Best of 2025: All Our Number Five Story Picks

Number five stories are often the perfect portal to another dimension.

第五个故事通常是通往另一个维度的完美门户。

Great for the commute or that comfy spot on your couch, they offer a handy distraction from the mundane or that holiday gathering you wish you’d declined.

非常适合通勤或沙发上舒适的地方，它们可以方便地分散您对平凡或您希望拒绝的假日聚会的注意力。

Sometimes lighthearted, always thoughtful, number five stories help us to view the world through a different lens.

有时轻松、总是深思熟虑的第五个故事帮助我们通过不同的镜头看待世界。

If you haven’t already, become a Longreads member so that you get these number five stories, and our other recommended reads, in your inbox on Friday mornings.

如果您还没有，请成为 Longreads 会员，以便您在周五早上的收件箱中收到这些排名第五的故事以及我们其他推荐的读物。

—Brendan, Carolyn, Cheri, Krista, Peter & Seyward

—布伦丹、卡罗琳、谢里、克里斯塔、彼得和西沃德

## January

##一月

## Do You Believe in Life After Death?

## 你相信死后有生命吗？

These Scientists Study It.

这些科学家正在研究它。

Saskia Solomon | The New York Times | January 3, 2025 | 3,719 words

萨斯基亚·所罗门 |纽约时报 | 2025 年 1 月 3 日 | 3,719 字

Once, years ago, I tried to gain access to the Division of Perceptual Studies, the parapsychology research office at the University of Virginia.

几年前，有一次，我试图进入感知研究部，即弗吉尼亚大学的超心理学研究办公室。

I’d become fascinated by Dr. Ian Stevenson, who founded the division in 1967 and, over decades, collected thousands of stories from people who claimed to recall past lives.

我对伊恩·史蒂文森 (Ian Stevenson) 博士着迷，他于 1967 年创立了这个部门，几十年来，从那些声称能回忆起前世的人们那里收集了数千个故事。

Before his own death in 2007, Stevenson bought a combination lock from a local hardware store, set a private code, and locked it.

2007 年，史蒂文森去世前，他从当地一家五金店购买了一把密码锁，设置了私人密码，然后将其锁上。

Perhaps one day, freed of his earthly body, he might somehow communicate the code.

也许有一天，他摆脱了尘世的身体，可以以某种方式传达密码。

The lock might snap open; a new light might shine into an old, dark mystery.

锁可能会突然打开；新的曙光可能会照亮一个古老而黑暗的谜团。

For a long time, I passed the same hardware store on my walk to work.

很长一段时间，我在上班的路上都会经过同一家五金店。

I tried interviewing Stevenson’s colleagues, who respectfully declined to speak with me; I made an appointment to visit the division’s research library, only to have it revoked.

我尝试采访史蒂文森的同事，但他们恭敬地拒绝与我交谈。我预约了参观该部门的研究图书馆，结果被取消了。

A staff member told me that the press “has trivialized our work here .

一名工作人员告诉我，媒体“轻视了我们在这里的工作……”

.

。

.

。

for entertainment purposes, and we are very wary of this sort of thing happening.” Saskia Solomon’s reported feature is a rare, deep glimpse into the work of the Division of Perceptual Studies as it quietly continues—“notably distanced from the university’s leafy main campus,” Solomon notes, “and at least a couple of miles from the medical school.” As one former director tells her, “Nobody knows we’re here.” Solomon’s work is measured throughout, appropriately questioning and quietly attuned to the wonder of the researchers she shadows.

出于娱乐目的，我们对此类事情的发生非常警惕。”萨斯基亚·所罗门报道的专题报道是对感知研究部门悄然进行的工作的一次罕见而深入的了解——“特别远离大学绿树成荫的主校区，”所罗门指出，“而且距离医学院至少有几英里。”正如一位前导演告诉她的那样：“没有人知道我们在这里。”所罗门的工作自始至终都是经过衡量的，适当地提出问题，并静静地适应她所跟随的研究人员的奇迹。

Photographs from Matt Eich—of an enclosure to block electromagnetic interference; of a drawer filled with locks—hum with potential.

马特·艾奇 (Matt Eich) 拍摄的阻止电磁干扰的外壳的照片；一个装满锁的抽屉——充满潜力的嗡嗡声。

There is always reason for skepticism; still, every story must mean something.

怀疑总是有理由的。尽管如此，每个故事都必须有意义。

—BF

—BF

## The Tickling of the Bulls: A Rodeo at Madison Square Garden

## 公牛的挠痒痒：麦迪逊广场花园的牛仔竞技表演

Jasper Nathaniel | The Paris Review | January 13, 2025 | 2,775 words

贾斯珀·纳撒尼尔 |巴黎评论 | 2025 年 1 月 13 日 | 2,775 字

New York City has always felt immune to certain cultural forces, particularly those that require wide-open spaces.

纽约市一直感觉不受某些文化力量的影响，尤其是那些需要广阔开放空间的文化力量。

As beautiful as its public parks are, they’re not exactly suited to activities beyond running or the odd pedal-boat rental.

尽管公园很漂亮，但除了跑步或奇怪的脚踏船租赁之外，它们并不适合进行其他活动。

Hiking requires driving an hour or more.

徒步旅行需要开车一个小时或更长时间。

Skiing, the same.

滑雪，同样如此。

The very concept of rodeo sports in the five boroughs—let alone Manhattan—seems as unlikely as putting pineapple on pizza.

五个行政区（更不用说曼哈顿）的牛仔竞技运动的概念似乎就像在披萨上放菠萝一样不可能。

This impossibility animates Jasper Nathaniel’s visit to a three-day bull-riding event held in Madison Square Garden, elevating it from what might be a gawking safari to an exercise in curiosity.

这种不可能使贾斯珀·纳撒尼尔 (Jasper Nathaniel) 参观了在麦迪逊广场花园举行的为期三天的骑牛活动，将其从令人目瞪口呆的狩猎之旅提升为好奇心的锻炼。

How does this all work?

这一切是如何运作的？

Where do the bulls stay?

公牛住在哪里？

Who attends the Monster Energy Buck Off at the Garden?

谁参加花园里的怪物能量大赛？

(Who sponsors the Monster Energy Buck Off at the Garden does not invite such curiosity.) The result is incredibly entertaining, if not surprising.

（谁赞助了花园里的怪物能量降压比赛并没有引起这样的好奇心。）结果即使并不令人惊讶，也是令人难以置信的有趣。

While the piece can skew toward glib at times, Nathaniel avoids the dreaded Coastal Writer Observes America™ trope by foregrounding his own ignorance.

虽然这篇文章有时会倾向于油嘴滑舌，但纳撒尼尔通过突出自己的无知来避免可怕的沿海作家观察美国™的比喻。

He’s chastened by wranglers; he comes out on the losing end of a handshake with a bull rider.

他被争吵者管教；他在与一名斗牛士握手时失败了。

So what if he dutifully recounts some conversations that happen to be hilarious?

那么，如果他尽职尽责地讲述一些恰好很搞笑的对话呢？

You ride with the bulls, you get the horns.

你与公牛一起骑行，你就得到了牛角。

—PR

——公关

## Do Our Dogs Have Something to Tell the World?

## 我们的狗有什么要告诉世界的吗？

Camille Bromley | The New York Times Magazine | January 6, 2025 | 5,104 words

卡米尔布罗姆利|纽约时报杂志 | 2025 年 1 月 6 日 | 5,104 字

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of bringing home Bowser.

上周是鲍泽带回家一周年纪念日。

He wasn’t Bowser then; the day my wife and I met him, he had no name at all.

那时他还不是鲍泽；我和妻子见到他的那天，他根本没有名字。

Someone from the dog rescue had found him running around a shoreline park in the East Bay, collarless and ID-less, presumably dumped there but still friendly and trusting enough to hop in their car.

狗救援组织的工作人员发现他在东湾的一个海岸线公园里跑来跑去，没有项圈，也没有身份证件，大概是被扔在那里的，但仍然友好和信任，可以跳上他们的车。

We waited a month, so he could be reunited with whoever it was, if that was meant to happen, but it didn’t, and he became part of our family.

我们等了一个月，所以他可以与任何人团聚，如果这是注定要发生的，但事实并非如此，他成了我们家庭的一员。

Bowser has changed our lives, as dogs will do.

Bowser 改变了我们的生活，就像狗一样。

Some of that is just the result of his being a happy, muscly little pug-mutt who walks like a cartoon—when you’re outside with a dog like that, people get happy, and they invariably talk to you—but some of it is just the alchemy of independence and utter dependence of living with a dog.

其中一些只是因为他是一只快乐、肌肉发达的小哈巴狗，走路像卡通片一样——当你带着这样的狗在外面时，人们会很高兴，他们总是会和你说话——但还有一些只是与狗一起生活的独立和完全依赖的炼金术。

It’s impossible not to anthropomorphize them just a little, to map their moods and foibles to human psychology, to love them even while knowing that their bonding behaviors are more evolution than emotion.

不可能不将他们拟人化一点，将他们的情绪和弱点映射到人类心理，即使知道他们的联系行为更多的是进化而不是情感，也要爱他们。

Even before we got Bowser, I’d seen TikTok videos of dogs using “talking buttons,” and couldn’t decide if it was miraculous or just well-engineered meme fodder.

甚至在我们拥有 Bowser 之前，我就看过 TikTok 上狗使用“说话按钮”的视频，但无法确定这是奇迹还是只是精心设计的模因素材。

If a dog like Bunny the sheepadoodle really could tell her human that she had a foxtail in her paw, I reasoned, it made that bond all the more mystical.

我推断，如果像牧羊犬兔子兔子这样的狗真的可以告诉她的人类，她的爪子里有一条狐尾草，这会让这种联系变得更加神秘。

“These pets weren’t just standing by to serve their human owners,” as Camille Bromley writes of the animals she sees using talking buttons on social media.

卡米尔·布罗姆利（Camille Bromley）在谈到她在社交媒体上看到的使用会说话的按钮的动物时写道：“这些宠物不仅仅是站在一旁为人类主人服务。”

“They were companions with voices of their own.” Bromley’s fascinating feature can’t render a definitive judgment on dogs’ linguistic facility, since science can’t either, but it still plumbs the question with rigor and verve.

“他们是有自己声音的同伴。”布罗姆利令人着迷的特征无法对狗的语言能力做出明确的判断，因为科学也不能，但它仍然以严谨和活力来探讨这个问题。

She detours into the history of animal language experiments, she speaks to proponents and detractors in the research community, and she renders button-based communication in all caps because it’s just far more enjoyable that way.

她绕道探讨了动物语言实验的历史，她与研究界的支持者和反对者进行了交谈，并且她将基于按钮的交流全部大写，因为这样更有趣。

This is a piece for dog lovers, yes, but it’s really for anyone with a sense of wonder and possibility.

是的，这是一部为爱狗人士准备的作品，但它确实适合任何有好奇心和可能性的人。

(The readers in the story’s comment thread do not have a sense of wonder and possibility.) Besides, even if we never get Bowser a set of talking buttons, I know what he’d use it for.

（故事评论中的读者没有好奇心和可能性。）此外，即使我们从未给鲍泽提供一套会说话的按钮，我也知道他会用它做什么。

BALL.

球。

BALL NOW.

现在就开始吧。

BALL PLAY NOW.

现在开始打球。

—PR

——公关

## Why Children’s Books?

## 为什么是儿童读物？

Katherine Rundell | London Review of Books | January 29, 2025 | 5,753 words

凯瑟琳·伦德尔 |伦敦书评| 2025 年 1 月 29 日 | 5,753 字

Shortly after parenthood recalibrated my life, I visited the children’s section of our local library for the first time.

为人父母重新调整我的生活后不久，我第一次参观了当地图书馆的儿童区。

My initial confusion—Who hid all the modern art books in the kids’ section?—quickly gave way to giddiness as I pulled more picture books from the shelves.

我最初的困惑——是谁把所有的现代艺术书籍藏在儿童区？——当我从书架上拿出更多图画书时，我很快就变得头晕目眩。

There was subversion here, both sly and overt!

这里存在着颠覆，无论是狡猾的还是公开的！

There was economy of emotion!

情感很节约！

Conceptual rigor!

概念严谨！

The library’s most accessible section, I realized, was also its most powerful.

我意识到，图书馆最方便访问的部分也是最强大的。

“Children’s literature can be a form of distillation: of what it means to hope, to fear, to yearn, distilled down and down into a piece of concentrated meaning,” Katherine Rundell writes for The London Review of Books.

凯瑟琳·朗德尔在《伦敦书评》上写道：“儿童文学可以是一种蒸馏形式：希望、恐惧、渴望的意义，被不断地蒸馏成浓缩的意义。”

It also holds the promise of an egalitarian space: “We can all meet on the pages of A.A.

它还承载着平等空间的承诺：“我们都可以在互诫协会的页面上见面。

Milne in a way that we cannot on the pages of Jacques Derrida.” Rundell offers a brisk and entertaining history of English-language children’s books, from “conduct manuals focused on nose-picking” through Tolstoy’s stories for younger readers.

米尔恩的方式是我们在雅克·德里达的书中无法做到的。”朗德尔为年轻读者提供了生动有趣的英语儿童读物历史，从“专注于挖鼻孔的行为手册”到托尔斯泰的故事。

(“There is a lion who tears apart a puppy, a tree cut down ‘screaming in unbearable pain,’ a dead bird, a dead hare, another dead bird.”) As labor and suffrage movements gained strength, however, children’s books became less concerned with simplistic manner lessons; instead, Rundell observes, “they began offering visions of how various good and evil might be.” She draws on the mighty Ursula Le Guin for urgency: “In an America where our reality may seem degraded to posturing patriotism and self-righteous brutality, imaginative literature continues to question what heroism is, to examine the roots of power and to offer moral alternatives.” And there are so many alternatives to consider, if one only looks.

（“有一头狮子撕碎了一只小狗，一棵被砍倒的树‘痛苦地尖叫’，一只死鸟，一只死野兔，另一只死鸟。”）然而，随着劳工和选举权运动的壮大，儿童读物不再那么关心简单的礼仪课程；相反，伦德尔观察到，“他们开始提供各种善恶可能的愿景。”她借用强大的乌苏拉·勒吉恩（Ursula Le Guin）来表达紧迫感：“在美国，我们的现实似乎被贬低为故作爱国主义和自以为是的暴行，富有想象力的文学继续质疑什么是英雄主义，审视权力的根源并提供道德选择。”如果只看一眼，就有很多选择可供考虑。

—BF

—BF

## February

##二月

## My Quest to Find the Owner of a Mysterious WWII Japanese Sword

## 我寻找一把神秘的二战日本剑的主人的任务

Kevin Chroust | Outside | February 5, 2025 | 9,866 words

凯文·克鲁斯特 |外面| 2025 年 2 月 5 日 | 9,866 字

This piece on returning a Japanese military sword is a passion project.

这篇关于归还日本军刀的作品是一个充满激情的项目。

Born out of love for the author’s grandfather, curiosity, and just plain lockdown boredom, it was years in the making—500 years, if you count from when the sword was crafted.

出于对作者祖父的爱、好奇心，以及纯粹的封锁无聊，这把剑花了多年的时间——如果从这把剑制作时算起，已经有 500 年了。

Kevin Chroust’s family came into the picture a mere 80 years ago: His grandfather found the sword on an Okinawa beach in the final days of World War II and mailed it back to America.

仅仅 80 年前，凯文·克鲁斯特 (Kevin Chroust) 的家人就出现了：他的祖父在第二次世界大战的最后几天在冲绳海滩上发现了这把剑，并将其邮寄回美国。

(The competence of the postal service is one of the more shocking elements of this story.) Chroust remembers the sword being brought out as a child, a prop for war stories, but it was only as an adult that he considered the wooden label attached to it, which asked, in part, “your favour to send my sword to my home,” with a name and a town on the other side.

（邮政服务的能力是这个故事中更令人震惊的元素之一。）克鲁斯特记得这把剑是小时候带出来的，是战争故事的道具，但直到成年后，他才考虑到上面贴着的木制标签，上面写着“请您帮我把剑寄到我家”，另一面写着名字和城镇。

Drawn to the plea, Chroust began an internet search to track down the sword’s original owner.

受到这种恳求的吸引，克鲁斯特开始在互联网上搜索，以追查这把剑的原主人。

It was not a simple process, but after finding relatives of the owner, Chroust started to plan a trip to Japan.

这并不是一个简单的过程，但在找到失主的亲戚后，Chroust 开始计划去日本旅行。

He has a delightfully wry tone when discussing the reality of this adventure: “[F]antasy is simple.

在讨论这次冒险的现实时，他用一种令人愉快的讽刺语气：“幻想很简单。

The imagination can’t be bothered with unromantic minutiae.

想象力不会被不浪漫的细节所困扰。

With weapons laws.

与武器法。

Consulates.

领事馆。

Viruses.

病毒。

Visas.

签证。

Visa sponsorships.” But he perseveres until he and the sword are finally on the way to Japan.

签证赞助。”但他坚持不懈，直到他和剑最终踏上了前往日本的路上。

(Again, great trust is given to the postal system.) I won’t spoil the ending, but there are some beautiful moments.

（再次，对邮政系统给予极大的信任。）我不会破坏结局，但有一些美好的时刻。

This is a fun detective piece and a fascinating history lesson, but, above all, it is a personal story.

这是一部有趣的侦探作品，也是一堂引人入胜的历史课，但最重要的是，这是一个个人故事。

A tale of two families, on two sides of a war, then two sides of the world, who are brought together “with acts of kindness on both sides.” —CW

这是一个关于两个家庭的故事，他们分别处于战争的两侧，然后是世界的两侧，“通过双方的善行”走到了一起。 —CW

## Seth Rogen is the Boss Now

## 塞斯·罗根现在是老板

Dave Holmes | Esquire | February 11, 2025 | 5,482 words

戴夫·霍姆斯 |时尚先生 | 2025 年 2 月 11 日 | 5,482 字

I’ve written enough celebrity profiles in my life that I’d be happy if I never write another.

我一生写过足够多的名人简介，如果我不再写另一篇我会很高兴。

Judging from how rarely I recommend them here, sometimes I wonder if I’d be happy if I never read another.

从我在这里很少推荐它们的程度来看，有时我想知道如果我不再读其他书我会感到高兴吗？

They rarely feel anything other than transactional; they flatten into the same small arsenal of tropes; it’s always difficult to shake the sense that you’re reading something choreographed, negotiated, artificial.

除了交易之外，他们很少有任何感受。它们归结为同一个小修辞库；你总是很难摆脱这样一种感觉：你正在阅读一些精心设计的、经过协商的、人为的东西。

That’s unfair, of course.

当然，这是不公平的。

Curious writers and engaged subjects is never a bad combination, as Dave Holmes’s cover profile of Seth Rogen proves.

好奇的作家和参与的主题从来都不是一个糟糕的组合，戴夫·霍姆斯 (Dave Holmes) 的塞斯·罗根 (Seth Rogen) 封面人物简介就证明了这一点。

Rogen’s been a comedy star since he was 16 years old (at least for those of us who fell in love with the short-lived TV series Freaks and Geeks).

罗根从 16 岁起就一直是喜剧明星（至少对于我们这些喜欢短命电视剧《怪胎与极客》的人来说是这样）。

He’s done this dance a million times.

这种舞蹈他已经跳了一百万次了。

But despite what you may think from his cinematic man-child persona, Seth Rogen is also a thoughtful, decent, deeply creative person who is at home in his skin the way few people are.

但不管你对他电影中的男孩形象有什么看法，塞斯·罗根也是一个有思想、正派、富有创造力的人，很少有人能像他那样在自己的皮肤上感到自在。

He cares about what he does.

他关心他所做的事情。

He knows who he is.

他知道他是谁。

He lives his life intentionally.

他用心地过着自己的生活。

He’s made creative and personal choices, all well-chronicled, that I respect.

他做出了富有创意的个人选择，所有这些选择都有详细记录，我对此表示尊重。

And the time he spends with Holmes makes that clear.

他与福尔摩斯相处的时间清楚地表明了这一点。

There’s no stunty scenework here—no skydiving trips, no “come with me while I get my hands dirty pretending to drive cattle on this massive compound I bought two years ago”—just conversation.

这里没有特技场景，没有跳伞旅行，没有“跟我来，假装在我两年前买的这个巨大的院子里赶牛”——只是对话。

Sure, some of that conversation is about weed.

当然，其中一些谈话是关于大麻的。

(“I feel like [I’m] getting tips on my morning jog from .

（“我觉得[我]从……那里得到了关于晨跑的建议。”

.

。

.

。

Eliud Kipchoge,” cracks Holmes.) This is Seth Rogen, after all.

“埃鲁德·基普乔格”，福尔摩斯说道。）毕竟，这是塞斯·罗根。

And in a moment when so much comedy feels like it’s curdling into something belligerent and nasty, we could all use a little bit more of his you-do-you demeanor.

当这么多的喜剧感觉像是凝结成某种好战和令人讨厌的东西时，我们都可以多使用一点他的“你做你”的举止。

—PR

——公关

## The Cat’s Meat Man

## 猫的肉人

Kathryn Hughes | The Public Domain Review | February 12, 2025 | 2,009 words

凯瑟琳·休斯 |公共领域评论 | 2025 年 2 月 12 日 | 2,009 字

Somewhere in my drafts folder sits a long blog post about how I don’t know anything about history.

在我的草稿文件夹中的某个地方有一篇很长的博客文章，内容是关于我如何对历史一无所知。

(Apologies to Sam Cooke.) Little things, sure—I’ll never forget the year the Battle of Hastings was fought, for some reason—but my grasp of “world history” is absolutely shameful.

（向萨姆·库克道歉。） 当然，这些都是小事——出于某种原因，我永远不会忘记黑斯廷斯战役的那一年——但我对“世界历史”的理解绝对是可耻的。

I’ve thought more about this recently, and I think my issue is that too much history writing is boring.

我最近对此进行了更多思考，我认为我的问题是写太多历史很无聊。

You know what’s not boring?

你知道什么不无聊吗？

Kathryn Hughes’s piece about the “itinerant offal vendors” who crisscrissed Victorian London, selling horsemeat to cat owners.

凯瑟琳·休斯 (Kathryn Hughes) 的文章讲述了“流动内脏小贩”在维多利亚时代的伦敦穿梭往来，向猫主人出售马肉的故事。

At one point, she writes, there were 1,000 pushcarts traversing the city, feeding 300,000 cats.

她写道，一度有 1,000 辆手推车穿过这座城市，喂养了 300,000 只猫。

These were men bound by a code: They respected each other’s turf, and were up with the sun “threading the chunks onto wooden skewers, to make up anything from a ha’penny snack to a three-penny feast.” Hughes surveys the phenomenon with agility and verve, skipping from true crime (early speculation that Jack the Ripper may have been a cat’s meat man) to the spectacle of a 1901 grand banquet held for these hardworking friends of felines.

这些人受到一种准则的约束：他们尊重彼此的地盘，并在太阳升起时“将大块串在木串上，制成从半便士小吃到三便士盛宴的任何东西。”休斯敏捷而热情地调查了这一现象，从真正的犯罪（早期猜测开膛手杰克可能是一个吃猫的人）跳到了 1901 年为这些勤劳的猫科动物朋友举办的盛大宴会的场面。

What really brings this piece to life, though, is the wealth of archival materials that accompies it: photos, magazine illustrations, and postcards that span more than a century.

然而，真正让这件作品栩栩如生的是它所附带的丰富档案材料：照片、杂志插图和跨越一个多世纪的明信片。

This is history not as a dry excavation, but as a living, meowing, offal-reeking tour of the past.

这不是一次干涸的挖掘历史，而是一次活生生的、喵喵叫的、散发着内脏臭味的过去之旅。

I may not know anything about World War I, but at least now I can horrify friends with tales of horse kebabs and the men who peddled them.

我可能对第一次世界大战一无所知，但至少现在我可以用马肉串和贩卖马肉串的人的故事来吓唬朋友。

—PR

——公关

## Day 1,509 in the Big Brother House

## 老大哥之家的第 1,509 天

Gary Grimes | The Fence | January 29, 2025 | 1,856 words

加里·格莱姆斯 |栅栏| 2025 年 1 月 29 日 | 1,856 字

For a certain generation, the sound of the MSN Messenger notification is an instant time warp.

对于某一代人来说，MSN Messenger 通知的声音是瞬间的时间扭曲。

I am transported back to my dad’s home office, a tiny room dominated by a giant desktop that whirred and groaned as it came to life.

我被传送回我父亲的家庭办公室，这是一个小房间，里面有一个巨大的桌面，当它启动时，它发出呼呼声和呻吟声。

In my early teens, I spent hours in that room, playing Lemmings and talking to friends (and crushes) on MSN Messenger.

在我十几岁的时候，我在那个房间里呆了几个小时，玩旅鼠游戏，并通过 MSN Messenger 与朋友（和暗恋对象）聊天。

That ding-dong-ding signaling a new message was a pure thrill, and I still feel its echoes today.

发出新信息的“叮咚叮”声真是令人兴奋不已，至今我仍能感受到它的回声。

But when I left the room after being shouted at to free up the phone line, the conversations stayed behind, trapped in a computer now whirring its way through an agonizingly slow shutdown.

但当我在被大声要求释放电话线后离开房间时，谈话却被留在了后面，被困在一台正在缓慢关闭中呼呼作响的电脑中。

This was all before smartphones made online conversations perpetual.

这一切都发生在智能手机让在线对话成为永恒之前。

Gary Grimes knows what I am talking about.

加里·格莱姆斯知道我在说什么。

A veteran of pre-social media online interactions, Grimes spent his tween years on ThisIsBigBrother.com, or TiBB, “an online forum created in the early 2000s for discussion of the eponymous television phenomenon.” (Big Brother is another nostalgia bomb.) Grimes joyfully brings the disparate groups of the forum to life, explaining its operation “like the lunchroom from Mean Girls.” He is also happy to throw shade at his self-aggrandizing former self, not shying away from any of the cringeworthy teenage memories.

格莱姆斯是前社交媒体在线互动领域的资深人士，他在 ThisIsBigBrother.com（或 TiBB）上度过了自己的青少年时期，“这是一个于 2000 年代初创建的在线论坛，用于讨论同名电视现象。” （《老大哥》是另一颗怀旧炸弹。）格莱姆斯高兴地让论坛中的不同群体栩栩如生，解释说它的运作“就像《贱女孩》中的午餐室一样”。他也很乐意为过去自我夸大的自己蒙上阴影，不回避任何令人尴尬的青少年记忆。

The narrative revels in Grimes’s youthful world before bringing you back to the present, where Grimes tracks down his former forum buddies.

故事讲述了格莱姆斯的年轻世界，然后带你回到现实，格莱姆斯追踪他以前的论坛好友。

These online voices from the past now have “jobs, partners, friends, and grown-up responsibilities.” Real things.

这些过去的网络声音现在有了“工作、合作伙伴、朋友和成年人的责任”。真实的东西。

While that early 2000s forum helped shape them all, it was always something they could leave behind.

虽然 2000 年代初的论坛帮助塑造了他们所有人，但他们总是可以留下一些东西。

After all, the computer shut off.

说完，电脑就关机了。

—CW

—CW

## March

## 三月

## I Survived Downhill Skiing’s Rowdiest Party

## 我在高山滑雪最吵闹的派对中幸存下来

Devon O’Neil | Outside | February 27, 2025 | 2,432 words

德文·奥尼尔 |外面| 2025 年 2 月 27 日 | 2,432 字

Outside seems to be on a run of stories about getting worse for wear in a European ski resort.

外面似乎流传着一连串关于在欧洲滑雪胜地穿得越来越差的故事。

(A much more raucous and free experience than most lawsuit-happy North American resorts.) A few weeks ago, Kassondra Cloos reported on the debauchery of a singles ski trip to Val Thorens, France, and now it’s Devon O’Neil’s turn to slap on some skis (briefly) and down some shots (many).

（比大多数乐于提起诉讼的北美度假村更加喧闹和自由。）几周前，卡森德拉·克鲁斯（Kassondra Cloos）报道了法国瓦托伦斯（Val Thorens）单人滑雪之旅的放荡行为，现在轮到德文·奥尼尔（Devon O’Neil）穿上滑雪板（短暂地）并击落了一些镜头（很多）。

O’Neil is nothing if not committed.

奥尼尔如果不投入就什么都不是。

There is no fly-in-fly-out reporting here; he is in Kitzbühel, Austria, for six whole days and nights.

这里没有飞进飞出的报告；他在奥地利基茨比厄尔待了整整六个昼夜。

Six nights spent in a six-bunk room at the SnowBunnys Hostel with snoring Josh, who sounds like “a semi-truck using its engine brake,” and puking Rupert, who loses a battle with some peach schnapps.

在 SnowBunnys 旅馆的六床铺房间里度过了六个晚上，乔什打呼噜，听起来就像“一辆使用发动机制动器的半挂卡车”，而鲁珀特则呕吐，他与一些桃子杜松子酒打架失败了。

SnowBunnys may be grim, but O’Neil’s descriptions of sleep deprivation and urine on the toilet floor still gave me twinges of nostalgia: I stayed in many such ski hostels in my early 20s, and damn, it was fun.

《雪兔》可能很残酷，但奥尼尔对睡眠不足和厕所地板上的尿液的描述仍然让我心生怀念：我在 20 岁出头的时候住过很多这样的滑雪旅馆，该死的，这很有趣。

Nowadays, such a trip would result in a hospital stay, or at best, tears.

如今，这样的旅行只会导致住院，或者充其量只是流泪。

So big respect for O’Neil, a middle-aged dad who manages to complete this challenge while keeping the moaning to a minimum.

非常感谢奥尼尔，一位中年父亲，他成功地完成了这项挑战，同时将呻吟声降到最低。

One perk of the SnowBunnys Hostel is its location close to the finish line of the Hahnenkamm downhill ski race, or as O’Neil writes, “alpine schussing’s holy grail, where skiers become legends on a twisting elevator shaft of ice called the Streif.” While feigning to cover this event, this piece is more about the sport found off the slopes.

SnowBunnys Hostel 旅馆的一大优点是它的位置靠近 Hahnenkamm 速降滑雪比赛的终点线，或者正如 O’Neil 所写，“高山滑雪的圣杯，滑雪者在名为 Streif 的扭曲冰电梯井上成为传奇。”虽然假装报道了这一事件，但这篇文章更多的是关于滑雪场外的运动。

From the camaraderie of locals drinking in a tiny mountaintop bar to the legendary post-race shenanigans in the Londoner pub, this is an homage to having a good time.

从当地人在山顶小酒吧喝酒的友情，到伦敦酒吧里传奇的赛后恶作剧，这是对美好时光的致敬。

It is also a dissection of a tiny mountain hamlet and the vast array of very different people who descend upon it each year.

这也是对一个小山村和每年降临到这里的大量截然不同的人的剖析。

At one point, O’Neil watches “a young man dig a beer bottle out of the snow, hoping it was full, then toss it back when it wasn’t, next to a mother nursing her baby on the ground.” While the subject matter is unashamedly trivial, this is the humorous cavort I needed this week.

有一次，奥尼尔看到“一个年轻人从雪中挖出一个啤酒瓶，希望它装满了，然后当它没有装满时又把它扔了回去，旁边是一位在地上哺乳婴儿的母亲。”虽然主题极其琐碎，但这正是我本周所需要的幽默快感。

So, cheers to European après.

所以，为欧洲赛后欢呼吧。

I do miss it.

我很想念它。

—CW

—CW

## A ‘Jeopardy!’ Win 24 Years in the Making

## 一场“危险边缘！”的胜利酝酿了 24 年

Claire McNear | The Ringer | March 11, 2025 | 2,678 words

克莱尔·麦克尼尔 |铃声| 2025 年 3 月 11 日 | 2,678 字

Ringer writer Claire McNear has consistently owned the Jeopardy!

林格作家克莱尔麦克尼尔一直拥有《危险边缘》！

news beat since Alex Trebek’s 2020 death, including hastening the departure of initial replacement Mike Richards.

自 2020 年亚历克斯·特雷贝克 (Alex Trebek) 去世以来，新闻不断传出，其中包括加速最初替代者迈克·理查兹 (Mike Richards) 的离职。

But it’s stories like this one that really explain the game show’s foothold in the cultural firmament.

但正是这样的故事才真正解释了游戏节目在文化领域的立足点。

More than two decades ago, a man named Harvey “H-Bomb” Silikovitz auditioned for Jeopardy!

二十多年前，一位名叫哈维·“氢弹”·西利科维茨的男子参加了《危险边缘》的试镜！

He failed the test.

他考试没通过。

Over the years, he auditioned nine more times.

这些年来，他又试镜了九次。

Those times, he passed the test.

那一次，他通过了考验。

But he still never got on the show.

但他仍然没有上过节目。

He became friendly with the producers.

他与制片人变得友好。

He became a well-known personality in the larger trivia subculture, which is a thing that exists.

他成为了更大的琐事亚文化中的知名人物，这是存在的。

He developed Parkinson’s disease.

他患上了帕金森病。

Finally, last fall, he was invited to be a contestant.

终于，去年秋天，他被邀请成为参赛者。

And in his first episode, which aired earlier this week, he won.

在本周早些时候播出的第一集中，他获胜了。

(Alas, that would be his only victory; he was vanquished by a nuclear engineer the next night.) On its own, that’s a mildly heartwarming story.

（唉，这将是他唯一的胜利；第二天晚上他就被一名核工程师击败了。） 就其本身而言，这是一个温暖人心的故事。

Buoyed by McNear’s reporting, though, it’s a fascinating look behind the buzzer.

不过，在麦克尼尔的报道的鼓舞下，蜂鸣器背后的景象令人着迷。

Jeopardy!

危险！

has somehow only become more popular in the post-Trebek era—more than 65,000 people have taken the online test in the past year alone—and by now is a subculture of its own, beloved by alumni and spectators alike.

不知何故，它在后特雷贝克时代变得更加流行——仅在过去一年就有超过 65,000 人参加了在线测试——现在它已经成为一种自己的亚文化，受到校友和观众的喜爱。

McNear navigates its intricacies with a breezy assurance, less an anthropologist than a confidant.

麦克尼尔以一种轻松自信的态度应对错综复杂的问题，与其说是一位人类学家，不如说是一位知己。

When you have that many people fighting to get on, simply getting to the lectern is a victory of its own.

当有那么多人争先恐后地上台时，仅仅登上讲台本身就是一种胜利。

The winding nature of H-Bomb’s journey makes it all the sweeter.

氢弹旅程的曲折让一切变得更加甜蜜。

—PR

——公关

## How the Irish Pub Became One of the Emerald Isle’s Greatest Exports

## 爱尔兰酒吧如何成为翡翠岛最大的出口产品之一

Liza Weisstuch | Smithsonian Magazine | March 17, 2024 | 2,283 words

丽莎·韦斯图奇 |史密森尼杂志 | 2024 年 3 月 17 日 | 2,283 字

On Monday, St. Patrick’s Day, our local Irish pub was heaving by 9 a.m., a queue snaking out the door into the drizzle.

周一，也就是圣帕特里克节，早上 9 点，我们当地的爱尔兰酒吧就已经人满为患，门外排起长队，冒着毛毛细雨。

The pub is called Dubh Linn Gate, and I once went there for the big day myself.

这家酒吧叫 Dubh Linn Gate，我曾经在重要的日子里去过那里。

To get a spot, you have to be there by breakfast (a pint of Guinness).

为了获得席位，您必须在早餐前到达那里（一品脱吉尼斯黑啤酒）。

I vaguely remember a lot of green and fiddles, then needing to go home before lunch for a little lie-down.

我依稀记得很多绿色和小提琴，然后需要在午餐前回家休息一会儿。

The crowd was diverse, but with only a few genuine Irish revelers, for the Dubh Linn Gate is not in Dublin but in Canada—one of thousands of Irish pubs dotted around the world.

人群多种多样，但只有少数真正的爱尔兰狂欢者，因为 Dubh Linn Gate 不在都柏林，而是在加拿大——世界各地有数千家爱尔兰酒吧之一。

You’ve probably got an Irish pub in your hometown.

您的家乡可能有一家爱尔兰酒吧。

You’ve probably been.

你可能已经去过了。

The Irish pub is cozy and inviting: mahogany bars, stained glass, intimate booths.

爱尔兰酒吧舒适而温馨：红木吧台、彩色玻璃、私密的卡座。

No canteen-style sports bar here.

这里没有食堂式的运动酒吧。

It’s a town staple I took for granted until Liza Weisstuch’s piece enlightened me on the work it takes to replicate this Irish charm.

这是我认为理所当然的小镇主食，直到 Liza Weisstuch 的作品启发了我如何复制这种爱尔兰魅力。

Many of these establishments have one man to thank for their old-world ambiance: Mel McNally, whose Dublin-based Irish Pub Company has designed upward of 2,000 pubs in more than 100 countries around the globe.

这些场所中的许多酒吧都需要感谢一个人来营造出旧世界的氛围：梅尔·麦克纳利 (Mel McNally)，他的位于都柏林的爱尔兰酒吧公司已在全球 100 多个国家/地区设计了 2,000 多家酒吧。

In a genius move, McNally studied Irish pubs for two years as an architecture school student in the ’70s.

麦克纳利在 70 年代作为一名建筑学院学生时，花了两年时间研究了爱尔兰酒吧，这是一个天才之举。

His “homework” included visiting 200 pubs around Ireland.

他的“家庭作业”包括参观爱尔兰各地 200 家酒吧。

Once a pub expert, McNally realized that while Ireland may have plenty of them, the rest of the world did not, and he was the man to help.

麦克纳利曾经是一名酒吧专家，他意识到虽然爱尔兰可能有很多这样的酒吧，但世界其他地方却没有，而他就是那个可以提供帮助的人。

His company takes designing Irish pubs very seriously, as Weisstuch explains: “You can’t sell the history and lore and memories intrinsic in a community’s longstanding institution.

他的公司非常重视爱尔兰酒吧的设计，正如 Weisstuch 解释的那样：“你不能出售社区长期机构中固有的历史、传说和记忆。

But you can sell the craftsmanship inextricably linked to a nation’s cultural legacy.” McNally tells Weisstuch he “recorded the essence of what makes a pub a pub,” which is anchored by the bar, or “altar of service,” as McNally calls it.

但你可以出售与一个国家的文化遗产密不可分的手工艺。”麦克纳利告诉韦斯图奇，他“记录了酒吧之所以成为酒吧的本质”，而酒吧的本质是酒吧，麦克纳利称之为“服务祭坛”。

(The bar being visible from anywhere in the pub is a non-negotiable aspect of the company’s designs.) Up to 80 people are involved in a single project, with everything made in Ireland and shipped abroad.

（无论在酒吧的任何地方都可以看到酒吧，这是该公司设计中不容忽视的一个方面。）一个项目涉及多达 80 人，所有产品均在爱尔兰制造并运往国外。

Weisstuch takes her reporting on this detailed Irish export seriously, and both she and McNally turn a lovely phrase in their explanations.

韦斯图奇认真对待她对爱尔兰出口的详细报道，她和麦克纳利在解释中都说了一句可爱的话。

They left me with great respect for the effort that goes into creating the Irish “essence.” Next time I am in the Dubh Linn Gate, I will raise my pint to the bar—you can’t miss it, it’s positioned center stage.

他们让我对创造爱尔兰“精髓”的努力深表敬意。下次我在 Dubh Linn Gate 时，我会把我的品脱啤酒举到酒吧——你不会错过它的，它位于舞台中央。

—CW

—CW

## The Biggest Loser

## 最大的输家

Luke Winkie | Slate | March 20, 2025 | 5,265 words

卢克·温基 |板岩| 2025 年 3 月 20 日 | 5,265 字

Baby needs a new pair of shoes!

宝宝需要一双新鞋！

For Slate, Luke Winkie profiles profligate gambler Matt Morrow, aka “Vegas Matt,” a man who broadcasts his betting at the El Cortez Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, to his 1.1 million followers on YouTube.

卢克·温基 (Luke Winkie) 在 Slate 节目中介绍了挥霍无度的赌徒马特·莫罗 (Matt Morrow)，又名“维加斯·马特”(Vegas Matt)，他向 YouTube 上的 110 万粉丝直播自己在内华达州拉斯维加斯埃尔科尔特斯赌场 (El Cortez Casino) 的赌注。

Morrow plays baccarat, slots, and blackjack.

莫罗玩百家乐、老虎机和二十一点。

By recording it all, win or lose, he’s turned his gambling into a lucrative spectacle that allows viewers to experience his highs and lows vicariously, without risking any of their own “chocolate chips.” (A chocolate chip is worth $10,000, a pittance to Morrow, who routinely risks much higher sums.) Your first question might be: Where does he get his money?

通过记录这一切，无论输赢，他将赌博变成了一场利润丰厚的奇观，让观众可以亲身体验他的高潮和低谷，而不用拿自己的“巧克力片”冒险。 （一块巧克力片价值 10,000 美元，这对莫罗来说微不足道，他通常会冒更高的风险。） 你的第一个问题可能是：他从哪里得到他的钱？

Thirty percent comes from sponsorships and merch, while YouTube yields 70 percent.

30% 来自赞助和商品，而 YouTube 的收益为 70%。

Casinos are notoriously private.

众所周知，赌场是私人的。

They watch your every move but prohibit capturing video lest thieves gain an advantage against the house.

他们会监视您的一举一动，但禁止拍摄视频，以免小偷在房子里获得优势。

Not so the El Cortez.

埃尔科尔特斯则不然。

Morrow’s 1,200 YouTube videos have earned him a legion of viewers that follow his every move.

莫罗的 1,200 个 YouTube 视频为他赢得了大批观众，关注他的一举一动。

The El Cortez makes bank on fans who, inspired by Morrow, want to try their luck.

埃尔科尔特斯队的球迷在莫罗的启发下想要碰碰运气。

Winkie does a great job of trying to dig past Morrow’s rictus-grin hype to understand what motivates a man to gamble so prolifically and record every moment of it.

温基（Winkie）做得很好，试图挖掘莫罗（Morrow）咧着嘴笑的炒作，了解是什么促使一个人如此频繁地赌博并记录下赌博的每一刻。

As you might suspect, it’s not about the buzz of the casino, or even the wins.

正如您可能怀疑的那样，这与赌场的喧嚣无关，甚至与胜利无关。

It’s about fame, about validation from views.

这是关于名誉，关于观点的验证。

“The more I was around Morrow, the more I detected an elemental craving just below those gold chains,” writes Winkie.

“我在莫罗身边越多，我就越发觉到那些金链下面有一种基本的渴望，”温基写道。

“And why is the grind worth it?

“为什么辛苦值得？

Easy.

容易。

It has made Vegas Matt a celebrity, which, as I learned, is much more of a thrill for him than the money is.” As much as I enjoyed reading this profile about a guy doing what he wants with his own money, I felt uneasy about the shtick, about Morrow’s parlay-as-performance.

这让维加斯·马特成为了名人，据我所知，这对他来说比金钱更令人兴奋。”尽管我很喜欢读这篇关于一个人用自己的钱做他想做的事的简介，但我对这种小伎俩、对莫罗的连本带利表现感到不安。

After all, if you’ve given away years of your life gambling in Vegas for the empty love of YouTube infamy, do you really have anything more to lose?

毕竟，如果你为了 YouTube 恶名的空洞爱情而放弃了在维加斯赌博的多年，你真的还有什么可失去的吗？

—KS

—KS

## April

##四月

## The Last Detail

## 最后的细节

Kent Russell | Harper’s Magazine | March 21, 2025 | 8,178 words

肯特·拉塞尔 |哈珀杂志 | 2025 年 3 月 21 日 | 8,178 字

Of the many self-selecting groups that congregate in New York City, some seem to exist only in collective form.

在纽约市聚集的许多自我选择的群体中，有些似乎只以集体形式存在。

Like chess hustlers.

就像国际象棋骗子一样。

Or Black Israelites.

或者黑人以色列人。

Or, maybe most noticeably, the Guardian Angels: Not once have I spied that red satin jacket and almost-matching beret in the singular.

或者，也许最引人注目的是守护天使：我一次都没有发现那件红色缎面夹克和几乎匹配的贝雷帽。

I wasn’t sure if that was my own dumb luck, or if they simply kept the regalia stowed until they met up with their compatriots.

我不确定这是否是我自己的运气，或者他们是否只是将王冠收起来，直到与同胞见面。

Kent Russell’s Harper’s story about the volunteer patrol organization doesn’t explain the phenomenon, but given how enjoyable it is, I doubt you’ll hold it against him.

肯特·罗素（Kent Russell）的哈珀（Harper）关于志愿者巡逻组织的故事并没有解释这种现象，但考虑到它是多么令人愉快，我怀疑你会因此而反对他。

Russell joins the group after living in New York for nearly 20 years, motivated by curiosity but also the sincere desire to contribute.

Russell 在纽约生活了近 20 年后，出于好奇心和做出贡献的真诚愿望，加入了该组织。

The realization that there was a great essay in it probably didn’t hurt, either.

意识到其中有一篇很棒的文章可能也没有什么坏处。

You’re by his side through multiple patrols, each described in the deadpan detail Russell has perfected over the course of books like I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son and In the Land of Good Living: A Journey to the Heart of Florida.

你在多次巡逻中陪伴在他身边，拉塞尔在《我很抱歉认为我养育了一个胆怯的儿子》和《在美好生活的土地上：佛罗里达之心之旅》等书中，以面无表情的细节描述了每一次巡逻。

I’m predisposed to being annoyed by pieces like this; one person’s fish out of water is another’s white writer on class/culture safari.

我很容易对这样的事情感到恼火；一个人离开水的鱼是另一个人的阶级/文化之旅的白人作家。

However, Russell approaches this with care, and while his scenework is often pitched for a laugh, its arm’s-length regard feels like a function of self-consciousness rather than judgment.

然而，拉塞尔谨慎地对待这一点，虽然他的场景作品经常让人发笑，但它的疏远感觉感觉像是一种自我意识的作用，而不是判断力的作用。

(Besides, there’s something patently ridiculous about treating the New York of now—a Target on every corner, an influencer filming TikToks on every block—like the New York of the late ’70s.) Look through the group’s bluster and the writer’s self-deprecation, and you’ll see that the two are more similar than they appear.

（此外，对待现在的纽约显然有些荒谬——每个角落都有塔吉特，每个街区都有一个有影响力的人在拍摄 TikTok——就像 70 年代末的纽约一样。） 看看这个团体的咆哮和作者的自嘲，你会发现两者比表面上更相似。

Both love the city they live in.

两人都热爱自己所居住的城市。

And neither wants to be the only one.

双方都不想成为唯一的一个。

—PR

——公关

## Richard E.

## 理查德·E.

Grant: ‘Love Again?

格兰特：‘再爱一次？

I’m Not Looking For It’

我不是在寻找它”

Vassi Chamberlain | The Times | April 5, 2025 | 2,168 words

瓦西·张伯伦 |泰晤士报| 2025 年 4 月 5 日 | 2,168 字

In my early 20s, I spent a few months living in France.

20 岁出头时，我在法国生活了几个月。

My French was embarrassingly poor, and in those days before streaming, my media consumption was limited to the handful of English DVDs I had packed.

我的法语差得令人尴尬，而且在没有流媒体的那些日子里，我的媒体消费仅限于我打包的几张英文 DVD。

I watched these films so many times that I can still quote huge chunks.

这些电影我看了很多遍，我仍然可以引用大段内容。

My favorite was Withnail and I, in which Richard E.

我最喜欢的是《Withnail and I》，其中 Richard E.

Grant plays Withnail, an out-of-work, alcoholic actor who proclaims such things as, “We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here and we want them now!” Withnail speaks his mind, often disparaging those around him with bitter humor, which is a trait that came to mind as I read Vassi Chamberlain’s interview with an audacious and combative Grant.

格兰特饰演维内尔，一位失业、酗酒的演员，他宣称，“我们想要为人类提供最好的葡萄酒，我们想要它们在这里，我们现在就想要它们！”维内尔说出了自己的想法，经常用苦涩的幽默来贬低周围的人，当我读到瓦西·张伯伦对大胆而好斗的格兰特的采访时，我脑海中浮现出这种特质。

There is no sycophantic pandering on either side here, which, while a touch uncomfortable, makes for a fascinating read.

这里没有任何一方的阿谀奉承，虽然有点不舒服，但读起来却很有趣。

For every question Chamberlain asks, Grant responds by asking her the same one, including whether she has had therapy.

对于张伯伦提出的每一个问题，格兰特都会问她同样的问题，包括她是否接受过治疗。

(Chamberlain avoids answering it.) But this is not an avoidance strategy on Grant’s part: He still answers Chamberlain’s questions with searing honesty.

（张伯伦避免回答这个问题。）但这并不是格兰特的回避策略：他仍然以极其诚实的态度回答张伯伦的问题。

When asked about Withnail, he is dismissive: “The last time I saw it was a rough cut in 1987.

当被问及《Withnail》时，他不屑一顾：“我最后一次看到它是 1987 年的粗剪。

I offered to return the £20,000 fee because I thought I’d ruined the film.” (A painful blow to this ardent fan.) We also learn that he had an alcoholic, abusive father, and that he was devastated over the death of his wife of 38 years.

我提出退还 2 万英镑的费用，因为我认为我毁了这部电影。” （对这位狂热的粉丝来说是一个痛苦的打击。）我们还了解到他有一个酗酒、虐待的父亲，并且他对结婚 38 年的妻子的去世感到悲痛欲绝。

Grant beautifully speaks about the latter: “The conversation that began in bed in January 1983, ended in bed as we held each other’s hands, still talking, on Thursday the 2nd of September, 2021.

格兰特精彩地谈到了后者：“1983 年 1 月在床上开始的谈话，在 2021 年 9 月 2 日星期四，我们握着彼此的手，仍在床上交谈时结束了。

.

。

.

。

.

。

Talking is the greatest intimacy of all.” He still writes to his wife every night, telling her about his day and who he has met.

交谈是最伟大的亲密关系。”他仍然每天晚上给妻子写信，告诉她他的一天以及他遇到了谁。

Chamberlain bravely, perhaps foolishly, asks him what he will write about her.

张伯伦勇敢地，也许是愚蠢地，问他会写些什么关于她的事。

He replies: “All her girlfriends now look 40 years old but her jawline is hanging around her knees and in ten years she will tie a bow with her dyed hair around her chin in a tight knot and she’ll look like the Queen at Balmoral.” Chamberlain’s response, and her final word: “Ouch.” —CW

他回答道：“她所有的女朋友现在看起来都 40 岁了，但她的下巴轮廓垂到膝盖上，十年后，她会把染过的头发在下巴上打一个蝴蝶结，紧紧地打结，她看起来就像巴尔莫勒尔堡的女王。”张伯伦的回应，以及她的最后一句话：“哎哟。” —CW

## There Are Two Types of Dishwasher People

## 有两种类型的洗碗工

Ellen Cushing | The Atlantic | April 14, 2025 | 2,402 words

艾伦·库欣 |大西洋 | 2025 年 4 月 14 日 | 2,402 字

A few years ago, I replaced my trusty old black Bosch dishwasher, seduced by a newer, sleeker silver model.

几年前，我更换了值得信赖的旧黑色博世洗碗机，受到更新、更时尚的银色型号的诱惑。

I hate it.

我恨它。

The new dishwasher may look pretty, but the damn dishes never seem to come out clean.

新洗碗机可能看起来很漂亮，但该死的盘子似乎永远洗不干净。

A dishwasher without substance, I thought.

我想，一台没有实质内容的洗碗机。

But after reading Ellen Cushing’s delightfully sardonic piece on how to load a dishwasher, I’m forced to admit: Maybe I’m part of the problem.

但读完艾伦·库欣关于如何装载洗碗机的令人愉快的讽刺文章后，我不得不承认：也许我是问题的一部分。

A chaotic dish-dumper by nature, I’ve long been the source of sharp intakes of breath from friends brave enough to crack the door and peer into the abyss.

我天生就是一个乱扔盘子的人，长期以来，我一直是那些勇敢地打开门、凝视深渊的朋友们的倒吸一口凉气的来源。

And according to fellow dish-dumper Cushing, we may need to refine our systems (or start one).

根据同事库欣的说法，我们可能需要完善我们的系统（或启动一个系统）。

Or maybe we’ve been misled: As she notes, the internet is clogged with dishwasher-loading advice, commentary, and anxiety.

或者也许我们被误导了：正如她指出的那样，互联网上充斥着洗碗机的建议、评论和焦虑。

This humble source of domestic angst was clearly crying out for an investigation, and in Cushing’s hands, the quest for dishwasher-loading truth becomes highly entertaining.

这个家庭焦虑的卑微来源显然迫切需要进行调查，而在库欣的手中，寻找洗碗机装载的真相变得非常有趣。

It turns out I had absolutely no idea how dishwashers actually work.

事实证明我完全不知道洗碗机的实际工作原理。

I’ve also been wasting time faffing about pre-rinsing plates, when, as Cushing explains, today’s “enzymatic detergent” is “like a little Pac-Man, eating dirt and making room for the soap to do its job.” Life-changing.

我还浪费时间在预冲洗盘子上，正如库欣解释的那样，今天的“酶清洁剂”“就像一个小吃豆人，吃掉污垢，为肥皂腾出空间来完成它的工作。”改变生活。

Maybe you, too, will read Cushing’s piece and quietly make a few tweaks to your own dishwasher game.

也许您也会阅读库欣的文章，并悄悄地对您自己的洗碗机游戏进行一些调整。

Or, maybe, you’ll quickly forward this on to your partner.

或者，也许您会很快将其转发给您的合作伙伴。

Whether household harmony or continued dishwasher wars lie in your future, may your glasses always come out spot-free.

无论您的未来是家庭和谐还是持续不断的洗碗机大战，愿您的眼镜始终一尘不染。

—CW

—CW

## How Creativity Became the Reigning Value of Our Time

## 创造力如何成为我们这个时代的主导价值

Bryan Gardiner | MIT Technology Review | April 18, 2025 | 1,988 words

布莱恩·加德纳 |麻省理工科技评论 | 2025 年 4 月 18 日 | 1,988 字

Creativity is of the utmost importance in Minecraft, a digital fantasia for would-be architects where my 8-year-old son spends time (though not nearly as much as he would like).

创造力在《我的世界》中至关重要，这是一部为未来建筑师打造的数字幻想曲，我 8 岁的儿子在这里度过了很多时间（尽管没有他想要的那么多）。

He studies blueprints for elaborate, blocky structures, and invents his own idiosyncratic ones.

他研究复杂的块状结构的蓝图，并发明了自己独特的结构。

A four-story fortress made entirely from TNT?

完全由 TNT 制成的四层堡垒？

No one will mess with that, he assures me.

他向我保证，没有人会打扰这一点。

“Anything you can dream about, you can create,” Jack Black promises, his voice brimming with awe, in A Minecraft Movie, the highest-grossing film of 2025 so far.

“任何你能梦想的东西，你都可以创造，”杰克·布莱克在 2025 年迄今为止票房最高的电影《我的世界电影》中承诺道，他的声音充满敬畏。

In contrast, the Nether, Minecraft’s hellish underworld, is “a place with no joy or creativity at all.” I don’t derive much joy from Minecraft, myself.

相比之下，下界，即《我的世界》中的地狱般的地下世界，是“一个完全没有欢乐或创造力的地方”。我自己并没有从《我的世界》中获得太多乐趣。

And yet Bryan Gardiner’s conversation with Samuel Franklin, a cultural historian and author of The Cult of Creativity, has me watching my son a bit more closely, wondering at his impulses to shape the space around him.

然而，布莱恩·加德纳 (Bryan Gardiner) 与文化历史学家、《创造力崇拜》一书的作者塞缪尔·富兰克林 (Samuel Franklin) 的对话让我更仔细地观察我的儿子，想知道他塑造周围空间的冲动。

“Like a lot of kids, I grew up thinking that creativity was this inherently good thing,” Franklin tells Gardiner.

“像很多孩子一样，我从小就认为创造力本质上是一件好事，”富兰克林告诉加德纳。

“Being creative meant you at least had some future in this world, even if it wasn’t clear what that future would entail.” Later, Franklin realized that “what was being sold as the triumph of the creative class wasn’t actually resulting in a more inclusive or creative world order.” While on the shorter end of a Longreads recommendation, Gardiner’s exchange with Franklin is chock-a-block with curiosities from our recent fixation on creativity as a cure-all.

“具有创造力意味着你至少在这个世界上拥有一些未来，即使这个未来会带来什么还不清楚。”后来，富兰克林意识到，“被宣传为创意阶层的胜利的东西实际上并没有带来更具包容性或创意的世界秩序。”虽然在 Longreads 的推荐中较短的一端，加德纳与富兰克林的交流充满了我们最近对创造力作为万能药的执着的好奇心。

After you read, you’ll find yourself searching for details on the psychologists who first elevated concepts of divergent thinking, on the cognitive tests put to Norman Mailer and Louis Kahn to gather data on creativity.

读完后，你会发现自己正在寻找有关首先提出发散思维概念的心理学家的详细信息，以及诺曼·梅勒和路易斯·卡恩为收集创造力数据而进行的认知测试的详细信息。

You may find yourself looking at a brick, and thinking more expansively about just how much heart you put in your creations.

您可能会发现自己看着一块砖，并更广泛地思考您在创作中投入了多少心血。

—BF

—BF

## May

##五月

## Fried Fish & Family Affairs

## 炸鱼和家事

Sarah Golibart Gorman | The Bitter Southerner | April 30, 2025 | 3,489 words

莎拉·戈利巴特·戈尔曼 | 莎拉·戈利巴特·戈尔曼苦涩的南方人 | 2025 年 4 月 30 日 | 3,489 字

No matter how many states you’ve lived in, no matter how much of the country you’ve seen, the United States is so vast and varied as to remain stubbornly unknowable.

无论你生活在多少个州，无论你见过这个国家多少个州，美国幅员辽阔、变化多样，你永远无法了解它。

(Sorry, Alexis de Tocqueville.) Case in point: the Eastern Shore of Virginia, where Sarah Golibart Gorman spent her adolescence.

（对不起，亚历克西斯·德·托克维尔。） 典型的例子是：弗吉尼亚东海岸，莎拉·戈利巴特·戈尔曼 (Sarah Golibart Gorman) 在那里度过了青春期。

It’s a place that feels distinct even from the other two states that share its peninsula—linguistically, culinarily, culturally.

这个地方甚至在语言、烹饪和文化上都给人一种与共享其半岛的其他两个国家截然不同的感觉。

(The “from here” vs. “come here” divide is so strong that one transplant who had a child on the Shore is told “just because the cat has kittens in an oven, you don’t call them biscuits.”) When Golibart Gorman and her brothers come back to the Shore to help pack up their parents’ house, she tries black drum fish ribs for the first time in her life, at which point the piece shifts from a bucolic remembrance to something more viscerally satisfying.

（“从这里来”与“来这里”的分歧是如此强烈，以至于一位在海岸生了孩子的移植者被告知“仅仅因为猫在烤箱里养了小猫，你就不能称它们为饼干。”）当戈利巴特·戈尔曼和她的兄弟们回到海岸帮助收拾父母的房子时，她生平第一次尝试了黑鼓鱼排，此时这件作品从田园风光的回忆转变为更多的东西发自内心的满足。

“Perfectly salty, reflective of the bay and the ocean from which it came, the drum was a taste of home I tried to memorize,” she writes, “allowing its briny flakiness to anchor me.” She unpacks drum’s importance to the region, its unappetizing exterior and its unforgettable interior, its unerring ability to bring a family together.

“鼓声非常咸，反映出它来自的海湾和海洋，是我试图记住的家乡的味道，”她写道，“让它的咸味让我锚定。”她揭示了鼓对该地区的重要性，它令人倒胃口的外观和令人难忘的内部，以及它使家庭团结在一起的准确能力。

You don’t just read this piece; you feel it.

你不只是阅读这篇文章；你感觉到了。

You wonder how it is that you’ve never been to this place, tasted its bounty, felt that particular satiety that comes from sharing such a meal with loved ones.

你想知道你为什么从未去过这个地方，尝过它的丰盛，感受过与亲人分享这样一顿饭所带来的特殊满足感。

And you add one more name to the list of places you want to visit.

然后你又在你想去的地方列表中添加了一个名字。

—PR

——公关

## How To Build A Thousand-Year-Old Tree

## 如何建造一棵千年古树

Matthew Ponsford | Noēma | March 6, 2025 | 4,227 words

马修·庞斯福德 |诺埃玛 | 2025 年 3 月 6 日 | 4,227 字

I recently hugged a thousand-year-old yew tree.

我最近拥抱了一棵千年的红豆杉树。

Part of The Yew Tree Project in England, this tree had a sign next to it that read “Hugging a tree increases the levels of the hormone oxytocin.” (I imagine this tree gets a lot of hugs, so I hugged the sign-bereft neighbor too.) These trees are not conventionally beautiful.

作为英格兰紫杉树项目的一部分，这棵树旁边有一个标志，上面写着“拥抱一棵树会增加催产素激素的水平。” （我想这棵树得到了很多拥抱，所以我也拥抱了失去标志的邻居。）这些树并不像传统意义上的美丽。

Their huge limbs are knotted and furled, curling awkwardly to the ground, as if to prop up their heavy, rotting trunks.

它们巨大的四肢打结、卷曲，笨拙地卷曲在地上，仿佛是为了支撑它们沉重、腐烂的树干。

Seeing a thousand winters come and go takes its toll, and the air felt heavy with their sighs of age.

目睹一千个冬天的到来和离去令人心痛，空气中弥漫着他们对岁月的叹息。

Trees such as these (over 400 years old) are classified as “ancients.” The UK has more ancient trees than the rest of Europe combined.

像这样的树木（树龄超过 400 年）被归类为“古树”。英国的古树数量比欧洲其他国家的总和还多。

This isn’t because Brits have been particularly protective of their elderly vegetation.

这并不是因为英国人特别保护他们古老的植被。

Rather, as Matthew Ponsford explains in this piece for Noēma, it is, at least partly, because kings and queens shut people out from vast swaths of land so they could hunt without having to clap eyes on any bothersome commoners.

相反，正如马修·庞斯福德（Matthew Ponsford）在诺埃玛（Noēma）的这篇文章中所解释的那样，至少部分是因为国王和王后将人们拒之于大片土地之外，这样他们就可以打猎，而不必盯着任何烦人的平民。

Sherwood Forest, William the Conqueror’s hunting ground in the 11th century, has about 380 ancient trees.

舍伍德森林是11世纪征服者威廉的狩猎场，拥有约380棵古树。

Ponsford visits its most famous: an oak tree named the Major, another potentially thousand-year-old behemoth.

庞斯福德参观了其中最著名的一棵橡树，名为“Major”，这是另一棵可能有千年历史的庞然大物。

Like the yews, this old man is past his prime.

和紫杉一样，这位老人也已经过了壮年。

As Ponsford contemplates the wizened boughs held up by metal columns like walking sticks, he wonders if he should feel “saddened by the decline of this long-lived beast.” But arborist Rob Harris is quick to reframe Ponsford’s thoughts of the Major as a “withering geriatric.” Ancients have a fundamental role in the forest, one so important that arborists have even begun “veteranization.” This is the process of hitting and cutting holes in young trees to promote the aging seen in their elders.

当庞斯福德凝视着像手杖一样由金属柱支撑的干枯树枝时，他想知道自己是否应该“为这种长寿野兽的衰落感到悲伤”。但树艺家罗布·哈里斯很快就将庞斯福德对少校的看法重新定义为“枯萎的老人”。古人在森林中发挥着重要作用，这一作用如此重要，以至于树木学家甚至开始“退伍”。这是在幼树上打孔并切洞以促进老树衰老的过程。

It seems brutal—but rot-filled caverns are fundamental ecosystems for birds and insects, and, as the ancients diminish, ones that are becoming lost.

这看起来很残酷，但充满腐烂的洞穴是鸟类和昆虫的基本生态系统，而且随着古人的减少，这些生态系统正在消失。

The young, beautiful trees are just not as valuable to the forest without a few life scars.

如果没有一些生命伤痕，那些年轻而美丽的树木对于森林来说就不那么有价值了。

As someone who has always loved trees, I devoured Ponsford’s fascinating insights, but you will be gripped regardless of your forestry inclinations.

作为一个一直热爱树木的人，我深深地吸收了庞斯福德的迷人见解，但无论你对林业有何兴趣，你都会被深深吸引。

A solid reminder to always hug the ugly old ones.

这是一个有力的提醒，要永远拥抱那些丑陋的旧人。

They are important.

它们很重要。

—CW

—CW

## The Curious Case of the Pygmy Nuthatch

## 侏儒五子雀的奇事

Forrest Wickman | Slate | May 11, 2025 | 6,365 words

福雷斯特·威克曼 |板岩| 2025 年 5 月 11 日 | 6,365 字

As far as opening sentences go, it’s hard to beat “There is nothing quite like becoming birdpilled.” I don’t even care about birds!* Yet, Forrest Wickman grabbed me immediately.

就开头句子而言，很难击败“没有什么比成为鸟丸更重要的了”。我什至不关心鸟！*然而，福雷斯特·威克曼立即抓住了我。

Maybe I’m a sucker for obsessions.

也许我是一个痴迷的傻瓜。

Maybe I’m just a sucker for a good hook.

也许我只是一个好钩子的傻瓜。

Probably both.

可能两者都有。

Thankfully, the other 6,358 words in the story pay off the promise of those first seven.

值得庆幸的是，故事中的其他 6,358 个字兑现了前七个字的承诺。

See, in becoming the kind of person who listens to birds basically all the time, Forrest Wickman has also become the kind of person who gets irritated when a bird sound in a movie or TV show doesn’t match the bird shown on screen, or is otherwise impossible.

看，福雷斯特·威克曼在成为那种基本上一直听鸟叫的人的同时，也成为了那种当电影或电视节目中的鸟声与屏幕上显示的鸟声不匹配或不可能的时候会生气的人。

This happens a lot.

这种情况经常发生。

But nothing is quite as irritating to Forrest Wickman as the bird who proves pivotal to the plot of 2000’s Charlie’s Angels.

但没有什么比这只鸟更让福雷斯特·威克曼恼火了，这只鸟在 2000 年的《霹雳娇娃》的情节中发挥了关键作用。

It’s called a pygmy nuthatch, which it is not; it’s described as being indigenous to a single city in California, which it is also not; and it makes a sound that is neither that of a pygmy nuthatch or the bird it actually is.

它被称为侏儒五子雀，但其实不是。它被描述为加州某个城市的本土产品，但事实并非如此；它发出的声音既不是侏儒五子雀的声音，也不是它实际上的鸟的声音。

I’m not even Forrest Wickman, and this bothers me.

我什至不是福雷斯特·威克曼，这让我很烦恼。

So Forrest Wickman (whose name I am doomed to write in full) sets off to figure out what the hell happened to create this sorry state of affairs.

因此，福雷斯特·威克曼（Forrest Wickman）（我注定要写下他的全名）开始弄清楚到底发生了什么造成了这种令人遗憾的事态。

He talks to the original screenwriter.

他与原编剧交谈。

He talks to one of the script doctors.

他与一位剧本医生交谈。

He talks to the animal trainer who helped cast the imposter.

他与帮助扮演冒名顶替者的驯兽师交谈。

He talks to the sound editor.

他与声音编辑交谈。

He talks to a naturalist and journalist who seems to specialize in how Hollywood screws up anything ornithological.

他与一位博物学家兼记者交谈，这位记者似乎专门研究好莱坞如何搞砸鸟类学。

He talks to a man who is even crazier about birds than he is.

他和一个比他更热爱鸟类的人交谈。

He talks to the developer of a popular birdsong app.

他与一款流行鸟鸣应用程序的开发者进行了交谈。

Each of these conversations is more entertaining than it has any right to be.

这些对话中的每一个都比它应有的更有趣。

Ultimately, he talks to the movie’s director, McG—who, I have to say, destroyed everything I’d ever assumed about McG.

最终，他与电影导演麦格进行了交谈——我不得不说，他摧毁了我对麦格的所有假设。

McG should be interviewed about weird things more often.

麦格应该更多地接受关于奇怪事情的采访。

Yes, Forrest Wickman discovers exactly what happened with the bird on Charlie’s Angels, and why.

是的，福雷斯特·威克曼准确地发现了《查理的天使》中那只鸟发生的事情以及原因。

And in the process, he writes** one of the most pleasurable stories I’ve read this year.

在此过程中，他写了**我今年读过的最令人愉快的故事之一。

Maybe I’ve been birdpilled too.

也许我也被鸟丸咬过。

—PR

——公关

* Clarification: I care about birds in the dignity-of-living-things sense.

*澄清：我从生命尊严的角度关心鸟类。

I don’t care inordinately about birds.

我不太关心鸟类。

No angry emails, please.

请不要发愤怒的电子邮件。

** The story was originally an episode of Slate’s podcast Decoder Ring that came out last October.

** 这个故事最初是去年 10 月推出的 Slate 播客 Decoder Ring 的一集。

As much as I enjoy Decoder Ring, though, I have to tell you: This is even better as a written feature.

尽管我很喜欢解码器环，但我必须告诉你：作为书面功能，这甚至更好。

## The Hobo Handbook

## 流浪汉手册

Jeremiah David | The Paris Review | May 9, 2025 | 2,233 words

耶利米·大卫 |巴黎评论 | 2025 年 5 月 9 日 | 2,233 字

When I was in my 20s, someone passed me a map to the steam tunnels that run beneath the University of Virginia, complete with “anecdotal demonstration” of how to access locked buildings.

当我 20 多岁的时候，有人递给我一张弗吉尼亚大学地下蒸汽隧道的地图，上面有如何进入上锁的建筑物的“轶事演示”。

The map had come under scrutiny from the school; a student had recently fallen from the top of the Physics Building to his death.

该地图已经接受了学校的审查；最近，一名学生从物理楼顶坠落身亡。

In most respects, I was, and still am, a cautious person.

在大多数方面，我过去是、现在仍然是一个谨慎的人。

Still, I felt a pull.

尽管如此，我还是感觉到了一股拉力。

I never used the map, but I took some satisfaction from exploring its contents and nursing the idea that I might quietly transport myself somewhere rarely traveled.

我从来没有使用过这张地图，但我从探索它的内容中获得了一些满足，并想到我可以安静地把自己传送到很少有人去过的地方。

Jeremiah David knows of what I speak, having frequently tested the limits of a similar, albeit more storied, desire: hopping trains.

耶利米·大卫（Jeremiah David）知道我所说的话，他经常测试一个类似的、尽管更有传奇色彩的愿望的极限：跳火车。

In New Orleans, he briefly takes hold of a freight car and, keeping pace, considers “what it would feel like to pull myself up on the fly.” In Oregon, he climbs aboard a stopped car one night.

在新奥尔良，他短暂地抓住一辆货车，跟上步伐，思考“在飞行中把自己拉上来会是什么感觉”。在俄勒冈州，一天晚上，他爬上了一辆停着的汽车。

“I lay there in the dark for hours before stumbling home at first light,” David writes.

“我在黑暗中躺了几个小时，然后天一亮就跌跌撞撞地回家了，”大卫写道。

“The train hissed and sputtered but never moved an inch.” A friend finally hands David a copy of the Crew Change Guide, an underground text that promises “best practices and guidelines for hopping freight trains anywhere in the U.S. and Canada” and whose extremely pre-Internet history David relays with the care of a true devotee.

“火车发出嘶嘶声和溅射声，但从未移动过一英寸。”一位朋友最终递给大卫一本《乘务员换班指南》，这是一份地下文本，其中承诺“在美国和加拿大任何地方跳动货运列车的最佳实践和指南”，大卫以真正的爱好者的态度转述了其在互联网出现之前的历史。

“The Guide signified more than information to me; it signified the courage to act on it,” he writes.

“对我来说，《指南》不仅仅意味着信息；它还意味着据此采取行动的勇气，”他写道。

“I knew that no guide, no matter how detailed or digestible, could substitute for experience.

“我知道任何指南，无论多么详细或易于理解，都无法替代经验。

But I returned to it again and again over the following days, craving some conclusive invitation.” David’s fascinating literary history is a thoughtful evaluation of his own longings, and a reminder that the most enchanting reads often feel like invitations.

但在接下来的几天里，我一次又一次地回到这个话题，渴望得到一些决定性的邀请。”大卫引人入胜的文学史是对他自己渴望的深思熟虑的评估，并提醒我们，最迷人的读物往往感觉像是邀请。

—BF

—BF

## Haines Man Finds Father

## 海恩斯男子找到父亲

Will Steinfeld | Chilkat Valley News | May 15, 2020 | 3,063 words

威尔·斯坦菲尔德 |奇卡特谷新闻| 2020 年 5 月 15 日 | 3,063 字

Being shown a picture in a magazine and being told it’s your long-lost father?

在杂志上看到一张照片并被告知这是你失散多年的父亲？

That’s the kind of plotline that belongs in a soap opera.

这就是属于肥皂剧的情节。

But in Mike Thompson’s case, it’s plausible.

但在迈克·汤普森的例子中，这是有道理的。

Thompson’s mother claimed she met his dad at a New York party in the ’60s: a suave, well-dressed model who drove fancy cars.

汤普森的母亲声称她在 60 年代纽约的一次聚会上认识了他的父亲：一位温文尔雅、衣着考究、开着豪华汽车的模特。

Despite her mailing him a GQ clipping, Thompson remained doubtful.

尽管她给他寄了一份《GQ》剪报，汤普森仍然心存疑虑。

Growing up the “only son of a nurse in Anchorage,” as Will Steinfield writes, makes it hard to imagine your dad as a jet-setting James Bond type.

正如威尔·斯坦菲尔德所写，你的父亲是“安克雷奇一名护士的独生子”，你很难想象他会成为乘坐喷气式飞机的詹姆斯·邦德类型。

Besides, Thompson was too busy leading his own life to chase down his father.

此外，汤普森忙于过自己的生活，无暇追捕他的父亲。

While subtle in his comparisons, Steinfield still shows Thompson to be as impressive—if a touch less glamorous—as the man from the magazine.

尽管斯坦菲尔德的比较很微妙，但他仍然表明汤普森与杂志上的那个人一样令人印象深刻，尽管稍微不那么迷人。

Entering Thompson’s home, Steinfield notes: “Through the entryway is a wall of certificates and mementos from Thompson’s service, as a park ranger, fighter pilot, and air marshal, all hung plumb and level.” It’s Thompson’s calm, level-headed demeanor that grounds this larger-than-life story.

进入汤普森的家，斯坦菲尔德注意到：“穿过入口，墙上挂满了汤普森作为公园管理员、战斗机飞行员和空军元帅服役期间的证书和纪念品，所有这些都垂直且水平地悬挂着。”汤普森冷静、冷静的举止奠定了这个传奇故事的基础。

When a relative reaches out through Ancestry.com, Thompson takes months to respond with a phone number.

当一位亲戚通过 Ancestry.com 联系时，汤普森花了几个月的时间才回复电话号码。

Eventually, he learns of his half-brother.

最终，他得知了他同父异母的兄弟的事。

He also learns of Stephen Winn: a former model who had been to New York and drove fancy cars.

他还了解到史蒂芬·温恩（Stephen Winn）：一位前模特，去过纽约并开过豪华汽车。

Thompson then flies across the world from freezing Anchorage to freezing Scotland, where Winn lived.

随后，汤普森飞往世界各地，从寒冷的安克雷奇飞往温恩居住的寒冷的苏格兰。

I’ll let you find out what happens next.

我会让你知道接下来会发生什么。

Steinfield’s writing is accessible and smooth, never weighed down by sentimentality or excessive detail, light with clarity.

斯坦菲尔德的写作通俗易懂、流畅，从不因感伤或过多的细节而沉重，轻松而清晰。

At a tight 3,000 words, this piece of reporting brings decades-spanning revelations to life and wraps them in the quiet dignity of a man who built his own life, regardless of who his dad was.

这篇简短的 3000 字的报道将跨越数十年的真相带入生活，并将其包裹在一个建立自己生活的男人的安静尊严中，无论他的父亲是谁。

—CW

—CW

## June

## 六月

## Laughing With the Pain

## 带着痛苦笑

Natalie Marlin | Bright Wall / Dark Room | May 30, 2025 | 3,121 words

娜塔莉·马林 |明亮的墙壁/黑暗的房间| 2025 年 5 月 30 日 | 3,121 字

I never set out to watch Jackass, the unlikely media franchise born from the self-inflicted humiliation and ding-dong daredevilry of Johnny Knoxville and his crew of goons.

我从来没有打算看《蠢驴》，这是一部不太可能的媒体专营权，诞生于约翰尼·诺克斯维尔和他的一群暴徒的自我羞辱和胆大妄为。

Still, was there a teenager in the early aughts who managed to dodge it entirely?

不过，有没有一个少年能够完全躲过这一劫呢？

Clips resurfaced at odd hours on MTV; I was never quite sure when I might encounter footage of Steve-O, wild-eyed and jockstrapped, walking a low tightrope over an alligator pit, surrounded by his band of brothers, who were few but always seemed happy.

剪辑片段在 MTV 的非正常时间重新出现；我一直不太确定什么时候会看到史蒂夫-O的镜头，他眼神狂野，穿着紧身裤，在鳄鱼坑上走钢丝，周围是他的一群兄弟，他们虽然人数不多，但似乎总是很快乐。

The Jackass cast members have “an abrasive way of expressing their love for one another, but it’s a love language regardless,” writes Natalie Marlin.

娜塔莉·马林写道，《蠢驴》演员们“用一种粗暴的方式表达对彼此的爱，但无论如何，这都是一种爱的语言”。

“To be cared for, in the world of Jackass, is to subject your friends to outlandish feats of human endurance, blows that knock the wind out, staredowns with deadly wildlife, and blunt genital trauma.” Marlin started watching Jackass after she began transitioning, joining a population “more statistically prone to pain than most people who appear in a Jackass film.” In her essay for Bright Wall/Dark Room, she winces and laughs her way through two decades of Jackass content, watching the cast suffer together as they grow older.

“在《公驴》的世界里，被照顾就是让你的朋友经历人类忍耐力的奇异壮举、击倒风的打击、与致命野生动物的凝视，以及钝性生殖器创伤。”马林在开始变性后开始观看《蠢驴》，加入了“从统计数据来看，比蠢驴电影中出现的大多数人更容易遭受痛苦”的人群。在她为《亮墙/暗室》撰写的文章中，她一边皱着眉头一边大笑，经历了二十年的蠢货内容，看着演员们随着年龄的增长而一起受苦。

As she does, she details the pain she has invited into her own life, as well as the comfort she takes from those who have shared a version of it.

正如她所做的那样，她详细描述了她给自己的生活带来的痛苦，以及她从那些经历过同样经历的人那里得到的安慰。

Between the groin shots and hospital trips, Marlin identifies acts of “community-building, of getting closer to those you love by partaking in the stupidest, most humiliating, most dangerous acts imaginable.

在腹股沟枪击和住院治疗之间，马林指出了“社区建设，通过参与可以想象到的最愚蠢、最羞辱、最危险的行为来拉近与你所爱的人的距离”的行为。

You wouldn’t do the kinds of things that happen in a Jackass film in front of just anyone.

你不会在任何人面前做傻瓜电影中发生的事情。

The most ideal way to endure those kinds of pain is with those you feel the closest to.” For years, a disclaimer ran ahead of Jackass, warning away imitators and declaring that the stunts to follow were “performed by professionals.” The joke, of course, was that they weren’t—at least not at first.

忍受这些痛苦的最理想方式就是和那些你感觉最亲近的人在一起。”多年来，《蠢驴》的前面都有免责声明，警告模仿者远离，并宣称接下来的特技是“由专业人士表演的”。当然，笑话是他们不是——至少一开始不是。

But we all become veterans of pain, don’t we?

但我们都会成为痛苦的老兵，不是吗？

May we all find a small crew of friends to soothe us.

愿我们都能找到一小群朋友来安慰我们。

—BF

—BF

## The Talented Ms. Highsmith

## 才华横溢的海史密斯女士

Elena Gosalvez Blanco | The Yale Review | June 9, 2025 | 6,281 words

埃琳娜·戈萨尔韦斯·布兰科 | Elena Gosalvez Blanco耶鲁评论| 2025 年 6 月 9 日 | 6,281 字

My wife and I lived, for a summer, in the home of a writer I admire.

我和妻子在一位我敬佩的作家家里住了一个夏天。

He told us jokes while he made us dinner, a recipe an ex taught him, tossing pieces of rotisserie chicken with arugula, olives, and goat cheese.

他一边给我们做饭，一边给我们讲笑话，这是前任教他的菜谱，将烤鸡片与芝麻菜、橄榄和山羊奶酪一起搅拌。

I drove his pickup to the dump for him, his Public Enemy cassette in the deck, a garbage can filled with his empty bourbon bottles rattling in the back.

我把他的皮卡开到了垃圾场，他的《公敌》磁带放在甲板上，装满空波本威士忌酒瓶的垃圾桶在后座嘎嘎作响。

When he was away, I read his story collections.

当他不在的时候，我读了他的故事集。

There were the same pieces of his life, dispersed among his characters: the truck, the Public Enemy, the salad.

他生活中的相同片段分散在他的角色中：卡车、公敌、沙拉。

The distinctions between our life and his stories blurred, sharpening the remainder of our summer together.

我们的生活和他的故事之间的区别变得模糊，让我们一起度过的夏天变得更加清晰。

Another couple moved in after us; later, I saw pieces of their life in a New Yorker story.

另一对夫妇在我们之后搬了进来。后来，我在《纽约客》的一篇报道中看到了他们生活的片段。

Patricia Highsmith, the author of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train, wielded a singular intensity in her life and work.

帕特里夏·海史密斯是《才华横溢的雷普利先生》和《火车上的陌生人》的作者，她在生活和工作中表现出一种独特的热情。

(One critic who resisted her novels feared that “spending too much time in Highsmith’s brain might alter mine irrevocably.”) In 1994, during the final months of Highsmith’s life, Elena Gosalvez Blanco moves to Switzerland to become her live-in assistant.

（一位抵制她小说的评论家担心“在海史密斯的大脑中花费太多时间可能会不可挽回地改变我的大脑。”）1994 年，在海史密斯生命的最后几个月，埃琳娜·戈萨尔维斯·布兰科搬到了瑞士，成为她的住家助理。

Highsmith controls Blanco’s access to the phone and to friends, and scolds her for using electricity.

海史密斯控制了布兰科的电话和与朋友的联系，并责骂她用电。

“I was trapped in her world with her, trembling,” Blanco writes.

“我和她一起被困在她的世界里，浑身颤抖，”布兰科写道。

“I fantasized that she might try to kill me.” From one wing of the U-shaped house, Blanco gazes across a courtyard into Highsmith’s bedroom, aware that Highsmith might just as easily observe her when she chooses.

“我幻想她可能会试图杀了我。”布兰科从 U 形房子的一侧，凝视着庭院对面的海史密斯的卧室，意识到海史密斯可能会在她选择的时候很容易地观察她。

An acquaintance tells Blanco that Highsmith “is just in love with you,” deepening Blanco’s worry: “Like Ripley, Pat could be charming but also dark, possessive, irrational, and impatient.” Blanco’s account of her weeks with Highsmith is suspenseful and precise, a dark portrait of a complex relationship that explores the scrim between life and art.

一位熟人告诉布兰科，海史密斯“只是爱上了你”，这加深了布兰科的担忧：“像里普利一样，帕特可能很迷人，但也很阴暗、占有欲强、不理性、缺乏耐心。”布兰科对她与海史密斯相处的几周的描述充满悬疑而精确，这是一幅复杂关系的黑暗肖像，探讨了生活与艺术之间的紧张关系。

—BF

—BF

## Changing Lanes

## 变道

Dave Denison | The Baffler | June 2, 2025 | 5,812 words

戴夫·丹尼森 |挡板| 2025 年 6 月 2 日 | 5,812 字

That I haven’t bowled a single time in the past 15 years* doesn’t change the fact that a bowling alley’s sounds and smells remain one of the most vivid sense memories still knocking around my temporal lobe.

在过去的 15 年里，我没有打过一次保龄球*，但这并没有改变这样一个事实：保龄球馆的声音和气味仍然是最生动的感官记忆之一，仍然在我的颞叶周围敲响。

Besides, this isn’t really a piece about bowling.

此外，这并不是一篇关于保龄球的文章。

It’s a piece through the eyes of a bowler about how bowling has changed as a social sport, and particularly how it’s changed since the arrival of private equity and its well-documented playbook.

这是一篇通过保龄球手的视角讲述保龄球作为一项社交运动如何变化的文章，特别是自私募股权及其详细记录的到来以来保龄球发生的变化。

We know that league bowling is down nearly 90% from its peak in the late 1970s.

我们知道，保龄球联赛较 20 世纪 70 年代末的巅峰时期下降了近 90%。

We know that neighborhood lanes have closed with ominous regularity.

我们知道附近的车道经常关闭。

However, bowling’s renaissance, as envisioned by large PE-backed global chains like Bowlero, is loud, luxe, and decidedly anti-league.

然而，正如 Bowlero 等大型 PE 支持的全球连锁店所设想的那样，保龄球运动的复兴是喧闹、奢华的，而且绝对是反联盟的。

It’s bowling as an occasional night out rather than the “third place” that it used to be—which means it’s somehow both more expensive and cheaper-feeling.

现在打保龄球只是偶尔的夜晚，而不是过去的“第三场所”——这意味着它在某种程度上既更贵又更便宜。

(Learning that pins are increasingly reset by attached cords, dragged back into position like bottom-heavy marionettes, was surprisingly disappointing.) Dave Denison takes us through the landscape as a bowler should: visiting as many New England alleys as he could drive to, and talking to the owners and enthusiasts who have kept the sport alive.

（得知球瓶越来越多地被连接的绳索重置，像底部重的木偶一样被拖回原位，令人惊讶地失望。）戴夫·丹尼森（Dave Denison）带我们以投球手应有的方式穿越风景：参观尽可能多的新英格兰小巷，并与使这项运动保持活力的业主和爱好者交谈。

There’s some nostalgia here for a bygone era, sure, but Denison also praises the places that are threading the needle, creating a community while also avoiding the cost-cutting of conglomerates.

当然，这里有一些对过去时代的怀旧之情，但丹尼森也赞扬了那些正在发挥作用的地方，创建了一个社区，同时也避免了企业集团削减成本。

Mostly, though, bowling has been cleaved by profit motive just as so many other industries have, forcing bowlers and lane owners alike into a difficult choice.

不过，与许多其他行业一样，保龄球运动大多受到利润动机的影响，迫使保龄球手和球道所有者做出艰难的选择。

You can drown while clinging to a fading ideal, or you can jump into a lifeboat that you know is heading somewhere worse.

你可能会在坚持逐渐消失的理想时被淹死，或者你可能会跳进一艘你知道驶向更糟糕的地方的救生艇。

Just make sure that 15-pound ball doesn’t make the decision for you.

只要确保 15 磅重的球不会替您做出决定即可。

—PR

——公关

*I’m assuming that multiple rewatches of the Documentary Now episode “Any Given Saturday Afternoon” doesn’t count as actual bowling.

*我假设多次重看纪录片《任何周六下午》这一集并不算真正的保龄球。

## Evolution and Guinea Pig Toes

## 进化和豚鼠脚趾

Zachary B.

扎卡里·B.

Hancock | Nautilus | June 12, 2025 | 3,483 words

汉考克 |鹦鹉螺 | 2025 年 6 月 12 日 | 3,483 字

It was the title that first pulled me in; who doesn’t want to know more about guinea pig toes?

首先吸引我的是这个标题；谁不想更多地了解豚鼠脚趾？

What followed was a surprisingly elegant introduction to a lesser-known evolutionary theory, wrapped in the curious biography of Sewall Wright, a geneticist with a lifelong fixation on guinea pigs.

接下来是对一种鲜为人知的进化论的令人惊讶的优雅介绍，包含在休厄尔赖特（Sewall Wright）的好奇传记中，休厄尔赖特是一位终生关注豚鼠的遗传学家。

I’ve occasionally wondered: Why don’t we see fish wandering around on little legs, on their way to becoming something grander?

我偶尔会想：为什么我们看不到鱼用小腿游来游去，逐渐变得更伟大呢？

Wright put it more scientifically: How do organisms evolve beneficial traits when the steps in between might be maladaptive?

赖特更科学地说：当中间的步骤可能不适应时，生物体如何进化出有益的特征？

In the early 1900s, guinea pigs were the lab animal of choice, and Wright—then a graduate student at Harvard’s Bussey Institute—found himself managing a colony housed in a gothic mansion in Boston.

1900 年代初期，豚鼠是首选的实验动物，当时是哈佛大学布西研究所的研究生的赖特发现自己管理着一个位于波士顿一座哥特式豪宅中的殖民地。

(Yes, it’s hard not to picture them in cloaks and top hats.) It was there that he encountered guinea pigs with an extra toe and began to formulate his answer.

（是的，很难不想象他们穿着斗篷、戴着高顶帽子。）正是在那里，他遇到了多了一个脚趾的豚鼠，并开始制定他的答案。

Hancock walks us through Wright’s “shifting balance theory,” which suggests that in small populations, genetic drift can help species leap across valleys of lower fitness toward new adaptive peaks.

汉考克向我们介绍了赖特的“平衡变化理论”，该理论表明，在小种群中，遗传漂变可以帮助物种跨越适应性较低的山谷，到达新的适应高峰。

It’s a complex idea, but Hancock is a skilled guide, helping us through with a clever Lego-brick metaphor and a timely parallel to the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant.

这是一个复杂的想法，但汉考克是一位熟练的向导，通过巧妙的乐高积木比喻和及时与 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron 变体的进化进行平行分析来帮助我们理解。

This thoughtful and fast-paced read is both accessible and delightful—an invitation to think differently about how change happens (and feel a touch smarter while doing it).

这本深思熟虑、节奏明快的读物既平易近人，又令人愉悦——邀请人们以不同的方式思考变化是如何发生的（并在做的过程中感觉更聪明）。

—CW

—CW

## July

##七月

## How to Save a Dog

## 如何拯救狗

David W.

大卫·W.

Brown | The New Yorker | July 5, 2025 | 3,974 words

棕色|纽约客 | 2025 年 7 月 5 日 | 3,974 字

I love a story about an animal on the loose.

我喜欢关于一只逍遥法外的动物的故事。

Rusty the red panda, Betsy the cow, the Bronx zoo cobra—these are just a few of my favorite entries in the genre.

小熊猫 Rusty、奶牛 Betsy、布朗克斯动物园眼镜蛇——这些只是我最喜欢的同类作品中的几个。

Now I can add Scrim the dog to the list.

现在我可以将狗 Scrim 添加到列表中。

I didn’t experience Scrim’s journey in real time—my preferred way to consume this kind of fare—because I’d just had a baby, but I was thrilled to learn about it in David W.

我没有实时体验 Scrim 的旅程——这是我消费此类食物的首选方式——因为我刚刚生了孩子，但我很高兴能在 David W.

Brown’s sweet, funny, captivating essay.

布朗的文章甜蜜、有趣、引人入胜。

Scrim is a scruffy white rescue terrier in New Orleans who ran away from home not once, but twice.

稀松布是新奥尔良一只衣衫褴褛的白色救援梗犬，它不止一次离家出走，而是两次。

Both times it took an army of do-gooders to track him down.

两次都需要大批行善者才能找到他。

Among them was Brown, who became a Scrim seeker one night while doomscrolling and feeling down.

布朗就是其中之一，有一天晚上，他在末日卷轴中情绪低落，成为了一名稀松布寻求者。

“I don’t know why I went out,” he writes of the moment he decided to act on social media posts reporting Scrim sightings near his home.

“我不知道我为什么要出去，”当他决定对社交媒体上报道他家附近目击事件的帖子采取行动时，他写道。

“I’m not even a dog person.

“我什至不是一个爱狗的人。

But it was that or reflect on every mistake I’d ever made.” (I laughed out loud at this wholly relatable line.) Alongside other dedicated volunteers, Brown soon found himself more a part of New Orleans, his adopted home, than ever before.

但就是这样，或者反思一下我犯过的每一个错误。” （我对这句完全相关的台词大笑起来。） 与其他热心的志愿者一起，布朗很快发现自己比以往任何时候都更加融入他的第二故乡新奥尔良。

“We engaged freely and deeply with anyone, anywhere, because that was the best way to gain intel,” he writes.

“我们在任何地方与任何人自由而深入地接触，因为这是获取情报的最佳方式，”他写道。

“Looking for Scrim meant immersing ourselves in the place where we lived, street by street and night after night.” One volunteer gave sanitation kits to unhoused people she met.

“寻找 Scrim 意味着让我们沉浸在我们居住的地方，一条街接着一条街，夜复一夜。”一名志愿者向她遇到的无家可归者提供了卫生用品。

Brown helped a woman he came across who’d overdosed.

布朗帮助了他遇到的一位吸毒过量的妇女。

Collectively, Scrim’s supporters rescued 300 other animals during their months-long search for the escape artist.

在长达数月的寻找逃脱艺术家的过程中，Scrim 的支持者总共拯救了 300 只其他动物。

I mean it when I say that I needed this piece.

当我说我需要这件作品时，我是认真的。

The world is a raging dumpster fire, but for a few thousand words, Brown dims the flames.

世界是一场熊熊的垃圾箱大火，但布朗用几千字熄灭了火焰。

—SD

—SD

## Cloning Came to Polo.

## 克隆来到了 Polo。

Then Things Got Truly Uncivilized

然后事情变得非常不文明

Matt Reynolds | Wired | July 10, 2025 | 5,668 words

马特·雷诺兹 |有线| 2025 年 7 月 10 日 | 5,668 字

Until a week ago, my entire understanding of polo came from reading Jilly Cooper’s Polo—multiple times, no shame.

直到一周前，我对马球的全部理解都来自于读了吉莉·库珀的《马球》——读了好几遍，这没什么可耻的。

In Cooper’s world, the sport is soaked in glamour, drama, and obscene wealth.

在库珀的世界里，这项运动充满了魅力、戏剧性和淫荡的财富。

Tight jodhpurs, loose morals, and fabulous beasts (both human and equine) abound.

紧绷的马裤、宽松的道德和神话般的野兽（包括人类和马）比比皆是。

I assumed liberties had been taken.

我以为有人采取了自由行动。

Then I read Matt Reynolds’s piece in Wired, and I stand corrected.

然后我读了马特·雷诺兹在《连线》杂志上的文章，我的观点得到了纠正。

Not averse to a bit of Cooper-esque flair himself, Reynolds introduces our hero, polo god Adolfo Cambiaso, as “a horse whisperer, a sex symbol, or a marvel of longevity,” with a “handsome face and cleft chin sun-beaten and stubbled, his dark hair matted with sweat.” Along with that chiseled jawline, Cambiaso also happens to own a little bay mare named Cuartetera—possibly the greatest polo pony that ever lived.

雷诺兹本人并不反对有点库珀式的天赋，他介绍我们的英雄、马球之神阿道夫·坎比亚索为“马语者、性感的象征或长寿的奇迹”，他有一张“英俊的脸庞，下巴裂开，饱经阳光，胡茬丛生，黑发被汗水打结”。除了轮廓分明的下巴轮廓外，坎比亚索还碰巧拥有一匹名叫 Cuartetera 的海湾小母马，它可能是有史以来最伟大的马球小马。

But Cuartetera can’t play every chukka.

但 Cuartetera 无法演奏每一个小节。

Enter Texas oilman Alan Meeker, who struck a deal with Cambiaso to clone his best horses, including Cuartetera, via the pet cloning lab ViaGen.

德克萨斯州石油商艾伦·米克 (Alan Meeker) 与坎比亚索 (Cambiaso) 达成协议，通过宠物克隆实验室 ViaGen 克隆他最好的马匹，包括 Cuartetera。

The final plan?

最终的计划？

To produce and sell foals of the clones.

生产和销售克隆马驹。

The catch?

收获是什么？

The golden rule of their agreement was that the Cuartetera clones themselves must never be sold.

他们协议的黄金法则是 Cuartetera 克隆体本身绝不能被出售。

Her bloodline was just too precious.

她的血脉实在是太珍贵了。

(Hence the surreal moment at the 2016 Argentine Open, when Cambiaso rode six different Cuarteteras to victory.) All was fine and dandy until, in a dastardly yet predictable plot twist, Meeker sold clones anyway—in a secret deal struck aboard a superyacht, obviously.

（因此，2016 年阿根廷公开赛上出现了超现实的时刻，当时坎比亚索骑着六辆不同的 Cuartetera 取得了胜利。） 一切都很好，直到，在一个卑鄙但可预见的情节转折中，米克无论如何都出售了克隆人 - 显然，这是在一艘超级游艇上达成的秘密交易。

Legal battles ensued, and Reynolds gleefully guides us through every betrayal, backstab, and bruised ego.

法律斗争接踵而至，雷诺兹兴高采烈地引导我们度过每一次背叛、背后中伤和受伤的自尊。

The stakes are high, the horses are glorious, the men are brooding, and the science is bonkers.

赌注很高，马匹光荣，人们沉思，科学疯狂。

Every player on the field is fascinating, and you’ll be hooked until the last Cuartetera gallops off into the sunset.

场上的每个球员都很迷人，你一定会被迷住，直到最后一只 Cuartetera 驰骋在夕阳下。

So saddle up!

所以，上鞍吧！

—CW

—CW

## Puzzled

## 困惑

Susannah Pratt | The American Scholar | July 18, 2025 | 2,050 wordsOn the surface, this story is about a jigsaw puzzle, but it’s about much more.

苏珊娜普拉特 |美国学者| 2025 年 7 月 18 日 | 2,050字从表面上看，这个故事是关于拼图游戏的，但它的内涵远不止于此。

For The American Scholar, Susannah Pratt recounts working on a 1,000-piece reproduction of William Morris’s tapestry Tree of Life.

苏珊娜·普拉特 (Susannah Pratt) 在《美国学者》杂志上讲述了威廉·莫里斯 (William Morris) 挂毯《生命之树》的 1,000 幅复制品的制作过程。

Pratt is no puzzle novice.

普拉特并不是拼图新手。

She has a piece-sorting method that has served her well, until she faces the Tree of Life.

她有一种对她很有帮助的棋子分类方法，直到她面对生命之树。

The puzzle’s patterns and colors are so subtle that they defy quick and easy categorization.

拼图的图案和颜色非常微妙，以至于无法快速轻松地进行分类。

When her methodical approach fails, she questions what motivates her to do puzzles in the first place: Are they leisure, or are they productivity cloaked in leisure?

当她的有条不紊的方法失败时，她首先质疑是什么促使她做谜题：它们是休闲，还是隐藏在休闲之下的生产力？

Does she enjoy working the puzzle to watch the image appear?

她喜欢玩拼图并观看图像出现吗？

Or is it the satisfaction of pieces popping into place, like task boxes getting checked off, that drives her?

或者是因为零件突然就位而产生的满足感，比如任务箱被勾掉，这驱使着她？

I love it when a piece stops me short like this one did.

我喜欢当一首曲子像这首曲子一样让我停下来。

Given the topic, that was unexpected.

考虑到这个话题，这是出乎意料的。

The world is a rough place right now and everything seems to be getting worse by the day.

现在的世界很艰难，一切似乎都在一天天变得更糟。

But no matter how bad things get, questioning your motivation is a must.

但无论事情变得多么糟糕，质疑你的动机都是必须的。

Questioning your approach is a must.

质疑你的方法是必须的。

Sometimes that introspection might, as in Pratt’s case, reveal the need to pause.

有时，就像普拉特的例子一样，这种内省可能会揭示出暂停的必要性。

“Often, I would simply put the piece back in the pile, realizing that I did not yet understand where it was meant to go,” she writes.

“通常，我只是简单地把这件作品放回堆里，因为我意识到我还不知道它应该去哪里，”她写道。

This essay is a lovely reminder that when it comes to anything worth doing, it’s often more about the process than the result.

这篇文章很好地提醒我们，当涉及到任何值得做的事情时，过程往往比结果更重要。

—KS

—KS

## August

## 八月

## Maximalisma

## 极简主义

Lisa Russ Spaar | The American Scholar | May 16, 2025 | 3,007 words

丽莎·拉斯·斯帕尔 | Lisa Russ Spaar美国学者| 2025 年 5 月 16 日 | 3,007 字

My parents are purging their home of nearly 50 years as they prepare to downsize.

我的父母正在清理他们已有近 50 年历史的房子，准备缩小规模。

Last week, my mom asked me if I wanted her dinnerware; this week, she gifted me her collection of massive terracotta planters.

上周，我妈妈问我是否想要她的餐具；我回答道。这周，她送给我她收藏的大量陶土花盆。

(How could I say no?

（我怎么能说不呢？

My dad had already loaded them onto his truck.) I get it: It’s hard to let go of stuff, even things that lack sentimental value.

我爸爸已经把它们装到了他的卡车上。）我明白了：很难放手东西，即使是那些缺乏情感价值的东西。

In her essay for The American Scholar, Lisa Russ Spaar reflects on the accumulation of objects, both trash and treasure, and how they’ve helped shape her identity: “I have to admit, at 68, that all of these ‘things’ comfort and inspire me no less than my college dorm room décor helped me, 50 years ago, feel like the person I wanted to be.” Her words inspired me to reflect on my own curated spaces over the years, from my freshman dorm room—walls plastered with underground rave flyers that I’ve since stored in shoeboxes—to my current sun-filled office in my new home, filled with houseplants, miniatures, and art.

丽莎·拉斯·斯帕尔 (Lisa Russ Spaar) 在为《美国学者》撰写的文章中反思了物品的积累，包括垃圾和宝藏，以及它们如何帮助塑造了她的身份：“我必须承认，68 岁的我，所有这些‘东西’对我的安慰和启发，不亚于 50 年前我的大学宿舍房间装饰让我感觉自己成为了我想成为的人。”她的话启发我反思这些年来我自己策划的空间，从我的新生宿舍——墙上贴满了地下狂欢传单，我后来把它们存放在鞋盒里——到我现在在新家里充满阳光的办公室，里面摆满了室内植物、微型模型和艺术品。

Spaar shares her great-aunts’ compulsion to hold onto stuff, while also acknowledging a responsibility to pare down so her loved ones won’t have to later.

斯帕尔和她的曾祖母一样，都有抓着东西的冲动，同时她也承认自己有责任减少开支，这样她所爱的人以后就不用再这么做了。

The essay then evolves into a playful exploration of language and collecting.

然后这篇文章演变成对语言和收藏的有趣探索。

She compares her poems—”short, sonnet-haunted lyrics that juxtapose high and low diction, arcane or gnomish syntax, and contemporary slang”—to cabinets of curiosities: “My little poems—both tidy and lush at once—are perhaps, like Aunt Ruth’s grocery bags or Warhol’s boxes, a way for me to collect disparate things in one place, to create a kind of order or meaning out of what I notice and feel.” Poetry may offer Spaar a kind of balance, a way to know when to hold on and when to let go.

她将自己的诗——“短小、十四行诗般的歌词，将高雅和低俗的措辞、神秘或侏儒的语法以及当代俚语并列在一起”——比作好奇心的柜子：“我的小诗——既整洁又丰富——也许就像露丝阿姨的杂货袋或沃霍尔的盒子一样，是我将不同的东西收集在一个地方的一种方式，从我的观察和感受中创造出一种秩序或意义。”诗歌可以为斯帕尔提供一种平衡，一种知道何时坚持、何时放手的方法。

While hoarding can feel oppressive, Spaar’s reflections reframe it as something tender and artful: a means of noticing, honoring, and building a life.

虽然囤积会让人感到压抑，但斯帕尔的思考将其重新定义为一种温柔而巧妙的东西：一种关注、尊重和建设生活的方式。

Reading her piece made me see those planters, and all the things I’ve carried with me, not as clutter, but as parts of a story that I’m still shaping.

读她的作品让我看到那些花盆，以及我随身携带的所有东西，不是杂乱无章，而是我仍在塑造的故事的一部分。

—CLR

—CLR

## All Hail the Mighty Snail

## 向强大的蜗牛致敬

Dina Gachman | Texas Monthly | July 31, 2025 | 1,508 words

迪娜·加赫曼 |德克萨斯月刊| 2025 年 7 月 31 日 | 1,508 字

Walking down the street this spring, I met two young girls who had found a snail about the size of a golf ball on a green stretch of lawn.

今年春天，我走在街上，遇到了两个年轻女孩，她们在一片绿色的草坪上发现了一只高尔夫球大小的蜗牛。

They were excited to show their discovery to a complete stranger and so I knelt down to admire their languid new friend.

他们很高兴向一个完全陌生的人展示他们的发现，所以我跪下来欣赏他们懒洋洋的新朋友。

I had never seen such a large snail before.

我以前从未见过这么大的蜗牛。

It appeared moist, its shell variegated in tans and browns.

它看起来很湿润，外壳呈棕褐色和棕色。

Charmed by the snail and their enthusiasm, I exclaimed and marveled, and asked them what they noticed about it.

我被蜗牛和他们的热情迷住了，我惊叹不已，并问他们注意到了什么。

They chattered away, interrupting each other while their mom smiled to herself a few feet away.

他们喋喋不休，互相打断，而他们的妈妈在几英尺外微笑着。

This chance meeting made my day.

这次偶然的相遇让我很开心。

Remembering the reason for this wholesome encounter, I was powerless against Dina Gachman’s appreciation of snails and the enthusiastic community behind them for Texas Monthly.

回想起这次有益邂逅的原因，我无法抗拒迪娜·加赫曼 (Dina Gachman) 对蜗牛的欣赏以及《德克萨斯月刊》背后的热情社区。

This story stars Gary, a milk snail who took a wrong turn and ended up on a jade plant in Jorjana Gietl’s sister’s shop, It’s a Succulent Thang.

这个故事的主人公是一只牛奶蜗牛加里 (Gary)，他走错了路，最终落在了乔贾娜·吉特尔 (Jorjana Gietl) 姐姐的店里的一株玉树上，“这是一株多汁的唐”。

Gary was outed by an inspector and had to be removed from the plant before sale, though, because milk snails are nonnative to Texas.

不过，加里被检查员揭发，在出售前必须将其从工厂中移出，因为牛奶蜗牛不是德克萨斯州的本土品种。

Gietl decided to take Gary home and learn everything she could about raising snails so that he could have a happily ever after.

吉特尔决定带加里回家，学习一切有关饲养蜗牛的知识，让他从此过上幸福的生活。

Now Gietl has more than 100 garden snails that she breeds and sells locally to fellow enthusiasts.

现在，Gietl 拥有 100 多只花园蜗牛，她在当地饲养这些蜗牛并将其出售给其他爱好者。

There’s plenty to learn about these creatures in this piece.

在这篇文章中，有很多关于这些生物的知识。

Snails are hermaphrodites and easy to breed!

蜗牛是雌雄同体，很容易繁殖！

Enthusiasts provide cuttlebone so that snails get the calcium they need to grow and repair their shells!

爱好者提供墨鱼骨，以便蜗牛获得生长和修复外壳所需的钙！

If you listen very, very carefully you can actually hear them eating!

如果你非常非常仔细地听，你真的可以听到他们在吃东西！

This piece might be on the shorter side of the reading we typically recommend, but it’s no less satisfying.

这篇文章可能是我们通常推荐的阅读材料中较短的一部分，但它同样令人满意。

It’s a lovely reminder that despite what’s going on in the world, despite the grim news cycle, wonder still exists, if you stop and take the time to look.

这是一个可爱的提醒，尽管世界上正在发生什么，尽管新闻周期严峻，但如果你停下来花时间看看，奇迹仍然存在。

—KS

—KS

## The Worm Hunters of Southern Ontario

## 安大略省南部的蠕虫猎人

Inori Roy | The Local | July 23, 2025 | 3,243 words

伊诺里·罗伊 |本地| 2025 年 7 月 23 日 | 3,243 字

If you use nightcrawlers as fishing bait, chances are they came from a field somewhere between Toronto and Windsor, Ontario.

如果您使用夜行虫作为鱼饵，它们很可能来自多伦多和安大略省温莎之间的某个地方。

For The Local, Inori Roy literally gets down and dirty to learn what it’s like to be a worm picker, someone who harvests nightcrawlers as they emerge from the soil in the wee hours of the morning.

在《The Local》中，伊诺里·罗伊 (Inori Roy) 认真地、肮脏地学习了一名拾虫者的感受，即在凌晨从土壤中捕获夜行虫的人。

What started as a side hustle for young boys trying to earn a few extra dollars in the 1900s is now a C$200 million industry run by generational family businesses who employ mostly immigrants and refugees trying to make their way in Canada.

这个行业最初是 1900 年代年轻男孩为了赚点外快而做的副业，现在已发展成为一个价值 2 亿加元的产业，由几代家族企业经营，这些企业主要雇佣试图在加拿大闯出一片天的移民和难民。

This piece hooked me for a few reasons.

这件作品让我着迷有几个原因。

Roy was patient; she fished around and was rejected by several worm operations for weak reasons, until she landed a chance to pick for Nick Alafogiannis, owner of A1 Bait.

罗伊很有耐心。她到处钓鱼，并因一些微不足道的原因而被几次蠕虫行动拒绝，直到她有机会挑选 A1 Bait 的所有者尼克·阿拉福吉安尼斯 (Nick Alafogiannis)。

As a reporter, though, she is no fish out of water.

但作为一名记者，她也并非脱离了水的鱼。

She quickly develops a rapport with Alafogiannis and his crew to learn the business from the ground up, an industry threatened by a lack of temporary workers, trade tensions with the US, a downturn in recreational fishing, and of course, climate change.

她很快与 Alafogiannis 和他的团队建立了融洽的关系，从头开始学习这个行业，这个行业受到临时工短缺、与美国的贸易紧张、休闲钓鱼低迷，当然还有气候变化的威胁。

“And in truth, as much as I now have an intense, perhaps overly-romanticized fondness for it, worm harvesting is not an essential industry,” she writes.

“事实上，尽管我现在对它有一种强烈的、也许过于浪漫化的喜爱，但蠕虫收获并不是一个重要的行业，”她写道。

“The world would move on without it, and it would become a subject of nostalgic memory, a quaint eccentricity from a different time, when people had the luxury of fishing with massive, lively worms hand-selected by workers flown in from the other side of the world.” The next time I go fishing, I’ll be sure to remember Roy and the legion of workers toiling through the night, angling to keep a dying industry afloat.

“没有它，世界也会继续前进，它会成为怀旧记忆的主题，一种来自不同时代的古怪现象，当时人们可以奢侈地用从世界另一端飞来的工人手工挑选的巨大而活泼的蠕虫来钓鱼。”下次我去钓鱼时，我一定会记得罗伊和大批工人彻夜辛劳，努力让垂死的行业维持下去。

—KS

—KS

## The Great French Fry Mystery

## 炸薯条之谜

Harley Rustad | Toronto Life | August 11, 2025 | 3,564 words

哈雷·鲁斯塔德 |多伦多生活 | 2025 年 8 月 11 日 | 3,564 字

His name was Rodolphe, or at least that’s what was written on the 10 A&W bags Harley Rustad’s neighbor found on her porch, discarded, over a period of several days.

他的名字叫鲁道夫（Rodolphe），或者至少哈雷·鲁斯塔德（Harley Rustad）的邻居在她的门廊上发现了几天以来被丢弃的 10 个 A&W 包上写着这个名字。

Who was Rodolphe?

鲁道夫是谁？

Why had he left his mostly eaten french fries at her door, night after night?

为什么他一夜又一夜地将吃得最多的炸薯条留在她家门口？

Was it an inviting space to enjoy a late-night snack?

这是一个享受夜宵的诱人空间吗？

A weird political statement?

奇怪的政治声明？

Some sort of scam?

某种骗局？

Rustad set up an old baby monitor aimed at the porch in an attempt to spot the perpetrator.

鲁斯塔德在门廊上安装了一个旧婴儿监视器，试图找出肇事者。

Together, he and his neighbor taped a skein of thread across the staircase to the porch to determine whether the perpetrator was animal or human; they sprinkled baking soda on the stoop to capture paw pads or footprints.

他和邻居一起用一束线从楼梯上绑到门廊上，以确定肇事者是动物还是人；他们在门廊上撒小苏打以捕捉爪垫或脚印。

The following morning revealed a set of decidedly human shoes, and of course, another crumpled bag of half-eaten french fries.

第二天早上，我们发现了一双明显是人类的鞋子，当然，还有另一袋皱巴巴的、吃了一半的炸薯条。

Late-night babycam notifications confirmed that the fries were being delivered to the front door and then devoured, first by a raccoon, followed by a squirrel munching on the leftovers.

深夜婴儿摄像头通知证实，薯条被送到前门，然后被浣熊吃掉，然后是松鼠咀嚼剩菜。

After nine days and nine bags of fries, Rustad and his neighbor decided to head to the source: their closest A&W location, only to learn that while the orders originated there, they’d been placed via Uber Eats, which revealed no further information.

经过九天的时间和九袋薯条，鲁斯塔德和他的邻居决定前往源头：他们最近的 A&W 地点，却发现订单虽然是从那里发出的，但却是通过 Uber Eats 下的，而 Uber Eats 没有透露更多信息。

“Via our tests, we had figured out the how,” writes Rustad.

“通过我们的测试，我们已经找到了方法，”鲁斯塔德写道。

“And we had solved one who: who had been eating the fries.

“我们解决了一个人：谁一直在吃薯条。

But other questions remained.

但其他问题仍然存在。

Who was ordering them?

谁在命令他们？

Who was Rodolphe?

鲁道夫是谁？

And why was someone repeatedly sending orders of french fries to my neighbour in the middle of the night?” I won’t spoil this story by delivering the ending to you.

为什么有人在半夜不断给我的邻居送薯条？”我不会把结局告诉你而破坏这个故事。

In addition to an intriguing whodunit, Rustad’s story of next-door detective work is, at its heart, a lovely testament to good neighbors in our increasingly myopic world, a piece that celebrates the simple joy of being one and having one.

除了一部引人入胜的侦探小说外，鲁斯塔德关于邻家侦探工作的故事从本质上讲，是对我们日益短视的世界中好邻居的可爱证明，一部歌颂成为一个人和拥有一个人的简单快乐的作品。

—KS

—KS

## September

## 九月

## Ocean of Influence: Inside the Celebrity Boat Trip That Was All Over Your Feeds

## 影响力之海：遍布您的动态的名人乘船旅行内部

Joe Hagan | Vanity Fair | August 6, 2025 | 4,214 words

乔·哈根 |名利场| 2025 年 8 月 6 日 | 4,214 字

I must have the wrong algorithm working on my feeds, because I somehow missed “the mother of all influencer trips” that unfolded aboard the Luminara, a floating behemoth in The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection.

我的提要一定是使用了错误的算法，因为我不知何故错过了在丽思卡尔顿游艇系列中的浮动庞然大物 Luminara 上展开的“所有影响者旅行之母”。

Luckily, Joe Hagan did not.

幸运的是，乔·哈根没有。

His Vanity Fair dispatch drops us onto a cruise designed to make superyachting feel more accessible (for those who are merely very rich, not astronomically rich).

他在《名利场》杂志上的报道让我们登上了一艘游轮，旨在让超级游艇变得更加触手可及（对于那些只是非常富有的人来说，而不是天文数字般的富有的人）。

Spending 48 hours alongside a hundred A-listers, Hagan quickly finds himself in a fever dream: Kate Hudson and Dakota Johnson sip daiquiris in the pool, Shaun White stretches on a lounger, and Leonardo DiCaprio wanders about in the background, vaping.

与一百位一线明星一起度过了 48 小时，哈根很快发现自己陷入了一场狂热的梦中：凯特·哈德森和达科塔·约翰逊在泳池里喝着代基里酒，肖恩·怀特在躺椅上伸懒腰，莱昂纳多·迪卡普里奥在后台徘徊，抽着电子烟。

Meanwhile, the conversation meanders from Martha Stewart’s frustration at it no longer being acceptable to drive her top-of-the-range, self-driving Tesla, to a defense of the Sánchez-Bezos wedding as “a normal, plain-Jane affair.” As someone whose own boating pinnacle tops out at precariously balancing a dog and a hamper of curling sandwiches on an aluminum dinghy, I found the sheer level of pampering fascinating—like Below Deck on steroids.

与此同时，谈话从玛莎·斯图尔特因驾驶她的顶级自动驾驶特斯拉而感到沮丧，到为桑切斯-贝佐斯的婚礼辩解为“一场正常、简单的事件”。作为一个划船巅峰的人，我的巅峰是在铝制小船上摇摇晃晃地平衡一只狗和一篮冰壶三明治，我发现这种纯粹的纵容程度令人着迷——就像类固醇的“甲板下”一样。

But what Hagan captures is not just the luxury, but the unfiltered absurdity of it all: a forgotten vial of LSD, 3 a.m.

但哈根捕捉到的不仅仅是奢华，还有这一切未经过滤的荒谬：凌晨 3 点，一瓶被遗忘的迷幻药。

light shows no one watches, drunk entourages.

光亮无人看，随从醉酒。

The access Vanity Fair is granted is shocking, and it’s no surprise the cruise organizer later tries (unsuccessfully) to smother the story.

《名利场》获得的访问权令人震惊，毫不奇怪游轮组织者后来试图（但没有成功）压制这个故事。

But beneath the spectacle runs a sharp portrait of wealth so insulated it verges on parody.

但在这一景象的背后，却隐藏着一幅与世隔绝的财富的鲜明肖像，近乎模仿。

(Yes, some of The White Lotus cast are there.) Part guilty pleasure, part sly cultural critique.

（是的，《白莲花》的一些演员也在场。）部分是内疚的快感，部分是狡猾的文化批评。

You, like Hagan, will step off this ship a little dazed.

你，就像哈根一样，走下这艘船时会有点茫然。

—CW

—CW

## Ecological Warfare

## 生态战

Nathaniel Rich | Harper’s Magazine | August 20, 2025 | 5,222 words

纳撒尼尔·里奇 |哈珀杂志 | 2025 年 8 月 20 日 | 5,222 字

Nathaniel Rich’s dispatch from the Louisiana Nutria Rodeo is rich with rewards—unless, of course, you’re the invasive, orange-toothed rodent at its heart.

纳撒尼尔·里奇 (Nathaniel Rich) 从路易斯安那海狸亚牛仔竞技大赛 (Louisiana Nutria Rodeo) 发来的消息充满了丰厚的回报——当然，除非你是其核心的入侵性橙齿啮齿动物。

A nutria, per Rich, is “approximately the shape of a football” and “about the same weight as a Jack Russell terrier.” In the past 25 years, nutrias have consumed more than 40 square miles of Louisiana, furthering damage done by a century of pipeline development and efforts to control the course of the Mississippi River.

根据里奇的说法，海狸鼠“形状近似足球”，“重量与杰克罗素梗犬差不多”。在过去 25 年里，海狸鼠吞噬了路易斯安那州超过 40 平方英里的土地，进一步加剧了一个世纪以来管道开发和密西西比河河道控制努力造成的破坏。

“A citizen is not permitted, in the current legal climate, to explode federal levees and dams, or to hunt oil and gas executives,” Rich writes.

“在当前的法律环境下，公民不得炸毁联邦堤坝和水坝，或追捕石油和天然气高管，”里奇写道。

“So the nutria must pay.” And, boy, does it pay.

“所以海狸鼠必须付出代价。”而且，孩子，这值得吗？

Rich briskly unfolds the day’s events: a 40-hour hunt to bag as many “swamp rats” as possible, followed by a rodent cook-off and, finally, the Nutria Toss.

里奇轻快地讲述了当天的活动：历时 40 小时的狩猎活动，尽可能多地捕获“沼泽老鼠”，然后是啮齿类动物烹饪比赛，最后是海狸鼠投掷比赛。

He spends a portion of the day aboard a fog-shrouded airboat with the former Miss Louisiana, an avid hunter who warns him that things “can get Western real quick.” He details the nutria’s murky origins—which include a Tabasco scion’s runaway farming operation—and its culinary possibilities, from Paul Prudhomme’s popcorn-chicken approach to brined nutria chops.

他花了一天的一部分时间与前路易斯安那小姐一起在雾气缭绕的汽船上度过，她是一位狂热的猎人，警告他事情“很快就会变得西方化”。他详细介绍了海狸鼠的神秘起源——其中包括塔巴斯科州后裔失控的农场经营——以及它的烹饪可能性，从保罗·普鲁多姆(Paul Prudhomme)的爆米花鸡肉到腌制海狸鼠排骨的方法。

(He samples, too, of course.

（当然，他也采样。

Nutria “tastes like roast beef, with an afternote of rust.”) At the Nutria Toss, dead rodents fly into the crowd, smacking onlookers.

海狸鼠“尝起来像烤牛肉，带有一丝铁锈味。”）在海狸鼠投掷活动中，死去的啮齿动物飞入人群，拍打围观者。

“This is essentially a conservation event,” a climate activist tells Rich.

“这本质上是一次保护活动，”一位气候活动家告诉里奇。

“But that’s not the appeal.

“但这不是吸引力。

The appeal is throwing nutria.” My folks live in nutria country these days, not far from the site of the rodeo, and I’ve already texted them about the event.

呼吁的是投掷海狸鼠。”这些天我的家人住在海狸鼠国家，离牛仔竞技表演地点不远，我已经给他们发了关于这次活动的短信。

I don’t wish the swamp rats any harm.

我不希望沼泽鼠受到任何伤害。

Still, I can’t help but wonder how far I could throw one.

尽管如此，我还是忍不住想知道我能扔多远。

—BF

—BF

## The New Hotness

## 新热点

Pat Cassels | Slate | September 14, 2025 | 3,531 words

帕特·卡塞尔 |板岩| 2025 年 9 月 14 日 | 3,531 字

Eurovision, a gentle homage to the real-life music competition, is one of my favorite movies.

欧洲歌唱大赛是我最喜欢的电影之一，它是对现实生活中音乐比赛的温柔致敬。

It’s glitzy, exuberant, and (as one might expect of a Will Ferrell vehicle) delightfully bonkers.

它闪闪发光、生机勃勃，而且（正如人们对威尔·法瑞尔的车辆所期望的那样）令人愉快的疯狂。

Clearly, this movie was on Pat Cassels’s mind as he dove headfirst into the world of aufguss, or competitive sauna-ing.

显然，当帕特·卡塞尔一头扎进奥夫格斯（aufguss）或竞技性桑拿的世界时，他脑子里就想到了这部电影。

He describes the scene as “Eurovision with linens”; one character even invokes Will Ferrell.

他将这一场景描述为“欧洲电视网的亚麻布”；其中一个角色甚至召唤了威尔·法瑞尔。

I was powerless to resist.

我无力反抗。

Aufguss is basically ballet with towels.

奥夫格斯基本上是毛巾芭蕾舞。

Sauna masters waft hot air around, adding dramatic flourishes as they shepherd the drafts.

桑拿大师们在周围飘荡着热空气，在引导气流时增添了戏剧性的华丽效果。

The practice first became a competition in Germany, but now Americans are ready to throw their towels into the ring.

这项练习首先在德国成为一项比赛，但现在美国人已经准备好认输了。

This is how Cassels finds himself sweating and semi-naked in a trendy Williamsburg bathhouse—or as he puts it, “a great place for an average guy to visit if he wants to feel like a gnarled tree”—for the Aufguss USA Nationals, America’s first Aufguss World Masters event.

卡塞尔就是这样发现自己在威廉斯堡时尚的浴室里大汗淋漓、半裸的——或者用他的话说，“对于一个普通人来说，如果他想感觉自己像一棵粗糙的树，那么这里是一个好地方”——参加奥夫格斯美国国民赛，这是美国首届奥夫格斯世界大师赛。

The winners earn the ultimate prize: facing the Europeans at the world championships in Italy.

获胜者将获得终极奖品：在意大利举行的世锦赛上与欧洲队对决。

First up in the lineup, “Fire and Ice,” a brother-and-sister duo “dressed head to toe in dazzling spandex unitards decorated with crystals.” I was thrilled to realize I had a connection to this act—not a deeply personal one, admittedly, but I had seen the sister perform in a jaw-dropping dance-and-puppet show in Las Vegas.

首先登场的是“火与冰”，一对兄妹“从头到脚都穿着饰有水晶的耀眼氨纶紧身衣”。我很高兴地意识到我与这个表演有联系——诚然，这不是一个很私人的联系，但我在拉斯维加斯看过姐姐在一场令人瞠目结舌的舞蹈和木偶表演中表演。

And here she was in front of Cassels, flipping and twirling with her brother in a 200-degree sauna.

而此时，她站在卡塞尔面前，与她的兄弟在 200 度的桑拿房里翻滚、旋转。

(I was lucky to have seen her at a reasonable temperature, while fully clothed.) Cassels’s spa day only grows stranger, yet he proves an excellent guide to this sense-overloading subculture of sweat and spandex, capturing the spectacle in all its glory while letting his bemusement shine through.

（我很幸运能在合理的温度下看到她，而且穿着衣服。）卡塞尔的水疗日只会变得陌生，但事实证明，他是这种汗水和氨纶的超载亚文化的出色向导，捕捉到了所有辉煌的奇观，同时让他的困惑闪耀出来。

Stories like this restore my faith in humanity.

这样的故事让我恢复了对人性的信心。

I am so glad to have learned that, as a species, we decided to make furiously dancing with towels a competition.

我很高兴得知，作为一个物种，我们决定将用毛巾疯狂跳舞作为一项比赛。

Triumphant absurdity.

胜利的荒谬。

—CW

—CW

## The Human Stain Remover: What Britain’s Greatest Extreme Cleaner Learned From 25 Years on the Job

## 人类去污剂：英国最伟大的极限清洁工从 25 年的工作中学到了什么

Tom Lamont | The Guardian | September 25, 2025 | 4,538 words

汤姆·拉蒙特 |卫报| 2025 年 9 月 25 日 | 4,538 字

For the past couple of months, I have been living with my mother’s ancient dog, Barney.

在过去的几个月里，我一直和我母亲的老狗巴尼住在一起。

Sadly, what Barney has gained in years, he has lost in personal hygiene.

可悲的是，巴尼多年来所获得的，却在个人卫生方面失去了。

In his fading mind, carpets are now pee zones, and the contents of bins are better off festooned decoratively around the house.

在他日渐衰退的头脑中，地毯现在是小便区，垃圾箱里的东西最好装饰在房子周围。

Life with Barney has sent me down a rabbit hole of frantic googling, late-night YouTube tutorials on stain removal, and desperate experiments with baking soda and vinegar.

和巴尼在一起的生活让我陷入了疯狂的谷歌搜索、深夜 YouTube 上关于去除污渍的教程、以及用小苏打和醋进行绝望实验的兔子洞。

It turns out I should have just asked Ben Giles, a.k.a.

事实证明我应该问本·贾尔斯（Ben Giles），又名

“the human stain remover.” As Tom Lamont discovers in this piece for The Guardian, Giles is “a self-taught stain savant, a walking database of remedies.” His cleaning business, Ultima, would take on any mess—from dead whales to drug paraphernalia, murder scenes to hoarders.

“人类去污剂。”正如汤姆·拉蒙特（Tom Lamont）在《卫报》的这篇文章中所发现的那样，贾尔斯是“一位自学成才的污渍专家，一个活生生的补救措施数据库”。他的清洁公司“Ultima”会处理任何乱七八糟的事情——从死鲸到毒品用具，从谋杀现场到囤积者。

Giles even started a training academy in the 2010s, teaching about 600 cleaners, whom he could then call upon for extra help.

贾尔斯甚至在 2010 年代创办了一所培训学院，教授约 600 名清洁工，然后他可以向他们寻求额外帮助。

It’s a fascinating insight into an industry more often kept firmly under wraps.

这是对一个经常被严格保密的行业的令人着迷的见解。

We all know there must be extreme cleaning jobs, but our collective subconscious chooses not to dwell.

我们都知道必须有极端的清洁工作，但我们的集体潜意识选择不去停留。

The mess our bodies can produce is far too human—or perhaps far too animal-like—to be fully acknowledged.

我们的身体产生的混乱太人性化了——或者可能太像动物了——以至于无法被充分认识到。

But Lamont does not shy away.

但拉蒙特并不回避。

Prepare for relentless, visceral descriptions.

准备好迎接无情的、发自内心的描述吧。

Prepare for maggots, stench, and every bodily fluid imaginable.

做好应对蛆虫、恶臭和所有可以想象到的体液的准备。

Lamont’s lack of squeamishness reflects his subject: a man for whom this has all become commonplace.

拉蒙特的不拘谨反映了他的主题：对一个人来说，这一切都变得司空见惯。

Yet there are occasional hints at the emotional cost of witnessing so much of “life’s disorderly processes.” Giles has gained an understanding “that is both privileged and discouraging.” A part of a hidden corner of modern life that is extraordinary, gross, and profoundly human.

然而，偶尔也有迹象表明，目睹如此多的“生活的无序过程”会造成情感代价。贾尔斯获得了一种“既令人高兴又令人沮丧”的理解。现代生活中一个隐秘角落的一部分，非同寻常、粗俗而又充满人性。

Turns out dog pee is no big deal.

事实证明，狗尿尿没什么大不了的。

—CW

—CW

## October

## 十月

## The Cat Who Woke Me Up

## 叫醒我的猫

Sy Safransky | The Sun | September 30, 2025 | 5,012 words

西·萨弗兰斯基 |太阳 | 2025 年 9 月 30 日 | 5,012 字

I’ve had cats my whole life.

我一生都养猫。

Mama Cat, who my parents converted from stray to pet early in their marriage, sometimes slept in my crib when I was an infant.

猫妈妈是我父母在结婚初期从流浪猫转变为宠物的，当我还是个婴儿时，猫妈妈有时会睡在我的婴儿床上。

Later there was Callie, adopted when I was 9, who delivered kittens on my bed, under the covers, one night while I slept.

后来，我九岁时收养了卡莉，一天晚上我睡觉时，她在我的床上、被子下接生了小猫。

When I met my husband, he’d never lived with a cat before, but he knew that my calico, Trouble, and I were a package deal, so he learned to tolerate—and eventually love—her meowing, purring, licking, clawing, and snoring.

当我遇到我的丈夫时，他以前从未和猫一起生活过，但他知道我的印花布、麻烦和我是一揽子交易，所以他学会了容忍——并最终爱上——她的喵喵声、咕噜声、舔舐、抓抓和打鼾。

There were other cats along the way: Maddie, Gracie, Emmie, Pokey.

沿途还有其他猫：麦迪、格雷西、艾米、波基。

And now, there’s Elaine May, who’s lounging on the floor next to me as I write.

现在，伊莱恩·梅 (Elaine May) 在我写作时躺在我旁边的地板上。

Reading Sy Safransky’s beautiful ode to his cat, Cirrus, I thought of my many cats, all of whom “woke me up” in one way or another.

读着西·萨弗兰斯基（Sy Safransky）对他的猫西拉斯（Cirrus）的优美颂歌，我想起了我的许多猫，它们都以这样或那样的方式“唤醒了我”。

Because that’s what pets do, if we let them—they crack us wide open, embolden us, humble us.

因为这就是宠物所做的事情，如果我们放任它们的话——它们会让我们敞开心扉，让我们勇敢，让我们谦卑。

They test our imaginations, expand our capacity for devotion, confront us with the mysteries of existence.

它们考验我们的想象力，拓展我们的奉献能力，让我们面对存在的奥秘。

They ask us to stop, see, feel.

他们要求我们停下来，看看，感受一下。

“Don’t imagine that anything you thought was yours is yours to keep,” Safransky writes of the lessons Cirrus taught him—lessons that are particularly poignant now, 20 years after Safransky first began writing this essay, as he grapples with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

“不要以为任何你认为属于你的东西都是你可以保留的，”萨弗兰斯基在谈到西锐教给他的教训时写道——在萨弗兰斯基第一次开始写这篇文章 20 年后，当他与阿尔茨海默氏症的诊断作斗争时，这些教训在现在尤其令人心酸。

“Get up and pay your dues for being in a human incarnation.

“站起来，为成为人类而付出代价。

.

。

.

。

.

。

Play hard whenever your playmate will play.

每当你的玩伴玩的时候，都要努力玩。

Never lose sight of your essential nature.

永远不要忽视你的本质。

The universe makes a home for you right now in this sixty-year-old body.

宇宙现在在你这个六十岁的身体里为你安了一个家。

Honor it as long as you’re in it.” I’ve never read a wiser or more moving piece about our relationship with animals.

只要你还在其中，就尊重它。”关于我们与动物的关系，我从未读过更明智或更感人的文章。

—SD

—SD

## You Have No Idea How Hard It Is to Be a Reenactor

## 你不知道成为一名重演者有多难

Caity Weaver | The Atlantic | October 8, 2025 | 7,197 words

凯蒂·韦弗 |大西洋 | 2025 年 10 月 8 日 | 7,197 字

I once participated in a reenactment of the Battle of Waynesboro, a Civil War skirmish, for a story about the ways in which people make history visible in the present.

我曾经参加过韦恩斯伯勒战役的重演，这是一场内战小冲突，目的是为了讲述人们如何让历史在当下可见的故事。

The verisimilitude was all over the place; the past assailed the present, and vice versa, in odd ways.

到处都栩栩如生。过去以奇怪的方式攻击现在，反之亦然。

I saw a father tell his child, “I don’t want to hear anything about Hooters,” while, nearby, a teenager played “John Brown’s Body” on a fife.

我看到一位父亲告诉他的孩子，“我不想听到任何关于猫头鹰餐厅的事情”，而在附近，一个青少年用横笛演奏着“约翰·布朗的尸体”。

Throughout, I felt my distance from the most committed performers, and wondered whether I could glean anything meaningful from their historical theater.

在整个过程中，我感受到了与最忠诚的表演者的距离，并想知道我是否可以从他们的历史剧院中收集到任何有意义的东西。

It’s not easy: Reenactments are a natural draw for participatory journalists, and the genre can feel well-worn.

这并不容易：重演自然而然地吸引了参与其中的记者，而且这种类型可能会让人感觉很陈旧。

(This year has already seen thoughtful pieces on a performance of the Scopes Monkey Trial and the gamification of the US Capitol insurrection.) Of course, not all participatory journalists are Caity Weaver, survivor of TGI Friday’s “Endless Appetizers” promo and undaunted seeker of Tom Cruise’s secret lair.

（今年已经出现了有关斯科普斯猴子审判和美国国会叛乱游戏化的深思熟虑的文章。）当然，并非所有参与的记者都是凯蒂·韦弗（Caity Weaver），她是 TGI 周五“无尽开胃菜”宣传片的幸存者，也是汤姆·克鲁斯秘密巢穴的勇敢探索者。

For “The Unfinished Revolution,” a new Atlantic series, Weaver embeds with reenactors for two early Revolutionary War battles, and savors every detail.

在新的大西洋系列剧《未完成的革命》中，韦弗嵌入了两场早期独立战争战役的重演者，并细细品味每一个细节。

A handsome Benedict Arnold is hoisted by his men, who bathe his leg in olive oil and struggle to remove his boots.

英俊的本尼迪克特·阿诺德被手下举起，他们用橄榄油给他的腿洗澡，费力地脱掉他的靴子。

A “Patriot civilian” whispers to Weaver that “a lot of the Brits are swingers.” It’s easy to admire Weaver’s eye for the absurd, and it’s a pleasure to share her gaze, which she gamely trains on herself, cataloguing potential musket mishaps and assessing her elaborate outfit as “a shapeless mound of fabrics crowned by my plain stupid face.” But what I most admire is her deep affection for the messiness of humanity.

一位“爱国者平民”对韦弗低声说，“很多英国人都是浪荡公子。”人们很容易钦佩韦弗对荒谬事物的洞察力，而且很高兴能分享她的目光，她勇敢地训练自己，列出潜在的步枪事故，并将她精心设计的服装评估为“一堆无形的织物，上面覆盖着我那张朴素愚蠢的脸”。但最令我敬佩的，是她对人性纷乱的深情。

Here, she reveals its place at the heart of history’s slow progress.

在这里，她揭示了它在历史缓慢进步的核心地位。

—BF

—BF

## The Secret Life of Horus

## 荷鲁斯的秘密生活

Russell Cobb and Sarah Brandvold | Edify | October 1, 2025 | 2,732 words

拉塞尔·科布和莎拉·布兰德沃德 |启发 | 2025 年 10 月 1 日 | 2,732 字

Horus (a nickname; his real name is long lost) is an Egyptian mummy.

荷鲁斯（昵称；他的真名早已失传）是一位埃及木乃伊。

He may be cursed.

他可能会被诅咒。

He has definitely been abused.

他肯定是被虐待了。

And he’s currently living at the University of Alberta.

他目前住在阿尔伯塔大学。

Russell Cobb and Sarah Brandvold tell Horus’s remarkable afterlife story for Edify with a light touch and a clear moral compass: Horus, before anything else, is a human being.

拉塞尔·科布 (Russell Cobb) 和莎拉·布兰德沃德 (Sarah Brandvold) 以轻松的笔触和清晰的道德指南针为 Edify 讲述了荷鲁斯非凡的来世故事：荷鲁斯首先是一个人类。

This was a fact conveniently forgotten in the Victorian era, when “owning a mummy was like driving a Rolls-Royce—a mark of refinement and prestige.” Unwrapping parties were all the rage, presumably wedged somewhere between cake and cigars, and “mummy brown,” paint made from, I kid you not, ground-up mummies, was a must-have palette color.

在维多利亚时代，这一事实很容易被遗忘，当时“拥有一具木乃伊就像驾驶一辆劳斯莱斯——是优雅和声望的标志。”拆包装派对风靡一时，大概介于蛋糕和雪茄之间，而“木乃伊棕色”，我没骗你，用磨碎的木乃伊制成的油漆，是必备的调色板颜色。

Horus escaped the paint pot, but not much else.

荷鲁斯逃脱了油漆桶，但除此之外也没有什么其他的事情。

In 1942, he landed with George Woodrow of Stanmore, England, after his previous owner died (curse alert!).

1942 年，在他的前任主人去世后，他与来自英国斯坦莫尔的乔治·伍德罗 (George Woodrow) 一起登陆（诅咒警报！）。

Mrs. Woodrow, less enthused about haunted antiquities, banished him to the shed for 25 years.

伍德罗夫人对闹鬼的古物不那么热衷，将他驱逐到小屋里长达 25 年。

Eventually, the family emigrated to Canada, where Horus also ended up.

最终，全家移民到了加拿大，荷鲁斯也来到了那里。

But a change of scenery did not improve his fortunes: A couple more deaths (curse alarm!) led to Horus being displayed on a city bus, unwrapped by teenagers, decapitated, sent to an Edmonton hospital, and even used as a political campaign prop (again, not kidding).

但环境的改变并没有改善他的命运：又有几人死亡（该死的警报！）导致荷鲁斯被展示在一辆城市公交车上，被青少年拆开，斩首，送往埃德蒙顿医院，甚至被用作政治竞选道具（再次，不是开玩笑）。

I’ll let you read the fascinating details, but suffice it to say that ending up at the University of Alberta was a huge improvement.

我会让你读到令人着迷的细节，但我只想说，最终进入阿尔伯塔大学是一个巨大的进步。

Shed spiders were swapped for a “multidisciplinary team of scientists, medical specialists, Egyptologists and conservation experts,” and Horus has been carefully studied and cared for since his arrival.

棚屋蜘蛛被替换为“由科学家、医学专家、埃及古物学家和保护专家组成的多学科团队”，荷鲁斯自抵达以来一直受到仔细研究和照顾。

But should he really be here, either?

但他真的应该在这里吗？

Like many, I can’t resist Egyptology, and find myself wandering straight to the mummy halls when I visit the British Museum.

和许多人一样，我无法抗拒埃及学，当我参观大英博物馆时，我发现自己径直走向了木乃伊大厅。

But as Cobb and Brandvold are so careful to remind us, these aren’t curiosities, they’re people.

但正如科布和布兰德沃德小心翼翼地提醒我们的那样，这些不是好奇心，而是人。

Horus was a lector priest and scribe, and was likely laid to rest with honor in the ancient city of Memphis, where he remained at peace for two millennia.

荷鲁斯是一位读经牧师和抄写员，很可能被光荣地安葬在孟菲斯古城，在那里他平静地生活了两千年。

His last hundred years have been a circus.

他的最后一百年就像一场马戏表演。

Maybe it’s time he went home.

也许他该回家了。

—CW

—CW

## What Made Blogging Different?

## 是什么让博客与众不同？

Elizabeth Spiers | Talking Points Memo | October 16, 2025 | 1,726 words

伊丽莎白·斯皮尔斯 |谈话要点备忘录| 2025 年 10 月 16 日 | 1,726 字

I once wrote on my blog about my growing fear of missing out online, and how checking Twitter felt like trying to jump onto a moving train.

我曾经在博客上写道，我越来越担心在网上错过机会，以及查看 Twitter 的感觉就像试图跳上一列行驶的火车。

That post, which generated 135 comments, ended up marking the beginning of the end for my blog, and for the kind of personal writing I used to share in public.

这篇文章产生了 135 条评论，最终标志着我的博客以及我过去在公开场合分享的个人写作的结束的开始。

(The link rot in that post says as much about the web’s evolution as it does about mine.) In this short but resonant piece, Elizabeth Spiers is nostalgic for the early ’00s internet, when thinking in the open could be slow, and we were able to leave our doors open for anyone who visited our online homes—because comments, even disagreements, were respectful.

（那篇文章中的链接腐烂既讲述了网络的演变，也讲述了我的发展。）在这篇简短但引起共鸣的文章中，伊丽莎白·斯皮尔斯（Elizabeth Spiers）怀念 00 年代早期的互联网，当时公开思考可能会很缓慢，而我们能够为任何访问我们在线家庭的人敞开大门，因为评论，甚至是分歧，都是尊重的。

“The sort of considered back and forth I remember from the thoughtful members of the early blogosphere is something that is harder to find now,” she writes.

“我记得早期博客圈那些深思熟虑的成员所经过的深思熟虑现在已经很难找到了，”她写道。

Growing up in rural Alabama in a conservative family, Spiers credits bloggers during that time with challenging her worldview and helping her evolve as a writer and thinker.

斯皮尔斯在阿拉巴马州乡村的一个保守家庭长大，她认为博客作者在那段时间挑战了她的世界观，并帮助她成长为一名作家和思想家。

“I still look for people with early blogger energy,” she writes.

“我仍然在寻找具有早期博客活力的人，”她写道。

I do, too.

我也是。

(This is a perfect spot to plug Phil Gyford’s post on his website about discovering the internet in 1995, which I also picked this week.) We need more of these spaces, now more than ever.

（这是 Phil Gyford 在他的网站上发布的关于 1995 年发现互联网的帖子的最佳位置，我本周也选择了该帖子。）我们现在比以往任何时候都需要更多这样的空间。

And I mean independent blogs and personal websites like Phil’s—not a bunch of people crammed into a Substack mansion.

我指的是像菲尔这样的独立博客和个人网站，而不是一群人挤在 Substack 豪宅里。

Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate the longform writing people are publishing there, but I miss clicking a link that takes me to someone’s own house, decorated exactly as they want it.

不要误会我的意思：我很欣赏人们在那里发表的长篇文章，但我错过了点击一个链接，将我带到某人自己的房子，完全按照他们想要的方式装饰。

Over the years, I’ve tried and failed to revive my neglected blog, but pieces like Spiers’s remind me of what being online could be like again, if only more of us were willing to rebuild those welcoming corners of the web.

多年来，我一直试图重振我被忽视的博客，但都以失败告终，但像斯皮尔斯这样的文章提醒我，如果我们中有更多人愿意重建网络上那些受欢迎的角落，上网会是什么样子。

Maybe the internet we miss isn’t really gone—it’s just waiting for us to come home.

也许我们怀念的互联网并没有真正消失——它只是在等待我们回家。

—CLR

—CLR

## November

## 十一月

## A Circling Story

## 一个循环的故事

Holly Haworth | Emergence Magazine | October 23, 2025 | 4,093 words

霍莉·霍沃斯 |新兴杂志| 2025 年 10 月 23 日 | 4,093 字

Spring, summer, fall, and winter: Amid each, sometimes it’s easy to forget that change is ongoing, if sometimes imperceptible.

春季、夏季、秋季和冬季：在每个季节中，有时很容易忘记变化正在持续进行，尽管有时是难以察觉的。

I try my best to mark seasonal changes: I love hearing “bird radio” get louder as spring unfolds, when robin dads sing evening songs to ward off other males.

我尽力标记季节变化：我喜欢听到“鸟类广播”随着春天的到来而变得越来越响亮，此时知更鸟爸爸会唱晚歌来抵御其他雄性。

Their voices go silent in late August, and that sudden void reminds me that fall will soon arrive.

他们的声音在八月下旬变得沉默，突然的空虚提醒我秋天即将到来。

In this piece for Emergence Magazine, Holly Haworth notes that the “Japanese have seventy-two microseasons, traditionally, each lasting around five days.” Their names include: “‘bamboo shoots start to sprout,’ ‘praying mantises hatch,’ ‘distant thunder,’ and ‘frogs start singing.’” Haworth’s ode to the seasons reads like a poem.

在 Emergence 杂志的这篇文章中，霍莉·霍沃斯 (Holly Haworth) 指出，“日本人有七十二个微季节，传统上每个微季节持续五天左右。”它们的名字包括：“‘竹笋开始发芽’、‘螳螂孵化’、‘遥远的雷声’和‘青蛙开始歌唱’。”霍沃斯对季节的颂歌读起来就像一首诗。

In simple yet vibrant declarative sentences, she reminds us what we stand to gain by getting outside and observing closely.

她用简单而充满活力的陈述句提醒我们，走出户外并仔细观察会得到什么。

Sometimes paying attention can be draining, but for Haworth, the act energizes and fulfills her as an antidote to climate change.

有时，集中注意力可能会让人筋疲力尽，但对霍沃斯来说，这种行为作为应对气候变化的解毒剂，给她带来了活力和成就感。

“This is why I have been turning my attention toward the seasons so devotedly these past many years, keeping my field notebooks,” she writes.

“这就是为什么我在过去的许多年里一直把注意力转向季节，并保留我的田野笔记本，”她写道。

“[T]o draw myself closer to the earth’s cycles whose disruption is, in fact, the most important story of our time .

“让自己更接近地球的周期，事实上，地球周期的破坏是我们这个时代最重要的故事……

.

。

.” I read this piece just after Daylight Saving Time ended.

”。我在夏令时结束后读了这篇文章。

With full darkness now at 5 p.m., it’s helped me to welcome the shorter days.

现在下午 5 点天就完全黑了，这帮助我迎接了更短的白天。

It’s a lyrical reminder that fallow periods are so important for the earth and for humans, that fall decay and winter stillness are necessary, if only to help us better appreciate the light when it finally returns.

这是一个抒情的提醒，休耕期对地球和人类来说都非常重要，秋季的衰败和冬季的静止是必要的，哪怕只是为了帮助我们在阳光最终回归时更好地欣赏它。

—KS

—KS

## Idle Things

## 闲事

Robert Rubsam | The Baffler | November 10, 2025 | 2,365 words

罗伯特·鲁布萨姆 |挡板| 2025 年 11 月 10 日 | 2,365 字

A few miles from where I live, there’s a playground made from the concrete fragments of old buildings.

距离我住处几英里的地方，有一个用旧建筑的混凝土碎片建成的游乐场。

Its pieces were salvaged from local government offices, banks, theaters, and hotels, then invitingly arranged—“like adult-sized toy building blocks,” a nearby plaque offers.

它的作品是从当地政府办公室、银行、剧院和酒店抢救出来的，然后被巧妙地排列起来——“就像成人大小的玩具积木一样，”附近的一块牌匾写道。

Children race between the unseeing stone faces lifted from the Bank of Montreal and balance themselves on hunks of Parliament.

孩子们在从蒙特利尔银行升起的看不见的石壁之间奔跑，并在议会的大块上保持平衡。

It’s a false ruin, fabricated by an artist and lacking deep history; still, I appreciate how it summons thoughts of power, turnover, churn.

这是一个假废墟，是艺术家捏造的，缺乏深厚的历史；尽管如此，我还是很欣赏它如何唤起人们对权力、更替和流失的思考。

A real ruin, Robert Rubsam writes, is “time’s product and time’s survivor,” an artifact that “has lost its originating context, yet survived into our own.” For The Baffler, Rubsam ruminates on ruin, sharpening his ideas against those of Jenny Erpenbeck, a writer born in East Berlin whose childhood played out amidst the post-war wreckage.

罗伯特·鲁布萨姆（Robert Rubsam）写道，真正的废墟是“时间的产物和时间的幸存者”，是一件“失去了其起源的背景，但却在我们自己的环境中幸存下来的文物”。在《迷惑者》中，鲁布萨姆对废墟进行了深思熟虑，与出生于东柏林的作家珍妮·埃尔彭贝克 (Jenny Erpenbeck) 的观点形成鲜明对比，她的童年是在战后的废墟中度过的。

“The ruins lingered,” Rubsam writes, “and in lingering, they taught her the virtue of unproductive places and idle things, of empty spaces, left open for her to wander them and to ask: How did I get here, and how did all of this?” Rubsam’s essay is well-timed, arriving at a moment in which natural and political forces are rewriting many of our landscapes and dismantling our familiar structures, for reasons banal and unconscionable.

“废墟徘徊不去，”鲁萨姆写道，“在徘徊中，它们教会了她无生产力的地方、闲置的东西、空旷的空间的优点，为她留出空间，让她漫步并问：我是怎么到这里的，这一切是怎么发生的？”鲁萨姆的文章恰逢其时，恰逢自然和政治力量出于平庸且不合情理的原因正在改写我们的许多景观并拆除我们熟悉的结构。

And while it’s a powerful introduction to Erpenbeck’s writing, it doubles as a prompt to notice, to document.

虽然它是对埃尔彭贝克作品的有力介绍，但它也可以提示人们注意和记录。

Erpenbeck’s writing is “a kind of bulwark, a catalog of the minor details and inconsequential impressions that make up the course of a private life,” Rubsam writes.

鲁萨姆写道，埃彭贝克的写作是“一种堡垒，是构成私人生活过程的次要细节和无关紧要的印象的目录”。

“They are her fragments, shored up against forgetting.” Even my false ruins may one day turn to real rubble.

“它们是她的碎片，防止遗忘。”即使我的虚假废墟有一天也可能变成真正的瓦砾。

—BF

—BF

## ‘I Awoke at ½ Past 7’

## “我七点半醒来”

Elena Mary | Aeon | November 17, 2025 | 3,683 words

埃琳娜·玛丽 |永旺 | 2025 年 11 月 17 日 | 3,683 字

I’ve never wanted to optimize my life.

我从来没有想过优化我的生活。

I use one simple tool—a digital notepad, Simplenote—to jot down thoughts and track my to dos at work and at home.

我使用一种简单的工具——数字记事本 Simplenote——来记下想法并跟踪我在工作和家里要做的事情。

That’s it.

就是这样。

I remember when Apple introduced iCloud and decided that syncing my life would make it easier.

我记得当苹果推出 iCloud 并决定同步我的生活会让它变得更容易。

(It didn’t.) Or when apps like Instapaper and Read It Later promised to organize my reading queue and instead rewired me to consume rather than enjoy.

（事实并非如此。）或者当 Instapaper 和 Read It Later 等应用程序承诺组织我的阅读队列时，反而让我重新消费而不是享受。

Nearly 15 years later, this constant push toward productivity is a cultural norm.

近 15 年后，这种对生产力的持续推动已成为一种文化规范。

As historian Elena Mary explains, though, Victorian-era diarists were already doing this long before Big Tech.

然而，正如历史学家埃琳娜·玛丽（Elena Mary）所解释的那样，维多利亚时代的日记作者早在大型科技公司之前就已经这样做了。

In her enlightening essay, she shows how people across all classes of UK society used diaries to meticulously record their experiences, organize their days, and measure their achievements during a period obsessed with progress and innovation.

在她富有启发性的文章中，她展示了英国社会各阶层的人们如何使用日记来精心记录他们的经历，安排他们的日子，并衡量他们在痴迷于进步和创新的时期所取得的成就。

“A printed diary held out the promise of total control over time, place and the self,” writes Mary.

“一本印刷的日记承诺了对时间、地点和自我的完全控制，”玛丽写道。

Diaries of this time could be outlets for introspection, but many were practical tools for planning and self-improvement: “The future could be mapped out, goal-oriented, solution-focused.” Increasingly, diaries were shared with others, which sounds a lot like today’s blogs and social media.

这个时期的日记可以成为反省的渠道，但许多日记都是规划和自我完善的实用工具：“可以规划未来，以目标为导向，以解决方案为中心。”日记越来越多地与他人分享，这听起来很像今天的博客和社交媒体。

It’s no surprise, then, that some of these 19th-century diaries became records of failure, documenting the days when people fell short of their goals.

因此，毫不奇怪，其中一些 19 世纪的日记成为了失败的记录，记录了人们未能实现目标的日子。

“The Victorians were great innovators, but progress was Janus-faced,” writes Mary.

“维多利亚时代的人是伟大的创新者，但进步是两面性的，”玛丽写道。

“For every leap forward, a renewed pressure to go further, and faster, to do better, be better.

“每一次飞跃，都会带来新的压力，要求走得更远、更快、做得更好、更好。

The age of progress was also an age of anxiety.” As someone who has considered ditching her iPhone, I keep wondering what real progress looks like.

进步的时代也是焦虑的时代。”作为一个考虑过放弃 iPhone 的人，我一直想知道真正的进步是什么样的。

Maybe it’s not about optimizing at all, but knowing when to opt out.

也许根本不是优化，而是知道何时选择退出。

—CLR

—CLR

## December

## 十二月

## Homeward Bound: On Pigeon Racing

## 归途：论赛鸽

Oliver Egger | The Paris Review | November 26, 2025 | 3,603 words

奥利弗·艾格 |巴黎评论 | 2025 年 11 月 26 日 | 3,603 字

“Imagine being blindfolded and loaded in a car, then dropped nearly four hundred miles from your house in a random field in rural Iowa and trying to get home before dark.” That thought experiment, courtesy of Oliver Egger’s piece on the American Racing Pigeon Union (ARPU) Convention Race, instantly dissolved my rosy image of the sport.

“想象一下，你被蒙住眼睛，装进汽车，然后从你家近四百英里的地方降落到爱荷华州乡村的一个随机田野上，并试图在天黑之前回家。”奥利弗·艾格（Oliver Egger）关于美国赛鸽联盟（ARPU）大会赛的文章所带来的这个思想实验立即消除了我对这项运动的美好印象。

I’d always pictured pigeon racing as a rather jolly pastime: birds stretching their wings on a nice flight before being proudly welcomed back by their flat-capped owners (known as “fanciers”).

我一直把赛鸽想象成一种相当愉快的消遣：鸽子在美丽的飞行中伸展翅膀，然后受到平顶主人（被称为“鸽友”）自豪地欢迎回来。

While the subject isn’t new, Egger offers a bracing reframing.

虽然这个主题并不新鲜，但艾格提供了一个令人振奋的重新框架。

At the start, the fanciers at the race are instantly suspicious of him.

一开始，比赛的鸽友们立即对他产生了怀疑。

“I had no crate, no pigeons, and was probably thirty years younger than anyone else in the room,” he writes.

“我没有板条箱，没有鸽子，而且可能比房间里的其他人年轻三十岁，”他写道。

“That could mean only one thing: undercover animal rights activist.” (Their fears are soothed only after he’s vouched for by a white-mustachioed fancier known as “Crazy Al.”) Egger isn’t an activist, sure, but this piece is still unusually clear-eyed about the welfare of racing pigeons.

“这可能只意味着一件事：卧底动物权利活动家。” （只有在一位留着白胡子、被称为“疯狂阿尔”的鸽友为他做担保后，他们的恐惧才得到缓解。）艾格当然不是一位活动家，但这篇文章对于赛鸽的福利仍然异常清晰。

What is sport to their owners is, for the birds, a life-and-death struggle to get home—past hawks, power lines, bad weather, starvation.

对于它们的主人来说，运动是一种运动，对于鸟类来说，则是为了回家而进行的生死斗争——经过老鹰、电线、恶劣的天气和饥饿。

Many don’t make it.

很多人都没有成功。

And what of the winners?

那么获胜者呢？

If you’re a super-pigeon, navigating hundreds of miles by mechanisms we still don’t fully understand, dodging every hazard, and beating the pack, do you get to retire in glory?

如果你是一只超级鸽子，通过我们仍然不完全理解的机制航行数百英里，躲避每一个危险，并击败对手，你会光荣退休吗？

Do you get to stay home, put your feet up, watch the sunset with some nice corn while telling the youngsters your war stories?

你能呆在家里，抬起脚，一边吃着美味的玉米看日落，一边向年轻人讲述你的战争故事吗？

No. In most major races, the fastest birds are automatically sold at auction as breeders, shipped to new lofts, and never allowed to leave because they’d only try to fly back “home.” You have to wonder if they ever stop feeling lost, locked in a place that doesn’t feel like theirs.

不。在大多数主要比赛中，速度最快的鸽子会自动作为种鸽在拍卖会上出售，运往新鸽舍，并且永远不会被允许离开，因为它们只会尝试飞回“家”。你必须想知道他们是否不再感到迷失，被锁在一个感觉不属于自己的地方。

Egger fills the piece with larger-than-life characters with a palpable love for the sport (and vodka)—it’s a charming read.

艾格在这篇文章中充满了传奇人物，并对这项运动（和伏特加）有着明显的热爱——这是一本迷人的读物。

But the thought that stayed with me was simple: For all our fascination with their homing instinct, maybe the pigeons would have preferred never to leave home at all.

但我心里的想法很简单：尽管我们对它们的归巢本能着迷，但也许鸽子宁愿永远不离开家。

—CW

—CW

## A Total Breakdown of All the Easter Eggs

## 所有复活节彩蛋的全面分解

A.S.

A.S.

Hamrah | The New York Review of Books | December 2, 2025 | 5,425 words

哈姆拉 |纽约书评| 2025 年 12 月 2 日 | 5,425 字

I miss critics who critique.

我想念那些批评的批评家。

I realize I’m not the only person to say this in recent years (far from it), but there’s a mealiness these days that flattens much of arts criticism into an equivocating wasteland.

我意识到我不是近年来唯一一个这么说的人（远非如此），但现在有一种粗俗的态度，将大部分艺术批评扁平化为模棱两可的荒地。

And then there’s A.S.

然后是 A.S.

Hamrah.

哈姆拉。

Give me someone who cooks up a sentence like the following and I don’t care whether I agree with them or not: “Let me be the first and only critic to point out that Reagan, a three-year-old biopic on the life of the fortieth president of the United States that’s just getting released now—a film directed by a man whose other movies include Casper Meets Wendy, Bratz, and Field of Lost Shoes—is a better movie than Deadpool & Wolverine.” That’s not from this piece; it’s from a summer movie roundup he wrote for n+1 last year.

如果有人编出这样一句话，我不在乎我是否同意他们的观点：“让我成为第一个也是唯一一个批评者，指出《里根》是一部比《死侍与金刚狼》更好的电影，这是一部上映三年的关于美国第四十任总统的传记片，现在刚刚上映——这部电影的导演是他的其他电影，包括《卡斯帕遇见温迪》、《布拉茨》和《失鞋之地》。”这不是出自这篇文章；这是他去年为 n+1 撰写的暑期电影综述。

My point is, when most critics have seemingly lost their teeth, Hamrah is still willing to tear into a film’s haunches*—or a film industry’s haunches, as he does here in dismantling the “movie theaters are dead” narrative that’s become even more entrenched with Netflix’s imminent acquisition of Warner Bros.

我的观点是，当大多数评论家似乎失去了牙齿时，哈姆拉仍然愿意撕扯电影的臀部*或电影业的臀部，就像他在这里瓦解“电影院已死”的叙述一样，这种叙述随着 Netflix 即将收购华纳兄弟而变得更加根深蒂固。

No one escapes his bite.

没有人能逃脱他的叮咬。

Not the boomers (personified by Bill Maher and, in a double-whammy for the ages, compared to Immortan Joe) who declare movies done; not the conservatives who dismiss film as a culture-war tactic; not the A-list actors who blithely assert that no one has the attention span for movies; and certainly not the studios themselves, who assiduously ignore the boom that’s keeping indie theaters alive while also pumping out a sequel-heavy diet of leftovers.

不是那些宣称电影已经完结的婴儿潮一代（以比尔·马赫为代表，与不朽的乔相比，在多年来受到双重打击）；不是那些将电影视为文化战争策略的保守派；不是那些乐此不疲地断言没有人能像电影一样集中注意力的一线演员；当然也不是电影公司本身，他们刻意忽视独立影院的繁荣，同时也推出大量续集的剩菜。

“The confluence of digital projection, streaming channels, AI, and the alleged death of criticism often makes it seem like we are dealing with the destruction of a worldview,” he writes.

他写道：“数字投影、流媒体频道、人工智能以及所谓的批评的消亡常常使我们看起来像是在应对世界观的破坏。”

“I believe that this is indeed the goal of the corporations that control the studios and publishers.

“我相信这确实是控制工作室和发行商的公司的目标。

I don’t think it means that people don’t want to read criticism.

我不认为这意味着人们不想阅读批评。

What they don’t want to read are writers who are afraid of their editors, who curry favor with Hollywood, and who want to be influencers.” There, in a single sentence, is the issue.

他们不想读的是那些害怕编辑、巴结好莱坞、想成为影响者的作家。”一句话，就解决了这个问题。

And there, in the same sentence, is why there’s always going to be a place for criticism that’s thoughtful, incisive, and yes, maybe even a little bit crotchety.

这就是为什么总有一个地方可以进行深思熟虑、尖锐的批评，是的，甚至可能有点古怪。

If you’re looking for concessions, the popcorn stand is that way.

如果您正在寻找优惠，爆米花摊就在那边。

—PR

——公关

* That’s not schadenfreude talking; as much as I enjoy writerly shade, give me interesting laudatory criticism any day of the week.

*这并不是幸灾乐祸的说法；尽管我很喜欢作家的影子，但一周中的任何一天都给我有趣的赞美批评。

## If a Tree Falls

## 如果一棵树倒下

Rosa Lyster | Harper’s Magazine | December 17, 2025 | 6,939 words

罗莎·莱斯特 |哈珀杂志 | 2025 年 12 月 17 日 | 6,939 字

Living many thousands of miles from England, I had absolutely zero awareness of the crime and aftermath that Rosa Lyster’s Harper’s feature chronicles: the felling of a tree.

我住在距离英格兰数千英里之外的地方，对罗莎·莱斯特 (Rosa Lyster) 的《哈珀》(Harper) 专题编年史中所记录的犯罪和后果：一棵树被砍倒的认识完全为零。

Not just any tree, though.

但不只是任何一棵树。

No, the Sycamore Gap Tree had become something of an icon for the Brits, sitting picturesquely between two steep hills in the country’s northeast, not to mention appearing in the 1991 movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

不，梧桐树已经成为英国人的标志，它风景如画地坐落在该国东北部的两座陡峭山丘之间，更不用说出现在 1991 年的电影《罗宾汉：盗贼王子》中。

And when it was chopped down in the middle of the night in 2023, those selfsame Brits lost their damn minds.

当它在 2023 年的半夜被砍掉时，那些同样的英国人疯了。

It didn’t take long to sniff out the likely culprits, and two men were soon arrested and brought to trial.

没过多久，就查出了可能的罪魁祸首，两名男子很快被捕并接受审判。

As entertaining as the piece is from the very beginning, this is where it shifts into an arch and meticulous courtroom dispatch, with Lyster playing Dominick Dunne to phenomenal effect.

尽管这部作品从一开始就很有趣，但在这里它转变为拱门和细致的法庭调度，莱斯特扮演多米尼克·邓恩达到了惊人的效果。

Any humor never comes at the tree’s expense, but rather from the many human foibles on display, particularly the defendants’ continual attempts to vindicate themselves.

任何幽默都不会以牺牲树为代价，而是来自于所展示的许多人类弱点，特别是被告不断试图为自己辩护的行为。

“It is strange to see people tell such brazen and low-effort lies in front of the international media and a High Court judge,” writes Lyster in typically deadpan fashion.

“看到人们在国际媒体和高等法院法官面前说出如此厚颜无耻、毫不费力的谎言，真是很奇怪，”莱斯特以典型的面无表情的方式写道。

(She’s not British, but there’s a distinctly Douglas Adams cant to many of the sentences, which I mean as high praise.) When I finished reading, the same smile plastered on my face that had been there for nearly 7,000 words, I realized how rare it is to come across a truly odd story that still manages to say something about humanity at large.

（她不是英国人，但很多句子都有明显的道格拉斯·亚当斯的俚语，我的意思是高度赞扬。）当我读完时，我脸上挂满了近 7,000 字的笑容，我意识到，遇到一个真正奇怪的故事，仍然设法讲述一些关于人类的事情是多么罕见。

In many ways, it feels like a fable, which Lyster sneakily both acknowledges and architects.

从很多方面来说，这感觉就像一个寓言，莱斯特偷偷地承认了这一点，并设计了它。

But that short-story quality is also its greatest strength.

但短篇小说的品质也是其最大的优势。

To be unrepentantly weird, without also losing itself in the weirdness, is the kind of needle-thread that you’re lucky to read once a year.

顽固地变得怪异，而又不迷失在怪异之中，就像你有幸每年读一次的针线一样。

How fitting, then—and how serendipitous—that it comes at the very end of 2025.

那么，它在 2025 年底到来是多么合适，也是多么偶然。

Happy holidays to us all.

祝我们大家节日快乐。

—PR

——公关