with which its first stone was lately laid," Jefferson writes. "The coincidence of circumstances too was truly fortunate, which permitted it to be laid by the hand of one so well-known (the Marquis de Lafayette) for his participation of the toil (苦活) and dangers which followed the event it signalizes."

More than 100 American troops were killed and 300 wounded in the battle, which ended in a British victory. However, over 1,000 British troops were either killed or wounded. The Marquis de Lafayette, a Frenchman, was a celebrated commander of American forces during the Revolutionary War.

In a blog (博客) post, the Raab Collection explains that the letter was given by Everett to George Washington Warren. From Warren, the letter passed to historian and collector Richard Frothingham and then to a private collector, who sold it to the Raab Collection.

The letter was published in the 1880s, but the original has been "lost to time" until now.

"This is a remarkable letter of Jefferson on the importance of independence not only to the United States but all people around the world," said Nathan Raab from the Raab Collection.

Notre Dame fire rings alarm for European monuments

语篇导读：巴黎圣母院的大火凸显了欧洲在文物保护方面存在的问题。愿警钟长鸣，不再有人类文明的瑰宝毁于烈焰。

In the wake of the fire that destroyed the inside of Notre Dame, questions are being raised about the state of thousands of other churches and palaces that have turned France — as well as Italy, Britain and Spain — into open-air museums of Western civilization.

If even such a symbol of France could not be protected from damage, it is clear that a culture of indifference (漠不关心) is threatening a shared history as well as the multibillion-dollar tourism industry upon which much of Europe depends.

"We are so used to our outstanding cultural heritage (遗产) in Europe that we tend to forget that it needs constant care and attention," Tibor Navracsics, the European Union's top culture official, said.

The wake-up call — not just for Europe but the whole world — rang in Paris. Before Notre Dame, the last global warning came when the National Museum of Brazil, one of the most important cultural institutions in South America, burned down in September. A 2015 study by the German engineering company Siemens showed that Scotland had about 10 damaging fires a year, while England lost at least a dozen listed buildings a year. Germany has seen 70 such buildings destroyed since 2000.

Every year, there's lightning or something else that destroys a tower or a roof. And all too often, fires happen during restoration (修复) work. Experts say what's lacking is the constant attention and regular maintenance (维护) that could help avoid the need for major restoration work. Officials should change their focus to prevention instead of only reacting to building disasters.

"Restoration should be seen as the failure of conservation," Juan Antonio Herráez, who is in charge of preventive conservation at the Spanish Cultural Heritage Institute, said. "We should be spending more money on maintenance."

Sneska Quaedvlieg-Mihailovicis, head of the Europa Nostra heritage foundation, agrees. "Cultural heritage is a gold mine. You cannot develop it and then just leave the mine and go to another one. It is something you really have to care for," said Quaedvlieg-Mihailovicis.

Milkha Singh

语篇导读：文章介绍了印度著名田径运动员米哈・辛格。

For a number of Indians who for over half a century have replayed a race again and again in their mind hoping it would someday throw up a different result, Milkha Singh's 400 metres final run at the Rome Olympics should be among the greatest heartbreaks in global sporting history.

However, continued adulation (称赞) for the man decades later is due to the effort by India's greatest track athlete on that September day in the Italian capital, though he still missed out on becoming India's first Olympic track medallist.

As he was growing up, he used to run barefoot daily on hot sand to school, which was situated 20 kilometres from his house. He thinks this was good training but knows it is not possible to ask children to do this today. However, he does feel that the early identification of talented athletes is also important for India's athletic teams to shine.

India has in the last few years judged success purely in terms of medals, but looking into the past reveals (显示) how a more generous generation saluted Milkha as a pioneer. Milkha is India's finest track athlete of all time. He remains the only Indian male to win an individual (个人的) Commonwealth Games athletics gold — he won the 400 metres at Cardiff in 1958, the first athlete from independent India to do so.

Since retiring from athletics, the former champion athlete has set up the Milkha Singh Charitable Trust, which helps poorer families survive if an athlete in their family has died. A percentage of the profits from the film Bhaag Milkha Bhaag are going to his trust.

Finally, let's read a quote from Milkha himself: "There is no shortcut (捷径) to success. A scene in the film shows Milkha Singh running with injured feet — this actually happened. I haven't found an alternative to hard work. You need to be patient, dedicated and true to yourself and your work."

Computer to understand the body poses (姿势) and movements

语篇导读：美国科学家研发了一种新的人工智能技术，可以让计算机读懂人类的身体语言。

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute have enabled a computer to understand the body poses and movements of multiple people from video in real time. This new method was developed with the help of the Panoptic Studio, a two-story building equipped with 500 video cameras.

Detecting the differences of nonverbal communication (非言语交际) between different people will make it possible for robots to serve in social spaces, allowing them to know what people around them are doing, what moods (心情) they are in and whether they can be interrupted. A self-driving car could get an early warning that a pedestrian is about to step into the street by monitoring body language.

"We communicate almost as much with the movement of our bodies as we do with our voice," said Yaser Sheikh, associate professor of robotics. "But computers are more or less blind to it."

In sports analytics, real-time pose detection will make it possible for computers not only to track the position of each player on the field of play, as is now the case, but to also know what players are doing with their arms, legs and heads at each point in time. The methods can be used for live events or applied to existing videos.

Tracking multiple people in real time, particularly in social situations where they may be communicating with each other, presents a number of challenges. The challenges for hand detection are even greater.

Sheikh and his colleagues managed to record everything from hand gestures to the movement of the mouth, creating huge image (影像) data sets, particularly on the hand. The method can even track multiple people at once.

"A single shot gives you 500 views of a person's hand," said Hanbyul Joo, a PhD student in robotics. "By using high-definition cameras, we were able to build a massive data set."

To encourage more research and applications, the researchers have shared their computer code (代码) for both multiperson and hand-pose detection. It already is being used by a lot of research groups, and more than 20 commercial groups, including automotive companies, have expressed interest in licensing the technology, Sheikh said.

Bottle that helps save the ocean

语篇导读 James Longcroft发明了一种可在海水中降解的瓶子，这对保护海洋有很重要的意义。

An Edinburgh-based inventor has created a fully biodegradable (可由生物降解的) bottle that is made from paper and a secret combination of plant-based materials and it could help save the planet's oceans from plastic pollution. The 27-year-old inventor claims that the bottle can also be eaten by sea creatures.

Edinburgh-based Durham University chemistry graduate James Longcroft started a non-profit bottled water company two years ago. He wanted to put all his profits into a charity that provided clean drinking water to countries in Africa.

However, after concerns about the environmental impact (巨大影响) of plastic bottles Mr Longcroft decided the Edinburgh and London-based company, Choose Water, should go plastic-free. After months of experimenting at his kitchen table he came up with a new type of water bottle which is a waterproof (防水的) paper bottle.

"The outside is made from recycled paper, but the inside has to be waterproof, and provides strength so the bottle would keep its structure, and keep the water fresh — just like plastic," Mr Longcroft said.

When the bottle is thrown in the ocean the degrading process begins within hours leaving the bottle totally degraded within weeks. The steel cap breaks down within a year.

Mr Longcroft now believes these novel bottles could revolutionise the industry and says the cost of producing the bottle is around 5 pence more than one made from single-use plastic.

"The main difficulty we face is breaking into a saturated (饱和的) market and competing with an old industry," he said. "Changing an industry will be a big uphill battle but with the support from the public we will change the way we look at bottled water."

Researchers warn that eight million tonnes (吨) of plastics currently find their way into the ocean every year — one truckload every minute. As most plastics are produced for single-use applications, these materials will stay in the environment for centuries.

"We really want to get our bottles on shelves and into people's hands as soon as possible — if we can stop even one plastic bottle ending up in the environment it will be worth it," said Mr Longcroft.

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