每
新英文外刊 周 Week07
精
选 20250215
Contents
目录
周一《经济学人》人工智能：巴黎峰会喧嚣 ★★★☆☆ 585 词.........................................................2
周二《大西洋月刊》网络语言的"精妙愚昧" ★★★★☆ 680 词 .........................................................5
周三《彭博社》出生公民权铸就美国伟大 ★★★★★ 642 词 .............................................................8
周四《外交学者》《哪吒 2》：中国科技实力的最新力作 ★★☆☆☆ 675 词 ............................... 11
周五《经济学人》深度解析：间歇性断食真的有效吗？ ★★★☆☆ 554 词 .............................. 14
新英文外刊公众号
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
扫 新
码 英
听 文
音 课
频 堂
Leaders Feb 12th 2025 | 585 words | ★★★☆☆
Artificial intelligence : The Paris discord
Both America and Europe need to rethink their approach to AI
The attempt at global harmony ended in cacophony. As Emmanuel Macron’s AI summit drew
to a close on February 11th J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, bluntly set out an America-
first vision for artificial intelligence, castigated Europe for being too rule-bound and left
before the usual group photograph. EU countries, for their part, struck a collaborative tone
with China and the global south, while stressing the need to limit the risks of using AI.
Both Europe and America should rethink their approach. After the work by DeepSeek,
China’s hotshot model-maker, Europe has been given an unexpected chance to catch up—if
it can cast off its regulatory straitjacket. America can no longer behave as if it has a
monopoly on AI. It should change how it wields power over its allies.
2/16
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
The pace of innovation is astonishing. Barely six
months ago AI looked as if it needed a technological
breakthrough to become widely affordable. Since
then reasoning and efficiency techniques have
emerged, enabling DeepSeek to develop models
close to the frontier even though it cannot use
cutting-edge American chips. And DeepSeek is just
exhibit A. Researchers everywhere are racing to make AI more efficient. Those at Stanford
and the University of Washington, for instance, have trained models more cheaply still. Once
there were concerns that the world did not contain enough data to train advanced systems.
Now the use of synthetic data seems to be producing impressive results.
For Europe, which looked hopelessly behind in AI, this is a golden opportunity. In contrast
to Google’s search engines, where network effects mean that a winner takes all, no law of
computing or economics will stop European firms from catching up. Closing the gap is
therefore a matter of policy. Mr Macron is rightly encouraging investment in data centres.
But just as important is cutting through the red tape that prevents companies from
innovating and adopting AI. The EU’s AI Act is fearsomely stringent: a startup offering an AI
tutoring service, by one account, must set up risk-management systems, conduct an impact
assessment and undergo an inspection, in addition to jumping through other hoops.
Another hurdle is privacy rules. Even big tech firms, with their huge compliance teams, now
launch their AI products in Europe with a delay. Imagine the costs for startups. German
manufacturers sit on a wealth of proprietary data that could help create productivity-
enhancing AI tools. But the fear of falling foul of regulations puts them off. A wise relaxation
of the rules, as well as harmonised enforcement, would help Europe exploit AI’s potential.
America needs to wake up, too. China’s advances suggest that Uncle Sam has less monopoly
power over AI simply by having a hold over cutting-edge chips. Instead, it needs to attract
the world’s best talent, however distasteful that may be to MAGA Republicans.
3/16
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
America should also change how it engages with its allies. In Paris Mr Vance rightly warned
against the use of Chinese infrastructure (and the fact that China signed the summit’s
declaration on AI governance may explain why America declined to). But America would
more successfully discourage the adoption of Chinese AI if it were more willing for its
friends to use its technology. In his final days in office Joe Biden proposed strict AI controls
that would hinder exports even to allies like India. Revising those would encourage
countries to use American tech rather than pushing them into China’s embrace. American
AI now faces competition. If it wants to reign supreme, Uncle Sam will have to entice, not
threaten. ■
4/16
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
扫 新
码 英
听 文
音 课
频 堂
Internet Speak February 13, 2025 | 680 words | ★★★★☆
The Brilliant Stupidity of Internet Speak
Online life changed the way we talk and write—then changed it again, and again, and so on,
forever.
I love the way that people talk online. And on a good day, I genuinely think the internet has
made people funnier and more creative. For instance, take this fairly anodyne post on X from
2023: “Financially, whatever happened in July can’t happen again.” For whatever reason, the
people of the internet saw one man’s budgeting struggles as a blank template for their own
posts, which got stranger and more ornate as they went on—until we reached what, for me,
was the post of the year: “What happened to my ankles tonight mosquitologically can never
happen again.”
“Mosquitologically”—it’s so good. Over and over, we come up with amazing things to say.
5/16
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
That is why I felt moved earlier this year to write a defense of what some call “brain rot”
language, a type of internet-inflected speech full of grammatical oddities and references to
memes. I called it both mind-numbing and irresistible; when I talk the way that people talk
online, I feel a little dumb, but also funny and current. Sometimes, these novel internet
phrases—it’s giving; if you even care—are the best way to express what I’m thinking, and so
it would be counterproductive and masochistic not to use them.
But long before the internet, there was spoken slang, the result of various cultures’ and
identity groups’ innovations. This type of language originated in the margins, my colleague
Caleb Madison wrote. In 14th-to-17th-century England, many people were pushed to the
fringes of society as the country transitioned to capitalism. Over time, they “developed a
secret, colorful, and ephemeral cant” to allow them to speak freely in front of law
enforcement or rival groups. Throughout The Atlantic’s history, writers have kept a close
eye on American slang; sometimes, they’ve fretted about it. An un-bylined piece from a 1912
issue bemoaned the state of American conversation and the laziness of “canned language”
(apparently too many people were saying “It is a benediction to know him” at the time).
Similarly, last year, the writer Dan Brooks argued that the internet is awash in “empty slang,”
and that the country is facing a “language crisis.”
The Brooks story distinguished between valuable slang and useless slang, a distinction that
also came up in another un-bylined essay, titled just “Slang,” from 1893. The writer posited
that people use slang “whenever one’s own vocabulary falls short of the demands of one’s
thought.” They argued that good slang replaces “inadequate” existing words, while bad slang
is meaningless. Good slang is valuable, in the end, because it solves a problem—“Every new
word which has a new meaning of its own, and is not a vain duplicate or pedantic substitute
for a sufficient old one, enriches the language.”
This is not to say that all linguistic innovation should receive a warm welcome. Over the
years, The Atlantic has also covered plenty of bad slang and uninspired turns of phrase, of
which the internet has produced oodles. In a 2014 issue of this magazine, the writer Britt
Peterson unpacked the linguistics of “LOLspeak,” a formerly common internet dialect that
6/16
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
has thankfully fallen out of favor in the years since. It originated from “I Can Has
Cheezburger?” cat memes—a relic from a simpler and cringier time in online history.
LOLSpeak was “meant to sound like the twisted language inside a cat’s brain,” Peterson
wrote, but “ended up resembling a down-South baby talk with some very strange
characteristics, including deliberate misspellings (teh, ennyfing), unique verb forms (gotted,
can haz), and word reduplication (fastfastfast).” The rise of social media in the mid-2010s
led to all sorts of experiments like this (remember the “Because Internet” phenomenon?),
many of which were similarly so annoying that they couldn’t possibly last.
It’s very obvious to say that language is always evolving, whether through misunderstanding
or appropriation or relentless posting. But not all change lasts. We keep throwing things at
the wall to see what sticks, and what usually does are the words and phrases that are
instantly intelligible, useful, and simply funny. “Mosquitologically”: Why didn’t we have a
word for that? ■
7/16
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
扫 新
码 英
听 文
音 课
频 堂
Opinion February 10, 2025 | 642 words | ★★★★★
Birthright Citizenship Helps Make America
Great
A pending executive order would upend a century-old understanding of what it means to
be a US citizen. Courts are right to stop it.
Amid the flood of executive orders issued from the White House on Jan. 20, one is especially
misguided, both in legal and policy terms: Beginning in 30 days, the order declared, children
born in the US to mothers who are undocumented immigrants — or even legal temporary
residents — may no longer automatically be granted citizenship of their own.
The order was immediately challenged in court, where a federal judge, John C. Coughenour,
quickly declared it “blatantly unconstitutional.” Two further injunctions followed last week.
For good reason. “All persons,” the 14th Amendment reads, “born or naturalized in the
8/16
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
Administration lawyers argue that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” doesn’t
apply to children of immigrants who arrived in the US either illegally or on a visa.
Logical quandaries aside — the implication seems to be that people born in the US aren’t
subject to its laws — there’s no statutory basis for such a claim. That any lawyer would even
make the case, said Coughenour, “just boggles my mind.”
Both the Supreme Court and Congress have allowed the plain language of the amendment
to go unchallenged since the court’s 1898 ruling in US v. Wong Kim Ark. At the time of the
amendment’s ratification, the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” referred to
members of sovereign native tribes. It continues to capture those born to diplomats or
soldiers of an invading army.
Regrettably, the latter group may be what the president has in mind. He frequently uses the
word “invaders” when referring to people entering the country, whether illegally or through
the legal asylum process. But his declaration of a national emergency at the border doesn’t
give him the authority to override the Constitution.
The 14th Amendment was adopted after the Civil War to wipe away one of the claims that
helped precipitate it: the Supreme Court’s odious 1857 Dred Scott decision holding that
even free Black people were not and could not be citizens. The ruling, had it stood, would’ve
created a permanent underclass.
The new executive order carries unfortunate echoes of that decision. It could turn about
150,000 children a year into stateless and second-class individuals, deprived of rights and
subject to deportation — potentially to a country they’ve never even visited.
The president’s insistence that the US is the “only country in the world” to provide birthright
citizenship is flatly wrong. Most countries in the Western Hemisphere do so. More to the
point: No country has reaped greater benefits from birthright citizenship than the US.
9/16
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
Immigrants have made America great. Some have come to improve their own prospects in
life. More have come to create opportunity for their children. And notwithstanding the
discrimination they’ve often faced, they’ve enriched the US economically and culturally
beyond all measure.
It’s true that the previous administration did a poor job of policing the border. Stepped-up
enforcement is a necessity. But ultimately, the best way to dissuade people dreaming of
better lives from crossing into the US illegally, and amassing at the border to seek asylum, is
not to punish their children. It’s to fix the legal immigration system to create more
opportunities for the law-abiding.
The number of visas allotted annually has remained capped at about 675,000 since 1990,
even though the economy has since doubled in size — and even as many businesses can’t
find the workers they need to grow. Today, the number of job-seekers remains far below the
roughly 8 million job openings. Lifting the visa cap will be an essential part of any effort to
mend the broader system.
No matter how many deportations the government orders or how many walls it builds,
migrants will still be inexorably drawn to the US. Such is the magnetic power of the
American dream. Better to see that as an opportunity than a threat. ■
10/16
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
扫 新
码 英
听 文
音 课
频 堂
Ne Zha 2 February 14, 2025 | 675 words | ★★☆☆☆
‘Ne Zha 2’: China’s Latest Tech Success
“Ne Zha 2” has shattered several box office records while sparking national pride in China’s
cultural strength.
Move over, DeepSeek and “Black Myth: Wukong” – there’s a new flagbearer of Chinese
technological and cultural excellence.
“Ne Zha 2,” an animated film about a mythical boy born with special powers, has shattered
several box office records since its release over the recent Lunar New Year holiday, the peak
period for Chinese movie theaters each year. With box office receipts having surpassed 10
billion renminbi (commonly called the yuan), or around $1.4 billion, the film is now China’s
highest-grossing film ever, the highest-grossing film in a single market ever, and the 17th
highest-grossing film ever – all this just as it begins to hit overseas markets, with a limited
11/16
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
release in the United States starting Friday.
The film is a sequel to the 2019 hit “Ne Zha,” which made around 5 billion yuan in mainland
China’s box office. According to Chinese box office data provider Maoyan, the sequel is
expected to rake in around 16 billion yuan in total, which would make it the fifth highest-
grossing film ever, surpassing “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
“Ne Zha 2” has been the subject of patriotic pride not dissimilar to the 2021 state-backed
war epic “The Battle at Lake Changjin,” which was China’s most successful film until being
supplanted this month. Filmgoers have celebrated the emergence of a homegrown film
perceived as being on par with Hollywood blockbusters such as “Inside Out” and “Toy Story”
in terms of special effects and animation quality.
The plot, based on the ancient Chinese legend of Ne Zha, has also won plaudits for
showcasing the strength of “Chinese IP,” a popular term in China related to the country’s soft
power as measured by its cultural products and exports.
On social media, the hashtag “Raise the national flag for Ne Zha’s box office success” has
gone viral, with state news agency Xinhua also using the hashtag in its posts. Celebrating
the film’s achievement shortly after it broke the 10 billion yuan mark, nationalist
commentator Hu Xijin wrote on Weibo that the film should encourage “Chinese people to
be more confident in ourselves,” alluding to the push by the state in recent years for Chinese
people to have more “cultural confidence.”
In her commentary on the film, Shanghai journalist Wu Haiyun noted the shared
commitment of “Ne Zha” director Jiao Zi and GameScience CEO Feng Ji, the developer behind
“Black Myth: Wukong,” to the ideas propagated by the influential online community known
as the gongyedang, or the “Industrial Party,” which perceives China’s “national rejuvenation”
as being intimately bound up with technological and scientific progress.
“Jiao Zi… has talked about the need for Chinese animators to stand up for themselves. One
12/16
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
reason he gave for the prolonged development cycle of ‘Ne Zha 2’ was the difficulty he faced
collaborating with international visual effects teams, whom he accused of ‘arrogance and
prejudice.’ Ultimately, he scrapped his initial plan and hired domestic teams instead,” Wu
wrote.
Meanwhile, a popular commentary pointed out implicit criticisms of the United States in
several pivotal scenes in the film. The article, which has received over 100,000 views in the
past week, drew parallels between China and the main character’s “fighting spirit to dare to
confront hegemony” and notes similarities in the appearances of several settings in the film
with well-known U.S. institutions such as the Pentagon.
Notably, the WeChat public account that published the article, “Jiuwanli,” has been
promoted by numerous higher education institutions and government platforms since its
launch in 2023, with students reportedly being instructed to follow the account.
The China-U.S. subtext aside, many filmgoers have been impressed with the film based
simply on the quality of its animation and storyline, which has earned it an 8.5 rating on
leading Chinese review site Douban. But patriotism and pride cannot easily be separated
from politics, not when the symbolic stakes are this high.
“I can’t remember how many times I’ve watched the special effects in Hollywood films and
wondered when our Chinese screenwriters and special effects would produce a similar
blockbuster,” said Joyce Mai, a filmgoer in Nanjing. “Finally, it’s happened.” ■
13/16
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
扫 新
码 英
听 文
音 课
频 堂
Science & technology Feb 7th 2025 | 554 words | ★★★☆☆
Well informed: Does intermittent fasting work?
It does for weight loss. Its other supposed benefits are debatable
Diets come and diets go. One of the most popular today is “intermittent fasting” in which, as
the name suggests, the idea is to limit one’s food intake to certain time windows. One
popular variant, the “5-2 diet”, requires people to eat either very small amounts, or nothing
at all, on two days a week, but imposes no restrictions on the other five.
Intermittent fasting is popular. And as a weight-loss strategy, it has several things going for
it. One is that it is uncomplicated. There is no need to weigh the ingredients of every meal,
as some diets demand, nor to change what you eat drastically. Limiting the restrictions to a
couple of days a week, or several hours a day (most of which are spent asleep) also requires
less willpower, which might make it easier to stick with.
14/16
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
Working out whether that actually translates into greater weight loss than other diets is
difficult. Most studies find limited data and mixed results. The general consensus, says
Nichola Ludlam-Raine, a dietitian and spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association, is
that intermittent fasting seems to work roughly as well for weight loss as traditional calorie-
counting does.
Other health benefits might also beckon. Forcing lab animals to fast (albeit not
intermittently) can increase their lifespans by up to 40%. It also appears to mitigate the
physical decline that comes with old age, boost various markers of metabolic health and
even reduce susceptibility to cancer.
Exactly how it does all that is not entirely clear. One important factor seems to be autophagy,
the process by which cells break down and recycle parts of themselves. Cells become much
keener on autophagy when nutrients are scarce. At the same time, autophagy seems to have
a preference for attacking damaged and degraded parts of cells—and the accumulation of
such cellular detritus is one of several mechanisms thought to underlie the decrepitude that
comes with ageing.
The hope is that intermittent fasting might provoke a similar response in humans. There
are theoretical reasons to think it might: the cellular mechanisms triggered by food
shortages seem to have been conserved by evolution in all sorts of different animals. But
running definitive human trials of the sort done on lab animals is impossible. “When we say
‘calorie restriction’ we mean nearly starving [the animals],” says Adam Collins, a nutrition
researcher at the University of Surrey.
That leaves scientists reliant, for now, on smallish, short-lived studies that use less drastic
diets and which rely on proxy measures of health such as insulin response or cholesterol
levels. Their results are mixed. Dr Collins’s team, for instance, has published a randomised-
control trial (the most rigorous sort) suggesting that intermittent fasting improves the
metabolism of fats more than ordinary dieting does. A review paper published in April 2024
looked at 23 other studies and concluded that intermittent fasting was slightly better than
15/16
新英文外刊公众号 2025.02.17-2025.02.21
ordinary dieting for overweight people when it came to improving levels of cholesterol and
insulin. A similar article, published in January, found no meaningful difference for either
weight loss or cardiovascular health.
There are also risks. A study in mice published in Nature in October 2024 found that severe
fasting (where calories were cut by 40%) had downsides, including muscle mass loss and,
possibly, weakened immune systems. Moderation, too, should be taken in moderation. ■
16/16
