【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:America’s gambling boom should be celebrated, not feared The gambling frenzy is mostly about people being free to enjoy themselves 正文：A craze for betting is sweeping over America. This year Americans are on track to wager nearly $150bn on sports, having bet a paltry $7bn in 2018. Another $80bn is being wagered in online casinos; in the few weeks when election gambling was legal before the presidential vote, hundreds of millions of dollars were placed on the outcom...
Dec 09, 2024•13 min•Ep. 511
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Behind the Brain Rot Oxford’s controversial Word of the Year captures how chronically online life has become. 正文：The image is black-and-white, lending it an air of “historical artifact”: A modern-day Donald Trump standing next to Elvis Presley. The president-elect posted the picture on Truth Social last night. Presley is strumming a guitar; Trump is idling in the frame. Of course, this scene is impossible, and it’s not a real photograph. Elvis died in 1977, when T...
Dec 09, 2024•19 min•Ep. 512
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Picasso was a genius—and a beast. Can the two be separated? It’s the wrong question to ask, says “Monsters”, a provocative new book by Claire Dederer 正文：Look closely at “Woman with a Yellow Necklace” (pictured below), a painting by Pablo Picasso of 1946. The woman is Françoise Gilot, his partner at the time. Notice, in particular, what appears to be a Marilyn-esque beauty spot on the figure’s left cheek. That mark is said to represent a cigarette burn, seared onto...
Dec 08, 2024•12 min•Ep. 513
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Martial law in South Korea—and then not. What comes next? A rash, unexpected move by Yoon Suk Yeol, the president, tests South Korean democracy 正文：December 3rd began as an uneventful early-winter day in Seoul, South Korea’s capital. Many went to sleep soundly that evening. By the time the sun rose the next morning, the country’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, had declared martial law, attempted to forcibly take control of the National Assembly—and then abruptly reverse...
Dec 06, 2024•14 min•Ep. 514
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Joe Biden abused a medieval power to pardon his son The president’s reversal is understandable, humane and wrong 正文：When setting up the checks and balances in the American constitution, the document’s authors knew they wanted the judiciary to be independent of the legislative and the executive branches. But who, then, would check the judges? One answer was that the president would be able to pardon criminals. This awesome power—to override a decision taken by the ...
Dec 05, 2024•20 min•Ep. 515
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:What will humans do if technology solves everything? Welcome to a high-tech utopia 正文：In “permutation city”, a novel by Greg Egan, the character Peer, having achieved immortality within a virtual reality over which he has total control, finds himself terribly bored. So he engineers himself to have new passions. One moment he is pushing the boundaries of higher mathematics; the next he is writing operas. “He’d even been interested in the Elysians [the afterlife], o...
Dec 04, 2024•16 min•Ep. 516
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Electric ‘beng bengs’ create a sensation in US. Now about those delivery charges … 正文：Bad news for Americans worried about the viability of domestic auto production. The super-cheap Chinese electric vehicles that Elon Musk and Donald Trump fear are already rolling on US soil. The good news is that these vehicles only have three wheels. 知识点：sensation /senˈseɪʃ(ə)n/ n. very great surprise, excitement, or interest among a lot of people; the person or the thing that c...
Dec 03, 2024•9 min•Ep. 517
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:China Is Mixed on Elon Musk—but They Sure Love His Mom At 76, Maye Musk is a surprising celebrity in the country, and the tycoon’s secret weapon 正文：Elon Musk has many problems in China. His 76-year-old mom isn’t one of them. Maye Musk, the enigmatic tycoon’s mother, enjoys a surprising celebrity status across the country. Her autobiography, “A Woman Makes A Plan,” skyrocketed to the top of China’s bestseller lists in recent years. Crowds pack in to hear her speak....
Dec 02, 2024•13 min•Ep. 518
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Why caste still matters in Indian politics Narendra Modi must rethink his approach to Hinduism’s social hierarchy 正文：Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, made several costly miscalculations in this year’s general election. He overestimated his own popularity. He underestimated the extent of economic angst, especially about underemployment and inflation. And he relied excessively on Hindu nationalism to mobilise voters from the nation’s religious majority. But pe...
Dec 01, 2024•18 min•Ep. 519
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题：Has Sequoia Capital outgrown its business model? Venture capital’s hardiest perennial gets back to its roots 正文：The first thing that catches your eye when you enter the poshly serene headquarters of Sequoia Capital on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California, is a metre-wide cross-section of what appears to be a redwood. On closer inspection it turns out to have been a tree in the past—38m years ago, according to a plaque on the back. Now it is solid stone. A gift...
Dec 01, 2024•24 min•Ep. 520
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:India is turning into an SUV country The culture and meaning of cars is changing as the country gets richer 正文：Getting to Bangalore, India’s startup capital, is easy: arrive at the gorgeous new garden-themed terminal, collect your bags, and zip down the buttery smooth National Highway 44 into the city. Getting around Bangalore is another matter. It is the most heavily gridlocked city in India, with average speeds during rush hour of 18kph (11mph). That has not sto...
Nov 29, 2024•17 min•Ep. 521
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Angela Merkel Tells Us What She Really Thinks 正文： “Never explain, never complain,” is a maxim supposedly espoused by the British royal family. As Angela Merkel writes in her exhaustive yet surprisingly fast-paced autobiography, “Freedom,” it also became a phrase that she would repeat to herself during her 16 years as German chancellor, from 2005 until she stepped down in December 2021. 知识点：maxim n./ˈmæksɪm/ A maxim is a rule for good or sensible behaviour, especia...
Nov 28, 2024•9 min•Ep. 522
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Dictionary.com Names‘Demure’ as Its Word of the Year for 2024 正文：Popular online dictionary platform Dictionary.com has officially announced its annual word of the year, and they’ve made a very mindful choice. Their 2024 Word of the Year is the viral sensation “demure,” which took off on TikTok in August of this year. It was popularized by TikToker Jools Lebron, whose phrase “very demure, very mindful” was featured in a series of viral videos and replicated by othe...
Nov 27, 2024•15 min•Ep. 523
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:What ChatGPT’s corporate victims have in common The first casualties of generative AI offer lessons for other businesses 正文： In less than four years the share price of Chegg, an online education service, has dropped by 99%. A post-pandemic slump in digital learning is partly to blame for its tumble. A bigger problem for the company, though,is artificial intelligence (AI). Its customers are mostly students who want help answering their homework assignments, which o...
Nov 26, 2024•14 min•Ep. 524
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Once dominant, Germany is now desperate As an election looms its business model is breaking down 正文：The finance ministry of the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg, home to giants like Bosch, /bɔ:ʃ/ Mercedes and ZF Friedrichshafen, is not a bad spot from which to probe Germany’s anxieties. The country is gripped by fears of deindustrialisation as it heads into an election that seems certain to throw its chancellor, Olaf Scholz, out of his job if his party d...
Nov 25, 2024•25 min•Ep. 525
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:The surprising stagnation of Asia’s middle classes It could shake up everything from profits to politics 正文： In August Amalia Adininggar, Indonesia’s statistician-in-chief, appeared in parliament with bad news. The country’s middle class had shrunk. Between 2021 and 2024, 6m Indonesians had fallen into the “aspiring middle class”, an official euphemism for being a stone’s throw away from poverty. Asked about the grim trend the next day, Joko Widodo, then the presi...
Nov 25, 2024•15 min•Ep. 526
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题：Collins Dictionary’s word of the year is a confident, messy way of life 正文： More than a “brat summer” – it may even be a brat year. Collins Dictionary has named “brat” its word of the year for 2024, defining it as someone “characterized by a confident, independent, and hedonistic attitude.” “More than a hugely successful album, ‘brat’ is a cultural phenomenon that has resonated with people globally, and ‘brat summer’ established itself as an aesthetic and a way of...
Nov 23, 2024•14 min•Ep. 527
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:How the Super-Rich Signal Their Wealth to Each Other 正文：Sturdy red curtains cordon off the lives of plutocrats at play. To better hide their gilded world from the 99.9%, the super-rich avoid high-end labels, favoring “quiet luxury” and “stealth wealth.” When this affluent army enters our world, they camouflage themselves with earthy-colored cashmere and luxurious suede. Yank back those curtains, however, and a quandary emerges for the highest of high-net-worth ind...
Nov 22, 2024•17 min•Ep. 528
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Everything you need to know about the reopening of Notre Dame 正文：The April 2019 conflagration that nearly toppled Notre Dame de Paris elicited a deluge of emotion from people all over the planet. Five years later, the celebrated cathedral—what historian Jacques Hillairet called la maison du peuple (the house of the people)—will reopen on December 7 after a Herculean restoration project that united a thousand specialist artisans. 知识点：conflagration n. /ˌkɑːnfləˈɡreɪ...
Nov 21, 2024•8 min•Ep. 529
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:The superpower glass ceiling Failure to elect a female leader is not a uniquely American problem 正文：The autopsy results have been flooding in. Democrats’ hopes of retaining the US presidency perished, so the diagnosis goes, because of what the party failed to do, and because of what it chose to do. It failed to detach itself sufficiently from a fading incumbent, and to hammer home a cogent message on the economy and migration. Simultaneously, it is claimed, Kamala...
Nov 20, 2024•16 min•Ep. 530
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Shock photos show physical deterioration of stranded NASA astronaut Sunita Williams 正文：Photos have revealed NASA astronaut Sunita Williams' shocking weight loss as she and her crewmate remain stuck on the International Space Station (ISS). Williams, 59, and Barry Wilmore, 61, have been living on the ISS for five months after Boeing's faulty Starliner spacecraft was deemed unsafe to return them to Earth. 知识点：crewmate n./ˈkruːˌmeɪt/ a colleague on the crew of a boat...
Nov 19, 2024•9 min•Ep. 531
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Squid Game is back —and darker than ever 正文：Making the first season of Squid Game cost its creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, nine of his teeth. If you’re among the quarter of a billion viewers who watched the ultra-violent Netflix series, you might fantasise about how this happened. Was his head locked by studio execs in a ghastly contraption, a single tooth pulled for each day the script was late? Or his mouthwash swapped for corrosive acid when he failed to tie up plot ...
Nov 18, 2024•17 min•Ep. 532
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Nike and Adidas are losing their lead in running shoes On, Hoka and other challengers are catching up fast 正文：The origin of On, a Swiss sportswear brand, is unusual. In 2010 Olivier Bernhard, a triathlete, stuck bits of garden hose to the bottom of his trainers for added cushioning. The idea worked so well that he and two friends decided to make a business out of it. Their shoes were a hit; last year the company made almost $2bn in sales. On November 12th it repor...
Nov 18, 2024•13 min•Ep. 533
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Welcome to ‘Dalifornia,’ an Oasis for China’s Drifters and Dreamers Young Chinese are flocking to the picturesque mountain town of Dali to escape the cutthroat competition and suffocating political environment of the country’s megacities. 正文：To find the dance circle in the bed-and-breakfast’s courtyard, drive north from the bedsheet factory converted into a crafts market, toward the vegan canteen urging diners to “walk barefoot in the soil and bathe in the sunshin...
Nov 17, 2024•19 min•Ep. 534
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Li Ziqi’s Online Pastoral Poetics 正文：Somewhere in the mountainous region of northern Sichuan, a young woman harvests soybeans alone in a field. She cuts through the beanstalks with a sickle and stuffs them into a wicker basket. Once the basket is full, she makes her way to a courtyard garden, where she shells the beans by hand and grinds them in a stone mill. Working industriously yet serenely, she boils the resulting pulp in a wood-fired wok, drains it in a cloth...
Nov 15, 2024•14 min•Ep. 535
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Why your company is struggling to scale up generative AI As employers hesitate, workers are ahead of the curve 正文：For investors concerned that America’s tech giants are making recklessly large bets on generative artificial intelligence (AI), big tech’s latest quarterly results have offered some reassurance. The growth in demand from companies for the cloud services of Amazon, Microsoft and Google was red hot. Andy Jassy, boss of Amazon, said that AI revenue for Am...
Nov 14, 2024•16 min•Ep. 536
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Why suspects in Japan are almost never acquitted And it is facing renewed criticism 正文：In 2020 the president of Ohkawara Kakohki, a small machinery-making firm in Yokohama, near Tokyo, was arrested along with two of its executives. The charge? That the company was sending equipment to be turned into biological weapons in China. The three were detained for 11 months. Their application for bail was rejected by judges five times. The investigators implied they would ...
Nov 13, 2024•15 min•Ep. 537
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Meet the HENRYs: The Six-Figure Earners Who Don’t Feel Rich 正文：Fifteen years ago if you’d told April Little that she’d make $300,000 a year, she would have pictured a life free of financial stress. “The white picket fence—I have the whole visual in my head,” says Little, 38 years old, a human-resources executive turned career coach. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but when I got to that proverbial mountaintop I realized there’s a lot of expenses. And I still do...
Nov 12, 2024•15 min•Ep. 538
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:India’s startup scene is picking up speed again Zippy new firms are emerging in a number of areas 正文：Visitors to Bangalore, India’s tech hub, quickly learn why locals measure distances in minutes and not kilometres. The city’s clogged streets turn every outing into a test of patience. Other large cities in the country are just as bad. So it is no surprise that Indians are getting everything from biryanis and books to mangoes and mobile phones delivered straight to...
Nov 11, 2024•15 min•Ep. 539
【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题:Warren Buffett’s Apple share sales and cash pile spark intrigue over motives 正文：Warren Buffett is unwinding his most profitable trade in history, filling Berkshire Hathaway’s coffers with cash. But it is unclear if the Oracle of Omaha is ready to go elephant-hunting with his recent bounty. Buffett revealed that he had continued to slash his position in iPhone maker Apple and other stocks in the third quarter, generating $97bn in gains for Berkshire Hathaway, the s...
Nov 11, 2024•17 min•Ep. 540
