Every New Year’s Day, Emma Bisley starts asking herself the same question: who is going to win Christmas this year? Since 2023, the cherubic 34-year-old has been head of campaigns for Sainsbury’s, Britain’s second-largest supermarket chain. She thinks about winning Christmas the same way the Grinch thinks about stealing it, which is to say nearly all the time.

每年元旦，艾玛•比斯利(Emma Bisley)都会问自己同一个问题：今年谁会赢得圣诞节？自2023年以来，这位34岁的可爱女子一直担任英国第二大超市连锁店塞恩斯伯里(Sainsbury)的活动负责人。她对赢得圣诞节的思考方式就像格林奇对偷走圣诞节的思考方式一样，也就是说几乎无时无刻不在想。

When Bisley’s friends think of her, they often think of Christmas too. For her hen do, someone dressed as a giant electrical plug after the breakout star of “The Big Night”, the first Christmas campaign Bisley worked on, back in 2018. It featured an elaborate school musical, in which a little boy dressed as a plug launches himself, prongs first, into a giant socket, thereby turning on all the lights on the stage.

当比斯利的朋友们想到她时，他们也常常想到圣诞节。在她的单身派对上，有人打扮成一个巨大的电插头，这个形象来自于2018年比斯利参与的第一个圣诞节广告活动《大夜》的突破明星。广告中有一个精心制作的学校音乐剧，一个小男孩打扮成插头，先是把插头插入一个巨大的插座，从而点亮了舞台上的所有灯光。

Plugboy became a minor celebrity. Sainsbury’s had him turn on its Christmas lights in a car park in Cornwall, even as some anxious parents complained about the ad. (What if their children attempted to plug themselves into real sockets?) That year, most in the advertising world agreed that Sainsbury’s won Christmas. Ever since, Bisley has been hunting for the next big idea.

插头男孩成为了一位小名人。塞恩斯伯里请他在康沃尔郡的一个停车场为圣诞灯饰揭幕，尽管一些焦虑的家长对广告提出了投诉。（如果他们的孩子试图将自己插入真正的插座怎么办？）那一年，广告界大多数人都认为塞恩斯伯里赢得了圣诞节。从那时起，比斯利一直在寻找下一个大创意。

——本文2024年12月16日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 The race to make the greatest Christmas ad

The killing of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson in New York last week, which appears to have been motivated by “ill will towards corporate America”, is the latest sign that a new era of intense political violence is taking hold in the US.   

上周，联合医疗(United Healthcare)高管布莱恩•汤普森(Brian Thompson)在纽约被杀，据悉这起案件是出于对美国企业界的“恶意”所致。这一事件表明，美国正进入一个日渐激烈的政治暴力时代。

What is significant about political violence in America today is the extent to which it garners significant mass public support. Luigi Mangione, the man charged with murdering Thompson, has become a hero to some on social media. And national surveys we have carried out at the University of Chicago have found that, from 2021 to 2024, 10 to 15 per cent of Americans consistently support violence for political goals that they endorse.

如今，美国政治暴力引人注目的特征在于其获得相当程度的公众支持。涉嫌谋杀汤普森的路易吉•曼焦内(Luigi Mangione)在社交媒体上居然被部分人奉为英雄。我们在芝加哥大学所做的全国调查显示，从2021年至2024年，始终有10%至15%的美国人支持为他们所认可的政治目标而诉诸暴力。

Political violence in the US has ebbed and flowed for decades, but past episodes of what can be called “violent populism” have been rare. In the early 1920s, for instance, America witnessed a dramatic rise in dues-paying membership of the Ku Klux Klan. This was a period of extensive violence against Black people, Jews and Catholics that swept across states from Indiana to Georgia and beyond, in support of the Klan’s political goal of ensuring the country was “one-hundred per cent American”. 

美国的政治暴力在数十年来此起彼伏，但被称为“暴力民粹主义”的现象过去并不多见。比如，20世纪20年代初，三K党(Ku Klux Klan)的缴费会员人数激增。那个时期，黑人、犹太人和天主教徒遭受广泛暴力侵害，这股浪潮从印第安纳州扩散到佐治亚州及其他地区，以支持三K党将美国“百分之百美国化”的政治目标。

——本文2024年12月16日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 New eras, same bubbles: the forgotten lessons of history

OpenAI’s Sam Altman is reckoning with an unpredictable force that threatens his ambition of transforming the start-up into a trillion-dollar company: Elon Musk.

OpenAI的萨姆•奥尔特曼正在应对一股不可预测的力量，这股力量威胁着他将这家初创公司转变为万亿美元企业的雄心：埃隆•马斯克。

Since Donald Trump was elected president in November, executives at the ChatGPT-maker have been preparing to deal with the incoming US administration — a process complicated by Musk’s emergence as a pivotal confidant of the president-elect.

自唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)于11月当选美国总统以来，ChatGPT开发者的高管们一直在准备应对即将上任的美国政府——由于马斯克成为当选总统的重要顾问，这一过程变得更加复杂。

OpenAI has been among Musk’s rivals who are trying to anticipate how the billionaire may use his new vantage point in Washington, from pushing for new regulations that target the company to influencing the award of lucrative government contracts that could boost Musk’s own artificial intelligence start-up xAI.

OpenAI一直是马斯克的竞争对手之一，他们试图预测这位亿万富翁将如何利用他在华盛顿的新优势，从推动针对该公司的新法规到影响利润丰厚的政府合同的授予，这些合同可能会推动马斯克自己的人工智能初创公司 xAI 的发展。

——本文2024年12月15日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 Sam Altman reckons with a growing threat to OpenAI: Elon Musk

Education technology companies became sought after properties during the pandemic amid mass school closures. Online learning platforms Coursera, Udemy and Nerdy were among those that rode the wave of investor interest to make their public market debut in 2021. 

在大规模学校关闭期间，教育科技公司成为了备受追捧的对象。Coursera、Udemy 和 Nerdy 等在线学习平台在投资者兴趣的推动下，于2021年首次公开上市。

Since then, edtech has gone the way of other pandemic darlings like Peloton, with most companies in the sector trading at well below their 2021 peaks.

自那时起，教育科技行业的发展轨迹与其他疫情期间的宠儿如派乐腾(Peloton)相似，该领域大多数公司的股价都远低于2021年的峰值。

Language learning app Duolingo has managed to buck the trend. The stock is up about 60 per cent this year to give the company a $15bn market valuation, and has more than tripled from its IPO price of $102 three years ago.

语言学习应用多邻国成功逆势而上。今年其股价上涨了约60%，使公司市值达到150亿美元，并且从三年前首次公开募股(IPO)时的102美元价格上涨了三倍多。

——本文2024年12月16日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 Duolingo bucks edtech post-pandemic blues