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When Tonee Carter sits in front of a piano, his fingers take on a life of their own, dancing across the keys as he smiles, closes his eyes, and sinks into a melody.

Carter, 66, isn’t famous, but he does perform for an international audience nearly every day at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Travelers lucky enough to hear him often find themselves attracted by his music. That’s what happened to Carlos Whittaker, a motivational speaker who was traveling home to Tennessee. “As I was walking through the hall, I heard someone playing the piano,” Whittaker, 46, told CNN.

While listening to the music that seemed to effortlessly flow from Carter’s fingertips, Whittaker, the influencer on social media also took videos of the musician and shared them with his more than 200,000 followers. And an idea hit Whittaker. “Suddenly I was like, what would happen if I asked my followers if we could give him the biggest tip he’s ever gotten,” he said. “As of this conversation, we had raised $61,000.”

Carter was just 6 years old when his father, also a pianist, took him to a Ray Charles concert. But Carter hasn’t had the easiest life. In fact, Carter has had serious kidney disease since 2008. “I thought he was kidding. I just couldn’t believe it,” Cater told CNN. “This is the kind of thing I do. I love giving and donating and helping people, but I never expected someone to do it for me.”

Whittaker has used his social media platform to raise funds for others in the past. Earlier this month, he and his followers raised $230,000 for Brooklyn To Alaska, a non-profit organization that sends urban teenagers on an adventure to Alaska.

Carter plans to use the money to help people the way Whittaker has helped him. “That $61,000 is not mine. It’s the money that’s going to go to others,” Carter said. “There is only one way to say thank you, because words aren’t enough. And that is to pay this forward.

Since the Apollo missions began, space programs have offered a unique perspective on our home planet. Its most fascinating legacy may have been, not visiting the moon—the barren world that is our planetary companion, but giving us a view of the bounteous (富饶的) world that is our home.

The Apollo missions, which concluded in 1972, occurred alongside the birth of the modern environmental movement—the founding of Friends of the Earth in 1969 and Greenpeace in 1971, the first Earth Day in 1970, among other important events—and the sight of Earth from space offered inspiration and motivation.

When Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders snapped a photograph of Earth, partially in shadow, rising above the moon’s surface in 1968, he provided the clearest image yet seen of our world and its fragility (脆弱) in space. Many years later, photographer Galen Rowell described “Earthrise” as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.” “Earthrise” was followed by “Blue Marble”, a view of the Earth taken from the Apollo 17 spacecraft in 1972. That was the last of the Apollo moon missions, but NASA’s space exploration continued to take longing glances back toward their home world.

In 1989, NASA formalized a Mission to Planet Earth, in which examining the third planet from the sun was no longer incidental to its work but central to it. In the three decades since then, the agency’s Earth Science program observation has expanded along with both the technological ability and the growing necessity to do so. NASA and partners such as the European Space Agency (ESA) have compiled an ever-growing image library of our own planet.

The images reveal how Earth is transformed by land use, human activities, weather phenomena and climate changes. The thousands upon thousands of images reveal moments in time and seemingly timeless vistas, of our world up close and from afar. As Anders himself observed, 50 years after his first “Earthrise” image was released, “We set out to explore the moon, and instead discovered the Earth.”

If you’ve ever hung around scientists, you’ve most likely heard one of them say “the best explanation is the simplest one. But is it? From the behavior of ants to the occurrence of tornadoes, the natural world is often quite complex. Why should we assume the simplest explanation is closest to the truth?

This idea is known as Occam’s (or Ockham’s) razor. It’s also referred to as “rule of economy”. And it bears a family relationship to the “principle of least astonishment,” which holds that if an explanation is too surprising, it’s probably not right. The name comes from William of Ockham, a 14th-century scholastic philosopher. He created the principle that “entities (实体) should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” The philosophical claim is a form of ontological minimalism: we should not invoke entities unless we have evidence that they exist. In other words, don’t make stuff up.

In 1687, Isaac Newton expanded on the notion with his concept of a vera causa — a true cause, stating that we should admit only causes that were both true and sufficient to explain natural phenomena. He added that Nature did nothing in vain and Nature was pleased with simplicity. Although Newton was a great scientist, this claim seems odd. Who is to say what “pleases Nature”? Doesn’t this guidance assume we know what we are in fact trying to figure out?

Consider the world of Physics filled with explanations that are surprising, unexpected and hard to get your head around. Newton explained light as being made of particles, whereas other scientists explained it as a wave. Quantum mechanics, however, tells us light is both a wave and a particle. Newton’s account was simpler, but modern physics tells us the more complex model is closer to the truth.

When we turn to biology, things get even more complicated. Imagine two smokers, both of whom went through a pack a day for 30 years. One gets cancer; the other doesn’t. The simplest explanation? For decades the tobacco industry’s answer was that smoking doesn’t cause cancer. Simple but false. In fact, disease is complex, and we don’t yet understand all the factors involved in cancer.

Occam’s razor is not a fact or even a theory. It’s a metaphysical (形而上学的) principle: an idea held independently of empirical (实证的) evidence. In human affairs, things are more often than not complex. Human motivations are typically multiple. People can be good and bad at the same time, selfish and selfless, depending on circumstances. The shelves of ethicists are filled with books thinking why good people do bad things, and their answers are rarely short and sweet.

Our explanations should match the world as best as we can make them. Science is about allowing things to unfold naturally, and sometimes this means accepting that the truth is not simple, even if it would make our lives easier if it were.

Recently, I sat in a lecture hall with a couple of hundred final-year undergraduate students. 【小题1】 When I was about to graduate, the future seemed unclear. I didn’t have a place on a company graduate programme like many of my classmates. Decades on, I realized that what seemed like obvious career ladders weren’t so simple.

In the UK at least, the job market for today’s graduates seems good. The annual report by the Institute of Student Employers found that graduate recruitment could increase by 5% in 2023-24. Companies struggled to recruit in areas such as digital, engineering and finance. 【小题2】 — with an average of 86 applications for every opening.

【小题3】 The Chartered Institution of Personnel and Development’s good work survey found that only 35% of people said their job offered good opportunities for career advancement.

There are a few reasons why people find it difficult to advance on the career ladder. One of them many people struggle is that career ladders are becoming smaller. As large organizations have slimmed down, so have the internal paths for promotion. 【小题4】 As work gets outsourced to gig workers, there are few opportunities for developing new skills and stepping up.

Another issue is that increasing numbers of people just aren’t interested in climbing the ladder. The recent iteration of the world values survey found millennials and generation Z placed less value on work than they used to. A decade ago, 41% of millennials thought work should come first while that number is 14% today. 【小题5】

One of the quickest ways to get a job lately has been to announce on social media that you were laid off (解雇).

Despite the overall strength of the job market, layoffs have been increasing in recent months. Companies in the entertainment, automotive, and financial industries, such as Netflix, Tesla, and JPMorgan Chase, have all announced layoffs, and more are _______ in the technology, aerospace, and travel sectors.

However, many recently laid-off _______ are turning to social media platforms to share their experiences and seek new employment opportunities. What was once considered an embarrassing no-no has now become a(n) _______ step to show one’s toughness and readiness for new challenges.

Nathan Felt, _______, shared his layoff experience online after losing his position as a director of product design at Guaranteed Rate. He expressed a mix of disappointment and hope for the future, and provided a podcast discussing how _______ can lead to growth opportunities. His post, which did not _______ ask for a job, received numerous responses, including several job offers. He eventually started a new role as a product-design leader at Amazon.

Career coaches advise job seekers to avoid _______ sadness in their online posts. _______, they suggest expressing gratitude for their previous employment and conveying eagerness for new opportunities. Liz Maupin, a marketing producer in Los Angeles, posted about her being fired. She wrote, “If you hear of anything, I’m a lovely producer and am _______ about keeping working.” Within 24 hours, she was flooded with responses, and one of them turned into a job offer, which she described as “________”.

Others who have successfully found new jobs through social media emphasize the importance of providing ________ information, such as job titles, experience levels, and their value to a team. Sarah Nelson, who works in human resources, ________ her layoff from a San Francisco firm on a social media platform. She ________ in conversations with several companies. Recently she started a new remote job as a recruiter (招聘人员) with Dandy, an online dental lab platform, in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Silvia Fuentes, who revealed her layoff last week, specified that she was seeking a mid-level digital product designer role. She included the phrase “hmu” (“hit me up”, meaning “contact me”) in her ________ for job opportunities. She was ________ by several professionals online in no time, and she has had a few initial conversations so far.