Name: The perfect day.
Apearance: Data driven.
The perfect day? Huh. Good luck with that. You seem down — is your day going badly?
Photo: Reuters
Honestly, it’s a mixed bag. The world is sliding into geopolitical chaos and climate collapse while Jeff Bezos sends Katy Perry into space, but on the plus side, I’ve just made a great sandwich. Would you like to know how to make it better?
My sandwich? Impossible. No, your day.
Let me guess. Is it generational wealth? No, there’s a new formula for how to have a good day.
A formula — what is this, GCSE chemistry? It’s social science, actually. Researchers at the University of British Columbia have used machine-learning techniques to analyze data from the American Time Use Survey and work out how the amount of time people devoted to various activities determined whether they rated their day as “better than typical.”
I see. So what’s the formula? Well, there’s six hours of family time and two hours with friends, plus an hour and a half of extra socializing, for a start.
Exhausting. Do introverts not contribute to the American Time Use Survey? Some of them seem to: one of the findings was that, while socializing was an important part of a better than average day, there was little benefit beyond two hours of it.
That makes sense — there’s a limit to how long I want to spend talking with Dave next door about the bins. “Some activities may be best in small doses, like a touch of salt when baking cookies,” the research team theorized. “While other activities may be akin to chocolate chips, where more is almost always better.”
Very true. What else should I be doing? Well, speaking of chocolate chips, there’s an hour of eating and drinking in there.
Easy. Anything else? Two hours of exercise.
Twice as much time exercising as eating and drinking? Madness. Data doesn’t lie. Better than average days involved work, too, though not more than six hours of it.
Yes, six hours of work is plenty. I need time for zoning out watching TikToks of medieval dog names and murderous emus. Sorry, no — you should only be having an hour of screen time.
So how am I supposed to relax? Well, here’s the strangest finding from this research: “Time spent relaxing was always negatively associated with having a good day.”
What? Strange, isn’t it? The research team think it’s because most of that time is spent watching TV.
In the age of prestige streaming? Unlikely. It’s probably because these days, we need lives stuffed with work, exercise and other people to distract ourselves from impending doom. Sssh, eat your sandwich.
Do say: “Such a perfect day, drink sangria in the park.”
Don’t say: “For a period not exceeding one hour, followed by a two-hour high-intensity interval training workout.”
April 14 to April 20 In March 1947, Sising Katadrepan urged the government to drop the “high mountain people” (高山族) designation for Indigenous Taiwanese and refer to them as “Taiwan people” (台灣族). He considered the term derogatory, arguing that it made them sound like animals. The Taiwan Provincial Government agreed to stop using the term, stating that Indigenous Taiwanese suffered all sorts of discrimination and oppression under the Japanese and were forced to live in the mountains as outsiders to society. Now, under the new regime, they would be seen as equals, thus they should be henceforth
Last week, the the National Immigration Agency (NIA) told the legislature that more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) risked having their citizenship revoked if they failed to provide proof that they had renounced their Chinese household registration within the next three months. Renunciation is required under the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), as amended in 2004, though it was only a legal requirement after 2000. Prior to that, it had been only an administrative requirement since the Nationality Act (國籍法) was established in
Three big changes have transformed the landscape of Taiwan’s local patronage factions: Increasing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) involvement, rising new factions and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) significantly weakened control. GREEN FACTIONS It is said that “south of the Zhuoshui River (濁水溪), there is no blue-green divide,” meaning that from Yunlin County south there is no difference between KMT and DPP politicians. This is not always true, but there is more than a grain of truth to it. Traditionally, DPP factions are viewed as national entities, with their primary function to secure plum positions in the party and government. This is not unusual
US President Donald Trump’s bid to take back control of the Panama Canal has put his counterpart Jose Raul Mulino in a difficult position and revived fears in the Central American country that US military bases will return. After Trump vowed to reclaim the interoceanic waterway from Chinese influence, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed an agreement with the Mulino administration last week for the US to deploy troops in areas adjacent to the canal. For more than two decades, after handing over control of the strategically vital waterway to Panama in 1999 and dismantling the bases that protected it, Washington has
RSS