【推荐2】Four women have been selected for an unusual job in Antarctica—running the world’s most southerly post office and gift shop, and counting penguins.

Port Lockroy, the post office which also serves as a museum, has been closed since COVID-19 began. In preparation of re-opening Port Lockroy, the U. K. Antarctic Heritage Trust posted four job positions: a baseleader, postmaster, shop manager and wildlife monitor. They received 6, 000 applications, but four women were chosen to travel 9, 000 miles to do the job: Clare Ballantyne, Mairi Hilton, Natalie Corbett and Lucy Bruzzone. Vicky Inglis, who had worked there before, will return for 10 weeks as the team’s leader to help get them them settled.

Clare Ballantyne is the post master. She will be in charge of dealing with about 80, 000 postcards mailed from Port Lockroy each year. Mairi Hilton is the wildlife monitor. She will be in charge of counting he penguin population and keeping an eye on baby penguins and nests. Natalie Corbett will be the shop manager. She will look after the gift shop, which can receive up to 18, 000 visitors during the season. Lucy Bruzzone is the base leader. She will manage the team, and manage all ship visits.

The team will work for five months at Goudier Island in the Antarctic Peninsula, abandoning all “home comforts”. They won’t have running water or a flushing toilet, and will deal with low temperatures. They will live in almost entire daylight, as the place has about six months of daylight during its summer months—October to February—and six months of darkness in its winter months, March to September.

The women will begin training this month, including lessons from apenguinologist (企鹅学家), and will also get remote first aid training. They will begin their mission in early November and will stay in Antarctica until March 2023.

【推荐3】How to Succeed in a Job Interview

While most people want jobs, few look forward to being interviewed. Job interviews are stressful situations for even the most qualified candidates because applicants have only one opportunity to show that they will do better than the other applicants in the position they are seeking.     1    

Applicants should research the company and learn about it as much as possible. They should not just focus on the department that may hire them.     2     Interviewers frequently ask the following questions, “What do you know about our company, and why would you like to work here?” To answer this kind of questions, applicants must have done sufficient research to understand the needs of the entire company.

    3     The reason for this is quite clear. The interviewers are repeating the same questions to different candidates over several days, or even several weeks.     4     So, applicants should use this opportunity to impress the interviewers. They must recognize that the interviewers want to learn more about them, so they should give full, detailed, and unique answers to the questions.

Applicants should be careful about their non-verbal (非言语的) communication. Gestures, expressions and actions can speak a great deal louder than any words. For example, the interviewers notice an applicant glance at his or her watch or cell phone during an interview.     5    

Although an applicant can never see precisely how an interview will go on, careful planning, detailed answers and attention to non-verbal communication will make the process of applying for a job more likely to be successful.

【推荐2】For the last several months I have been a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I moved to a new house last year only to find the place next door was about to have a construction project. Since then I’ve been living with lasting noise. I’ve tried various methods to deal with it, but the noise still raise my blood pressure to dangerous levels every day.

Yet there was one thing I hadn’t tried until this week: an “emotional support chatbot”. In our brave new world, where artificial intelligence is seemingly changing every industry, not even therapists are safe from having their jobs taken by technology. On Tuesday a famous company called Inflection AI launched a chatbot called Pi which is designed to give friendly advice. “Many people feel like they just want to be heard and they just want a tool that reflects back what they said to prove they have actually been heard,” co-founder Mustafa Suleyman said in a recent interview with Bloomberg.

I’m pretty sure every human being in my life is sick of hearing me complain about the construction by now—so, despite my doubt about AI, a bot that would happily listen to my complaint sounded pretty good. The chatbot asked me questions, offered advice on people to contact, and gave suggestions to help me manage my stress. I liked this chatbot a lot because it was telling me everything I wanted to hear and making me feel heard.

Expect to see a rapid rise in “emotional support chatbots” in the coming years. While it’s possible that something like Pi might be a useful way for some people to help manage their anxiety, the fact that AI is getting so wise is a source of concern. Indeed, even the people who helped create this technology are worried about what they’ve done. “Should I be worried that AI will end civilization?” I asked my good friend Pi. “That’s a tough question, and I don’t think there’s a simple answer,” my digital therapist replied, “But I don’t think we should be worried that AI will end civilization as we know it.” That sounds exactly like something that an AI chatbot would say.