Practice #8 Today I read a news article connecting two companies that I don't think could be related together: Pinduoduo and Tesla. Pinduoduo is an Ecommerce platform that is known for offering its costumers generous subsidies. Tesla is the most valuable company of carmakers bypassing dealers to sell its electric vehicles directly to customers via its website. The two companies sound unrelated but they clashed with each other recently. Pinduoduo sold a Tesla Model 3 with a price significantly lower than its price tag. However, Tesla said they would not deliver the car and pointed to a company policy that resale is banned.

Practice #7 Today I read a news article talking about the novel coronavirus vaccine invented by Russia. "The vaccine is effective enough." Said by President Putin, and his own daughter has taken it. Though many health authorities doubted the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine since it has yet to complete the last-stage clinical trials. Some critics said that the Russian dash is for winning the global race for the vaccine because it doesn't want to be left behind by China and the U.S.- the two countries poured billions into the scientific research.

Practice #7 Today I read heartbreaking news about Ms. Fares, the 24-year-old bride-to-be who will never have the wedding. She is one of the victims killed by the massive explosion on Tuesday, in Port of Beirut. Ms. Fares was a determined daughter from a family of modest means. She devoted herself to an almost all-male world and became an excellent paramedic. "The nation is not worth her sacrifice and commitment. And her death conveyed a message to our youth that if you commit to the nation, you could lose everything. I wish we had a proper state." Said one of Ms. Fares' friend.

Practice #6 This news article talks about the dealmaking process of TikTok selling its U.S. business to Microsoft Corp. The negotiation over TikTok is not just a purely business dealing because U.S. government officials have involved in this process all the time. Obviously, President Trump is making efforts to close the U.S. border to Chinese companies deemed a potential threat. Under this situation, global technology companies could be used as political bargaining chips. Trump, the capricious U.S. president, made the negotiation harder. Last week, Microsoft and TikTok almost closed the deal but Trump changed his minds and threw a wrench into the talks by saying he preferred an outright ban of the video-sharing app instead of making its operations under Microsoft's control.

Practice #5 Among the European countries, Denmark took immediate steps to control the COVID-19 very well. Besides the reasonable policies that the government conducted, Samfundssind, a word buried in the history books, was considered as an important part of the story. You can think of the word as putting the interests of the society above your own personal interests. This word lifted the community spirit and made Danes came together to fight against the pandemic. Rasmus Munk, a previous fine dinner cook, had whipped up 300 daily down-to-earth staples to homeless and socially vulnerable residents by March 19. He was asked why pivoted from making molecular gastronomy to offering down-to-earth staples, and his answer was "I just felt obligated to do something beyond my own needs rather than staying at home relaxing".

Practice #4 Lately, I've been reading a book, Upheaval, written by Jared Diamond. This book talks about how individuals and nation countries cope with their crisis. I like the topic because it reminds me of some of the personal crisis that I've gotten through. Today, I read news about Alexander Hamilton, the Broadway musical. Alexander Hamilton was an outsider from the Caribbean, with no money and scant connection who found his way to George Washington's rights hands and the front of the $10 bill. This is an inspiring story telling us how an ordinary person could help his country went through the national crisis.

Practice #3 Here is some news about TikTok. As everybody knows, Trump is considering taking steps to ban TikTok in the U.S. Even though there is plenty more that U.S government could do to ensure TikTok to play a responsible role, Trump seemed to want to get rid of the app altogether. TikTok did accumulate many problems, such as TikTok conspiracy, TikTok extremism, the list goes on. However, some fellows in White House said U.S government should make an example of TikTok instead of removing it completely from the country.

A practice This is just to paraphrase a new... This news introduces a sad story about Airbnb. Airbnb, a rare commitment culture company that valued people and principle over daily stock moves, just made a hard decision to lay off 1900 employees, which took up one-quarter of the workforce. Coronavirus is the reason behind it. Like many other industries, Airbnb's home rental business was crushed by the pandemic and they have to do layoffs to reduce their budget. Looking into her webcam, Julie Hampton asked the chief executive that why there weren't furloughs or border pay cuts instead of layoffs. The answer was that layoff was the best copping method when facing such an extremely uncertain situation.

Imposer syndrome As a Ph.D. student, I feel guilty usually. For example, I feel guilty because taking one day off -- somehow I feel like I need to constantly keep working because I don't have a specific off time. Not like a nine-to-five job, researchers need to keep their project in their minds always because you can find your inspiration anywhere at any time (for me, ideas usually emerge when taking a shower). Well, I just realized the title is "imposter syndrome" and I haven't touched upon the topic so I decided to add more....... A personal experience of imposter syndrome is that I did produce some nice graphs for a research project and I don't feel like that I am the one who actually contributes to it. The reason is that I asked around when I struggled of making the graphs. I asked my friends and they helped me a lot, such as giving me the basic code (so I can edited them to suit my purpose) and fixingmy bugs. So, somehow I feel I "stolen" the codes from my friends and they are not my codes and I am the imposter.