In the past, video conference technology was mainly used for just a few elements of business meetings or hangouts with friends and family. Now, video conference tools are essential for our productivity, learning and social interaction. We use them not only for fun, but mainly as a meaningful part of our work.

However, once we start to join endless video calls for a few hours each day, we become very tired. This term is called “zoom fatigue”, and it’s related to overusing virtual communication platforms.

There are some advantages of using video conferencing tools. Without them, it might be impossible for us to work from home. But what we haven’t expected is a price that we need to pay for that sort of convenience.

When we are having a face-to-face conversation with others, everything seems pretty natural. While speaking, you look into the eyes, sometimes slightly moving your stare onto something else. You know when to stop talking and when to speak up. Even if you’re in a conference room with 10 people, you don’t have a terrible feeling of being observed all the time. You notice that people mostly look at the person who is speaking, and then they move their attention onto someone else. But when you use a teleconferencing tool, things are different. Being physically on camera makes you very aware of being watched all the time, because you don’t know who is looking at you. You just see many faces on your screen.

Marissa Shuffler from Clemson University once said, “When you’re on a video conference, you know everybody’s looking at you; you are on stage, so there comes the social pressure—a feeling like you need to perform. Being performative is stressful.”

Moreover, there is another interesting tendency as far as video calls are concerned. Who are you looking at most of the time? The answer is yourself. For most people, it’s hard not to look at their own face if they can see it on the screen. We are likely to make sure that our head is at the right angle and that our shirt isn’t creased.

Yogita Dighe works as a salesperson at an electronics store in Aundh, an upmarket neighbourhood in Pune, India’s ninth-largest city.

Even though she has a comfortable job, Dighe used to be filled with uneasiness at the thought of having to use the store’s toilet. It is a unisex space shared by customers and staff, and is “constantly dirty” owing to overuse, being cleaned only once every day.

A year ago, Dighe discovered a “Ti bus” (“ti” means “her” in Marathi) —a restroom inside a decommissioned bus, parked about five minutes away from her workplace. Since then, she’s used it regularly. Cleaned after every use, the toilets within the bus “feel nice and fresh”.

Currently, 12 decommissioned city buses in Pune have been turned into restrooms by SaraPlast, a private sanitation (卫生设备) company. Each solar-powered bus toilet comes with a full-time female attendant and can be accessed either free of charge or for a fee of 5 rupees, affordable even for low-income women. Showers, breastfeeding and baby-changing stations, and drinking water are all included in the buses to meet the needs of every woman.

A kiosk (小摊棚) selling masks and juices has been set up on one side of the bus, making it a sustainable business. Ads on the bus also bring in profits, which go towards water supply, electricity, repairs and the salary of the attendant who cleans and maintains the restroom from 8 a. m. to 8 p. m.

“Every person, whether rich or poor, should have access to a good, clean toilet,” SaraPlast states, “A public bus goes out of service after 15 years in India. Transforming it into the restroom extends its life by up to two decades, aside from the social service it offers.” This concept was so well received that other cities are following in Pune’s footsteps.

There are few places on Earth that humans haven’t messed up. Now even Antarctica, the only continent with no permanent human inhabitants, is being altered by us. A study found that the increasing human presence in Antarctica is causing more snow melt-bad news for a frozen world already battling the effects of human-caused global warming.

Black carbon, the dark, dusty pollution that comes from burning fossil fuels has settled in locations where tourists and researchers spend a lot of time, scientists found. Even the smallest amount of the dark pollutant can have a significant impact on melting because of its very low reflectiveness: things that are light in color, like snow, reflect the sun's energy and stay cool; things that are dark, like black carbon, absorb the sun's energy and warm up.

“The snow albedo (反射率) effect is one of the largest uncertainties in regional and global climate modeling right now,” Alia Khan, a snow and ice scientist at Western Washington University, told CNN. “That’s one of the motivations for the study, to quantify the impact of black carbon on regional snowmelt, which is important for quantifying the role of black carbon in the global loss of snow and ice.”

“Antarctica is sitting there pretty much silently all year. But, if it weren’t there, in the state that it is meant to be, the balance that we have in the climate system will no longer be,” Marilyn Raphael, a geography professor said. “Antarctica’s sea ice is also important to maintain a balance in atmospheric circulation,” he added. As waters get warmer, some Antarctic creatures are finding their homes more and more unlivable.

“Everything we do has consequences,” Raphael said. “We need to educate ourselves about those consequences, especially in systems that we know relatively little about. We have to be careful that we don’t upset the climate balance.”