【推荐1】Neudy Rojop, 29, looks across the rough, rocky road in the small rural village of San Rafael Pacayá. It leads to the home where she grew up and where she still lives today.

When she was about 10, her cousin, Carlos, was very sick. Without any local clinics (诊所), Rojop’s family couldn’t even figure out what the disease was. They could do nothing but wait. Growing up, she noticed how frequently many of those around her were getting sick. As a teenager, she started to realize her community needed better access to health care. So she determined to go to a nursing school.

But her vision was beyond being a nurse. After graduation, she realized one person was not enough to make the community better. “The people here may have common disease.” she thought, “Some are known, But there may be new diseases that we don’ t know about.” She wanted to do something to keep any illness from being a threat in the first place. She wanted to train people and do some research to monitor these illnesses and try to provide early actions, or try out new ways to prevent some of them.

Over the next few years, she and a small team brought her vision to life. They provided measures that could limit the possible risks. Olson, one of her colleagues, recalled, “She had zero clinical experience and zero research experience at first, but now she is a superstar here. Her working place is usually busy with about 300 patients per month.”

Now Rojop starts her days with a morning meeting, making decisions, solving problems and setting priorities with her teammates. “Before I was so young that I could do nothing for my community.” she says, “But now I can help because I know how.”

【推荐2】A man recently connected with me on LinkedIn and sent me this note: “Let me know if you ever need a writer. ”I guess he’s a writer? I don’t know. But I do know this phrase “Let me know if you ever need a…” shows up a lot, in my inbox and surely yours, too. I’ve come to think of it as the eight most deadly words in selling oneself because that phrase is the death of opportunity.

Let’s consider the approach. These people are being standoffish. Rather than selling themselves, they’re shifting the burden onto someone else to make the sale. If I need a writer, I should reach out to them. If I need a story, I should ask them for an interview. If I need a customer service solution, I should ask them for details. “Let me know if you ever need a…” sounds like an invitation, but it’s really a shrug.

Imagine the situation where I’d assign a story to the writer who used the nine words, “Let me know if you ever need a writer. ”Just anyone who can string words together. I would have needed to be in a panic, so desperate for someone to contribute to our magazine that I’d stopped thinking about great writers or good writers, or even serviceable writers and simply settled for: a writer. This isn’t a situation that exists. The world is full of good options! We are not living in times of shortage. If we need a job done, there are plenty of qualified people to do it. Our question is: Who’s the best?

If you want to create opportunity for yourself, answer that question convincingly. The first thing to do is show someone you are the opportunity. Hiring you can help them. We also need to stop hiding behind ourselves. Get out in front! Sell yourself and your amazing abilities. Understand someone’s problem, and explain exactly why you are the solution. Avoid saying “Let me know if you ever need a…”. Instead, start with: “Let me explain how I can help you.”

【推荐1】With the emergence (出现) of intelligent transportation systems and the internet of things, the world is entering the next stage of movement — smart transportation.

In recent years, Chinese technology companies have worked hard to speed up the commercial use of robotaxis. In March, Beijing gave autonomous driving permits to tech giant Baidu and self-driving startup Pony.ai to run fully driverless robotaxis on open roads. In June, Baidu carried out its driverless ride-hailing (叫车) service in Shenzhen, Guangdong. Its Apollo Go robotaxis have been put into use across an area of 188 square kilometers in Shenzhen from 7 am to 10 pm daily.

Passengers can download apps like Apollo Go or Baidu Map to their smartphones, and tell the app where they are and where they want to go. Then, a car will appear. With sensors and cameras placed all over the car, a computer takes full control of the drive. A screen on the back seats shows how the robotaxi’s software looks at the space around the car to see other cars, humans, bikes, and anything else that might get in its way.

“The robotaxi goes at about the same speed, providing a good driving experience,” a user posted on Xiaohongshu. As of the first quarter of 2023, the user satisfaction rating for the Apollo Go app has reached 4.9 out of 5, with the latest data showing that 97.12 percent of the reviews are five-star ratings.

Meanwhile, drivers in the city can also enjoy the conveniences of smart transportation. In Guiyang, Guizhou, at some smart parking lots, drivers only need to park their cars at an induction (感应) line. A smart system can put the vehicles into a specific area. When drivers want to get back their cars, they make a request on the terminal (终端的) device and the car will come out of the parking lot by itself in about one minute.

All in all, smart transportation uses new technologies to make moving around a city easier and safer.

【推荐2】There’s a popular local saying that links orange carrots to the Dutch royal family. In the late 1500s, the Dutch were ruled by Spain. Then came William, Prince of Orange, who was largely credited as the country’s founding father. The republic was later abandoned in favor of a home-grown monarchy(君主制), which still exists today.

According to the story, Dutch farmers at that time began to develop and plant orange carrots as a mark of respect for William’s House of Orange. The carrots then grew in popularity and spread around the world to become the vegetable’s standard color. This is only an interesting story, but not true.

“Though the development and stabilization of the orange carrot root does appear to date from around that period in the Netherlands,” said John Stolarczyk, an expert at the World Carrot Museum, “there is no documentary evidence that the Dutch invented orange carrots to honor their royal family.”

Wild carrots started off as either white or pale yellow but changed to purple and yellow when people first raised the vegetable almost 5,000 years ago. These carrots were later divided into two main classes: the Asiatic group and the Western group. Yellow carrots in the Western group probably became more orange, which farmers then selectively planted. “There are documents in Spain that show the growing of orange carrots as far back as the 14th century”, Stolarczyk said.

Flash forward a couple of centuries and the Dutch were one of the main agricultural forces in Europe in the 16th century. This know-how allowed them to plant orange carrots in large numbers, which seemed to grow really well in the Netherlands’ mild, wet weather. “The orange variety grew very well in its climates and environments, better than purple and yellow carrots, and was more productive, stable, and reliable,” Stolarczyk said. Dutch businessmen then spread the orange produce across the continent.

“Orange carrots were later used by the Netherlands to strengthen the nation’s national color,” said Stolarczyk, “which could explain where the strange connection between William of Orange and the carrot comes from. But it seems that the carrot came first and the independent country second”.

【推荐3】Geo-tracking apps such as Find My Kids and Google Family Link are fast growing in popularity, handing parents powers to monitor their children. But how are the latter experiencing what previous generations might have la-belled as an invasion of their privacy? Could these devices even hurt youths’ sense of independence?

We set out to answer these questions in our research, which involved a series of one-on-one interviews with parents who geo-tracked their children, and teenagers who were geo-tracked.

Overall, the parents who took part in our survey claimed they were driven to use these apps not by nosiness(多管闲事),but a sense of care in the face of what they perceived as dangerous or uncertain environments. Knowing a child’s geographical position cannot guarantee their safety when faced with an incident in real time, but checking where they are can help ease parental fears. Other parents surveyed admitted to monitoring their children only in the case of unanswered phone calls or unfulfilled requests. Rather than a systematic method of monitoring, geo-tracking acted as a “lastresort” option after parents failed to reach their children.

While some teenagers were sympathetic to their parents’ anxieties, most of them perceived the use of geo-tracking apps as an invasion of their privacy. When seen as a tool to contact, geo-tracking appeared to be quite well accepted by them in our survey. However, most teenagers in our sample were worried about their parents’ use of monitoring apps.

Geo-tracking is not without its ill effect on family relationships. Xavier, for instance, said that discovering he was being tracked has profoundly weakened the trust between him and his father. Furthermore, tensions among parents and children may also arise, thus widening the gap between them. Geographical monitoring also directly challenges young people’s need to go into the world independently, both holding back teenage autonomy and generating tensions in parent-child relationships.