Bright stars on a clear night sky are one of the most stunning views. Now you can have them every day on your computer or phone screen with May’s Free Wallpaper! I hope it will give you hot summer night vibes during those colder spring days.
Each wallpaper download from May 2022 includes:
Desktop wallpaper x3 (plain, with the calendar, and with a quote)
Phone wallpaper x2 (plain and with a quote)
Tablet wallpaper
Instagram ready quote
As always, May’s free wallpaper comes with two different mobile phone layouts. They are great to use at once – the simple version for your phone background and the one with a quote for the lock screen.
Quote for May 2022
This month’s theme needed a cosmic quote. However, I wanted to keep it simple. Because of that, I went with a well-known statement about the stars. Let it guide you in those a little bit darker days as they are sometimes needed to help us appreciate all the good things that happen.
Without darkness, there are no stars
P.S the square image is also included in the download package below! Feel free to post it on your Instagram.
The free download includes three desktop options – one with the calendar and one without the calendar, and one with a quote. There is also a wallpaper for tablets and two options for the phone. We have also included an Instagram-ready square with the weekly quote.
FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY.
NOTE: this template is available as a free download through May 31, 2022 only. After that, a $5 download fee applies.
What font is it?
If you are curious about what font has been used this month, let me help! It is my all-time favorite Cosmopolitan (make sure to check it out as it comes with a few different styles and lots of extras!) and a futuristic sans font called Outer.
If you have your favorite quotes and would like them to appear on the next free wallpaper, make sure to post them in the comments below or send us your ideas via email.
Enjoy!
P.S This post includes affiliate links so by clicking them you are supporting us. Thanks!
An entire half of her day has been compressed into 40 seconds and uploaded to TikTok, where it has been played more than 11 million times and more than 2.7 million people have liked it. It is a prime example of the genre I have come to think of as a “routine vlog,” in which people memorialize, in great detail, how they spend their time …
They are fascinating insofar as they document the minutiae of someone’s life — no detail is too small, even the 60 seconds devoted to drinking water. There’s a voyeurism in seeing how someone spends her time, down to the length of her showers. And yet the vlogs are also curiously devoid of real intimacy. Most tread the same unrevelatory territory: skin care, showers, healthful meals, hydration, waking up and going to sleep. If they are mesmerizing, it’s because they are so monotonous they lull the viewer into a kind of rhythmic stupor. They depict days that all pass in much the same way, broken, from morning to night, into intervals of minutes.
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word monotonous in a sentence?
Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.
Then, read some of the other sentences students have submitted and use the “Recommend” button to vote for two original sentences that stand out to you.
If you want a better idea of how monotonous can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.
Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.
1. After looking closely at the image above (or at the full-size image), think about these three questions:
2. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)
3. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.
Each Monday, our collaborator, Visual Thinking Strategies, will facilitate a discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time by paraphrasing comments and linking to responses to help students’ understanding go deeper. You might use their responses as models for your own.
4. On Thursday afternoons, we will reveal at the bottom of this post more information about the photo. How does reading the caption and learning its back story help you see the image differently?
The Reveal
We’ll post more information here on Thursday afternoon. Stay tuned!
Students 13 and older in the United States and the Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
Each Wednesday we shine a spotlight on five student activities that support a broad range of learners. In this week’s roundup of accessible activities, we invite students to learn about the history of lead poisoning, reflect on their relationship with mindfulness and meditation, make observations about a photograph, write a short story or poem and share how they come together with their community.
Note: To learn more about this new weekly feature, read our introductory post. Please share your thoughts in the comments section or by emailing us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com.
1. Learn about the history and risks of lead in pipes and paint.
This Lesson of the Day teaches students about the history and dangers of lead poisoning. After reading the article, they will study a graph to see how lead affects people nationwide, and then specifically in their region.
2. Reflect on mindfulness.
In this Student Opinion, students will do a five-minute meditation and share how they feel after meditating. Then, they can share what role mindfulness plays in their daily life and if there are other things they do to feel grounded. Students can share their responses with classmates or in the comments section.
3. What’s Going On in This Picture?
Students can test out their observational skills as they look at a photograph, stripped of its caption, and try to figure out what’s happening in the image. They can share their observations in the comments section and read what the moderators and other young people have to say about the picture.
4. Write a story inspired by an image.
In this Picture Prompt, students will look closely at an image from The Times. Then, they will write a story or poem inspired by the image, or share what the image reminds them of. They can share their writing in the comments section.
5. Share the ways you gather with your community.
Students will travel to San Antonio, Texas, and learn about Fiesta, a celebration with roots dating back to 1891. Then they will respond to the question: How do you come together with your community?
On Monday, the entrepreneur Elon Musk struck a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion. The Times reports:
The billionaire, who has more than 83 million followers on Twitter and has romped across the service hurling gibes and memes, has repeatedly said he wants to “transform” the platform by promoting more free speech and giving users more control over what they see on it. By taking the company private, Mr. Musk could work on the service out of sight of the prying eyes of investors, regulators and others.
What do you think about Mr. Musk’s purchase of Twitter? Based on what you know about Mr. Musk, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the company under his leadership? If you use Twitter, will this change in ownership affect the way you engage with the platform?
Soon, Mr. Musk will be the one confronting the gap between an idealized view of free speech and the zillion tough decisions that must be made to let everyone have a say.
His agreement to buy Twitter puts the combative billionaire, who is also the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, at the white-hot center of the global free-speech debate. Mr. Musk has not been specific about his plans once he becomes Twitter’s owner, but he has bristled when the company has removed posts and barred users, and has said Twitter should be a haven for unfettered expression within the bounds of the law.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Mr. Musk said in a statement announcing the deal.
Mr. Musk is a relative dilettante on the topic and hasn’t yet tackled the difficult trade-offs in which giving one person a voice may silence the expression of others, and in which an almost-anything-goes space for expression might be overrun with spam, nudity, propaganda from autocrats, the bullying of children and violent incitements.
“We need to protect freedom of speech in order to make our democracy work,” said Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “But there is a lot of distance to cover from that premise to the kinds of decisions that social media companies have to make every day.”
Almost no place on the internet or in the physical world is a zone of absolute free expression. The challenge of online expression is the challenge of expression, period, with questions that have few simple answers: When is more speech better, and when is it worse? And who gets to decide?
In countries with strong courts, civic groups and news media to hold politicians accountable, it may be relatively benign when elected leaders trash talk their opponents online. But in countries such as Myanmar, Saudi Arabia and Somalia, government leaders have weaponized social media to subject their critics to relentless verbal harassment, to spread lies that go mostly unchecked or to incite ethnic violence.
If Twitter wants to pull back from moderating speech on its site, will people be less willing to hang out where they might be harassed by those who disagree with them and swamped by pitches for cryptocurrency, fake Gucci handbags or pornography?
The column concludes:
There is no getting around the fact that Mr. Musk will join Mr. Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, TikTok’s Shouzi Chew and Apple’s Tim Cook as the handful of corporate executives who have enormous say over granting or denying access to influential platforms of global discourse.
One of the paradoxes of the Silicon Valley revolution is that it disempowered old gatekeepers of information and persuasion such as media tycoons and political leaders but created new ones. Mr. Musk’s purchase of Twitter won’t change that. We may not want these digital media barons to have so much power, but the reality is that they do.
How much do you think speech should be moderated on Twitter and other social media platforms? Do you think there are certain kinds of messages — like harassment, hate speech, misinformation or spam — that users should not be allowed to post? Why or why not?
What risks are there to less content moderation on social media? What benefits are there? In your opinion, do the benefits outweigh the risks? Why or why not?
“The deal will give Musk enormous influence over politicians, celebrities and the media, with the ability to platform and de-platform them at will,” Andrew Ross Sorkin, a Times columnist, writes in our newsletter The Morning. Do you agree with this interpretation? How do you feel about the ability of Mr. Musk, and other billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, to make the rules for influential social media platforms?
In an Opinion essay, the author Anand Giridharadas writes that Twitter faces problems with disinformation, racism and bullying and harassment. Have you experienced these on Twitter or elsewhere on social media? Do you think the loosening of content moderation guidelines is likely to exacerbate or resolve these problems?
Mr. Musk has suggested that he may make several changes to Twitter, including to its content moderation policies and its algorithm. Imagine you were in charge of a major social media platform. How would you alter it? Why?
When you’re applying for a job, you want to take every opportunity you have to explain why you’d be a great fit for the role. This is especially true in competitive tech fields, like data science, where hiring managers might have very little time to review each application. And while your resume is the key document in your application, your cover letter is also an important player when applying for jobs.
Here’s how to write a cover letter that stands out when you’re trying to land a job as a Data Scientist — and keep reading for a fully written example.
But first: Do you need a cover letter?
Even though it’s common to see cover letters as an optional part of the job application now, a great cover letter can make the difference between getting lost in the pile of applicants and landing an interview for your dream job.
If you think of your cover letter as a “best of” album, then it’s an opportunity to pick out the most relevant parts of your professional history and go into more detail. Also, including a cover letter with your application is a sign that you’re taking the job-hunting process seriously, and that you’re really interested in working at the company since you took the time to go above and beyond the application expectations.
The only time you wouldn’t want to submit a cover letter is if the application instructions specifically ask you not to include one. But that’s a rare scenario.
How to write a Data Scientist cover letter
Cover letters typically have five standard sections: the heading, greeting, introduction paragraph, body paragraphs, and closing. Remember that when you’re applying for multiple positions you’ll want to tweak information in the greeting, introduction paragraph, and body paragraphs to match each job description and company. Here’s what you can put in each section.
Heading
The heading includes your full name, professional email address, and phone number. Depending on how you format your cover letter, you could use a larger font than the body paragraphs for your name so it stands out and is easy for the hiring manager to see. You may also want to put links to your portfolio and LinkedIn profile here as well, but those are optional.
Greeting
If the job description doesn’t tell you who to address your cover letter to (there’s about a 50/50 chance this information will be given), you can try finding the hiring manager or team lead’s name on the company website or LinkedIn. But don’t spend too much time looking — it’s okay to use a general greeting like “Dear Hiring Manager” if you can’t find a specific name.
Introduction paragraph
It’s easy to get hung up on the introduction paragraph, but you really don’t need to overthink this part. Just a couple of short and direct sentences are all you need here. You simply want to introduce yourself and state the position you’re applying to, and then follow that up with a bit of information about yourself.
Your introduction paragraph could read, “My name is Cait Ferguson, and I’m excited to apply for the Senior Data Scientist position at Source Health. My experience in statistical modeling and relational databases, as well as my proficiency in Python and Julia, would make me a great addition to your team and company.”
Body paragraphs
Since you submit a cover letter along with your resume and portfolio, these paragraphs shouldn’t be a summary of what’s in either of these other documents. This is your chance to give the hiring manager new information about you and your work experience.
Here is where you want to talk about an experience or accomplishment that isn’t obvious on your resume but gives details the hiring manager would be interested to learn. When you’re picking examples to write about, you can use the STAR techniques to help you. A STAR story includes:
Situation: briefly explain what was going on and any relevant background details
Task: talk about what your tasks or responsibilities were in the context of the situation
Action: explain what you did to achieve the goal or fix the situation
Result: summarize the results of your actions, specifically how they positively affected the company and how you grew professionally
Here’s an example of a STAR story that someone could include in a Data Scientist cover letter:
Situation: “At a local science center where I volunteered, we noticed that membership numbers were significantly below target. We knew that lower member numbers would impact the organization’s growth and, subsequently, our access to future grant funding.”
Task: “My role at the time was events organizer, and I offered to help revamp the programming to bring in more members. I requested access to the membership database, which included household information about each member.”
Action: “Using the skills I learned in my machine learning course, I found that families were more likely to become long-time members if they had toddlers, while families with teenagers and without kids were more likely to drop their membership after one or two years.”
Result: “I worked with the rest of the events team to create a new educational program designed for toddlers, including events open only to members. Two quarters later, we were already above our membership targets. It was a great opportunity to apply my skills and help a great organization at the same time.”
Note that it doesn’t have to be a paid professional role to count as relevant experience. Volunteer and internship experiences can be just as powerful, especially for entry-level professionals.
You can also use your cover letter to discuss any areas in your application that might be seen as a red flag. Maybe this is an employment gap or if you changed careers and want to give some background context to that decision, you can do that here.
Closing
This is another short and to-the-point section of your cover letter. If you want to, you can write a couple sentences that show how excited you are about the position, or end with a simple, “Thank you for your time and consideration, and I look forward to speaking with you soon.” Either of these options is perfectly fine.
My name is Briana Simon, and I’m reaching out to apply for the Data Scientist (NLP) position at CoreAnalytics. My experience with NLP, as well as my proficiency in Python and SQL, would be a great contribution to your team and company.
Over the past three years, I’ve worked at TalentAI on the NLP team. I started as an intern, and I was promoted to Junior Data Scientist when my six-month internship finished. In addition to my technical skills, one of my strengths is communicating results with internal and external clients in a succinct, digestible fashion. This allowed me to take on the responsibility of presenting project updates to partners and senior management.
I also worked on a number of projects to improve the e-commerce experience on existing websites while at TalentAI. In total, I implemented over 115 A/B tests on five websites. One of the websites saw a 200% increase in online orders, and due to the results of this project, TalentAI secured additional contracts with this client.
Thank you for your time and consideration, and I’m looking forward to discussing more how my experience and skills can support the data science team at CoreAnalytics.
Sincerely, Briana Simon
Preparing for your new role as a Data Scientist
There are a lot of reasons to pursue a career in data science. It’s a growing, in-demand field, the work is stimulating, and it’s well-suited for career switchers who bring subject-matter expertise.
If you’re interested in pursuing a career in data science, our Data Scientist career paths will teach you to analyze data, communicate your findings, and draw predictions using machine learning. You’ll also add projects to your portfolio along the way that can help you land a job in data science.
Looking for more career advice? Check out our Career Center for more cover letter tips, resume writing advice, and interview prep.
Then, create a 50-word piece of writing in which you correctly and creatively use at least four of the words. Submit your story (or poem, or song) by commenting on this post between now and May 31.
Here is what we are looking for:
It is most important that you use each vocabulary word correctly — according to its definition. We will not consider any entries in which a word is used incorrectly.
Use as many vocabulary words as you can, but without crossing a line into gibberish or inanity. Do not simply list the words; we are looking for entries that demonstrate your understanding of the vocabulary.
Finally, we are looking for pieces of writing that are creative, original and make sense. Your comment can be fact or fiction, silly or serious; we care most that you learn new vocabulary and have fun.
And here are a few more rules:
Your story must be 50 words or fewer and use at least four of the listed vocabulary words.
Identify your vocabulary words by writing them in ALL CAPS (see the bottom of this post for examples).
Submit your entry as a comment on this post by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time on May 31.
It is acceptable to use a word in a different tense or to use the plural of a word that is listed in the singular.
However, you cannot change a word’s part of speech. For example, if the word “candor” is listed as a noun, you cannot substitute the adjective “candid.”
Minimum Age Requirements: Middle and high school students ages 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, can submit by commenting on this post. Teachers and parents can submit on behalf of students in middle or high school who do not meet these age requirements. If you are submitting on behalf of a student, please include the student’s name at the bottom of the comment.
Please submit only one story per student. You cannot edit your comment once it has been submitted.
The Vocabulary Words
Your piece of writing should draw from the words below. Each links to a Word of the Day post with the word’s definition and an example of how it has been used in The New York Times. To find more usage examples, consult the Vocabulary.com online dictionary.
The winners of our March Vocabulary Challenge used poetry and prose to describe unruly animals, a captive princess and a disagreeable intellectual.
Aria Capelli, age 16, The Athenian School, Danville, Calif.
Aperta Sesamae! With METICULOUS enunciation, she intoned the incantation, clutching the BROACH in anticipation. Unclasping, the pin radiated a beam that ILLUMINATED the dull school EDIFICE and conjured a MENAGERIE of beasts and birds. Yet terror replaced wonderment as the scene turned MACABRE, the ravenous animals hungrily eyeing their summoner.
Nicole Janowicz, age 12, Deerpath Middle School, Lake Forest, Ill.
This CANTANKEROUS MENAGERIE
Is very difficult to handle; you will soon see.
My UNAVAILING effort to calm them down
Might result in having to bring them to town.
This EDIFICE won’t hold them for long
But oh, boy, these IGNOMINIOUS animals are doing everything wrong.
Mi Nguyen, age 16, Silver Creek High School, San Jose, Calif.
After days of METICULOUS prepping and planning, the lost princess was ready to escape her captor and the crumbling, old EDIFICE where she had been locked away for the past 18 years. Her LUMINOUS BROACH caught the moonlight as a tear streaked down her cheek; she was finally going home.
Saanvi , Bengaluru, India
A MENAGERIE of intellectuals had gathered at the Burj Khalifa — its EDIFICE ILLUMINATED with the hologram of a skull — to ruminate over the MACABRE topic of death. One of these was a CANTANKEROUS old man, whose disinterest toward the topic GALVANIZED the rest to convince him of its significance.
Use your imagination to write the opening of a short story or poem inspired by this illustration — or, tell us about a memory from your own life that this image makes you think of.
Post it in the comments, then read the related newsletter to learn more.
Want more Picture Prompts? Find them all in this column.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
The word cleave has appeared in 21 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Feb. 17 in “The Paradox of the Lizard Tail, Solved” by Jack Tamisiea:
At a microscopic scale, they could see that each fracture where the tail had detached from the body was brimming with mushroom-shaped pillars. Zooming in even more, they saw that each mushroom cap was dotted with tiny pores. The team was surprised to find that instead of parts of the tail interlocking along the fracture planes, the dense pockets of micropillars on each segment appeared to touch only lightly. This made the lizard tail seem like a brittle constellation of loosely connected segments.
… While these microstructures can withstand pulling, the team found that they were susceptible to splintering from a slight twist. They determined that the tails were 17 times more likely to fracture from bending than from being pulled. In the slow-motion videos the researchers took, the lizards twisted their tails to cleanly cleave them in two along the fleshy fracture plane.
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word cleave in a sentence?
Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.
Then, read some of the other sentences students have submitted and use the “Recommend” button to vote for two original sentences that stand out to you.
If you want a better idea of how cleave can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.
Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.
What are the parks like in your community? What do you and your family and friends do there? What is your favorite park? Why?
If you have ever been to Central Park in New York City, the Biltmore Estate grounds in North Carolina, Niagra Falls State Park in New York or Cherokee Park in Louisville, Kentucky, you have been to a park created by the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed over 100 public parks in his lifetime. Are there any Olmstead parks in your area?
In “Olmsted’s Enduring Gift”Ruth Fremson, a photographer, and Audra D.S. Burch, a writer, collaborated on a visual essay about Frederick Law Olmsted’s parks. Some of the images are illustrated with descriptions like these:
The freedom of hymns sung in the rain and lonely night strolls in Central Park; the break dancer spinning in the afternoon light and the couple who said, “I do,” along the Emerald Necklace in Boston the man clutching an American flag outside a vigil on the U.S. Capitol grounds; and the hillside headstones standing sentry at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, Calif., all belong to the legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted — landscape architect, social reformer and believer in public parks as a democratic ideal.
The essay quotes Olmsted: “Where there were parks, they gave the highest assurance of safety, as well as a grateful sense of peculiarly fresh and pure air.” It continues:
His parks helped sustain Americans’ mental and physical health and social connections during the darkest days of the pandemic. As Covid-19 lockdowns unlaced nearly every familiar aspect of life, parks were reaffirmed as respite, an escape from quarantine.
For Olmsted, much of the story of public spaces began in 1850, when he visited England’s Birkenhead Park. He was charmed by its approach — free for all people — which influenced his own thinking about what it means to have a park without social or economic barriers.
Along with a collaborator, Calvert Vaux, Olmsted designed Central Park in the late 1850s. The oasis on the island of Manhattan was meant as a calming antidote to the dizzying rush of city life.
What memories do you have of spending time in parks when you were younger? Tell a story about one such memory.
What do parks mean to you as a teenager? Do you hang out with friends at parks? Play basketball? Or meet up with family for a barbecue or picnic?
Describe your favorite park in your community or elsewhere. What makes this park special?
Why do you think it is important that communities have access to parks?
Do you think your community has adequate access to parks and green space? Why or why not? How do you think your life be different if there were more parks in your area? Fewer?
According to this article, “Olmsted understood the promise of the park as a social force that would become anamenity in city life over the decades. In his view, parks were imbuedwith an exquisite kind of healing power. They were beautiful, born of nature, reimagined by man. He idealized them as literal common grounds forging communities, unstratified by race or class or faith.”Do the parks you visit play this role? Do they offer “healing power”?Are they places where barriers of race, class and faith are broken down? Why or why not?
Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
