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Asian Art Programme

Object, An Address That Cannot Be Replicated, And Calypso, Angela Hartnett Chef, Aparna Sridhar, Argentine Special Operations Unit, Argentine Supreme Court, As Pritchett, Asian Art

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FT Magazine - 25.07.2026.pdf 中文镜像版

中国独生子女政策的漫长阴影

作者：Edward White

极其引人入胜的文章。它捕捉到了现代生活的复杂性，不仅是在中国，而且在任何地方。对我来说，独生子女政策展示了当逻辑战胜人性时会发生什么。该政策看似如此简单，有一个任何人都能理解且没人能真正反驳的明确目标。而直到现在，需要通过一位艺术家的作品才能展现出其现实情况。 WORDLE SALAD 经由 FT.COM

一篇关于人口控制且权衡利弊（无论是对个人还是对社会）的非常有趣的文章。尽管结论似乎是应避免严格控制，但关于缺乏资源来支持不断增长的人口这一疑问仍有待解答。与此同时，我们可以看到西方国家和日本人口负增长的结果，在那里，尽管不存在此类控制措施，但依然存在严重的问题。 VIJAY MODI，伦敦

文笔优美的文章，它超越了独生子女政策在经济和政策上的后果，揭示了自私、愧疚和享乐主义的复杂层面。 RED 经由 FT.COM

挪威的平庸之论

作者：Jinu Koola

当你将欧洲一半的自然财富在五百万人之间共享时，变得平庸会更容易些。如果按这个逻辑，摩纳哥或迪拜的公民同样享受着平庸，但我仍然认为在波士顿、洛杉矶、纽约市和硅谷建立的美国模式对后代更具启发性。 ARTSY 经由 FT.COM

这是一篇写得极其精彩且富有洞察力的文章。作为一名美国人，在我看来，过度金融化，加上近几十年来我们缺乏共同面对的逆境，使我们陷入了某种麻痹：1) 认为金钱是唯一有意义的社会衡量标准，以及 2) 不再相信“我们”——这是一个阴郁且可怕的结果，且情况并不乐观。挪威的观点中似乎蕴含着许多先辈的智慧，这些信息可以帮助我们重新建立“我们”的概念。而且我们必须这样做，因为“万宝路男人”的神话在很大程度上只是虚构。 DHARMANAUT 经由 FT.COM

金字塔之外

作者：Laura Spinney

我热爱埃及，但埃及大博物馆内堆满了财宝，这至少对我来说，让人感到不知所措。由于该馆已经出现在这么多人的“人生清单”上，使得即便在它作为目的地开放的早期阶段，访问过程也可能变成一种折磨。建议在进入之前聘请一名导游并制定好访问计划。如果你访问埃及南部，请务必参观卢克索博物馆，与之相比，那里规模较小、安静、光线充足、指示清晰，且拥有精心策划、完美无瑕的雕塑作品。大并不总是更好。 LES J 经由 FT.COM

戴夫·埃格斯：创意难题

作者：Murad Ahmed

戴夫·埃格斯看起来像是一个深思熟虑且心怀善意的人。我完全同意，任何由人工智能生成的小说，就其本质而言，都将是衍生性的。但许多由人类撰写的小说亦然。 BOTANYWHIG 经由 FT.COM

像对 10 岁孩子那样解释给我听

作者：Tim Harford

哈福德先生（以及夫人）精准地击中了要害。简化语言和概念既不是居高临下，也不是将其低端化，而是至关重要地让那些不精通你专业知识的人能够理解并欣赏某些事物。

他现在能否说服各种事物的创造者来接纳这个概念？如果任何与媒体、技术甚至包装相关的设计和使用流程都能接纳这个简单的想法，全球范围内的血压都会降低，我们的生活也会变得美好得多。 ——MELISSA HAWKER, HEREFORDSHIRE

人工智能 (AI) 最好用的功能之一，就是将复杂的科学论文转换为 10 岁孩子也能读懂的版本。同样值得考虑的是，当约束条件被清晰地阐明时，反而能激发创造力。广告大师 戴维·奥格威 厌倦了人们认为他能挥舞创意魔法棒的想法，他有一句名言：“给我一个严谨（创意）简报的自由。” 这是一个真正的、释放性的约束，它在某种意义上限制了自由，但在另一个方向上则允许更大的自由。 ——MOD MAGUS (通过 FT.COM)

7 月 18 日 中国独生子女政策

观看天才表演的乐趣

作者：Simon Kuper

谢天谢地，没有任何一个国际足球“球星”模式的拥趸赢得世界杯。相反，el juego colectivo（集体游戏），即团队作战的最佳典范捧走了奖杯，在这次赛事期间还出现了一些其他优秀的例子（例如佛得角、刚果民主共和国）。

两年前西班牙赢得欧洲冠军杯时，他们表示这就是他们与英格兰队的不同之处，也是他们最终获胜的原因。希望 el juego colectivo 永远胜出。 ——DUNCAN STEPHENSON, YORKSHIRE

权力午睡 (Power Napping) 的规则是什么？

作者：Robert Shrimsley

我听说过一个前数字化时代的记者，在需要权力午睡时，他将椅子倾斜，使其靠在办公室门上。当门被打开时，他被向前推进，手指刚好落在打字机的按键上。 ——CHRISTIE BURTON, WILTSHIRE

我发现流口水很有用，因为这能把我叫醒。 ——JOHN GOLDINGAY, OXFORDSHIRE

评论：JUL'S, ST JAMES'S

作者：Jay Rayner

精辟的痛批，Jay。谢谢你的警告。我会绕道而行！ ——RELUCTANT BANKER (通过 FT.COM)

想要投稿 请在网上对我们的文章发表评论，或发送电子邮件至 magazineletters@ft.com。请提供白天的电话号码和详细地址（不予公布）。信件可能会经过编辑。

当我读到“谦卑是我们的关键成分”时，我以为 Jay 虚构了一家餐厅，好让他尽情地将其拆解，以此讽刺那些形式大于内容的极糟之作。但除非他同时还为 Jul's 创建了网站，否则这似乎是一个真实存在的地方，在那里，优质的食材遭遇了糟糕的对待。 ——DANIEL EMERSON (通过 FT.COM)

6

金融时报周末杂志

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当然是加拿大。

加拿大*

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郡政厅

金斯顿 (KINGSTON)

一个无法复制的地址

CHK 并非可以重复建设的开发项目。这是一座经过 130 年岁月沉淀、被列为 II* 级保护建筑的地标，在伦敦最具历史意义的建筑之一中，为当代生活重新构思。

1, 2 和 3 卧室 公寓及复式公寓

价格起于 £450,000

深秋入住 联系我们的团队 0330 162 0412 CHK LONDON

伦敦 广场 (SQUARE)

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内页：Simon Kuper 的最后思考 P14

智识 (Intellect)

卧底经济学家 (UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST)

在平行世界杯中追求胜利

作者：OLIVER ROEDER

插图：ALBERTO MIRANDA

到目前为止，有两项活动占据了我的整个夏天，以至于现在很难想象如果没有它们，我的生活将变成什么样。

第一项是由我的家人设计并参与的世界杯竞猜。我们一共八个人，轮流挑选球队，每人组建一个由六个国家组成的组合，最终进球数最多的组合获胜。第二项是在《金融时报》新闻编辑部进行的，这是一场世界杯“二十一点”（blackjack）游戏——就像在赌场里的纸牌游戏一样，目标是选择任意三个国家，使其总进球数尽可能接近 21，但不能超过。

为了准备，我在计算机中运行了数百万次假设的世界杯。无形的、数字化的梅西、姆巴佩和贝林厄姆在几吉赫兹的速度下悄无声息地打入了数千万个进球，所有数据都存储在硬盘上。我将这数百万次世界杯进行汇总，将它们堆叠、塑形，勾勒出本次赛事的轮廓。通过感知其表象，我了解了小组赛可能的走向、谁更有可能在淘汰赛中相遇，以及我如何能战胜我的亲人和同事。

JULY 25 2026

9

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智力 (Intellect)

这是一届全新的、规模最大化的世界杯，参赛球队从 32 支增加到了 48 支，并采用一套复杂的系统来决定晋级球队及其在淘汰赛中的排位。美国广播公司 Fox 至少有一次在显示通往决赛的路线时出现了错误。因此，释放模拟的暴力计算能力就显得尤为重要。（2030 年的赛事可能会增加到 64 支球队，模拟器支持者应当对此表示欢迎。）

作为一个物种，我们几个世纪以来一直在对自然现象和人类事务进行建模和模拟。我们建造太阳系仪，进行战争演习。在计算机中，我们模拟核武器和天气，因为这些事物在现实生活中重建过于危险或不切实际。正如哲学家 Stephan Hartmann 所定义，计算机模拟是“一个通过另一过程来模仿某个过程的过程”。

我经过处理并选定的“二十一点”球队——加拿大、韩国和瑞士——正好进了 21 个球。我对模拟的痴迷现在为我赢得了数十英镑。当然，这次成功也包含了一些运气成分。我的模拟预测这三支球队将分别进 6.7、5.6 和 7.0 个球（以防止爆掉）。而实际数字是 9, 2 和 10。即便在模拟中，我正好拿到 21 分的概率也仅有 7.3%。但丹·恩多耶 (Dan Ndoye) 在对阵阿根廷的比赛中为瑞士队再进一球，随后瑞士队通过被淘汰进一步地配合了我的结果。

但这不是重点，而且在家庭竞猜中我只排第五。（我的模拟器告诉我，当荷兰队被淘汰时，我追上我哥哥的机会萎缩到了 1%。）吸引力始终在于模拟本身。我的模拟取决于无数建模和校准的选择：如何衡量球队实力，以及如何将这种实力映射为进球数。但无论我选择什么，我都会孕育出一百万个未来——那些可能发生但永远不会实现的平行宇宙世界杯；通过这些结果的汇总，我们可以为即使是在国际足联 (Fifa) 董事会中构思出的最复杂的赛事，建立起一种概率结构——从而感知其走向。

就在刚才，我又模拟了一百万次全新的 2026 世界杯，就好像这个夏天从未发生过一样。在 0.005% 的情况下，库拉索成为了世界冠军。在其中一次模拟（编号 437,824）中，他们在决赛中与阿根廷队战成 0-0，并最终通过点球大战获胜。在我的硬盘某个角落里，这就是所发生的故事。

这一切，我不得不承认，是生成式人工智能 (AI) 一个方便的应用。与其仅仅询问人工智能应该起草哪些国家，或者什么样的组合可能会凑成 21（我的一些同事已承认犯有此类错误），人工智能可以并且应当被用来创建模拟场景，在培养皿中铺设琼脂，即便对于像我这样不精通或仅半精通代码的人来说也是如此。这种策略至关重要：它将聊天机器人从一个黑匣子转变为一个透明塑料盒的构建者，一个让我们观察世界形成过程的蚂蚁农场。

将这个练习简化到最核心的部分。模拟数千次随机游走，让一个像素在二维平面上疯狂移动，比如 10,000 步，并绘制出该路径。我在过去几分钟内构建了这样一个工具，名为 random_walk.js。这些游走没有实际应用，就像在公园里散步没有实际应用一样。尽管如此，它们依然具有价值。将这些游走图像铺满你的屏幕。它们讲述了自身过程的故事。这是数字花道 (ikebana)。它们令人着迷，并充当一种计算机模拟的冥想。

在研究蚂蚁农场时，我们并不关心任何一只蚂蚁或它去往何处，而是在于隧道在土中显现的过程，以及系统的形状。那么，这些东西能用来在足球比赛中击败你的同事，就只是一个令人欢迎的副作用。

诚然，这种兴趣可能是我个人的古怪之处；例如，我之前在这里写过我对比数字化高压水枪模拟器的痴迷。

我相信，这种蚂蚁农场活动

我将孵化一百万个未来，那些可能发生但永远不会实现的多元宇宙世界杯

与另一种近期出现的资本技术现象——预测市场——处于某种对立角度。在世界杯期间，Polymarket 和 Kalshi 等公司的广告点亮了场边广告牌，并充斥在美国的电视屏幕上。在它们的主要冠军预测市场中，共有约 $6bn 进行了交易。

预测市场将所有未来的世界压缩为一个数字——一个价格：例如在决赛前，西班牙的价格是 59 美分。这些网站上的专业操盘手肯定运行着他们自己的模拟模型。但对于广大消费公众来说，阅读价格而忽略构成该价格的无数世界之群的诱惑力很大。这就像是通过针孔观看雕塑。

这在足球之外同样重要。以选举为例，单一的价格压缩了所有世界事件、所有政策立场、所有修辞。它压缩了所有公众舆论调查，而后者反过来又压缩了选民。

科学哲学家们（愿他们好运）一直在努力研究计算机模拟的认识论。模拟是一种什么样的知识生产之物？几十年来，他们之间关于模拟性质的争论像钟摆一样摇摆。一方面，它们是科学模型；另一方面，它们是实验。一种较新的思考倾向认为，它们本身就是一种科学仪器。事实确实如此。而且它们教会我们的不是关于蚂蚁，而是关于大地。FT

Oliver Roeder 是《金融时报周末杂志》的约稿编辑。Tim Harford 正在休假中

专栏

来自较少为人知的 FT 驻外办事处 的报道

动物

强烈的情绪

英国电视史上最令人难忘的时刻之一，是名为 Lulu 的小象出现在 1969 年的一集《Blue Peter》节目中。由于对演播室环境过于兴奋，她在现场排泄了两次，引发了一场混乱，并差点压扁了一名主持人。

来源：BBC

电影

艺名

在职业生涯初期，未来的奥斯卡奖得主莱昂纳多·迪卡普里奥在寻找经纪人时陷入苦战。有人建议当时 11 岁的迪卡普里奥除非使用化名——伦尼·威廉姆斯 (Lenny Williams)——否则将无法找到工作，因为对方认为这位演员的真实姓名“种族色彩太浓”，无法吸引美国观众。迪卡普里奥拒绝了，尽管参加了数十次试镜仍处于失业状态，并几乎决定完全放弃演艺事业。最终，大约两年后，迪卡普里奥找到了一位接受他原名的经纪人，他的事业随后凭借一系列商业广告迅速起飞。

来源：综合

音乐

天才之笔

在青年时期，莫扎特写过许多充满侮辱和厕所幽默的喜剧卡农。虽然这些歌曲旨在与朋友在喝了几杯酒后共同演唱，但莫扎特从未降低他的音乐标准，即便歌词低俗，他依然编写了精巧的对位法。亮点包括：

Bona Nox! bist a rechts Ox（晚安！你真是头蠢牛） O du eselhafter Peierl（噢，你这个像驴一样的 Peierl），用于嘲讽奥地利歌手 Johann Nepomuk Peierl - Leck mich im Arsch - 最著名的一首 - 其标题本质上是“亲我的屁股”

来源：综合

上周主题：援助

10

金融时报周末杂志

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MR MARVIS

穿着 MR MARVIS 完美的短裤和泳裤，尽情享受每一天。探索 The Originals 等经典款，尝试我们全新的 Short Weekenders，或选择 The Swims。搭配我们的 T 恤、 Polo 衫和衬衫，完成你的造型。经典设计，葡萄牙制造。请在 mrmarvis.co.uk 选购系列产品，或访问我们位于伦敦 52 King's Road 的旗舰店。

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智识

画廊

AMAN ALAM

作者：JOSH LUSTIG

印度艺术家 Aman Alam 还在读大学时，他的祖母 Naseem 开始出现阿尔茨海默病的初步迹象。起初，他的母亲搬回了位于阿格拉 (Agra) 的家中照顾她，随后 Alam 本身接手成为了她的主要照顾者。“我并没有完全准备好承担照顾者的责任，”Alam 告诉我，“因此我必须在每天陪伴她的过程中，学习很多相关的知识。”

Alam 将他的祖母描述为他童年早期的“一个基石般的人物”。她是一位退休的历史教授和学院院长，在 Alam 眼中，“她拥有一种强烈的、超越常人的存在感”。Alam 青少年时期的几乎每个夏天都是和她在一起度过的。

Alam 说，在祖母确诊后，与她一起拍摄照片几乎是一种潜意识的反应。这个最终被命名为《奥兹曼迪亚斯》(Ozymandias)（以雪莱的诗作命名）的项目，起初“仅仅是一种锚定工具”。他说，这是“我与她的阿尔茨海默病达成和解的一种方式。在一种感觉日益不稳定的情境中，相机让我感到熟悉，而熟悉则带来了安全感。”

在此之前，Alam 的许多作品都在研究塑造我们世界的外部权力系统，无论是工业的、生态的还是存在主义的。“我以类似的方式看待大脑，”Alam 说，“我觉得人类的大脑是一个非常不可靠的叙述者，极易受到暗示，它提供的每一个‘真相’基本上都是偶然且构建出来的，其喂养给我们的方式是尽可能减少对我们既有结构和偏见的干扰。”

Alam 目前的展览探讨了他所描述的“记忆系统的架构”，并包含一个基于他祖母历史记录训练的大型语言模型。“（这）是一个人类大脑的隐喻，”Alam 说，“它随后会对她的事实档案产生‘幻觉’——这是人工智能的一个固有特性——从而创造出替代历史，以连接她档案中缺失的时刻。”

什么是真实的，什么不是？摄影中的某些特质使其适用于描绘认知瓦解。也许是因为它所呈现的现实错觉。它的机械之眼渲染表面的方式既清晰又精准，但与此同时，它似乎也极易被颠覆。固体可以看起来像液体，比如 Naseem 的手和披肩。液体可以看起来像固体，比如从水龙头中流出的水。照片的边缘约束并省略了如此之多。一切都可以被解读为另一种东西的象征，一个针对我们自身主观性以及我们关于自身是谁、知道什么以及不再记得什么的晶体化信念的罗夏克测试。FT

Aman Alam 是 2025. 年 Serendipity Arles Grant 的获得者。他的作品在法国阿尔勒 (Arles) 的 Les Rencontres de la Photographie 各个场馆展出，直到 10 月 4. 日。serendipityarts.org

“祈祷中的 NASEEM”

12

金融时报周末杂志

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“洗碗”

JULY 25 2026

13

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理智

世界观

一个终结与一个开始

作者：SIMON KUPER

插图：HARRY HAYSOM

在为《金融时报》（FT）撰写了 24 年专栏后，这是我的最后一篇。从 2002 年到 2010 年，我是一名体育专栏作家，之后转而写这个几乎涵盖任何话题的专栏。作为告别，让我讲述一下在这个特殊的 era. 担任这份工作是怎样的体验。

我的方法是，每篇专栏都始于一个原创想法——或者至少是一个对大多数读者来说新鲜的思考。这个想法应该是可以用一句话表述的：例如，一些 Maga 分子（如彼得·蒂尔和埃隆·马斯克）在南非种族隔离时期的童年经历对其产生了深远影响。而单纯重复传统观点则不能称作专栏文章。那似乎毫无意义，尽管我确信自己有时还是这么做了。

每一个想法都源自于我。FT 内部没有人告诉我该说什么或采取什么样的政治立场。所有这些年里，我花费大部分脑力在寻找灵感。我通过倾听有趣的人来获取灵感——在交谈中、在会议上，以及通过阅读他们的书。生活在一个全球性城市很有帮助，因为来自世界各地的人都会经过这里。英语专栏作家倾向于集中在伦敦和纽约，因此我希望在巴黎写作（那里的对话略有不同）能让我的专栏具备某种独特性。

一旦有了想法，我会深入研究该主题。有时在研究过程中，我会发现我的想法是错误的或缺乏原创性，或者我会发现潜藏在其中一个更好的想法。

然后，我将没完没了的研究页面压缩成 740 个单词。这就是结构化发挥作用的地方。大多数周次，我花在构建专栏结构上的时间比写作时间还要长。我会规划——几乎精确到句子——哪个想法或哪句引用该放在哪里。

写作通常在周一早晨进行，仅需一两个小时。几十年来，我已经将我的写作规则内化。其中大部分源自乔治·奥威尔那篇 14 页的论文《政治与英语》。我也增加了一些其他规则，例如“警惕超过 20 个单词的句子”或“以一个强有力的词结束句子”。

写完文章后，我会花好几个小时核对事实，然后将其发送给 FT 进行进一步的核查。FT 的读者拥有深厚的集体知识储备，通常能发现任何错误。每当有错误溜进去时，我都感到深切的羞愧。

我作为专栏作家的时光分为两个阶段：2016 年之前和之后。唐纳德·特朗普的出现和脱欧使我的专栏更具政治色彩，并修正了我的世界观。特别是 2016 年教会了我，许多人对新闻业的不信任有多深，以及他们的政治主张通常并非由经济利益驱动，而是由身份认同驱动。许多感到被“精英”（通常指文化精英而非商业精英）轻视的人，觉得特朗普和脱欧支持者看到了他们的价值。与此同时，许多（广义上的）自由主义者对自己的政党感到失望，转而更多地认同他们阅读的报纸。对于双方来说，专栏文章似乎比以前更重要了。

2016 年之后，担任专栏作家需要一种新的品质：不介意被大声斥责。我收到没完没了的电子邮件和评论，指责我在撒谎——无论是听命于 FT 的所有者、编辑还是广告商，还是某种更复杂阴谋的一部分。令人遗憾的事实是，我其实相信我写的东西。

人们经常指责我利用专栏来实现政治目的。这总是让我感到惊讶，因为我不认为如今的新闻业能改变任何事情，当我们谈论特朗普、国际法或专业知识时，任何话语似乎都没有任何影响。

我的时光分为 2016 年之前和之后。特朗普和脱欧修正了我的世界观

我们写的东西甚至可能产生反作用。许多人会相信与“媒体”所言截然相反的观点。我之所以坚持这份工作，是因为它很有趣，是一次有偿的自我教育，也是一种见证的形式。

我弄错了许多事情。尤其是，我几乎忽略了当代或许最重大的议题：气候变化。对于记者来说，这是一个困难的话题。其基本叙事从未改变：

气候变化是危险的，我们需要采取行动。但这也是一个缺乏人物的故事，而正如每个编剧所知，人们需要人物才能产生共鸣。我会继续寻找报道气候问题的方式，但现在是以特稿作家的身份——这是我在 FT 的新工作。

从现在起，我将为本杂志以及更广泛的 FT Weekend 报纸撰写关于各种主题的深度报道。我会想念这个专栏，但现在可能正是时候。我想我已经说完了我想说的话。我很感激能有这次机会。我也许再也不会有一份比这更有趣的工作了。感谢阅读。FT

14

FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE

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ELIZABETH HARROD & STEVEN MCRAE，皇家芭蕾舞团独舞员与首席舞者

SAVOIR

非凡之床 (EXTRAORDINARY BEDS)

savoirbeds.com

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Intellect

上个月，伦敦发布了极端高温预警，整个大都市陷入停滞。这座城市集体决定，天气实在太热，几乎什么都做不了。因此，许多居民大规模地转向由应用程序驱动的配送员大军，由他们穿梭于城市各处，配送餐食、杂货以及装有便携风扇的大包裹。当这支大军的一员布莱斯·普里切特 (Bryce Pritchett) 骑着电动自行车停在他公寓楼前时，气温接近 30C。

“你一定很热吧，”我说。我是英国人，忍不住要就天气进行寒暄。

“头盔里确实挺出汗的，”他说。一个小型高清摄像头固定在头盔的下巴处，正对着我。头盔顶部还安装了一个类似雨刷的装置，用于雨天情况。“这是一个话题开端，”他说。

普里切特是一名伦敦配送员。他同时也是一名 YouTuber，他以“London Hustle”之名拍摄自己的配送班次作为内容。在他的社交媒体渠道上，总关注人数超过 1.5 million。我也是其中之一。那个雨刷是赞助商送的礼物。

普里切特刚刚拍完一个为快递员提供服务的自行车租赁公司的赞助视频。他缓慢地骑着电动车向一个地下车库驶去。我步行跟在后面。在车库里，普里切特指向一辆黄黑相间的 Carrera Vengeance。这辆车是他 16 岁生日时母亲送的礼物，上面覆盖着薄薄的蛛网。出于情感原因，普里切特不愿将其处理掉。在车库更深处，还停着另外两辆电动车。他在科文垂 (Coventry) 的母亲家中还存放了 30 辆。普里切特喜欢有时把它们在花园里排成一排观看。除了两辆之外，其余全部是由品牌方提供，以换取在他的视频中露面。

外行可能会问：看着一个人把午餐送到办公楼，或者把麦当劳早餐送到宿醉的学生手中，有什么意思？“没看过的人是不明白的，”普里切特说，“这不仅仅是那样。”

他每段视频的开场白都一样：“大家好，欢迎回到我的另一个视频。” 随后，他穿梭在伦敦市中心和西北部，在配送外卖、包装不稳的咖啡、杂货、电子烟、啤酒、花束和气球到办公区和公寓楼的过程中，在汽车、巴士和 Lime 共享单车之间穿行。

“伦敦自创故事，”当我们在他俯瞰伊斯灵顿 (Islington) 的公寓楼露台上被晒得发烫时，他告诉我，“有人可能会突然走到马路中间——确实发生过一次，他们没事——而这就成了标题和缩略图。”

我是偶然发现普里切特的内容的。一段视频自动播放，我瞬间从我的曼哈顿公寓被传输到了车流拥堵的塔桥。我发现自己奇怪地被饮料洒出、交通分流这些低风险的戏剧冲突所抚慰。“很多人说这其实很放松，”普里切特说，“我可能在倾盆大雨中奔波，而他们蜷缩在床上，但他们仍然觉得就和我在一起。”我想，这就像在听航运预报，或者观看邮轮港口的直播一样，能满足某种心理需求。

普里切特并不是唯一一个创作此类零工内容的人。将劳动力原子化为手机主屏幕上一个个应用程序的商业模式，一直以来都特别

DISPATCH

双重奔波

配送员正将他们的日常巡回记录成视频并在网上播放，将零工经济转化为内容。

作者：Eve Upton-Clark

在技术资本主义下极具吸引力。加入摄像机后，消费者与生产者之间的界限变得模糊。“我想我可能是最早的一批配送员 YouTuber、社交媒体人士，或者无论我们被称作什么的人之一，”他说，“现在可能已经有数百个，甚至数千个这样的人了。”

另一位知名司机的网名是 London Eats，他在凌晨就开始记录自己的班次。Luke Delivers 则拍摄自己为亚马逊和 优步 配送的第一视角视频。Atlanta Delivers 带着观众在她的班次中游历萨塞克斯地区，在车里配送食物。我问 Pritchett 是否认识这些其他的配送内容创作者。他说他见过他们的作品，但“并没有什么秘密聊天群之类的”。

PRITCHETT 的公寓是阁楼风格，挑高天花板，巨大的窗户紧闭着，以挡住炽热的阳光。我问他是否独居，确实如此。我问他多大了。他说 26 岁。“这对我来说并不正常，”他补充道，可能注意到了我脸上钦佩的表情。

Pritchett 在 2018 年搬到伦敦在大学学习商业。毕业后不久，他注册成为配送员。当时他一周七天都在配送。他的目标是每天赚 40 英镑以支付房租，并购买超市打折区的食物。在他和朋友合租的公寓被房东卖掉后，他住在青年旅舍里，每晚花 10 英镑与 12 个人挤在一间房里。

在从事这份零工六个月后，他在万圣节前后被要求为一名客户配送 15 个南瓜，随后产生了拍摄班次视频的想法。Pritchett 在成长过程中就沉迷于 YouTube。“那就像是我版本的电视，”

他说，“我想也许我可以将这两者融合在一起。”他公寓里的布置显示出这种童年兴趣的痕迹。一块银色的 YouTube 奖牌被摆在最显眼的位置。一个印有他频道名称和 YouTube 标志的绝缘配送袋放在顶天立地的置物架上。Pritchett 现在每周与该网站的一名联系人沟通，讨论视频创意、分析数据和生活琐事。我问他是否一直知道这个频道会成功。“我想我内心深处一直知道，但我没让自己相信，”他说。

他的频道是“主打”视频（他知道核心受众会喜欢的内容）与实验性视频的混合体。在后者的一段视频中，Pritchett 挑战自己接受每一单进来的订单。在 Iceland 和 Sainsbury's 拿了几单后，他又接到了另一单超市订单。那是一次横跨伦敦、车程 18 分钟的配送，报酬为 6 英镑。“这单在通常情况下我绝对不会接，”他说。当他到达那里时，订单是 32 瓶 500 毫升的水和两瓶 5 升的水。在视频稍后部分，他接到了一个来自中国餐厅的订单，报酬为 1.25 英镑。“希望这能让大家深刻理解为什么不应该接受每一单订单，”他总结道。

当 Pritchett 在 2019 年开始拍摄班次时，他把一台旧的 GoPro 绑在胸前，拍摄沿途出现的所有东西。相机电池只能维持大约 20 分钟，所以他每个口袋里都揣着备用电池。随着时间的推移，Pritchett 积累了自信，开始对天气、伦敦地标以及他在取货和送货过程中遇到的不便发表评论。“那时候还没有无线麦克风，所以我把有线麦克风贴在胸前，就像

16

金融时报周末杂志

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Pritchett 在被要求为万圣节配送 15 个南瓜后开始拍摄他的班次

PRITCHETT 带着他的品牌配送袋

一名便衣警察一样，”他说。现在，一个微小的麦克风就安置在头盔内部，通过磁铁固定，并无线连接到一台时尚的相机上。“那时候这个领域的大量内容开始爆发，”他说，“变得太简单了。”

如今，食品配送收入占普里切特（Pritchett）总收入的比例不足 5 ％。而且他与 优步 (Uber) Eats 签署了一份独家赞助协议。“这说起来有点长，”他说，“他们看到了一些视频。”虽然他拒绝透露具体数字，但他目前的月收入已达五位数。

我问是否可以上网看看多久会来一单。那是周一下午 2.30pm，正值午餐高峰期刚刚过去。“我猜少于三分钟，”普里切特说。结果用了两分钟。他用于配送的那部破旧的 iPhone 响了，是一个来自附近 Waitrose 超市的订单，报酬为 £3.84。手机再次响起，是同一个 Waitrose 的另一单，报酬为 £7.92。尽管杂货订单日益增多，但它们是普里切特最不喜欢的配送单之一。等待时间可能会很长，从而削减潜在收益。他告诉我，这家特定的 Waitrose 尤其出名地糟糕，“在配送圈里它挺有名气的”。

他说麦当劳的情况更糟，而且饮料洒漏经常发生。他的一段名为“我 整个班次 只配送麦当劳！太令人沮丧了……”的视频已累积近五十万次观看。“人们喜欢看我受苦，”普里切特笑着说。但这种标题党视频并不保证比常规班次表现更好。每周一两次，普里切特会拍摄三到四个小时。“这是黄金时间，”他说，“你能获得足够的素材来制作一段至少 25 分钟的视频。有足够的时间让事情发生，而且还能赚到不少钱——大概 £30 到 £60。”

在一个日益“无摩擦”的世界里，配送司机已成为必要的劳动者。顾客不再需要与收银员交换客套话，也不需要与递送塑料包装外卖的司机进行闲谈。然而，我们可以在屏幕前的沙发上，一边吃着他们配送的食物，一边观看他们整个班次的工作过程。

我问普里切特其他配送司机如何看待他的内容。当然，每有一个可以自由选择班次的配送司机兼 YouTuber，就有数千名在客观低薪环境下长时间工作的司机。“很多人很好奇，”他说，“他们会问问题，问怎么才能像我一样，我会试着给他们一些建议。”

社交媒体是一种受欢迎的副业，配送驾驶也是。将两者结合，你可能会有一个有利可图的概念。对于普里切特来说，两者的枯燥磨砺正是吸引力的一部分——这就是他频道名称的由来。“配送本身也非常游戏化，”普里切特一边向我演示应用程序一边说道。优步 (Uber) Eats 会推出“任务”，尤其是在繁忙时段，通过提供额外奖金激励司机达成特定目标。如果你不需要依靠配送足够多的订单来维持生计，那么其中的乐趣可能很容易被发现。

“你想看看 T 恤吗？”普里切特问道。他从橱柜里拿出了一件在线销售的 T 恤，有绿色或黑色可选，售价为 £34.99。背面是普里切特骑着电动车、背着配送袋和大本钟的图案。正面是他用 Photoshop 制作的标志。他自豪地告诉我，每次上新的 T 恤在几小时内就会售罄。他还销售品牌配送袋、充电宝、防尘帽和贴纸。多余的库存存储在他母亲家中，她会帮他打包订单。

普里切特还雇用了两名剪辑师。由于隐私规定，处理过程非常耗时。逐帧模糊顾客的面孔和地址是最耗时的部分。以前普里切特用一台二手的、有裂缝的 iMac 剪辑视频需要好几天。现在的设备精简多了。第一名剪辑师对素材进行粗剪，第二名剪辑师添加音乐和图形。最后，视频交回给普里切特审核通过。

随着频道的成功，普里切特（Pritchett）的配送工作量在逐渐减少。“20 年后，我可能不会再做配送员了，”他说。相反，普里切特希望追随他所仰慕的其他 YouTube 博主的脚步。“他们有自己的细分领域，”他说。“一旦你在那个领域建立起受众群，你就可以适当地扩展，做任何你想做的事。足够的受众可能会跟随你。”但普里切特目前还没有准备好放弃配送工作。“有时我会出去但不拍摄，”他说。“我真的很享受骑在两轮车上的那种自由感。”

当普里切特领着我走出他那迷宫般的公寓楼时，我们偶然遇到了一位迷路的 Deliveroo 配送员。普里切特俯身查看了应用程序上的地址，并试图告诉该配送员正确的楼层在上面。当我们离开他，将他留在电梯旁时，他看起来仍然有些困惑。我想知道他是否也经营着一个 YouTube 频道。IT

Eve Upton-Clark 是一位来自伦敦、现居纽约的自由撰稿人

伦敦哈特 (LONDON HARTLE)

JULY 25 2026

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什么 更危险： 日常产品中 化学物质 对我们健康的 风险，还是 对此 近乎强迫地 回避的 追求？ 作者：KENZA BRYAN

是

有毒 (TOXIC)

摄影 LUKE & NIK

18

金融时报周末杂志 (FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE)

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去年年底的一个深夜，我熬夜坐在东伦敦哈克尼区（Hackney）狭小厨房的桌子旁，在做我的“低毒”功课。我刚刚给英国超级市场玛莎百货（Marks and Spencer）的首席执行官发了邮件，询问他是否会考虑进货 100 per cent 有机棉胸罩，

而我正准备在 Google 上搜索牙膏。我正在寻找一种含有氟化物（一种对抗龋齿的关键成分），但又不含任何干扰激素的化学物质或由石油和天然气制成的复杂成分的牙膏。

几个月来，我一直尝试对我家进行“排毒”。起初，这只是一个有趣的实验，旨在研究如何摆脱那些与健康问题相关的化学成分的日常产品。但我也必须承认，这项努力所花费的时间、金钱和精力开始超过了合理的范围。在房间的另一端，我尝试用小苏打和柠檬酸自制洗碗机洗涤片的残留物，正从冰格盘的边缘剧烈地冒泡。我想，也许我正处于走极端之危。

这一切始于我姐姐的一份礼物。去年，她买了一本关于自制清洁和美容产品的二手指南，并开始向家人分发她的作品：由箭根粉和椰子油制成的除臭剂，或者替代市售精华液的小瓶自制保湿油。这触动了我内心潜藏的不安感。多年来，家用产品上的层层塑料包装和复杂的成分表一直让我感到反感。于是，我开始研读毒素背后的科学知识，精简橱柜里的物品。不可避免地，我的社交媒体推送开始充斥着相关内容，承诺帮助我清除世界上的危险化学物质。

你无疑听说过“永久性”化学物质（forever chemicals）——这类物质多年来在人体内积聚，并由母亲传给孩子。你也可能读到过干扰激素的“无处不在”的化学物质，或者较少见但同样存在的双酚类物质，后者被用来软化包裹樱桃番茄的塑料包装以及一次性咖啡杯的内衬。

这是一个令人不安的想法。就像微小的外星生物一样，家用产品中的某些成分可以通过皮肤接触、灰尘、食物和水迁移到我们的体内。一些研究人员表示，每天即使吸收极少量的这些激素干扰物，也足以改变我们身体的运作方式。这有点像在徒步旅行时将指南针向北偏了半度，结果在天黑后被困在山脉不那么宜人的那一侧。

在过去的几年里，由于科学家们确立了化学物质接触与癌症或自身免疫疾病等健康问题之间的强关联，制造商们已支付了数十亿美元的赔偿金和罚款，以解决大规模的环境索赔。类似的诉讼在法国、澳大利亚等地也正在进行。

这些高调案件的公开报道，唤醒了人们对潜伏在食品和消费品中极少量污染物的担忧。过去几年，欧盟对数百种化学物质实施了限制。从下个月起，它将执行全球最严格的食品包装中永久性化学物质限量标准之一。面对这种新的认知，越来越多的人决定采取行动，这并不奇怪。人们很难防范像空气或水污染这样广为人知的杀手，但我们却可以相当容易地审查浴室和厨房橱柜里的成分。我想尝试一下。

事实证明，研究去除毒素并不像我的日常工作——气候变化报道——那样简单。毕竟，燃烧化石燃料与全球气温上升之间存在着坚不可摧的联系。而我阅读的关于微量化学物质如何与人体相互作用的科学研究，则更为近期，且更具争议性。

最关注这些问题的人通常也同样充满争议。许多人与美国的极右翼政治有联系，在那里，“传统妻子”（trad-wife）和“男性圈”（manosphere）的人物一直在宣传关于化学物质的阴谋论。在最近出版的《最后的男人》（The Last Men）一书中，自称“生蛋民族主义者”的英国极右翼影响者查尔斯·科尼什-代尔（Charles Cornish-Dale）写道，消费品和饮食引起的激素紊乱正威胁着全球范围内阿尔法男（alpha males）的主导地位。

同样引人入胜——且令人不安的——是那些全身穿着有机棉、开始出现在我 Instagram 动态中分享排毒技巧的年轻影响者，其中大部分是女性。她们似乎有无穷的时间从零开始烹饪和手工制作。许多人全神贯注于排毒以及生育很多孩子。在大多数情况下，她们并没有科学学位。

起初，我觉得居家排毒相当简单。我扔掉了带有化学不粘涂层的锅具，并检查新家具是否喷涂了旨在减缓火势蔓延的强力混合剂。只要仔细寻找，大多数产品都有不错的低毒替代品。你可以用玻璃罐取代塑料桶，用华丽的鸵鸟羽毛掸子取代微纤维抹布。你甚至可以购买小袋的寄生细蜂，而不是在心爱的羊毛织物上喷洒杀虫剂。

而其他决定则伴随着令人困惑的权衡。某些研究认为去渍剂中的某种成分具有毒性，但它也能让衬衫更白。大多数防晒霜使用干扰激素的化合物，首先是为了过滤紫外线，然后是为了将那种像水蜜桃般的度假气息传到我们的鼻腔。如果不涂防晒霜，皮肤受损和患癌的风险要高得多。我甚至在网上搜寻过一条由有机未漂白棉制成的内裤，其成分经过审核，确保从接缝到缝线都没有毒性。当它们寄到时，颜色是米白色且松松垮垮的，仿佛已经洗过一百遍一样。

不久之后，几位朋友和家人坦承他们也在悄悄研究成分表。我的丈夫也加入了这个计划，尽管他打趣我说把厨房填满了玻璃容器和脏盘子。但大多数人与这个话题保持着礼貌的距离。在加入化学焦虑之前，他们已经得筛选足够多关于碳足迹、运动和营养的既定认知了。他们没有时间去检查牙线上的蜡或雨衣上的标签。

应对有毒化学物质的第一个问题是，大多数公司不会说明其产品是否含有此类物质。通常这需要依靠被称为“公民检测员”的个体活动人士来发现。

如同小型外星人，家居用品中的某些成分可以通过皮肤接触、灰尘、食物和水迁移到我们的体内。

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利亚·塞格迪（Leah Segedie）来自洛杉矶市外的西米谷（Simi Valley）。她留着亮红色的头发，且有咒骂的习惯。“我是个红发人，而且我的个性证明了这一点，”当我在电话中联系到她时，她对我这样说道，这次通话最终持续了两个小时。

塞格迪告诉我，在她父亲因接触石棉去世后，她开始对有毒化学物质产生兴趣。她的父亲曾是一名机车工程师，在一条横跨美国、从加利福尼亚州经德克萨斯州到达伊利诺伊州的铁路上工作。她告诉我，父亲在她生命中有着巨大的影响力——长相帅气，带着一丝讥讽的微笑，戴着飞行员太阳镜。访问加利福尼亚州的日本游客经常把他误认为是哈里森·福特（Harrison Ford）。

从历史上看，石棉曾被用于某些刹车片和火车发动机零件中。“我的父亲死于极少数能直接与污染物联系起来的癌症之一，”她说，“石棉就像那些糟糕的——我要骂脏话了——极其糟糕的混蛋……你只需要接触一次就够了。”同样的侵袭性癌症——间皮瘤，最近夺走了她婆婆的生命，后者的肾脏和心脏都停止了工作。

Segedie 的父亲在 2006 年去世，就在她生下三个儿子中的长子几个月后。在悲痛的阴霾中，她在阅读中得知汗水可能会帮助将塑料纺织品中的化学物质抽离并进入血液，从而激发了她对有毒化学物质的兴趣。女性内衣和运动装尤其棘手。这些产品通常由石油和天然气衍生的塑料制成，类似于乙烯基地板或保鲜膜。一些添加到这些材料中以使其防水、多彩或灵活的化合物，已被证明与癌症、胰岛素抵抗以及呼吸和皮肤问题有关。研究人员表示，它们可能会干扰我们的生殖和大脑健康。

Segedie 开始担心在锻炼后给孩子喂奶。“我穿着那件胸罩，然后，砰地一声，宝宝现在就在我的乳房上，汗水可能已经抽出了那些有毒化学物质，然后，砰，他也暴露在其中了。”

2009 年，她创办了一个名为 Mamavation 的减肥和有机食品博客。该网站目前由捐赠、会员费、她选择链接的产品所产生的小额佣金，以及非营利组织《环境健康新闻》(Environmental Health News) 提供资金。她还运营一个拥有 20,000 名女性的封闭式 Facebook 小组，成员们投票决定她将付费请商业实验室检测哪些产品的污染物。该小组旨在引导女性加入首批专注于有毒化学物质的主要消费者检测运动之一。

Segedie 做的首批实验室检测之一是在 2020 年左右对自己的一缕头发进行的。检测发现强效杀虫剂 DDT 的指标很高，DDT 在 20 世纪 70 年代被禁止在美国使用，但直到 20 世纪 80 年代仍在南加州生产。进一步检测确定，她后院鸡产的蛋黄中存在 DDT，她认为那里曾是一个使用过 DDT 的核桃果园。

在那些日子里，Segedie 的博客仍然主要关注食品。但当她的读者了解到一名记者将一条经期内裤寄到大学检测并发现了氟（一种永久性化学物质的标志物）后，他们告诉她，希望她也将检测范围扩大到其他产品。“我意识到我们必须开始检测，”她说。在一组科学家的帮助下，她发现大量旨在替代一次性卫生用品的经期内裤检测呈阳性。许多被广告宣传为“天然”或“有机”的经期产品同样如此。

此后，Segedie 花费了数十万美元，并挑战大型企业目标。她通过在网上点名并公开羞辱，揭露了常见品牌的食用油、咖啡和避孕套中存在污染物的情况。

2020 年，她和其他人共同帮助说服零售巨头 Target 在其打印收据中停止使用双酚类（激素干扰物）。今年 6 月，一项针对全球领先浆果生产商 Driscoll's 的虚假广告诉讼中，引用了 Mamavation 关于其少量草莓中存在与永久性化学物质相关的农药残留的发现。Driscoll's 告诉《金融时报》，它“强烈”反对这些指控。“Driscoll's 的浆果食用安全，诉讼中并未提出相反主张……我们维持稳健的食品安全和合规计划，以及旨在支持符合适用监管要求的严格标准。”

搜寻污染意味着要寻找百万分之一、十亿分之一或万亿分之一的违禁合成化学物质。我们在交谈时，Segedie 刚刚将除臭剂、尿布和维生素 D 片送往商业实验室进行检测。“你无法清除所有东西，所以如果你尝试这样做，你会疯掉的——你将无法进食或触摸任何东西，”她说。“因此，你必须摆脱追求完美的心态。”她补充道，很多时候，污染是偶然的，是土壤和水中普遍存在的化学物质导致的结果：“人们把涂层锅扔掉了，但这并不意味着制造工厂没有在他们的设备上涂特氟龙，而且这种涂层在数十年间不断脱落，并出现在各种物品上。”

她的群体中许多成员之所以关注此事，是因为他们或他们的孩子患有自身免疫性疾病、慢性病，或有某些癌症或过敏的家族史。“你的‘兔子洞’（深陷之源）可能是内衣……大概有四五个主要的切入点。”她说，她的在线社区依赖于一种“福音传播”模式，成员们通过这种方式传播哪些产品可能有毒。但 Segedie 不允许他们因为服用药物而互相批评，因为她认为药物是有用的。

她通常不在政党政治的基础上开展活动。重点只是让人们能够获得关于他们购买产品的相关信息。“我们生活在美国。所以对我来说，在某种意义上，这完全关乎自由。你明白我的意思吗？我所做的一切就是纯粹的自由。”

但这种纯粹的自由对我来说开始变得有些过头了。排毒运动的批评者认为，痴迷于洗发水和内裤中微量的有问题化学物质，会分散人们对更严重问题的注意力：比如仍然暴露在高水平污染物中的工厂和农业工人，或者生活在历史性化学泄漏阴影下的社区。我决定审视相关的科学研究，看看扔掉我的“有毒”产品是否会对我的长寿和健康产生任何影响。

1962 年，美国环保主义者蕾切尔·卡森（Rachel Carson）出版了畅销书《寂静的春天》，探讨了农药的广泛使用及其对野生动物的影响。从那时起，活动人士缓慢地推动将关于化学损害的知识转化为监管法规。美国当局又花了一十年时间才禁止将 DDT 作为杀虫剂——这是卡森关注的化学物质，也是 Segedie 在她的鸡蛋黄和自己的头发中发现的物质。

一些最危险的物质（如重金属汞）在 20 世纪 70 年代到 90 年代期间开始在美国和欧盟被逐步淘汰。之后，活动人士将重点转向了知名度较低的合成化学物质。2000 年，电影《永不妥协》（Erin Brockovich）使一起关于

排毒运动的批评者认为，痴迷于微量的有问题化学物质会分散人们对更严重问题的注意力

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地下水污染的里程碑式法院案件广为人知。一个活动团体去年发现，尽管对其使用有所限制，但该案件关注的化学物质——六价铬（chromium 6），至今仍普遍存在于美国的饮用水中，加利福尼亚州和亚利桑那州是污染热点地区。

活动团体坚称，证明一种化学物质安全的举证责任应由工业界及其科学家承担，而非监管机构或公民检测者。面对化学工业的游说，“保护儿童”成了少数能产生影响的问题之一。例如，欧盟和美国接连的几个州从 2009 年起禁止在婴儿奶瓶中使用某些干扰内分泌的双酚类物质。尽管如此，多年对尿液、血液和家用灰尘的检测表明，禁止一种化学物质可能会导致其被另一种同样有害的物质所取代。

这赋予了监管整类化学物质这一想法以分量。欧盟正在打击“永久性化学物质”和双酚类化合物，采取了更为谨慎的预防措施。然而，一些最常见的内分泌干扰物在美国和其他地区仍然合法。特朗普政府最近推动削减美国环境保护署的预算。该机构目前正在审查其证明新化学物质不对人体健康构成威胁的义务。

人体分泌激素的量“极小”

环保活动团体坚持认为，证明化学物质安全的举证责任应由工业界及其科学家承担，而非由监管机构或公民检测者承担

美国国家环境健康科学研究所（NIEHS，联邦资助的国家卫生研究院的一个部门）表示，为了促进生长、繁殖和整体健康，即便只有少量的模仿、阻断或刺激激素的化学物质，最终也可能导致严重问题。

一些被称为邻苯二甲酸盐（phthalates）的内分泌干扰化学物质属于所谓的“无处不在”化学品组。它们使塑料变得柔软且具有可塑性，因此出现在静脉滴注液、食品包装和儿童玩具中。它们还能延长香料的留香时间，因此在化妆品中被大量使用。其他邻苯二甲酸盐则是“永久性”化学品，即全氟和多氟烷基物质（PFAS）。它们无法被我们的身体轻易代谢。它们出现在防油纸、雨衣和烹饪锅中。第三类是双酚类物质（bisphenols），用于制造某些塑料，存在于合成内衣、可重复使用水瓶和食品罐内壁中。

由 NIEHS 资助的研究人员发现，暴露于这些化学物质相关的副作用令人震惊。例如，暴露于邻苯二甲酸盐的孕妇更可能早产。另一项由 NIEHS 资助的研究表明，通过母乳传递而体内含有更多“永久性”化学物质的婴儿，其免疫系统发育较弱。暴露于邻苯二甲酸盐的青少年更容易表现出与注意缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）一致的行为。在青春期期间报告使用指甲油、香水以及痤疮和头发护理产品较多（尤其是黑人女性使用的治疗产品）的女性，在以后生活中患乳腺癌的可能性更高。

内裤也是一个令人担忧的原因。科学家对欧洲和中国的女性内衣进行检测发现，它们经常含有双酚类物质。这些化合物用于帮助颜色与织物（尤其是合成织物）结合。邻苯二甲酸盐也可以添加到内衣中以提高柔软度。

将这些风险映射到全球范围，一些科学家认为，这可能会导致大量的早逝。列奥纳多·特拉桑德（Leonardo Trasande）是纽约大学的儿科学和人口健康教授，也是 Segedie 消费者检测网站的顾问科学家之一。2021 年，他估计，在美国的一个中年群体中，邻苯二甲酸盐暴露导致每年约 100,000 例早逝。游说团体美国化学委员会（American Chemistry Council）称这是“糟糕的科学”，认为其可能将相关性与因果关系混淆，且对邻苯二甲酸盐的分类过于宽泛。

我阅读了大量资料，在海量的关于内分泌干扰化学物质影响的证据中筛选。很少有研究能精准指出具体产品有问题，或提供生活方式建议。无论是否能帮我延长寿命，通过皮肤减少接触有毒化学物质绝对会降低我体内的化学物质浓度。但对于普通消费者来说，应该如何看待这件事？

每个月我都会去我家附近的这家补给店 (Refill Shop)。

店内整齐地摆放着一排排色彩斑斓的有机、无塑料产品和化妆品，标明了重量，并将价格与超市的同类产品进行对比。在这里购物是一个体力活。首先，我在卸货站排队领取或称量空罐子——从洗净的果酱罐到两升的大桶不等。然后，我开始从公共储罐中填充我需要的东西。不可避免地，洗洁精或橄榄油的油渍、红椒粉的云雾以及矿物防晒霜的块状物会在过程中弄得到处都是。店员们态度轻松，会提供拖把或工业用纸巾。我拎着 15 个大小不一的罐子回家。

有一天，我买的生态洗衣粉看起来异常细腻。我把它舀进洗衣机，空气中顿时弥漫起一阵白色的粉尘，进入了我的肺部。用它洗过的衣服让我的胳膊和腿瘙痒了数周之久。追踪毒素是一件压力很大的事情，尤其是当世界上其他人都并不在意时。很快，我开始在到处注意到它们——更衣室和公司活动空间里那些充满邻苯二甲酸盐的香氛喷雾，灰色的小盒子喷出浓烈的花香蒸汽。很容易看出，过多的知识是如何滋生出一种病态的警觉心的。

二月份，我偶然发现了一篇由安德烈亚·洛夫 (Andrea Love) 撰写的博客。她是一名费城的生物医学科学家，她的哥哥在早年由于对化学工业持怀疑态度而拒绝服药，最终选择了自杀。她对他那些阴谋论的描述令人不寒而栗。洛夫开始相信，追求“低毒生活” (low-tox living) 是通往拒绝疫苗的一张单程票。她说，这还会导致人们对那些相对安全的化学产品产生怀疑，例如某些除草剂和人工食用色素。现在，她发起了一场反对“化学恐惧症” (chemophobia) 的运动，她将其描述为“全球范围内最强大的误导信息引擎之一”。她写道：“如果你不了解内情，你可能会认为你和你的家人一直处于危险之中。但事实并非如此。”

洛夫没有就这个故事接受我的采访，但她的帖子足以让我感到担忧。还有许多其他人也在思考，这种对无化学生活方式的狂热追求，是否是一种走入极端的健康焦虑，是某种专门针对女性的更广泛的“纯净文化” (purity culture) 的一部分。

这并非新论点。在 20 世纪 90 年代和 2000 年代，化学工业也曾称其女性批评者为“化学恐惧症患者”，甚至暗示她们可能患有强迫症。作家兼活动家林赛·达尔 (Lindsay Dahl) 在她 2025 年出版的《清理房屋》(Cleaning House) 一书中指出，这是怀疑论者和化学工业数十年以来一直在推动的一种叙事。

达尔与其他活动家一起取得了一些重大游说胜利。她的建议是让人们从简单的

24

金融时报周末杂志

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1

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几项家庭干预开始：过滤水、食用有机食品、减少化妆品的使用。她写道，通过给立法者写信或审查监管机构的调查结果来争取改变同样重要。依赖科学建议而非社交媒体影响者推崇的点击诱饵也同样重要。

自 19 世纪以来，毒理学家一直在对小鼠和大鼠进行测试。即便在现在，为了推断人体产品的安全水平，研究人员和监管机构通常依赖于评估大鼠在两年内（其大部分寿命）接触某种化学物质产生明显损害的剂量研究。欧盟去年禁止某些双酚类物质接触食物或饮料，因为研究发现最常见的一种——双酚 A (BPA) 可能会增加脾脏中一种白细胞的数量，从而增加自身免疫性疾病的风险。但得出这一结论所花费的时间并不令人安心。在 2015 年至 2023 年之间，欧盟大幅降低了 BPA 的每日安全摄入量。尽管如此，英国自身的“安全”水平仍比欧盟高出 1,000 倍。

为了了解这些决定背后的内幕，我阅读了欧盟关于章鱼烯（octocrylene）的最新科学咨询意见。章鱼烯是一种常见的防晒霜成分，用于吸收紫外线辐射。该意见书的开头基调较为积极：当不经稀释地涂抹在白化兔的眼睛上时，该化学物质没有产生影响。而当涂抹在雌性小鼠的耳朵上时，

罗伯特·F·肯尼迪（ROBERT F KENNEDY JR）就内分泌干扰化学物质与儿童性别特征之间的联系发表了毫无根据的言论

它仅作为皮肤的“温和致敏剂”起作用。然而，它确实干扰了大鼠的甲状腺。一些暴露于高剂量该化学物质的新西兰白兔生长速度较慢。而且，大鼠每胎产下的幼崽数量减少，且这些幼崽的发育速度也更慢。该文件总体认为，这种化学物质“可能”对人类产生内分泌干扰影响，“但目前证据尚不充分”。

英国政府的一个科学顾问小组建议，应根据儿童的体重，对其接触辛烯烃（octocrylene）的情况进行风险评估。德国毒理学会建议避免使用含有辛烯烃的防晒霜，因为产品一旦开启，就可能降解为致癌化合物或导致珊瑚白化。但我当地超市里销售的品牌似乎还没意识到这一点。

科学论文读多了也会有问题。在3月的几次视频采访中，我请两位名为大卫的顶尖科学家帮我得出结论：哪些东西我应该扔掉，哪些可以保留。

布朗大学流行病学荣休教授大卫·萨维茨（David Savitz）尽力帮我消除内心残留的对化学物质的迟疑。萨维茨广泛研究了永恒化学品和杀虫剂对健康的影响。他告诉我，对于农场或工厂工人来说，接触此类毒素可能非常严重。但在发达国家，在我们自己的家中，“我们处于一种在无风险和小风险之间徘徊的状态……在这种情况下很难证明风险的存在。”

毫无疑问，吸烟、饮酒、室外空气污染和肥胖分别引发了各自的小型健康流行病。但萨维茨表示，尼龙内裤和清洁喷雾则不至于。在他看来，问题在于富裕的人总是想通过“微调”生活方式来让自己感觉更健康。“如果我们现在抽取你的血液样本，会发现几十种剧毒化学物质，”萨维茨补充道。但“我们能检测到它们，且它们在高浓度下有害，并不意味着存在实质性的风险。”

我提到了一位处于该领域顶尖地位的科学家的研究。沙娜·斯旺（Shanna Swan）是一位 90 岁的环境与生殖流行病学家，她在 2017 年得出结论并获得专业赞誉：在过去的 38 年里，男性精子数量减少了一半以上。她认为这可能是由内分泌干扰化学物质引起的。“你知道，她是一位能力出色的科学家，”萨维茨说。但他认为，斯旺和其他研究人员（包括他的一些同事）在将现有证据解读为一条“清晰的叙事线”时过于“慷慨”了。

“有许多研究人员坚信……我们作为物种注定会灭绝：我认为这言过其实了，”萨维茨告诉我。他担心在“当前的政治气候中时不时冒出来的‘危言耸听’的评论”。

在美国，这类评论正处于风口浪尖。卫生部长罗伯特·F·肯尼迪（Robert F Kennedy Jr）攻击了草太隆（atrazine）的使用，这是一种常见的杀虫剂，因其对健康的损害已在欧盟禁药。但他也就内分泌干扰化学物质与儿童性别特征之间的联系发表了毫无根据的言论。

我询问萨维茨关于一些医疗趋势的问题，有些人认为这些趋势可能与我们被化学物质包围的生活有关。尽管有各种政治噪音，但年轻人中某些疾病发病率的上升，是否揭示了关于我们环境的宝贵问题？他承认，某些类型的癌症在增加，而另一些则在减少。但他认为，这些趋势尚未被定论地证明与消费产品中所使用的任何单一化学物质相关。

他补充道，疾病的不公正性难以让人接受，人们倾向于寻找一个合理的解释。患者会想：“是我吃了那个食物，或者接触了某种化学物质，是因为压力，或者各种原因……这可以理解，但从个人层面来看，我认为这可能是危险的。”

苏格兰科学家大卫·哈里森（David Harrison）曾担任一个委员会负责人近十年，该委员会负责就食品、消费品和环境中的化学品带来的癌症风险向英国政府提供建议。在一次视频通话中，他坐在一块写满涂鸦的白板前告诉我，对家庭环境中毒性的痴迷忽视了一些令人不安的事实。

他说，烤焦的吐司是有毒的，因为它会产生丙烯酰胺，而丙烯酰胺被用作工业密封剂——他说话的语气就像这番话已经解释过 100 次一样。“我们应该禁止烤焦的吐司吗？……酒精也是一种有毒化学物质，但我们不会实施禁酒令……所以我认为问题在于将‘有毒’视为一个绝对的概念。万物皆有毒。”不仅如此，而且很难证明像癌症这样的疾病存在任何直接的“剂量-反应关系”。细胞突变、个人的基因组学或风险因素都可能导致不同的结果。

我的研究一直指向一个压倒性的问题。于是我问道：如果万物皆有毒，但又无法证明任何单一事物造成了伤害，那么尝试（规避）的意义何在？

哈里森的回答让我感到惊讶。“我认为‘预防原则’必须成为驱动力，”他说，“在我看来这似乎显而易见。”他解释说，科学家们需要很多年才能准确证明现代化学物质的“鸡尾酒式”组合如何影响我们的身体，以及应该避免哪些物质。但与此同时，我们已经拥有了足够的信息来开始行动。

肯扎·布赖恩（Kenza Bryan）是金融时报的气候记者

26

FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE

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无尽的图书馆

当 FBI 在 2022 年查封在线 Z-Library 时，这似乎是免费、非法图书共享的最终章。然而，它的遗产却成为了 人工智能 革命的核心。

作者：FELIX BAZALGETTE 插图：MUHAMMAD FATCHUROFI

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金融时报周末杂志

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JULY 25 2026

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关于一座“全能图书馆”（包含世界上所有存在书籍的图书馆）的构想，曾在阿根廷作家豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯的脑海中占据着一种奇异的地位。In 1939, 他写了一篇关于该主题的论文，追溯其历史，从古代哲学家

德谟克里特一直到 19 世纪的物理学家古斯塔夫·西奥多·费希纳；随后他写了一个短篇小说，想象这座图书馆的建筑结构，以及如果它最终完工，将对人类产生怎样的心理影响。他认为，最初的反应将是“无界的喜悦”，但随后会凝固成一种“不成比例的抑郁”。

博尔赫斯本人职业就是图书管理员，且总是被开放式列表所吸引，他沉思于这座全能图书馆中将存放的作品，包括：“塞壬唱的歌”、“我 8 月 14, 1954 黎明时的梦与半梦”、“罗马秘密且真实的名称”、“图书馆的完整目录”以及“证明该目录不准确的证据”。

如果博尔赫斯在今天写作，他可能会加入另一篇文本——一份由美国司法部于 10 月 21 2022 提交给纽约联邦法院的密封起诉书。正因为这份文件，33 岁的安东·纳波尔斯基（Anton Napolsky）和 27 岁的瓦莱里娅·叶尔马科娃（Valeriia Ermakova）这两位前往博尔赫斯祖国的图书管理员，在 10 月 22 日抵达阿根廷中部科尔多瓦附近的一座机场时，在不知情的情况下触发了国际刑警组织的“红色通缉令”。他们期待着为期两周的假期，完全没有意识到头顶上正聚集着一场官僚主义的风暴，于是租了一辆车向南开往风景如画的湖边小镇埃尔卡拉法特。阿根廷当局通过手机追踪了他们。

这份现在已公开的起诉书指控这两名俄罗斯人经营着全球最大的非法图书馆——一个名为 Z-Library 的网站，拥有数千万本数字图书和数百万名定期用户。该网站提供了一个易于搜索的数据库，使任何人都能自由下载盗版书籍，并号召用户将自己的文件上传到这个不断扩大的馆藏中。

当两人于 11 月 3 日抵达南部城市里奥加列戈斯时，阿根廷特种作战部队的警员逮捕了他们。与此同时，在世界各地，任何登录 Z-Library 的人都会看到一张盖有美国司法部印章的醒目图片：本域名已被 FBI 没收。

“看到图书馆被焚毁永远不是一件好事，”阿姆斯特丹大学信息法教授 Balázs Bodó 写道，“而这就是数字空间中焚毁图书馆的样子。”

对于支持者和用户而言，像 Z-Library 这样的组织不被称为盗版图书网站，而被称为“影子图书馆”，Bodó 曾广泛撰写关于其历史的文章。在他看来，这并非一个关于犯罪与惩罚的故事（即俄罗斯人非法从赃物中获利），而是一场关于互联网应当如何运作、甚至世界应当如何运作的两种基本理念之间的对抗。

自从纳波尔斯基和叶尔马科娃被捕以来，影子图书馆已从边缘地带（被读者和研究人员悄悄使用）移到了 人工智能 繁荣的奇特中心。近期的法院案件表明，世界上一些最富有的科技公司依赖于影子图书馆中的数百万

他们说西方强制执行的版权法已脱离其最初目的且不再使作者获益，这种说法正确吗？

本图书来训练大语言模型 (LLMs)。在对文字近乎贪婪的追求中，这些公司投入了巨大的资源，旨在实现那个在博尔赫斯看来仅是寓言的目标：一座包含所有已写之物的图书馆。

去年，我见到了 Bodó，一个看起来很年轻、略显局促的 51 岁男人。在他建议下，我们在阿姆斯特丹最古老动物园的咖啡馆共进午餐。Bodó 戴着一副圆圆的小金属框眼镜，身穿一件夏威夷衬衫。他向我讲述了他对知识地下传播的兴趣，这源于 1995 年战争结束后的几周内，他在波斯尼亚旅行的经历。那时他注意到，在任何官方发行公司开始处理这样一个混乱且高风险的市场之前，盗版媒体——非法复制的 VHS 录像带和卡式录音带——是最先重新进入该国的。他向我描述盗版市场摊位前人们欢快排队的场景时说：“在那种混乱之中，正是盗版者在帮助波斯尼亚人重新与世界、与更广泛的文化建立联系。”

Bodó 在匈牙利长大，在他生命最初的 15 年里，那里是一个共产主义国家。如今运行的几乎所有大型书籍影子图书馆，都由在俄罗斯或后苏联卫星国长大的人创立并经营。根据 Bodó 及其盗版者本人的说法，这并非巧合。

“苏联传统中对图书馆、书籍以及整体教育的特殊尊重，在很大程度上塑造了我们项目的意识形态，” Z-Library 的一名资深管理员最近告诉我。Bodó 引用了俄罗斯社会学家 Valeriia Stelmakh 的观点，后者认为在苏联，“阅读几乎取代了宗教，成为一种神圣的活动”，并且“文学

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成为了民众道德真理的唯一来源”。Bodó 指出了苏联时期的 samizdat（地下出版）传统，即在官方审查环境下私人复制、囤积和分享文本，以及“后共产主义时期知识分子的经济崩溃”。

盗版者认为，由美国司法部以及英美出版商协会在国际上把守的版权体制，是一种近现代的、西方资本主义形式的审查，强加于世界其他地区。Z-Library 的管理员表示：“这是一个榨取利润的工具，违背公众利益，且通常使出版商而非作者获益。”他们认为，Z-Library 的存在本身就“证明了现代社会在信息获取方面存在的系统性问题”。

我对这些宏大的主张很感兴趣，同时也对 FBI 追捕一个书籍分享网站的激烈程度感到惊讶。于是我决定去了解影子图书馆的世界，采访了出版商协会、像 Bodó 这样的学者、作家、研究人员以及盗版者本人。

这些组织从何而来？又是如何运作的？他们是共产主义的民间英雄，还是伪装成利他主义者的加密资本主义骗子？他们说西方强制执行的版权法已背离其原始目的、不再使作者获益，这是否正确？此外，随着 Z-Library 重新上线，那些被国际通缉的图书管理员现在身在何处？

在第二次世界大战期间，当博尔赫斯首次发表关于“全能图书馆”（la biblioteca total）的著作时，得益于信息技术的进步，“全能图书馆”的概念进入了可能实现的领域。1945 年，一位名为 Vannevar Bush 的政府科学家在《大西洋月刊》上提出了一种原初的互联网形式，利用网络化的微缩摄影技术，能够将实体书架缩小。“一百万卷书的图书馆可以被压缩到一张办公桌的一端，”他写道。他推测，人类书写产出的总量——“十亿本书，全部内容”——很快就能轻松地“用一辆搬家车拉走”。

数字图书馆管理的实际操作几乎与互联网本身一样古老——古腾堡计划（Project Gutenberg）旨在将公有领域文本的数字化版本提供给所有人，该计划于 1971 年首次在 Arpanet（一个由美国政府支持的互联网前身）上启动。其第一篇文本是由伊利诺伊大学的一名学生手动打字输入的《独立宣言》，随后是《宪法》，然后是《钦定版圣经》，后者最终于 1989 年完成。

扫描技术的普及、数字存储效率的飞跃以及 20 世纪 90 年代万维网的兴起，导致了 21 世纪初图书数字化的爆发。现在，书籍不再需要费力地手动打字，而是可以存储在任何地方都能访问的在线数据库中。一些项目，例如谷歌的海洋计划（Project Ocean）——在 2002 和 2015 之间扫描并数字化了 25 million 本书——是由企业与大学合作运行的。这些项目受到了出版商和作者协会早期的起诉，从而限制了公众访问和使用这些资源的方式。

与此同时，许多规模较小的基层数字化项目开始出现，它们在谷歌最终必须遵守的法律体制之外运行。尽管它们被比作 Napster 和 The Pirate Bay 等主要处理音乐或电影文件的文件共享盗版网站，但许多文本共享项目自觉地避开了“盗版”这一标签。它们更倾向于“图书馆”的组织原则、历史和品牌。这些项目试图通过众包扫描或整合现有数据库，尽可能多地积累数字化书籍，对其进行编目和索引，并使其可以免费访问。

其中一个项目，Library Genesis（简称 LibGen），由俄罗斯科学家于 2008 年发起，旨在实现科学论文的免费流通。另一个项目 Library.nu ——据《星期日时报》报道，由在戈尔韦工作的学生于 2000 年代中期创立——规模变得如此之大，以至于引起了出版商和执法部门的注意。在 2012, 年初，面对 17 家不同出版商发起的诉讼，该网站关闭了，但其数字档案被并入了 LibGen，导致后者因此变得更加受欢迎。这是执法机构现在所称的“打地鼠”游戏的早期案例——影子图书馆狡猾且多变的特性使其难以被彻底“烧毁”。

就在这个时候，在 2010, 年初，Z-Library 的前身 BookFi 由圣彼得堡国立大学的两名学生 Napolsky 和 Vladislav Chikhira 创立。BookFi 与其影子图书馆同行在一个重要方面有所不同。LibGen 旨在收集“学术文献”，并避免“垃圾书”和“畅销书”。由哈萨克斯坦程序员 Alexandra Elbakyan 在 2011, 年创立的 Sci-Hub 同样专注于科学论文，其中许多论文是使用公共资金产生的，但却被私人公司以高额利润转售。

相比之下，BookFi 具有更广泛的、博尔赫斯式的野心。Napolsky 和 Chikhira 在 2011, 年告诉一个小型俄语新闻网站，其目标无非是成为世界上“最大的在线图书馆”，“涵盖小说、科学、参考和技术文献”。Z-Library 起初只是一个简单的电子书搜索引擎，运行在圣彼得堡国立大学内部网络的一台学生笔记本电脑上。它迅速演变成一个雄心勃勃的意识形态项目。当时年仅 20 岁的 Napolsky 和 Chikhira 宣布，“书籍是公共资产，其访问不应受到限制”。

到 2022 年年中，Z-Library 在设计之初就打破了所有这些非正式规则，并开始引起关注。它征集捐赠并提供一个 1 美元的会员级别，允许用户无限量下载书籍（否则用户每天仅限下载 10 本）。尽管该网站名义上配合

JULY 25 2026

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下架请求，但其存档的众包性质（每天由志愿者上传数百本书籍）使得实际合规变得十分困难。最后，由于其普适主义的目标，它吸引了除全球数百万传统上使用该平台获取教科书和学术文献的年轻学生之外的受众。

在这些新受众中，包括北美青少年小说的读者，特别是现象级成功作者科林·胡佛（Colleen Hoover）的粉丝，她在 2022 年出了一本新书。那一年，胡弗的粉丝在 TikTok 上发布的帖子将 Z-Library 推广为一种免费下载其作品的惊人新方式。这些帖子的观看次数达到了数百万次。美国和英国的出版商协会开始投入更多资源调查 Z-Library。

或许令人惊讶的是，出版商协会具有极强的调查性质，并与警方紧密联系——例如，英国出版商协会有一名员工长期借调至伦敦市警察局知识产权犯罪组。据一名熟悉针对 Z-Library 行动的人士透露，一家出版商协会的研究人员整理了一份关于该影子图书馆的档案，记录了其域名，并首次将 well 其活动明确地与两名具名的俄罗斯个人联系起来。这些细节被传递给了国际刑警组织和 FBI。该人士将此描述为一个“时机成熟的时刻”，所有因素都促使美国执法机构采取行动捍卫出版商的利益。有美国作者的版权显然被侵犯，有与负责此事的“国际犯罪网络”相关的具名个人，且最后，这些个人计划在不久的将来离开俄罗斯，前往一个与美国有引渡条约的国家。

看来，纳波尔斯基（Napolsky）和叶尔马科娃（Ermakova）之所以与 Z-Library 产生联系，是因为一系列事后看来很业余的错误。该网站接收捐赠的方式之一是通过发送到 Z-Library Gmail 地址的亚马逊礼品卡。据称，纳波尔斯基将自己的个人 Gmail 账户用作许多此类捐赠账户的备份邮箱，并在兑换 Z-Library 捐赠的亚马逊账户上输入了他的姓名、电话号码和地址。同样，根据起诉书，叶尔马科娃在兑换捐赠礼品券的亚马逊账户中注册了她的银行卡详情以及她在圣彼得堡的地址。所有这些账户通过 IP 地址数据进一步关联，显示他们通常在同一时间、同一地点登录。

亚马逊和谷歌均配合了 FBI 的搜查令，向调查人员提供了关于纳波尔斯基和叶尔马科娃账户活动的信息，并且（在谷歌的案例中）提供了其收件箱的内容。例如，根据 2022. 年提交的起诉书，与叶尔马科娃相关且兑换过部分 Z-Library 捐赠的亚马逊账户在三年期间“下了 110 多个订单，总计超过 $13,628.32，其中大部分是美容和服装产品”。据推测，正是通过访问 Gmail 收件箱，FBI 察觉到了纳波尔斯基和叶尔马科娃的旅行计划。在他们从圣彼得堡经亚松森飞往哥尔多瓦的前一晚，纽约地区法院批准了对两人申请的逮捕令。

“Z-Library 剥夺了个人劳动的成果，”一名 FBI 特工在逮捕令申请书中写道，“目的是为了 纳波尔斯基 和 叶尔马科娃 的个人私利”。次日上午 9:45，两人抵达阿根廷，国际刑警组织的红色通报随即启动。

当阿根廷警方最终在 11 月 3 日采取行动时，据 Z-Library 管理员称，这对于“所有项目参与者来说完全是一个惊喜”。两周后，两人被指控侵犯版权、电信欺诈、共谋电信欺诈以及共谋洗钱，随后对方提出了引渡请求。随着法律程序在阿根廷和美国法院一直延续到新年及整个 2023 年，这两名俄罗斯人在科尔多瓦开始了居家监禁。

到 2024 年 5 月，引渡进程似乎陷入了停滞。阿根廷法院拒绝批准引渡，理由是需要等待 FBI 提供更多信息，同时也在等待这两名俄罗斯人向阿根廷最高法院申请难民身份的结果。与此同时，美国法院一直在审议 Napolsky 和 Ermakova 的美国律师于前一年 9 月提交的一份备忘录，其中认为 FBI 提交的指控本身存在程序不当。

正是在这种僵局中，负责监督保释条件的阿根廷慈善机构 Patronato de Liberados 在一次例行检查中发现，这两名俄罗斯人已从他们位于科尔多瓦的指定公寓中失踪。针对 Napolsky 和 Ermakova 的另一份国际逮捕令随即发布；由于没有发现他们通过机场的任何痕迹，西班牙语媒体《La Voz》推测他们已在阿根廷潜逃。然而，去年 6 月，Z-Library 的管理员告诉我，两人“目前在俄罗斯很安全”。

他们是如何设法抵达那里的？无论是 Z-Library 还是他们的美国律师都没有提供更多细节，双方都不愿透露任何可能影响当前案件的信息。一名接近调查的消息人士暗示，为了让 Napolsky 和 Ermakova 在面对国际逮捕令的情况下逃离阿根廷，俄罗斯政府必须参与其中。“你可以想象这与俄罗斯有关，”他们说，“但我不可能对此发表评论。”一家西班牙语报纸报道称，俄罗斯外交人员一直出现在阿根廷的法院审理现场，有时甚至会就法律词汇地对法院翻译进行纠正。

Z-Library 的左翼人道主义精神似乎与弗拉基米尔·普京极端右翼、压制性的独裁统治格格不入。Napolsky 的联合创始人 Chikhira 及其许多前同学认为，在 2022 年俄罗斯入侵乌克兰后，他们必须离开俄罗斯。我询问 Z-Library 管理员，为什么他们认为其项目被允许在普京统治下安全运行。关于这一点，我没有收到任何回答。

影子图书馆与执法机构之间斗争的一个揭示性方面是，双方都对术语极其痴迷。前者倾向于避谈“海盗”和“盗版”。“对我来说，盗版意味着通过某种方式窃取以使自己获利，”一位欧洲影子图书馆的创始人告诉我，“我不认为我们的工作属于这种范畴。”但对于执法方来说，

任何提到“图书馆”这个词的行为都会引起反感。一名接近关闭 Z-Library 行动消息人士告诉我，他们更倾向于使用“有组织犯罪网络”这个词。这些“犯罪网络”不应在“文化”层面被看待，且在“内容生态系统中没有适当的位置”。

这些语言上的冲突，实际上是试图将战场转移到对自己有利的领域。执法机构希望将其简化为一起简单的盗窃案，而影子图书馆员则希望引发一场关于古老理想与现代不平等的辩论。例如，一个在中国或印度贫困的大学生，仅仅为了在网上获取教育所需的教科书或文章，就必须向利润丰厚的北美公司支付数千美元，这怎么能算公平？

2022年 Z-Library 的被封禁虽然被出版商和执法部门誉为一场胜利，但它也揭示了影子图书馆在多大程度上成功地定义了这场辩论的基调。

即便是一些认为自己的收入受到 Z-Library 损害的作者，也会将商业小说的盗版与学术文献的盗版区分开来，将前者视为有害，而将后者视为近乎神圣。胡佛（Hoover）——她的书籍被盗版可能正是整个行动的导火索——在发布的一份声明中表达了心声。她在 Facebook 的帖文中写道（值得注意的是，她并未谴责 Z-Library）：“我曾经是一名买不起教科书的大学生。我绝不会心甘情愿地让人们在这一方面陷入困境。”

主流出版商应该担心的是，与 Sci-Hub 或 LibGen 专注于学术领域不同，Z-Library 试图将论点推得更远，不再仅仅停留在贫困学生的挣扎上，而是直击版权合同本身的核心。在过去，这可能是出版商可以轻松掌控的阵地，但近年来，情况变得更加复杂。

在过去的二十年里，全球范围内的作者收入大幅下降。在英国，作者许可与征收协会（ALCS）的一系列令人沮丧的调查记录了这一下滑趋势：从 2006 到 2022 年，他们发现作者的中位数收入下降了 60% 以上。与此同时，大型出版公司的利润却在增加。根据 ALCS 的数据，出版业已成为更广泛不平等现象的一个缩影，“其特点是赢家通吃动态和极高水平的收入不平等”，仅有极小比例的出版业总收入最终流向作者。目前作者的年收入中位数约为 £7,000，因此，问题日益演变为谁能负担得起成为一名作者，而不是谁能写得足够好或足够努力地工作以成为一名作者。

有一种论点认为，全球读者和作者群体应全力支持版权执法，因为这为文学创作提供了资金——因为它使各种背景的作者都能进行写作——这一论点极具说服力。然而，如果版权执法是以一种类似于“禁毒战争”的军事化狂热进行，且作者的收入被无情地挤压，那么这个论点就变得难以成立。Z-Library 将版权概括为一种“利润榨取工具”，且其受益者是“出版商而非作者”，这一主张将引起越来越多人的共鸣。

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今年早些时候的一起诉讼指称，谷歌实际上使用了 Z-Library 来训练其 Gemini 模型

2022年 Z-Library 的毁灭结果证明仅仅是一次停机。三个月后，其管理员宣布回归，并采用了一套旨在规避域名封禁的新系统。然而，这次短暂的停摆催生了一个名为“安娜的档案”（Anna's Archive）的新图书盗版网站，该网站在 Z-Library 成员被捕几天后推出，是对此次事件的有意识回应。尽管它具有图书馆的许多特征，但这个新组织的宗旨是将档案保存作为主要目标：“编录所有现存的书籍”；通过复制、众包和地理分布存储确保书籍永不丢失；并将其提供给所有人。根据其自身的统计，它已经收集了全球约 16% 的书籍

和文章，每天通过该网站进行的个人下载量达 750,000 次。

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SOAS-Alphawood

亚洲艺术课程

基于文物的亚洲艺术研究，提供线下及在线课程。

依托大英博物馆及维多利亚和阿尔伯特博物馆（V&A）馆藏储备的卓越访问权限。

现提供：

• 亚洲艺术硕士 (MA)
• 亚洲艺术研究生文凭 (Postgraduate Diploma)
• 亚洲艺术研究生证书 (Postgraduate Certificate)
• 专业短期课程

联系我们：

asianart@soas.ac.uk

了解更多详情：

www.AsianArtProgramme.com

伦敦大学亚非学院 (SOAS)

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内页：英国烧烤的复兴 P40

食欲 (Appetites)

WINF

格鲁吉亚的琥珀色埋藏之宝

作者：JANCIS ROBINSON

插图：DEBORA SZPILMAN

在 2013 年首次前往格鲁吉亚旅行后，我的葡萄酒大师 (Master of Wine) 同事朱莉娅·哈丁 (Julia Harding) 在一篇备受赞誉的游记中探讨了这个国家独特的矛盾之处。她问道，一个国家如何在保持非民族主义自豪感的同时，抵御敌对的边界强权，优先考虑激进的款待之情，并在一个浸透着传统的国家中培养创造力？“格鲁吉亚似乎拥有一种极其卓越的能力，能够让对立面在紧张状态中共存，”哈丁写道。

无论如何，在我的圈子里，格鲁吉亚最出名的是其自称葡萄栽培发源地的说法。葡萄酒依然与这里的文化紧密交织，而格鲁吉亚葡萄酒的特点是使用名为 qverri 的埋入地下的黏土罐酿造。但如今，这种著名的葡萄酒文化日益两极分化，确实让对立面处于紧张状态。

在我最近一起品酒的两人身上，这种两极分化得到了有力的体现。第一位是伊拉克利·吉劳里 (Irakli Gilauri)，格鲁吉亚银行前首席执行官，一位葡萄酒发烧友。他不知通过何种途径，为他在加利福尼亚的一个高级葡萄酒项目从纳帕谷最炙手可热的产地之一——葡萄山牧场 (Vine Hill Ranch) 获取了果实。他现在决定投入部分财富用于

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食欲 (Appetites)

JANCIS 推荐

杰出格鲁吉亚葡萄酒

白葡萄酒

• Vachnadziani Winery Krakhuna 2024 Imereti (12.5%)

£12.79 ALL ABOUT WINE, £13.99 RATCLIFFE & CO, £14 DRINKS DIRECT

琥珀葡萄酒

• Dugladze, Ranina Kakhuri NV Kakheti (12.5%)

£15.60 AMATHUS

• Shilda, Rustaveli 2022 Kakheti (13.5%)

£17.99 D BYRNE, £19.95 SPY WINES, £22 THE SALUSBURY WINE STORE

• Iago Bitarishvili, Iago Chinuri 2024 Kartli (12%)

£23.22 LES CAVES DE PYRENE

• Orgo Rkatsiteli 2024 Kakheti (12.5%)

£23.49 BUTLER'S WINE CELLAR

• Baia's Wine Tsolikouri Qvevri 2024 Kakheti (13%)

£24 TASTE OF GEORGIA

红葡萄酒

• Chelti, Family Collection Saperavi 2022 Kakheti (14%)

2021 年份售价 £14.99，购自 NOVEL WINES，但目前缺货

• Ch Mukhrani Shavkapito 2021 Kartli (13.5%)

2018 年份售价 £23.99，购自 GEORGIAN WINE GUILD

• Sad Meli Aleksandrouli/ Mujuretuli 2022 Racha-Lechkhumi (14%)

£40，购自 SAPERAVI SOCIAL

品鉴笔记、评分及建议饮用日期请见 JANCISROBINSON.COM，国际供应商请见 WINE-SEARCHER.COM。

他坚称这将打造出他祖国的首款世界级葡萄酒。

我第一次听说他的情况是通过一封来自旧金山公关公司的电子邮件，邀请我去“结识一位用奢华葡萄酒对抗法西斯主义的格鲁吉亚酿酒师”。在邮件中，目前的格鲁吉亚葡萄酒被描述为“质朴”——出现了三次——并引用 Gilauri 的话称，“qvevri 陶罐之所以仍是我们的传统，唯一的原因是人们从来没有钱用其他方式酿酒”。

Gilauri 正在格鲁吉亚最主要的葡萄酒产区——位于该国东南部的卡赫季 (Kakheti) 建造一座豪华酒庄，并聘请了波尔多最国际化的葡萄酒顾问公司 Rolland et Associés 来协助他。“在葡萄园或酒窖管理方面，我不想雇佣任何有格鲁吉亚经验的人，”他在 6 月于伦敦城举行的一次格鲁吉亚葡萄酒品鉴会上告诉我，并拿出了两瓶 Gilauri 葡萄酒的原型半瓶装。在此之前，他告诉我，在格鲁吉亚的一次盲品会上，他的新款红葡萄酒与波尔多一级庄（以及管理其中两家酒庄的酿酒师 Pierre Lurton）同场竞技，他的产品排名第二，“仅次于 Ch Ausone，且高于 Haut-Brion”。

至于那个关于法西斯主义的说法？尽管格鲁吉亚在 1991, 年后独立脱离苏联，但它仍然受到一个咄咄逼人的俄罗斯的威胁，后者非法军事占领了其 20% 的领土。

格鲁吉亚葡萄酒长期在俄罗斯占据特殊地位，即便在今天，格鲁吉亚 65% 的葡萄酒出口仍是发送到北方以满足俄罗斯需求的半甜基础款葡萄酒。“格鲁吉亚今天对俄罗斯的依赖仅限于葡萄酒，”Gilauri 说。“通过酿造干葡萄酒，我们可以摆脱对俄罗斯的依赖。”他说他肩负使命，并选择将“Resistance”（抵抗）作为其葡萄酒的品牌名称。

当我说他的白葡萄酒（一款桶发酵的极干霞多丽）让我想起夏布利 (Chablis) 时，Gilauri 欣喜若狂。

格鲁吉亚生产商正沉浸在展示本土葡萄品种的快感中

这款酒因其极高的熟悉度，确实与我品尝过的任何格鲁吉亚葡萄酒都截然不同。他的红葡萄酒至少是基于格鲁吉亚葡萄品种——主要的红葡萄酒葡萄 Saperavi 酿造的。其中可以明显感受到 Rolland 留下的橡木桶和酒精印记，但我应当指出，他在品鉴会上向我展示的那些酒是尚未装瓶、更不用说上市的桶装样品。

两周后在伊斯灵顿 (Islington) 的一家格鲁吉亚葡萄酒酒吧 Saperavi Social 展出的葡萄酒则具有更典型的格鲁吉亚特色。主讲人是 Les Caves de Pyrene 的 Douglas Wregg，他是一位天然葡萄酒的专业进口商，也是英国最大的格鲁吉亚葡萄酒进口商。早在 2005, 年，他就听到传闻说该国正在使用 qvevri 酿造极具特色的葡萄酒，这种方法依赖于与葡萄皮的长时间接触，于是他进行了首次旅行。他爱上了格鲁吉亚及其伴随着舞蹈和多声部合唱的葡萄酒盛宴。“葡萄酒是那里文化的固有组成部分，”他热情地说道。“用葡萄的皮，以及通常包括葡萄梗在内进行酿造——这才是完整的葡萄酒。”

与有嚼劲的果皮，有时甚至是更有嚼劲的梗和籽接触，使得酿出的葡萄酒颜色比传统的白葡萄酒深得多。这就是 Wregg 描述为“天然葡萄酒的一个子集”的所谓橙色葡萄酒。

格鲁吉亚人称之为琥珀色，其颜色可从最浅的杏色到浓郁的深棕色不等。或许一个更为显著的特征是，接触果皮的葡萄酒相对较为涩，尤其是在余味上。Wregg 非常欣赏他所描述的“一种

第一口品鉴

格鲁吉亚宏伟的本土葡萄

许多陌生之名，却有着极佳的风味。皮色浅且高产的 Rkatsiteli 是目前格鲁吉亚种植最广泛的葡萄，是该国极东南部卡赫季（Kakheti）地区的特色，在第比利斯周边的卡特利（Kartli）也很受欢迎。它特别适合酿造接触果皮的葡萄酒。Rkatsiteli 也在乌克兰、摩尔多瓦和保加利亚种植，其抵御严寒冬季的能力在俄罗斯和纽约州都深受看重。

我长期以来一直喜爱由 Kisi 酿造的芳香型白葡萄酒，该品种也主要分布在卡赫季；而最近的一场惊喜则是来自极西部伊梅里蒂（Imereti）的一种带有叶片气息的 Krakhuna 白葡萄酒，以及来自拉恰（Racha）北部纳贝劳里（Naberauli）的一种具有柑橘风味的 Tsolikouri——后者是一家专注于研究格鲁吉亚冷门葡萄品种的新兴生产商。Mtsvane Kakhuri 是卡赫季的特产，而更清新的 Goruli Mtsvane 则与卡特利相关，在那里，风味更酸涩的 Chinuri 也能大放异彩。

Saperavi 在格鲁吉亚红葡萄酒生产中占据主导地位，其种植国家与 Rkatsiteli 基本相同，此外还包括澳大利亚。在其年轻时期，这种酒的染色能力与年份波特酒一样强。有时它们可能过于厚重，反而失去了平衡。在埋入地下的 qvevri（陶罐）中陈酿的版本往往比大多数常规样本更有趣。我非常喜欢透明度更高的 Shavkapito（近期在卡特利被重新发现），以及 Aleksandrouli 和 Mujuretuli（两者通常在葡萄园中就已混种），它们是该国北部山区拉恰地区的特产，紧邻莱赫库米（Lechkhumi）以东。

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金融时报周末杂志

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qvevri 黏土所赋予的一种“砖土般的 earthy 气息”，并且对英国超市中能见到的淡琥珀色葡萄酒相当不屑，因为后者的果皮接触时间可能相对较短。（顺便提一句，qvevri 一词并未受到监管，似乎被随意使用。）

Wregg 首次年度访问格鲁吉亚的时机再好不过。在 2006 年初，俄罗斯实际上禁止进口格鲁吉亚葡萄酒，直到 2013 年才解除，此举被广泛谴责为对该国亲欧盟立场的经济报复。从长远来看，这给格鲁吉亚的新一代生产商提供了巨大的机遇，迫使他们提升品质并寻找如英国等新市场。

我们被告知，在苏联 era，大约四分之一的家庭会酿造自己的葡萄酒——他们将其视为真正的葡萄酒，而与运往俄罗斯的半甜酒截然不同。但由于俄罗斯人追求数量而非质量，只有极少数最具商业价值的葡萄品种在商业运作中被采用。然而今天，一家国家葡萄苗圃正在收集该国极其多样化的本土品种样本（数百种），并分析其 DNA。

格鲁吉亚的葡萄酒生产商也正致力于展示更多本土葡萄品种。对于西方人来说，这些名字很陌生，但不出所料，Wregg 对那些抱怨无法正确发音的人不屑一顾。“他们应该直接享受这种体验。”

这场城市品鉴会由葡萄酒大师（Master of Wine）Sarah Abbott 主持，她被格鲁吉亚人雇佣以帮助开发英国市场。她挑选的大部分葡萄酒都是用 qvevri 酿造的，但当她承认这在所有格鲁吉亚葡萄酒产量中占比不足 10% 时，我好奇为什么她的选择如此缺乏代表性。“对于格鲁吉亚人来说，qvevri 酿酒的产量虽小，但文化象征意义巨大，”她在随后的一封邮件中解释道，“这个国家有两条平行的传承路径：一条是作为神话中葡萄酒的发源地，另一条则是作为前苏联被粗暴对待的工业化葡萄酒工厂。qvevri 酿酒正是对那种苏联遗产和思维方式的具象化反抗。”

这话没毛病。我很喜欢喝 qvevri 陶罐酒——事实上，只要果味足以支撑起那股涩味，我通常更倾向于格鲁吉亚极具特色的接触皮质白葡萄酒，而非标准且往往过于浓郁的 Saperavi 红葡萄酒。

但我能理解为什么 Gilauri 认为他国家的葡萄酒仍处于完善阶段。常驻第比利斯的葡萄酒进口商 Olivier Sauvage（他为自己的高祖父曾任 Chassagne-Montrachet 市长而感到自豪）的看法比 Wregg 更接近 Gilauri。他尖刻地将目前的格鲁吉亚葡萄酒现状总结为：“8,000 年的历史，30 年的经验”。PT

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Banquet 88, 圣凯瑟琳码头 (St Katharine Docks)

作者：JAY RAYNER

插图：DANIEL EGNEUS

无论一家餐厅铺设了多少卧室风的灯光或纽扣背靠的软包，都毫无意义。这些都不能保证能有一顿美餐。有些漂亮的餐厅提供美味的食物，但前者并不导致后者，任何曾被迫在 Botanist 分店忍受一份干瘪烤肉串的人都会知道这一点。那么，让我们为餐厅“反设计”的真正英雄们喝彩吧：那些高质量、实用主义的中国餐厅，它们的设计是为了在这里用餐，而不是为了观赏。在这些地方，大灯永远亮着，地毯是极具胜出潜力的“乏味”色，而装饰最合适的描述是“隔离学校风”（School of Severance）。这一切都极其注重功能。瞧，你是来这里吃饭的。除了一个足够容纳你点餐的大桌子，以及每桌之间足以让服务员快捷穿行的空间，你还需要什么？

这些餐厅在喧闹的点心服务高峰期才展现出其本色，此时顾客和员工都参与到了一场关于争抢摇摇欲坠的竹蒸笼的“接触性运动”中。在我的怀旧之心中，有一块特殊的区域是留给那些生意极好、用方形金属推车提供点心的餐厅的，服务员们推着车在房间里穿梭，对你完全不感兴趣。关键是要找一家如此繁忙的店，以至于任何关于每辆推车上那些俏皮货品新鲜程度的疑虑，

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食欲 (Appetites)

查找它 (FIND IT)

BANQUET 88

Unit 2 Commodity Quay, London E1W 1AZ; 020 3951 4389; banquet88.com

点心及开胃菜 £7–£59 主菜（含烧腊） £15–£120 甜点 £7

象牙色皮的饺子被它们被清空的惊人速度所掩盖。New World 曾与环境卫生官员有过一段坎坷的历史，它是伦敦中国城最后一家经营推车服务的餐厅。现在那里已经消失了，不过几年前，我在旧金山林孔中心 (Rincon Center) 的 Yank Sing 餐厅体验了周六午餐的推车服务，那是一次极佳的乐趣——那个地方像个拥挤的谷仓，感觉就像在酒店大堂临时开辟出的餐厅里用餐。

位于伦敦圣凯瑟琳码头 (St Katharine Docks) 的 Banquet 88 是一家主打粤菜的餐厅，店名中包含着一个吉祥的数字 88，这是该公司在伦敦郊区起家后的第三次创业。这里没有推车，但它非常符合实用主义风格的中国餐厅定义。那里有不错的焦糖色软垫座椅，白墙上挂着几幅线条精美的中国生活场景画，但除此之外，灯光明亮，室内设计仅限于将厨房置于玻璃墙之后。在一个安静的周中夜晚，这里给人的感觉像是一间正在等待周末点心高峰期的房间。

我们都应该利用好周中的安静时段。就像 Alan Yau 的 Yauatcha（伦敦首批打破“点心仅在午餐时段供应”传统的餐厅之一）一样，Banquet 88 全天供应点心。在这个充斥着平庸饺子的城市里（其中许多饺子在 Wing Yip 分店的冷冻柜中就开始了它们的生命），这里的点心绝对值得专程前往。按照某些标准，选择种类并不多，但它涵盖了所有经典的蒸点和炸点，此外还有一份单独的、口感软糯舒心的肠粉清单，以及一个异乎寻常地丰富的汤品选择。他们还提供各种“下午茶”点心菜单，里面塞满了虾饺、煎墨鱼饼和汤汁丰盈的小笼包；比起甜杏仁膏沉重的巴特滕堡蛋糕 (Battenberg)，这显然是更好的下午茶选择。

我们先尝试了晶莹剔透的干贝饺，色泽洁白得令人眩目，象牙色的皮褶起像三角帽一般，包裹着厚切的干贝，在甜美的虾仁泥之上，散发出干贝本身大胆的味道。随后是猪肉虾仁烧卖，包裹在标志性的黄色桶状皮中，口感极具韧性且多汁。在炸点清单中，我们点了一份底部酥脆的包子，里面填满了浓稠酱汁且黏糯的烤鸭碎肉。烧腊是这里的亮点。脆皮腩肉处理得恰到好处，皮层具有碎裂般的酥脆感，在吃到肉之前只有一层薄薄的软脂，而非一块肥腻的厚肉。粤式烧鸭的皮色深沉如漆，在齿间爆裂，味道尤为出色，并配以一种甜美的深色酱油蘸料，简直是神级调料。这里还提供北京烤鸭，整只的价格为极具竞争力的 £98，如果觉得需要加入鱼子酱这种不必要的点缀，价格会更高。北京烤鸭不需要咸鱼籽来装酷。事实上，极少有东西需要这样做。

唯一略有欠缺的菜肴

是椒盐排骨，肉被切成了厚实的菱形块。这道菜显得过于文雅和克制，反而失去了应有的风味。它也被一道非凡的菜肴掩盖了光芒：肥美的黑色羊肚菌，被对半切开，随后似乎与猪肉末进行了“基因拼接”，加入了饱满的蒜末和姜末，使得馅料紧紧贴在菌盖下方。接着，它们与最脆的新季芦笋一同翻炒。天哪，太好吃了。当然，这里还有蛋炒饭和一盘蒜蓉小青菜，每一颗鲜绿的菜心都蜷缩着，仿佛正蜷在床上睡觉。

像这样一份冗长的中餐菜单带来的问题是，在一次用餐过程中，你会觉得仅仅触及了皮毛。我想为了黑松露炸蚝再次光临。为了蒜蓉粉丝蒸蟶子。为了羊腩煲、蟹黄煎肉和烤乳鸽。你明白我的意思了。我想为了很多东西再次光临。伦敦到处都是中餐选择。令人惊叹的是，当你偶然发现高品质时，它会如此鲜明地彰显自己。那就是 Banquet 88. 它不是最便宜的，但无论花费多少，至少你知道在这里，你支付的不是室内设计师的账单。FT

jay.rayner@ft.com

摄影：ANDY SEWELL • 造型：GEORGIA RUDD

38

FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE

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食谱俱乐部

意大利最受欢迎的开胃菜来到城中

伦敦近期对大众喜爱的意大利餐厅之痴迷产生了一个令人愉悦的结果，那就是在许多菜单上都出现了 gnocco fritto（与 gnocchi 无关系）。这些油炸面团球通常与腌制肉类和硬奶酪一同供应，是开启正餐最惬意的方式之一。它们在家中也很容易掌握，当你想要提供一些餐前小食而又不想费力制作开胃菜时，这是一个绝佳的选择。在 Martino's——由餐厅经营者 Martin Kuczmarski（他是热门的梅费尔餐厅 The Dover 的主创人物）开设的这家位于切尔西的名流场所中，gnocco fritto 配以同样时尚的酸爽 giardiniera（腌制蔬菜）。两者结合，生动地证明了有时追随时尚是一件好事。Harriet Fitch Little

饮品

中等酒体的红葡萄酒与 gnocco fritto 和熟食冷盘很搭，例如来自阿布鲁佐的蒙特普齐亚诺（Montepulciano）或任何托斯卡纳红酒。

替代方案

可以用黄油代替猪油，但口感和风味会更柔软且略带甜味，而非酥脆咸香。

提示

gnocco fritto 最好在油炸后立即新鲜食用，但也可以提前几个小时做好，在需要时重新加热。你可以在意大利熟食店买到优质的 giardiniera。

MARTINO'S GNOCCO FRITTO（4 至 6 人份）

• 200g 00 面粉
• 100g 全脂牛奶
• 5g 细海盐
• 5g 干酵母
• 5g 蜂蜜
• 16g 猪油，切成小块

油炸用

• 400ml 菜籽油

食用配料

• 每人 50g 摩塔代拉香肠 (mortadella)、帕尔马火腿 (prosciutto)、托斯卡纳萨拉米香肠 (Tuscan salami) 和陈年帕马森奶酪 (aged parmesan)
• 每人 50g giardiniera

1 在带有揉面钩的厨师机中，混合除猪油外的所有食材，直到充分融合（大约 5 分钟左右）。 2 加入猪油，继续搅拌 10 分钟，直到面团变得光滑、柔软且具有轻微弹性。 3 将面团放在容器中静置 2 小时，然后在冰箱中继续发酵 24 小时，直到体积增加一倍。 4 将面团转移到撒有少量面粉的平面上，将其擀至约 3-4mm 厚。 5 切成 24 个长方形。 6 在一个深且坚固的锅中将油加热至 180C。分批次油炸面团，直到呈金黄色且酥脆，大约 2 到 3 分钟，在油中不断翻动面团，使面团膨起并均匀熟透。用漏勺将其捞出，沥干在铺有厨房纸的盘子上。

下周 —— HONEY & CO 将庆祝最酷的蔬菜

JULY 25 2026

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英国烧烤的新风貌

随着厨师们告别焦黑的香肠以及对美国仪式感的执迷，一种更自信的本土烧烤文化正在形成。

作者：Helen Graves

想象 6 世纪的英格兰，盎格鲁-撒克逊农民正为 300 人准备一场盛宴。一只牛和几只来自领主庄园的羊在坑中缓慢烹饪，周围环绕着熊熊大火加热的石头。抹上盐、野草药和大蒜的肉类将成为这场奢华户外餐宴的主角，此外还有鳗鱼、黄油和三文鱼等罕见的珍馐。美酒与啤酒畅饮，资金在此时被收集，誓言被重新宣誓，所有人再次确认了他们赞助人的慷慨与地位。

几个世纪以来，用火烹饪一直是英国重要的社交仪式之一。然而，在某个时间点，它变成了另一种东西：英国后院烧烤。想象一下那个刻板印象：一名被晒得黝黑的中年男子眯着眼睛盯着炽热的碳火，一手拿着夹子，一手拿着啤酒。为了符合陈词滥调，假设这是一个异性恋规范的场景，主人夫妇与客人们之间有着明显的界限。抵达后，男人们走向烤架讨论体育、香肠以及清洗露台甲板的最佳高压水枪洗法；女人们则聚集在室内准备配菜，讨论孩子，并对伴侣无法把甲板洗干净而感到绝望。客人们最终排队领取战利品——一堆乱七八糟的鸡腿、鸡翅和香肠，配以面包和匆忙挤上的番茄酱。如果运气好，肉在中间可能是熟的，其余部分则被烤得焦黑。很快，天就开始下雨了。

作为两本烧烤食谱的作者以及一名饮食与文化作家，我长期以来一直对这种枯燥的现状感到着迷。在英国，户外烹饪往往更多地关乎喝酒和拨弄火堆，而非食物本身。事情怎么会变成这样？一些拙劣的 20 世纪 50 年代（来自美国）的营销手段，塑造了一个“露台奶爸”式的家长形象——一个在下班后将家人聚集在烤架周围的文化原型——结合战后烹饪整体堪忧的状态，当然还有天气，这些可能都有一定关系。但一种更好的烧烤文化正在形成，烹饪风格更加本土化、多样化且深思熟虑，并且越来越关注食材产地和专业器材。

这种转变不仅体现在烤架上，还体现在销售数据中。总部位于芝加哥、生产标志性水壶形烧烤炉的 Weber 公司表示，随着入门级型号的需求下降，价格超过 £350 的产品需求正在上升。John Lewis 观察到，Bertha 和 Kamado Joe 等高端品牌的销售额在过去一年中激增了 150%。该零售商的户外与厨房采购员 Taylor Hawkins 表示：“我们的客户正越来越多地超越标准烧烤，寻求能够提供格调和戏剧化效果的高端烹饪体验。” Waitrose 的预制烧烤食品系列在 2026, 规模扩大了一倍，汉堡的周销售额增长了 71%，烤肉串增长了 27%。

近年来，美式烧烤——将肉类长时间熏制直到结缔组织分解（英国人所说的许多“barbecue”其实是美国人称之为“grilling”的快速烧烤）——在英国引起了热潮。2010, 作者兼烧烤先驱 Jon Finch（现就职于 Weber）在引进美式风格方面发挥了重要作用。

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FT Weekend 节庆 (FT Weekend Festival)

见证《金融时报》周末报的跃然纸上：

Camilla Cavendish 记者、广播员 及评论员

Angela Hartnett Murano 及 Cafe Murano 主厨兼业主

Ed Conway 作家

Yotam Ottolenghi Ottolenghi 集团 主厨兼老板

Es Devlin 艺术家及舞台 设计师

Audrey Tang 台湾网络 大使

2026年9月5日

伦敦肯伍德屋花园 (Kenwood House Gardens) 及 线上

加入我们 ft.com/festival

首席合作伙伴

美国银行 (BANK OF AMERICA)

官方目的地合作伙伴

Canada, naturally.

香槟合作伙伴

节庆之友

Booking.com

节庆参展商

BAILEY ROBINSON

节庆合作伙伴

bacqd

CLINIQUE LA PRAIRIE

GROVE

Pearson

Wealth Management

Sotheby's

VINTAGE ACQUISITIONS

品鉴合作伙伴

H VINEYARDS, HANPELIERE

KEWPIE

Locate University

mizkan

NH Foods

Niwaki

travelwise

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一个售卖牙买加香辣鸡 (Jerk Chicken) 的嘉年华摊位，这是重新定义英国烧烤的众多菜系之一

由 Taylor 和 Thompson 等女性引领的风格，利用了不同的技巧，并将其与当地的食材和风味相结合。例如，Taylor 将芦笋熏制，配以马苏里拉奶酪和热蜂蜜碧根果；而 Thompson 则用软香草黄油将扇贝连壳烹饪，烤沙丁鱼配番茄薄片 (carpaccio)，并用明火轻炙西葫芦，配以里科塔奶酪和柠檬。这涉及季节性食材，且可以（或许应该）包含英国制造的木炭。希望现在大多数人都知道不要在加油站前买浸透了汽油的炭包，更不用说一次性烤盘了。廉价木炭产业依赖于与非法砍伐森林、环境破坏和剥削劳工的深层联系。此外，它会让你的食物味道糟糕透顶。

作为可持续英国产品使用的大力倡导者，Taylor 指出，使用“极纯碳”木炭可以避免廉价产品的残酷现实——后者在运输过程中被浸泡在阻燃剂中，到达后又被浸泡在助燃剂中。她说，这些物质在烹饪前需要被烧掉，因此会有“等待灰色灰烬层出现”的指示。而使用优质木炭则可以“立即”烹饪（当然，前提是达到了合适的烹饪温度）。像 House of Charcoal 这样的供应商提供了一系列与森林周期和谐共生的英国生产商产品，例如总部位于科茨沃尔德 (Cotswolds) 的 Whittle & Flame，他们使用自然砍伐的木材。

无论你是否负担得起顶级的食材和优质的燃料，烧烤首先应该是关于风味的。蔬菜是一种具有成本效益的尝试方式，Thompson 建议将肉类切块“更多地作为一种调味品”，通过提供更小分量的方式来食用。此外，还有价格较低的替代品，“例如鹿肉，在英国非常丰富且是走地饲养的”。一旦你意识到烤架能为几乎任何类型的农产品增添独特风味，就很难回去了——而且，烧烤越来越多地被视为厨房的延伸。金融时报的饮食作家 Tim Hayward 表示，通常人们是根据烹饪方法来决定的。“如果我要给三四个人做牛排，绝对会讨论最好的做法。在室内？还是启动烧烤炉？它已成为烹饪曲目的一部分。”

英国烧烤正开始寻找自己的身份认同。“由于移民和国家的多样性，英国美食是世界上最好的美食之一，”Thompson 说道。她希望烧烤也能反映这一点，前提是厨师能够理解这些技巧的来源，并给予开发这些文化的文化应有的认可。

这也许才是真正正在发生的转变。厨师们不再试图寻找一种定义性的英国烧烤风格，而是越来越自信地利用这个国家自身的多元化——将来自其他地方的技术与时令农产品和当地食材相结合。在盎格鲁-撒克逊时期的盛宴之后一千五百年，围绕在火堆旁的聚会依然具有将人们凝聚在一起的力量。而食物则在变得越来越好。FT

通过发起 Grillstock（一个总部位于布里斯托的竞技烧烤节），将烧烤引入英国，而我当时是评委。芬奇（Finch）受到一次横跨美国烧烤之乡旅行的启发，采用了美国的模式——一种结构严谨的“低温慢烤”烹饪比赛——但他说，他将其“颠覆”了，通过向公众开放，让人们可以接触参赛队伍、品尝食物并观看现场评审。在其八年的运营期间，该活动吸引了 25 万名游客，并在全国范围内催生了类似的活动，如马尔顿（Maldon）的“烟火节”（Smoke & Fire Festival）和Herefordshire 的“牛肉库存”（Beef Stock）。诸如“rub”（干腌料）、“bark”（外壳）和“burnt ends”（焦边肉）等词汇成为了常用语，而 Bodean's、Pitt Cue 以及后来的 Smokestak 和 Temper 等餐厅的开业，则巩固了英国公众对“低温慢烤”烧烤的热爱。芬奇说，美国风格中有一种“神秘而神奇”的东西，“照看火坑，燃烧木材，彻夜不眠，给肉涂抹酱汁和喷雾，调节火候和空气。这完全是一门艺术。”

虽然这确实没错，但我一直对这种对美国风格的痴迷感到困惑。生活在伦敦，沉浸在美食中且对烧烤日益感兴趣，我看到在公共和私人空间中，都有一个可以从中汲取灵感的、折衷的多文化场景。东区用 Tandoor 烤炉烤出的泡沫馕饼，格林巷（Green Lanes）mangals 烤炉上滋滋作响的烤肉串，以及空气中飘散的pimento（allspice）香气——那是来自牙买加的 jerk 烹饪法，即将肉类抹上香料并在火上慢烤。我看到了经过数世纪磨练的技术，从温和的烟熏鱼，到精致的日本串烧（kushiyaki），在名为 binchotan 的特殊木炭的小型矩形烤炉上翻转。由于感到沮丧，我为美食刊物《Vitiles》写了一篇题为“烧烤而非兄弟烧烤”（barbecue not bro-becue）的文章，引起了积极的关注。核心问题在于：为什么关于英国烧烤的叙事只有两种——要么是你父亲的朋友穿着一件新奇的围裙在烤焦香肠，要么就是低温慢烤的美国风？其他的一切去哪儿了？

这种好奇心最终促成了我的著作《烈火》（Live Fire），在书中我追溯了从烟熏鲱鱼房到尼日利亚 suya 以及土耳其 ocakbasi 烤炉的烧烤传统。在观察这些不同的传统时

单词圈 No 118

and, ands, ant, ante, anted, anties, ants, assent, aunt, aunts, daunt, dauntless, daunts, dean, deans, den, dens, dent, dental, dents, dun, dune, dunes, duns, end, ends, laden, land, lands, lane, lanes, lean, leans, lend, lends, lens, lent, neat, neat, nests, net, nets, nude, nudes, nut, nuts, sand, sands, sane, sanes, sarest, sans, sedan, sedans, send, sends, sensual, sent, slant, slanted, slants, stand, stands, stun, stuns, sultan, sultans, sun, sundae, sundaes, suns, sunset, tan, tans, ten, tend, tends, tens, tun, tuna, tunas, tune, tuned, tunes, tuns, ulna, ulnae, ulnas, unless, unsalted, unseal, unseals, unseat, unseats, unset

本周竞猜答案

关联题 关联词为：温度形容词 1. 咬指甲 (Nail biting) 2. 沸水反应堆 (Boiling water reactor) 3. 克莱门特·艾特利 (Clement Attlee) 4. “燃烧甲板上的血” ("Blood on the burning deck") 5. “在敞开的火上烤栗子” ("Chestnuts roasting on an open fire") 6. 《热情似火》(Some Like It Hot) 7. 冷战 (Cold war) 8. 冷冻酸奶 (Frozen yoghurt) 9. 北冰洋 (Arctic) 10. 小苏打 (Baking soda)

图片题 野蛮人柯南 (Conan the Barbarian) + 多伊尔太太 (Mrs Doyle，出自《神父泰德》) = 柯南·多伊尔 (Conan Doyle)

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FT 周末杂志

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纵横字谜

NO 803 由 ALDHELM 设定

横向线索较为直接，纵向线索为隐喻谜题。

横向

1 工作场所工会官员 (4, 7) 10 加拿大树种 (5) 11 困境，关键路径 (5, 4) 12 非神职传教士 (3, 6) 13 状态不佳 (5) 14 充满，浸透 (6) 16 与血管相关的 (8) 16 叶片光亮且花朵巨大的植物 (8) 20 中国武术 (4, 2) 23 厌恶 (5) 24 被遗弃的孩子 (9) 26 厨房抹布 (3, 6) 27 开篇部分 (5) 28 镜像双胞胎 (4, 7)

字谜 No 802

纵向

2 幸运地在一天结束前获得软件的硬片段 (5) 3 在记录停止前先行，深度重混 (7) 4 关于隐藏的宣传在上升后大发议论 (6) 5 被冲突吞没的一个最终字符克服了乏味的魔法 (8) 6 在英国巅峰为故障旅游车寻找新路 (7) 7 他们将用持久变革的极端地带振兴无精打采的人 (8, 5) 8 例如，我发现关于青年教育的负责人 (8) 9 被派出的少年强烈鼓励医学专业人士 (6, 7) 15 杂交生物被修复时的庆祝活动 (8) 17 来自旧文件的能量源，我编辑过 (8) 19 带有荣誉的贵族的柔软部分 (7) 21 一个政党的垮台——劣质金酒 (7) 22 谷物菜肴，切碎的青柠围绕着坚果中心 (6) 25 用他们的古怪字符将当前新闻片段掩埋 (5)

关联题

作者：JAMES WALTON

这里所有的答案都以某种方式相关联。

一旦你发现了这种联系，初次不熟悉的答案将会变得更容易。

1 强迫性咬指甲习惯的科学名称是什么？ 2 在能源发电中，BWR 代表什么？ 3 谁是唯一出生于 1880 年代的英国首相？ 4 在费利西亚·海曼斯 1826 年的名诗《卡萨比安卡》的第一行中，那个男孩做了什么？ 5 由 Robert Wells 和 Mel Tormé 创作，由 Nat King Cole Trio（如图）首次录制的《圣诞之歌》通常以其第一行作为曲名——那是什么？

6 哪部 1959 年由比利·怀尔德执导的电影在 2000 年被美国电影学会 (American Film Institute) 评为 20 世纪最有趣的美国电影？ 7 乔治·奥威尔 1945 年随笔《你与原子弹》中的哪个两词短语成为了随后 46 年全球政治的特征？ 8 froyo 是哪种类型的食物？ 9 世界上最小的海洋是什么？ 10 小苏打在美国被称作什么？

图片题

作者：JAMES WALTON

这些图片相加等于谁或什么？

+

= ?

答案在对面

2026年7月25日

45

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真是太糟糕了 (WHAT FRESH HELL)

《奥德赛》的衍生剧集都去哪儿了？

罗伯特·希姆斯利 (Robert Shrimsley) 解决工作、生活与家庭的困境

插图：卢卡斯·瓦雷拉 (LUCAS VARELA)

坦白说，我有点担心。每个人都在对克里斯托弗·诺兰改编的荷马《奥德赛》电影赞不绝口，将其 variously 描述为“令人惊叹”、“杰作”以及“确实相当长”。我们已经预订了下周的票，在一家屏幕大到让马特·达蒙得花十年时间才能从一边走到另一边的电影院观看。想必在途中，他必须面对诸如自助购票机和人手不足的特许经营摊位这类挑战。“我的丈夫，为什么你离开这么久？”“它一直刷不进我的卡，潘内洛佩。”

总之，我肯定会错过它的。所以，我的担忧并非源于对这部电影的质疑。更多的是我没听到关于续集的任何消息。在结尾处，奥德赛与潘内洛佩一起走向日落，任务完成。难道没有人考虑过特许经营的问题吗？

如今，电影制片厂不再追求一部必须在阿兹特卡体育场规模的电影院里观看的惊艳影片。不，他们是通过围绕一个经证明的赢家建立特许经营体系来赚钱，包括衍生剧、续集之类的。在从该系列中榨干每一分钱之前，他们不会停止。

所以首先，我们绝对需要一部《奥德赛：前传》，不过好消息是，荷马已经向环球影业提交了一份方案。篇幅偏长，但三部曲前传很不错，本·阿弗莱克可以饰演年轻时的马特·达蒙。

我们甚至可以追溯得更远，效仿“蝙蝠侠”模式，拍一部《奥德赛之起源》电影。作为希腊神祇兼围巾制造商赫耳墨斯的曾孙，奥德赛有一天发现，另一首诗暗示他的亲生父亲并非拉厄耳忒斯，而是西绪福斯——后者最近被雇佣在山坡上永无止境地推滚一块巨石。奥德赛（朋友们叫他 Ody）制定了一个大胆的计划，将西绪福斯从冥界救出，并将那块巨石送回科罗拉多州。

然后我们需要《奥德赛 2：下一章》。当奥德赛和潘内洛佩向西航行时会发生什么？他们是否会被安提诺厄帮派中心怀仇恨的成员拦截？或者，他们可能收到了关于儿子特勒马库斯面临新威胁的消息，而这个年轻人显然值得拥有自己的衍生传奇。我是说，该死，这个男人应该有各种危险的

塞壬们就像是一个由古典美女组成的“查理的天使”小组，负责维护国际航道

冒险之旅去寻找他的父亲。荷马的诗篇共有 24 卷（我们都知道实际上是由克里斯托弗·马洛写的）。哪个白痴决定可以用一部三小时的电影把所有内容涵盖掉？

早期草案显示，事实上他最初被称为“电销马库斯” (Telemarketus)，在伊萨卡岛的一个呼叫中心做着一份吃力不讨好的工作，直到神在梦中显现，告诉他注定要成为一名孝子、一位国王，以及至少三部电影和可能一部电视剧的主角。毕竟，我们从未看到奥德赛离开后他过得如何，尽管我们知道他在詹姆斯·乔伊斯的《尤利西斯》中以戴达罗斯之名客串出演。原诗实际上并未将他推向王位，但电影已经解决了这个异常点，所以我们认为没有问题。

然后，是一些衍生剧，我们可以塑造几个令人同情的角色。也许独眼巨人在某种程度上被误解了。诚然，他是一个食人巨人，但就像电视剧《德克斯特》一样，结果证明他主要只吃坏人和精神病患者。

我也看到了塞壬（sirens）的巨大潜力，如果你仔细观察，她们其实就像是一个由古典美女组成的“查理的天使”小组，致力于维护国际航道。她们的背景故事可能会大受欢迎。我们认为这与《与卡戴珊同行》（Keeping Up with the Kardashians）差不多，但整容手术少一些。而卡吕普索（Calypso）——那个在产生怜悯之心之前将奥德修斯囚禁七年的女人——显然自带一个《女巫》（Wicked）风格的救赎弧光，并且有潜力成为一系列“食莲者”健康咖啡馆的代言人。

一个令人担忧的问题是缺乏优秀的《奥德赛》周边产品。女巫、独眼巨人（Cyclops）和漩涡都很好，但它们并不太像能做成毛绒玩具的东西。荷马可能是古典诗歌的顶峰，但这人对零售市场一窍不通。动作玩偶显然有空间，但有人需要在下一部电影中加入一个可爱的毛茸茸伙伴，一个只能发出动物叫声，同时帮助我们的英雄克服一些重大挑战的角色。

好消息是，我们绝对预见到了环球影城会推出一款游乐设施。为了契合电影的精神，游乐项目本身仅持续四分钟，但排队则要持续数年。放松，这段旅程才刚刚开始。FT

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FT Weekend Magazine

JULY 25 2026

Features

16

On his bike

Following the online Uber rider By Eve Upton-Clark

18 COVER STORY

The low-tox paradox

Fear over exposure to everyday chemicals is changing how we shop and live By Kenza Bryan

28

A war of words

How the world's biggest pirate library helped shape AI and forced a reckoning over global copyright By Felix Bazalgette

40

Grill power

Britain's barbecue renaissance By Helen Graves

PAGE 18. THE QUEST FOR A NON-TOXIC LIFESTYLE

Departments

Intellect

9 Oliver Roeder

The prediction game

10 Departments

Reports from FT bureaux

12 Gallery

Aman Alam in India

14 Simon Kuper

The art of writing a column

Appetites

35 Jancis Robinson

Amber gems from Georgia

37 Jay Rayner

Bancuet 88, St Katharine Docks

38 Recipe Club

Golden dough puffs, a perfect antipasto

Plus

44 Games

46 Robert Shrimsley

Where are all The Odyssey spin-offs?

FT Weekend Magazine issue number 1,186 • FT.com/magazine • @FTMag

Printed by Rousta Media Group in Belgium and published by The Financial Times Ltd, Bracken House, 1 Friday Street, London EC4M 9BT. ©The Financial Times Ltd 2026. No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form without the prior express permission of the publisher. Publishing: Dorota Gwillam - Global Director, Luxury & Weekend Portfolio - dorota.gwillam@ft.com Issue: Pella - Commercial sales & product manager - www.pella@ft.com Production: Mark Fridby - Advertising production - mark.fridby@ft.com/magazine@ft.com

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ON THE COVER PHOTOGRAPH by LUKE & NIK

JULY 25 2026

5

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Letters

THE LONG SHADOW OF CHINA'S ONE-CHILD POLICY

by Edward White

Fascinating article. It captures the complexity of modern life, not just in China but everywhere. To me, the one-child policy shows what happens when logic wins over humanity. The policy seemed so simple. It had a clear goal that anyone could understand and no one could really argue with. It has taken an artist to show the reality. WORDLE SALAD VIA FT.COM

Very interesting article on population control weighing the pros and cons, for both the individual and society. Although the conclusion seems to be to avoid strict controls, the question mark of a lack of resources to support an increasing population remains to be answered. Simultaneously, we can see the results of negative population growth in western countries and Japan, where, even though no such controls exist, there are serious questions. VIJAY MODI, LONDON

Beautifully written article that goes beyond the economic and policy consequences of the one-child policy to show the complex layers of selfishness, culpability and hedonism. RED VIA FT.COM

THE NORWEGIAN CASE FOR MEDIOCRACY

by Jinu Koola

Easier to be mediocre when you're sharing half of Europe's natural wealth among five million people. If you go that way, citizens in Monaco or Dubai also enjoy mediocrity, but I still believe the American model built in Boston, LA, NYC and Silicon Valley is more inspirational for future generations. ARTSY VIA FT.COM

What a wonderfully written and insightful article. As an American, it seems to me that hyperfinancialisation, combined with our lack of shared adversity in recent decades, has lulled us into 1) thinking money is the only meaningful social metric, and 2) not believing in "we" any longer, a dreary, dreadful outcome that isn't going particularly well. There appears to be much ancestral wisdom baked into the

Norwegian perspective, news we can use to re-establish "we". And we must, because the Marlboro Man mythos is largely a fiction. DHARMANAUT VIA FT.COM

BEYOND THE PYRAMIDS

by Laura Spinney

I love Egypt but the Grand Egyptian Museum is so stuffed with treasure that it was, at least for me, overwhelming. Being already on so many bucket lists makes visiting, even this early in its life as a destination, potentially an ordeal. Go with a guide and make a plan for your visit before stepping inside. If you visit the south of Egypt, make a point of visiting the Luxor Museum, which by contrast is small, calm, well lit, well signed and carefully curated with impeccable sculpture. Bigger is not always better. LES J VIA FT.COM

DAVE EGGERS: THE CREATIVITY CONUNDRUM

by Murad Ahmed

Dave Eggers seems like a thoughtful, well-meaning guy. I certainly agree that any AI-generated novel would be derivative, by its very nature. But so are many novels penned by human beings. BOTANYWHIG VIA FT.COM

EXPLAIN IT TO ME LIKE I'M 10

by Tim Harford

Mr (and Mrs) Harford have hit the nail on the head. Simplifying language and concepts is neither condescending nor dumbing them down, but crucially allows those less steeped in your own knowledge to understand and appreciate something.

Could he now persuade the creators of a whole range of things to embrace this concept? It would lower blood pressure around the world and make all our lives so much better if the design and process of using anything to do with media, technology or even packaging embraced this simple idea. MELISSA HAWKER, HEREFORDSHIRE

One of the best uses of AI is to take complex scientific papers and request a version for 10-year-olds. It's also worth considering that constraints can stimulate creativity when clearly articulated. David Ogilvy, the advertising guru, was fed

JULY 18 CHINA'S ONE-CHILD POLICY

up with people assuming he could wave a creative magic wand and said famously: "Give me the freedom of a tight (creative) brief." A true, liberating constraint that restricts one's freedom in one sense, but allows greater freedom in another direction. MOD MAGUS VIA FT.COM

THE JOY OF WATCHING GENIUSES DELIVER

by Simon Kuper

Thankfully, none of the exponents of the "star" model of international football won the World Cup. Instead, the best example of el juego colectivo, playing as a team, walked off with the trophy, and there were also some other good examples during the tournament (eg Cabo Verde, DR Congo).

When Spain won the European Championship two years ago, they said that this was what differentiated them from the England team and ultimately why they prevailed. Hopefully, el juego colectivo will always prevail. DUNCAN STEPHENSON, YORKSHIRE

WHAT ARE THE RULES FOR POWER NAPPING?

by Robert Shrimsley

I heard of a journalist in a pre-digital era who, needing a power nap, tilted his chair so that it rested against the office door. When the door was opened he was propelled forward, his fingers landing on the keys of his typewriter. CHRISTIE BURTON, WILTSHIRE

I find dribbling useful as it wakes me up.

JOHN GOLDINGAY, OXFORDSHIRE

REVIEW: JUL'S, ST JAMES'S

by Jay Rayner

Brilliant excoriation, Jay. Thanks for the warning. I will give this place a wide berth!

RELUCTANT BANKER VIA FT.COM

TO CONTRIBUTE Comment on our articles online or email magazineletters@ft.com. Please include a daytime telephone number and full address (not for publication). Letters may be edited.

By the time I got to "Humility is our key ingredient", I assumed that Jay had invented a fictional restaurant he could have fun tearing apart as a satire on the worst excesses of style over substance. But unless he also created the website for Jul's, this appears to be a real place where bad things happen to good ingredients. DANIEL EMERSON VIA FT.COM

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INSIDE Simon Kuper's parting thoughts P14

Intellect

UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST

Playing to win in the alternate World Cup

by OLIVER ROEDER

ILLUSTRATION by ALBERTO MIRANDA

TWO ACTIVITIES HAVE OCCUPIED MY SUMMER THUS far to the extent that it is now difficult to imagine my life without them.

The first was a World Cup pool, designed and contested by members of my family. There were eight of us and we drafted teams in turn, each assembling portfolios of six nations, and whichever portfolio scored the most goals won. The second was conducted in the FT newsroom, a World Cup blackjack game, as in the casino card game, its goal being to choose any three countries that would combine for as close to 21 total goals as possible, without going over.

To prepare, I administered millions of hypothetical World Cups inside a computer. Invisible, digitised Messis, Mbappés and Bellinghams silently scored tens of millions of goals at the clip of a few gigahertz, all stored on hard disk. I aggregated these millions of cups, moulding them into piles, sculpting a likeness of the tournament. By feeling its surfaces, I learnt how its groups might unfold, who was likely to play whom in the knockouts and how I might get the better of my loved ones and colleagues.

JULY 25 2026

9

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Intellect

This was a newly maximalist World Cup, with its 48 teams, up from 32, and a complex system for determining advancing teams and placing them in the knockout stage. At least once, the American broadcaster Fox displayed an incorrect route to the final. All the better, then, to unleash the brute force of simulation. (The tournament in 2030 may feature 64 teams, an expansion that simulators ought to welcome.)

As a species we have modelled and simulated natural phenomena and human affairs for centuries. We built orreries and played war games. In the computer, we generate nuclear weapons and weather, things that are too dangerous or impractical to recreate in real life. The computer simulation is "a process that imitates one process by another process", as defined by the philosopher Stephan Hartmann.

My processed and chosen blackjack teams - Canada, South Korea and Switzerland - scored exactly 21 goals. My obsession with simulation has now earned me dozens of pounds. This success featured dumb luck too, of course. My simulations had predicted 6.7, 5.6 and 7.0 goals for these three teams respectively (hedging against busting). The true figures were 9, 2 and 10. Even the simulations gave me only a 7.3 per cent chance of getting 21 on the nose. But Dan Ndoye angled one more in for Switzerland against Argentina, and then the Swiss obliged further by getting knocked out.

But this is beside the point, and in the family pool I finished fifth. (My simulator had told me that, when the Netherlands were eliminated, my chances of catching my brother wilted to 1 per cent.) The allure was always the simulation itself. My simulations were at the whim of countless choices of modelling and calibration: how to measure team strength, mapping that strength to goals. But whatever I chose, I would incubate a million futures, multiverse World Cups that might have been but never shall be, the aggregation of which can place a probabilistic structure on - get a sense of - even the most complicated tournament that might be dreamt up in a Fifa boardroom.

Just now, I simulated a fresh batch of a million 2026 World Cups, as if this summer had never happened. In 0.005 per cent, Curaçao were world champions. In one of those, simulation number 437,824, they played Argentina to 0-0 in the final and won on penalties. Somewhere on my hard drive, that is what happened.

All this, I hate to admit, is a handy application of generative artificial intelligence. Rather than merely asking the AI which countries to draft, or what set is likely to combine for 21, an offence to which some of my colleagues have pleaded guilty, the AI can and ought to be used to create the simulating arena, to spread the agar in the Petri dish, even for non- or quasi-coders

like me. This tactic is crucial: it transforms a chatbot from a black box to the builder of a clear plastic box, an ant farm in which we watch worlds form.

Strip the exercise to its bare essentials. Simulate thousands of random walks, a pixel moving madly around a two-dimensional plane for, say, 10,000 steps, and draw that path. I have built such a tool in the past few minutes, random, walk.js. There is no practical application of these walks, just as there is no practical application of a walk through the park. They are valuable nonetheless. Spread the images of the walks on your screen. They tell stories of their process. This is digital ikebana. They are mesmerising and serve as a kind of in silico meditation.

When studying an ant farm, we are not interested in any individual ant or where it goes, but in the emergence of the tunnels through the earth, the shape of the system. It's just a welcome side effect, then, that these things can be useful to triumph over your colleagues at football games.

Admittedly, this interest may be a personal quirk; I've written here before, for example, about my obsession with digital power-washing simulators.

This ant-farm activity, I believe, stands

I would incubate a million futures, multiverse World Cups that might have been but never shall be

at some angle of opposition to another recent capitotechnical phenomenon, the prediction market. Advertisements for companies such as Polymarket and Kalshi lit up pitchside hoardings and saturated television in the US during the cup. Together about $6bn was traded on their main tournament-winner markets.

Prediction markets collapse all future worlds into one number - a price: 59 cents for Spain, for example, just before the final. The sharps on these sites certainly run their own modelled simulations. But the temptation for the broader consuming public is strong to read the price and ignore the swarm of worlds from which it is made. This is like viewing the sculpture through a pinhole.

This matters beyond football. Take elections, for example, where a single price collapses all world events, all policy positions, all rhetoric. It collapses all public-opinion polls, which in turn collapse voters.

Philosophers of science, bless them, have struggled with the epistemology of computer simulations. What kind of knowledge-producing thing is a simulation? There has been among them over decades a pendular debate about their nature. On the one hand they are scientific models; on the other they are experiments. A newer strand of thought suggests they are a scientific instrument in their own right. They are. And they teach us not about the ant but about the earth. FT

Oliver Roeder is a commissioning editor on FT Weekend Magazine. Tim Harford is away

DEPARTMENTS

REPORTS from LESSER-KNOWN

FT BUREAUX

ANIMALS

Big feelings

One of the most memorable moments in British television history came when a baby elephant named Lulu appeared on a 1969 episode of Blue Peter. Overexcited by the studio environment, she caused a frenzy when she relieved herself on set - twice - and nearly crushed one of the hosts.

SOURCE: BBC

FILM

Stage names

At the beginning of his career, future Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio struggled to find an agent. One suggested that the then 11-year-old DiCaprio wouldn't find work unless he used a pseudonym - Lenny Williams - deeming the actor's real name "too ethnic" to appeal to American audiences. DiCaprio refused, remained jobless despite dozens of auditions, and nearly gave up acting altogether. Finally, about two years later, DiCaprio found an agent who accepted his name, and his career took off with a string of commercials.

SOURCE: VARIOUS

MUSIC

Strokes of genius

As a young adult, Mozart wrote multiple comic canons full of insults and toilet humour. While the songs are meant to be sung with friends after a few drinks, Mozart never lowered his musical standards, writing clever counterpoint, albeit set to vulgar lyrics. Highlights include:

Bona Nox! bist a rechts Ox (Good night! You're a real ox) O du eselhafter Peierl (Oh, you asinine Peierl), to mock the Austrian singer Johann Nepomuk Peierl - Leck mich im Arsch - the most famous - which is essentially titled "kiss my arse"

SOURCE: VARIOUS

LAST WEEK'S THEME: ASSISTANCE

10

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Intellect

GALLERY

AMAN ALAM

by JOSH LUSTIG

It was while the Indian artist Aman Alam was still at university that his grandmother, Naseem, started to show the first signs of Alzheimer's. Initially, his mother moved back to the family home in Agra to care for her, before Alam himself stepped in as her primary caregiver. 'I wasn't fully equipped for the responsibilities of caregiving,' Alam tells me, 'and so I had to learn a lot about it through the day-to-day process of just being there.'

Alam describes his grandmother as 'a foundational figure' in his early childhood. She was a retired history professor and college principal, and, in Alam's eyes, 'she had this fierce, larger-than-life presence'. Alam spent almost every summer with her in his youth.

Making pictures with his grandmother after her diagnosis was, Alam says, almost an unconscious reaction. What would eventually become his project Ozymandias, named after the poem by Shelley, began 'simply as an anchoring tool'. It was, he says, 'a way for me to come to terms with her Alzheimer's. In a situation that felt increasingly unstable, the camera felt familiar, and the familiar felt safe.'

Much of Alam's work up to this point investigated the external power systems that shape our world, whether industrial, ecological or existential. 'I look at the mind in a similar way,' Alam says. 'I feel the human mind is a very unreliable narrator, very susceptible to suggestion and every 'truth' it offers is essentially contingent and constructed, fed to us in a manner that least disturbs our own established structures and biases.'

Alam's current exhibition examines what he describes as the 'architecture of memory systems' and features a large language model trained on his grandmother's histories. '[It is] a metaphor for a human mind,' Alam says, 'which then hallucinates – an inherent feature of AI – on her factual archives to create alternate histories that connect missing moments in her archive.'

What is real and what is not? Something in photography lends itself to the depiction of cognitive disintegration. Perhaps it's the illusion of reality that it presents. The way its mechanical eye renders surfaces is at once so clear and precise, and yet it seems ripe for subversion. Solids can appear liquid, like Naseem's hand and shawl. Liquid can appear solid, like the water running from the tap. The edges of a photograph constrain and omit so much. Everything can be read as a symbol for something else, a Rorschach test for our own subjectivities and our own crystallised beliefs about who we are, what we know and what we can no longer remember. FT

Aman Alam is the recipient of the Serendipity Arles Grant 2025. His work is on view at Les Rencontres de la Photographie at various venues in Arles, France, until October 4. serendipityarts.org

'NASEEM IN PRAYER'

12

FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE

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'CLEANING THE DISHES'

JULY 25 2026

13

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Intellect

WORLD VIEW

An end and a beginning

by SIMON KUPER

ILLUSTRATION by HARRY HAYSOM

After 24 years of writing columns for the FT, this is my last. I was a sports columnist from 2002 to 2010 before switching to this column about more or less anything. As a goodbye, let me recount what it's been like doing the job in our peculiar era.

My approach was that every column starts with one original idea – or at least a thought that is new to most readers. The idea should be something that can be stated in a sentence: for instance, that some Maga folk such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk had formative childhood experiences in apartheid South Africa. What's not a column is restating the conventional wisdom. That seems pointless, though I'm sure I sometimes ended up doing it.

Every idea came from me. Nobody at the FT ever told me what to say or what political line to take. All those years, I spent most of my brain-power hunting ideas. I did it by listening to interesting people – in conversation, at conferences and by reading their books. It helps to live in a global city where people from everywhere pass through. English-language columnists tend to concentrate in London and New York, so I hope that writing from Paris, where the conversation is a little different, gave my column something distinct.

Once I had an idea, I would research the topic in depth. Sometimes, while doing that, I'd discover that my idea was wrong or unoriginal, or I'd find a better idea buried beneath it.

Then I compressed endless pages of research into 740 words. That's where structuring comes

in. Most weeks I spent longer structuring the column than writing it. I'd plan, almost to the sentence, which thought or quote went where.

The writing, typically on Monday morning, only took an hour or two. Over the decades, I've internalised my writing rules. Most come from George Orwell's 14-page essay 'Politics and the English Language'. I've added others, such as 'Be wary of sentences longer than about 20 words' or 'End the sentence on a strong word.'

Having written the piece, I'd spend hours fact-checking it before sending it to the FT for even more fact-checking. FT readers have deep collective knowledge and will usually spot any error. Whenever one crept in, I felt deep shame.

My time as a columnist divides into two halves: before and after 2016. The advent of Donald Trump and Brexit made my column more political and revised my worldview. In particular, 2016 taught me how deeply many people distrust journalism, and how their politics are usually driven less by economic self-interest than by their identity. Lots of people who had felt disrespected by 'elites' (which usually meant the cultural rather than the business elite) felt seen by Trump and the Brexiters. Meanwhile, many liberals (in the broadest sense), disillusioned with their political parties, came to identify more with their newspapers. For both sides, columns seemed to matter more than before.

Being a columnist after 2016 required a new quality: not minding being shouted at. I got end-

endless emails and comments telling me I was lying, whether on orders from the FT's proprietor or editor or advertisers, or as part of some more complicated conspiracy. The sorry truth is that I actually believe the stuff I write.

People often accused me of using the column to achieve political ends. That always surprised me, because I don't imagine that journalism changes anything nowadays, when nothing we say about Trump or international law or expertise seems to have any effect.

My time divides into before and after 2016. Trump and Brexit revised my worldview

What we write might even be counter-productive. Many people will believe the opposite of whatever 'the media' say. I kept doing the job because it's fun, a paid self-education and a form of bearing witness.

I got a lot wrong. In particular, I mostly neglected perhaps the biggest issue of our time: climate change. It's a difficult topic for journalists. The fundamental story never changes:

climate change is dangerous, and we need to act. It's also a story without characters, and as every screenwriter knows, people need characters to care. I'll keep looking for ways to write about climate, but now as a feature writer – my new job at the FT.

From now on, I'll be writing for this magazine and the wider FT Weekend paper in more depth on all sorts of subjects. I'll miss this column, but it was probably time. I suspect I've said what I had to say. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity. I may never have a more interesting job. Thank you for reading. FT

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ELIZABETH HARROD & STEVEN MCRAE, SOLOIST & PRINCIPAL, THE ROYAL BALLET

SAVOIR

EXTRAORDINARY BEDS

savoirbeds.com

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Intellect

Last month, an extreme-heat warning was declared in London and the metropolis was stagnant. The city had collectively decided it was simply too hot to do much of anything. Many of its residents therefore turned en masse to the army of app-based delivery drivers who shuttle meals, groceries and bulky boxes containing portable fans across the city. It approached 30C as Bryce Pritchett, a member of this army, pulled up in front of his apartment building on his e-bike.

"You must be hot," I said. I'm British and cannot help but make small talk about the weather.

"It does get sweaty inside the helmet," he said. A small, high-definition camera was affixed to the chin of the helmet and it pointed straight at me. There was also a windshield-wiper-esque contraption secured to the top, for rainy conditions. "It's a conversation starter," he said.

Pritchett is a London delivery driver. He is also a YouTuber, and he films his delivery shifts for content, under the name "London Hustle". Across his social media channels, he has a combined following of over 1.5 million people. I am one of them. The windshield wiper was a gift from a sponsor.

Pritchett had just finished filming a sponsored video for a bike-rental service used by couriers. He drove his e-bike slowly towards an underground parking garage. I followed on foot. Inside the garage, Pritchett pointed to a yellow and black Carrera Vengeance. This bike was a gift from his mother for his 16th birthday and was lightly covered in cobwebs. Pritchett won't part with it, for sentimental reasons. Further inside two more of his e-bikes were parked up. He stores another 30 at his mother's house in Coventry. Pritchett enjoys lining them up in the garden and looking at them sometimes. All but two were furnished by brands in return for a feature in one of his videos.

The uninitiated might ask: What is interesting about watching someone deliver lunch to office buildings, and McDonald's breakfasts to hungover students? "People that haven't watched it don't get it," said Pritchett. "It's more than that."

He introduces each video the same way: "Hello guys and welcome back to another video." From there, he zooms across central and north-west London, navigating cars, buses and Lime bikes as he delivers takeaways, precariously packaged coffees, groceries, vapes, beers, bouquets and balloons to office blocks and apartment buildings.

"London creates its own stories," he told me, as we baked on the terrace of his apartment building, overlooking Islington. "Someone can walk out into the road - which happened once, they were fine - and that becomes the title and thumbnail."

I discovered Pritchett's content by accident. A video came on auto-play and I was transported from my Manhattan apartment to a traffic-lined Tower Bridge. I found myself strangely soothed by the low-stakes drama of drinks spillages and traffic diversions. "A lot of people say it's just quite relaxing," Pritchett said. "I can be out in the pouring rain and they're tucked up in bed, but they still feel like they're there with me." It scratches the same itch, I imagine, as tuning into the shipping forecast, or watching livestreams of cruise ports.

Pritchett is not the only one creating this gig content. The business model of atomising labour into a homescreen of apps has been particularly

DISPATCH

The double hustle

Delivery drivers are filming their daily rounds for online viewing, transforming the gig economy into content.

By Eve Upton-Clark

appealing under techno-capitalism. Throw a camera in the mix and the lines blur between consumer and producer. "I think I was probably one of the first delivery-driver YouTubers, social media people, whatever we're called," he said. "Now there's probably hundreds, if not thousands."

London Eats, the screen name of another prominent driver, starts recording his shifts in the early hours. Luke Delivers films his POV delivering for Amazon and Uber. Atlanta Delivers takes the Sussex area along on her shifts, delivering food from her car. I asked Pritchett if he knows these other delivery-content creators. He'd seen their work but, he said, "there's not a secret chat or anything".

PRITCHETT'S APARTMENT IS MEZZANINE-STYLE with high ceilings and tall windows that were closed to block out the heating sun. I asked if he lives alone, which he does. I asked how old he is. Twenty-six, he said. "This isn't normal for me," he added, likely noticing my impressed expression.

Pritchett moved to London in 2018 to study business at university. He signed up to deliver soon after graduating. At the time he was delivering seven days a week. He aimed to make £40 a day to cover his rent, and food from the reduced section of the supermarket. After his landlord sold the apartment he was renting with a friend, he lived out of hostels, bunking in a room with 12 others for £10 a night.

It was six months into the gig when he had the idea to start filming his shifts, after he was asked to deliver 15 pumpkins for a customer around Halloween. Pritchett had been addicted to YouTube growing up. "It was like my version of TV,"

he said. "I thought maybe I could kind of fuse the two." The signs of that childhood interest were there in his apartment. A silver YouTube plaque displayed pride of place. An insulated delivery bag with his channel name and the YouTube logo sat in a floor-to-ceiling shelving unit. Pritchett now speaks to a contact at the site weekly to discuss video ideas, analytics and general life. I asked if he always knew the channel would be successful. "I think I always secretly knew, but I didn't let myself believe it," he said.

His channel is a mix of "hero" videos - ones he knows will perform well with his core audience - and more experimental ones. In one of the latter, Pritchett challenged himself to accept every order that came through. After a few pick-ups from Iceland and Sainsbury's, he got another supermarket order. It was an 18-minute drive across London for £6. "That is an order I would never ever take usually," he said. When he got there, the order was 32 500ml bottles of water and two five-litre bottles of water. Later in the video, he got an order from a Chinese restaurant paying £1.25. "Hopefully this was a good insight into why you shouldn't accept every single order," he concluded.

When Pritchett started filming his shifts in 2019, he strapped an old GoPro to his chest and shot whatever was in his oncoming path. The camera battery would only last about 20 minutes, so he would ride with spares in each pocket. Over time, Pritchett built up the confidence to start making observations about the weather, London landmarks, the inconveniences he encountered during pick-ups and drop-offs. "Wireless mics didn't exist, so I was taping wired microphones to my chest like

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Pritchett started filming his shifts after he was asked to deliver 15 pumpkins for Halloween

PRITCHETT WITH HIS BRANDED DELIVERY BAG

an undercover police officer," he said. Now a tiny microphone sits just inside his helmet, attached by a magnet and connected wirelessly to a sleek camera. "That's when a lot of content in this space boomed," he said. "It became so easy."

FOOD DELIVERIES MAKE UP LESS THAN 5 PER CENT of Pritchett's income these days. And he has an exclusive sponsorship deal with Uber Eats. "It's a bit of a long story," he said. "They'd seen some of the videos." While he declined to share exact numbers, he now earns five figures a month.

I asked if we could go online and see how long before an order came in. It was 2.30pm on a Monday, just after the lunch rush. "I'm going to guess less than three minutes," Pritchett said. It took two. The battered iPhone he uses for deliveries pinged with an order from a nearby Waitrose. It paid £3.84. The phone pinged again. Another order from the same Waitrose paying £7.92. Groceries, though increasingly common orders, are some of Pritchett's least favourite deliveries. The wait times can be slow, which eats into potential earnings. This particular Waitrose is also notoriously bad, he told me. "It's kind of got a reputation in the delivery scene."

McDonald's is even worse, he said, and drink spillages happen often. One of his videos - titled "I DELIVERED McDONALDS ONLY for an ENTIRE SHIFT! Frustrating..." - has racked up almost half a million views. "People like to see me suffer," Pritchett laughed. But the clickbait isn't guaranteed to perform better than any regular shift. Once or twice a week, Pritchett will film for three to four hours. "It's the sweet spot," he said. "You get enough con-

tent to make at least a 25-minute video. There's enough time for things to happen, and you make a decent amount - maybe £30 to £60."

Delivery drivers have become essential workers in an increasingly "frictionless" world. No longer must customers exchange pleasantries with cashiers. No need for small talk with the driver dropping off plastic-wrapped takeaways. We can, however, watch their entire shift, while we eat what they deliver, on a couch in front of a screen.

I asked Pritchett how other delivery drivers feel about his content. Naturally, for every delivery-driver-YouTuber who can pick and choose their shifts, there are thousands more working long hours for objectively low pay. "A lot of them are curious," he said. "They'll ask questions and ask how they can do it, and I try to give them bits of advice."

Social media is a popular side hustle, as is delivery driving. Combine the two, and you might have a lucrative concept. For Pritchett, the grind of each is part of the appeal - hence his channel name. "Delivering as well is very gamified," Pritchett said, as he showed me around the app. Uber Eats puts on "quests", particularly during busy times, incentivising drivers with extra money for meeting specific targets. It might be easy to see the fun in it - if your livelihood were not dependent on delivering enough orders to make ends meet.

"DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE T-SHIRTS?" PRITCHETT asked. From a cupboard he pulled out one that he sells online for £34.99 in either green or black. On the back is a graphic of Pritchett on his e-bike, a delivery bag and Big Ben. On the front is a logo he made in Photoshop. He proudly informed me

that each T-shirt drop sold out in a matter of hours. He also sells branded delivery bags, power banks, dust caps and stickers. The excess stock is stored at his mother's house, and she helps pack orders.

Pritchett also employs two editors. There are privacy rules that make the process time-consuming. Blurring customers' faces and addresses, frame by frame, takes the longest. It used to take Pritchett multiple days to edit a video on a used, cracked iMac. Now his set-up is a lot sleeker. The first editor does a rough cut of the footage. The second editor adds the music and graphics. Finally, the video comes back to Pritchett for approval.

As the channel finds more success, Pritchett delivers less and less. "In 20 years I'm probably not going to be a delivery driver," he said. Instead, Pritchett hopes to follow in the footsteps of other YouTubers he admires. "They had a niche," he said. "Once you build up an audience within that niche, you can kind of branch out and do whatever you want. Enough of that audience will probably follow you." But Pritchett isn't ready to give up delivering just yet. "Sometimes I'll go out and not film," he said. "I really do enjoy the freedom of just being on two wheels."

As Pritchett walked me out of his mazelike apartment building, we stumbled across a lost Deliveroo driver. Pritchett leaned over and looked at the address on the app, and tried to tell the driver that the correct floor was upstairs. He still seemed slightly confused as we left him next to the lifts. I wonder if he has a YouTube channel. IT

Eve Upton-Clark is a freelance writer from London living in New York

LONDON HARTLE

JULY 25 2026

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EVERY

THING

WHAT'S MORE DANGEROUS: THE RISKS TO OUR HEALTH POSED BY CHEMICALS IN EVERYDAY PRODUCTS, OR THE OBSESSIVE QUEST TO AVOID THEM? BY KENZA BRYAN

IS

TOXIC

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LUKE & NIK

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ne night towards the end of last year I was up late, sitting at the table in my tiny kitchen in Hackney, east London, doing my low-tox homework. I had just emailed the chief executive of British supermarket Marks and Spencer to ask if he would consider stocking bras that are 100 per cent organic cotton,

and I was about to start Googling toothpastes. I was looking for one that did contain fluoride, a crucial ingredient to fight tooth decay, but did not contain any hormone-disrupting chemicals or complicated ingredients made from oil and gas.

For months, I'd been trying to detoxify my home. It started as a fun experiment in working out how to get rid of everyday products containing chemicals linked to health problems. But, I had to admit, the endeavour was starting to take up more of my time, money and energy than seemed reasonable. Across the room, the remains of my attempts to make my own dishwasher tablets from bicarbonate of soda and citric acid were bubbling over violently from the sides of an ice-cube tray. Perhaps, I thought, I was in danger of taking this too far.

It started with a gift from my older sister. Last year, she bought a second-hand instruction manual on home-made cleaning and beauty products and started handing out her creations to the family: deodorants made from arrowroot powder and coconut oil, or tiny vials of home-mixed moisturising oils in lieu of shop-bought serums. It tapped into my own latent sense of unease. For years, I'd been grossed out by the layers of plastic wrapping and the complicated ingredients lists on household products. So I started reading up on the science behind toxins, whittling down the contents of my cupboards. Inevitably, my social media feeds began to fill up with related content that promised to help me rid my world of dangerous chemicals.

You will undoubtedly have heard of "forever" chemicals - the kind that accumulate in our bodies over the years and are passed from mother to child. You might also have read about hormone-disrupting "everywhere" chemicals or the less prevalent bisphenols, used in turn to soften the plastics that wrap around cartons of cherry tomatoes and line our disposable coffee cups.

It's a disturbing idea. Like small aliens, some of the ingredients in household goods can migrate into our bodies through skin contact, dust, food and water. Absorbing even the tiniest amounts of these hormone disruptors every day is enough to change the way our bodies work, some researchers say. It's a bit like setting a compass half a degree too far north on a hike and ending up on the unpleasant side of the mountain range after dark.

Over the past few years, manufacturers have paid billions of dollars in settlements and fines to resolve large-scale environmental claims, bolstered by scientists establishing strong links between chemical exposure and health problems such as cancers or autoimmune conditions. Similar litigation is under way in France, Australia and elsewhere.

The publicity around these high-profile cases has awakened concerns about the deviously small quantities of contaminants that lurk in our food and consumer goods. The EU has brought in restrictions on hundreds of chemicals over the past few years. Starting next month, it will enforce one of the world's strictest limits on forever chemicals in food packaging. Faced

with this new awareness, it's not surprising that more people are moving to take matters into their own hands. It is hard to guard against well-known killers such as air or water pollution. But we can vet the contents of our bathroom and kitchen cupboards quite easily. I wanted to give it a go.

As it turns out, researching toxic elimination is not as straightforward as my day job, which is reporting on climate change. There is, after all, a rock-solid link between burning fossil fuels and rising global temperatures. The science I read about how tiny doses of chemicals interact with human bodies is more recent and more contested.

Those who care most about this stuff are often just as controversial. Many have ties to far-right politics in the US, where "trad-wife" and manosphere figures have promoted conspiracy theories about chemicals. In his recent book The Last Men, the British far-right influencer Charles Cornish-Dale, who calls himself a "raw egg nationalist", wrote that hormone disruption from consumer goods and diets was threatening the dominance of alpha males globally.

Equally fascinating - and disconcerting - are the young, mostly female influencers dressed top to toe in organic cotton who have started showing up on my Instagram feed with tips on how to detoxify. They seem to have endless time to cook and craft from scratch. Many are intently focused on both detoxification and having lots of children. They do not, for the most part, have science degrees.

At first, I found my domestic detoxification pretty easy. I got rid of pans with non-stick chemical coatings and checked that new furniture had not been sprayed with potent mixtures meant to slow the spread of fire. Most products have a decent low-tox alternative if you look hard enough. You can replace your plastic tubs with glass jars, your microfibre cloths with flamboyant ostrich-feather dusters. You can even buy sachets of tiny parasitic wasps instead of spraying insecticide on your precious woollens.

Other decisions come with perplexing trade-offs. The ingredient in stain removers that some research has linked to toxicity also makes shirts whiter. Most suncreams use hormone-disrupting compounds, first to filter UV rays and then to carry that peachy holiday smell to our noses. The risks of skin damage and cancer from not wearing it are much higher. I even searched online for a pair of knickers made from organic, unbleached cotton, with ingredients vetted for toxicity down to the seams and stitching. When they arrived, they were off-white and baggy, as if they had already been through a hundred washes.

Before long, a few friends and family members confessed they had also been discreetly looking into ingredients lists. My husband got on board with the project, while teasing me for filling our kitchen with glass receptacles and dirty dishes. But most people keep a polite distance from the topic. They already have to sift through enough received wisdom on carbon footprints, exercise and nutrition without throwing chemical anxiety into the mix. They don't have time to check the wax on their dental floss or the label on their raincoats.

THE FIRST PROBLEM WITH TACKLING TOXIC chemicals is that most companies don't say whether their products contain any. Often it is down to individual activists - known as citizen testers - to find out.

LIKE SMALL ALIENS, SOME OF THE INGREDIENTS IN HOUSEHOLD GOODS CAN MIGRATE INTO OUR BODIES THROUGH SKIN CONTACT, DUST, FOOD AND WATER

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Leah Segedie is from Simi Valley, just outside Los Angeles. She has bright red hair and a swearing habit. "I'm a ginger, and I have the personality to prove it," she told me when I reached her on the phone, in what turned into a two-hour conversation.

Segedie told me she became interested in toxic chemicals after asbestos exposure killed her father, a locomotive engineer on a railroad that crossed the US from California to Illinois, via Texas. He was a huge presence in her life, she told me - good-looking, with a wry smile and aviator sunglasses. Japanese tourists visiting California used to mistake him for Harrison Ford.

Historically, asbestos was used in some brake pads and train engine parts. "My father died from one of the very few cancers that can be linked directly to a contaminant," she said. "Asbestos is like one of those bad - I'm gonna cuss - really bad motherfuckers... you only need to be exposed one time." The same aggressive cancer, mesothelioma, recently killed her mother-in-law, whose kidneys and heart stopped working.

Segedie's father died in 2006, a few months after she gave birth to the first of her three boys. Amid the haze of grief, her interest in toxic chemicals was piqued by reading that sweat may help draw them out of plasticky textiles and into bloodstreams. Women's underwear and sportswear are particularly tricky. These are often made from oil- and gas-derived plastics, similar to vinyl flooring or cling film. Some of the compounds that can be added to these materials to make them water-resistant, colourful or flexible have been linked to cancers, insulin resistance and breathing and skin problems. They can, researchers say, interfere with our reproductive and brain health.

Segedie began to worry about feeding her child after a workout. "I have that bra on and, boom, the baby's right on my boob now, the sweat could have pulled out those toxic chemicals, and boom, he's also being exposed."

In 2009, she founded a weight-loss and organic-food blog called Mamavation. The site is now funded by donations, memberships and small commissions from products she chooses to link to, as well as by the non-profit Environmental Health News. She also runs a closed Facebook group of 20,000 women who vote on which products she will pay commercial laboratories to test for contaminants. The group is aimed at bringing women into one of the first major consumer testing movements focused on toxic chemicals.

One of the first lab tests Segedie did was on strands of her own hair, around 2020. It found high markers for the powerful pesticide DDT, which was banned for use in the US in the 1970s but produced in southern California until the 1980s. More testing determined that DDT had been present in the yolks from the eggs laid by chickens in her backyard, which she thinks was a former walnut orchard where DDT was used.

In those days, Segedie's blog was still mostly focused on food. But when her readers learnt about a journalist who had sent a pair of period pants to a university for testing and found fluorine, a marker of forever chemicals, they told her they wanted her to expand to other products too. "I realised we got to start testing," she said. Aided by a group of scientists, she found that a broad range of period pants, which are meant to replace disposable sanitary products, tested positive. Many period products that had been advertised as "natural" or "organic" did too.

Segedie has since spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and taken on big corporate targets. She has highlighted the presence of contaminants in common brands of cooking oil, coffee and condoms by naming and shaming them online.

In 2020, she and others helped persuade retail giant Target to stop using bisphenols, hormone disruptors, in its printed receipts. In June, a false advertising lawsuit against Driscoll's, the world's leading producer of berries, cited Mamavation's findings of pesticide residues linked to forever chemicals in a small number of its strawberries. Driscoll's told the FT that it "strongly" disputed the allegations. "Driscoll's berries are safe to eat and the lawsuits do not claim otherwise... We maintain robust food safety and compliance programs and rigorous standards designed to support compliance with applicable regulatory requirements."

The hunt for contamination means looking for offending synthetic chemicals in parts per million, billion or trillion. When we spoke, Segedie had just sent off deodorants, nappies and vitamin D tablets for testing in commercial laboratories. "You can't get rid of everything, so if you tried you'd go crazy - you wouldn't be able to eat or touch anything," she said. "So you have to get rid of the perfection mindset." A lot of the time, she added, contamination will be accidental, a result of chemicals pervasive in soil and water: "People threw their coated pans away but that doesn't mean the manufacturing plant didn't coat their equipment in Teflon, and it's coming off over decades and is showing up on things."

Many of her group's members got into this because they or their children had autoimmune disorders,

chronic illnesses, a family history of certain cancers or allergies. "Your rabbit hole was underwear... There's like four or five main points of entry." Her online community relies on a kind of "evangelism" whereby members spread the word about which products might be toxic, she said. But Segedie doesn't let them criticise each other for taking pharmaceutical drugs, which she believes are useful.

She typically doesn't campaign on party-political grounds. The point is just for people to have access to information about what they're buying. "We live in America. So for me, it's all about freedom, in a sense. You know what I'm saying? What I'm doing is just pure freedom."

But all the pure freedom was getting a bit too much for me. Critics of the detox movement say that obsessing over trace amounts of problematic chemicals in shampoos and pants is a distraction from more serious problems: the factory and agricultural workers still exposed to high levels of contaminants, or communities living in the shadow of historic chemical spills. I decided to review the science on whether throwing away my "toxic" products would make any difference to my longevity and health.

IN 1962, THE US CONSERVATIONIST RACHEL CARSON published the bestselling book Silent Spring about the widespread use of pesticides and their effect on wildlife. Since then, activists have pushed, slowly, to translate knowledge about chemical harms into regulation. It took another decade for authorities in the US to ban DDT as a pesticide, the chemical Carson focused on and which Segedie found stored up in her chickens' egg yolks and her own hair.

Some of the most dangerous substances, such as the heavy metal mercury, started being phased out between the 1970s and 1990s in the US and the EU. After that, activists dug their heels in on less well-known synthetic chemicals. In 2000, the film Erin Brockovich popularised a landmark court case about

CRITICS OF THE DETOX MOVEMENT SAY OBSESSING OVER TRACE AMOUNTS OF PROBLEMATIC CHEMICALS IS A DISTRACTION FROM MORE SERIOUS PROBLEMS

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groundwater contamination. Despite some restrictions on its use, the chemical it focused on, chromium 6, is still prevalent in US drinking water today, with hotspots in California and Arizona, a campaign group found last year.

Activist groups insist that the burden of proof to show a chemical is safe should be on industry and its scientists, not regulators or citizen testers. In the face of lobbying from the chemical industry, the "protection of childhood" has been one of the few issues to cut through. The EU and successive US states banned certain hormone-disrupting bisphenols in babies' bottles from 2009 onwards, for example. Despite this, years of tests on urine, blood and household dust showed that a ban on one chemical could lead to its replacement with a similarly harmful one.

This gave weight to the idea of regulating an entire class of chemicals. The EU is clamping down on forever chemicals and bisphenols, taking a more precautionary approach. But some of the most common endocrine disruptors are still legal in the US and other parts of the world. The Trump administration recently pushed to slash the Environmental Protection Agency's budget. The agency is reviewing its obligation to prove that new chemicals do not pose a threat to human health.

Humans produce hormones in "extremely small" amounts

ACTIVIST GROUPS INSIST THAT THE BURDEN OF PROOF TO SHOW A CHEMICAL IS SAFE SHOULD BE ON INDUSTRY AND ITS SCIENTISTS, NOT REGULATORS OR CITIZEN TESTERS

to spur on growth, reproduction and general health, says the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), a division of the federal-funded National Institutes of Health. Chemicals that mimic, block or stimulate hormones, even a little, can end up causing serious problems.

Some hormone-disrupting chemicals called phthalates are part of the group known as "everywhere" chemicals. They make plastic soft and malleable, so are found in IV drips, food packaging and children's toys. They also help fragrances last longer, so are used liberally in cosmetics. Other phthalates are "forever" chemicals, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). They

cannot readily be processed by our bodies. They pop up in grease-proof paper, raincoats and cooking pans. The third kind, bisphenols, which are used to make some plastics, are found in synthetic underwear, reusable water bottles and the inside of cans of food.

Researchers funded by the NIEHS have found a startling array of nasty side effects correlated with exposure to these chemicals. Pregnant women exposed to phthalates, for example, were more likely to have premature babies. Another NIEHS-funded study showed that babies with more "forever" chemicals, passed through breast milk, developed weaker immune systems. Teenagers exposed to phthalates were more likely to display behaviours synonymous with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Women who reported greater use of products like nail varnish, perfume and acne and hair products during puberty - particularly treatments used by women of Black heritage - were more likely to develop breast cancer later in life.

There's also a reason to worry about knickers. Testing of women's underwear in Europe and China by scientists has shown that they often contain bisphenols. These compounds are used to help colour bind to fabric, particularly synthetic fabrics. Phthalates can also be added to underwear to improve softness.

Mapped on to the world as a whole, these risks might add up to lots of early deaths - or so some scientists think. Leonardo Trasande is a professor of paediatrics and population health at New York University, and is listed as one of the scientists who advises Segedie's consumer testing website. In 2021, he estimated that phthalate exposure had contributed to about 100,000 annual early deaths among one middle-aged cohort in the US. The American Chemistry Council, a lobby group, called this "bad science" that may have confused correlation with causation and grouped phthalates too broadly.

I read, and read, sifting through an overwhelming amount of evidence about the effects of hormone-disrupting chemicals. Few of the studies pinpoint individual products as problematic or made lifestyle recommendations. Whether or not it would help me to live longer, cutting exposure to toxic chemicals through my skin would definitely lower their concentration in my body. But what is the average consumer to make of that?

EVERY MONTH I VISIT THE REFILL SHOP NEAR MY HOME.

It has rows of colourful, organic, plastic-free produce and cosmetics, labelled by weight, with prices compared with the equivalent from the supermarket. Shopping from here is a physical process. First, I queue at the unloading station to pick up or weigh empty jars - from cleaned-out jam pots to two-litre vats. Then I start to fill them from the communal tanks with what I need. Inevitably, slicks of washing-up liquid or olive oil, clouds of paprika and globs of mineral suncream get lost along the way. The shop assistants are relaxed, and provide mops or industrial paper. I lug 15 jars of varying sizes home.

One day, the eco laundry powder I'd bought seemed strangely fine. I scooped it into the washing machine and it filled the air with a white dust that got into my lungs. Clothes washed with it made my legs and arms itch for weeks. Keeping track of toxins is stressful, particularly when the rest of the world does not bother. Soon, I began to notice them everywhere - the little phthalate-laden scent sprays in changing rooms and corporate-event spaces, grey boxes that spew out an intense flowery vapour. It was easy to see how too much knowledge could breed an unhealthy level of vigilance.

In February, I came across a blog written by Andrea Love, a biomedical scientist in Philadelphia whose brother died by suicide after refusing medication earlier in life because of his scepticism of the chemicals industry. Her description of his conspiracy theories is chilling. Love has come to believe that low-tox living is a one-way ticket to vaccine rejection. It can also breed scepticism of what, she says, are relatively safe chemical products, such as certain herbicides and artificial food colourings. Now she campaigns against "chemophobia", which she describes as "one of the most powerful engines of misinformation worldwide". "If you didn't know better, you might think you and your family are in constant danger," she writes. "You're not."

Love didn't talk to me for this story, but her posts were enough to make me worry. There are plenty of others who wonder whether the fevered pursuit of a chemical-free lifestyle is a form of health anxiety taken too far, part of a wider purity culture aimed particularly at women.

It's not a new argument. In the 1990s and 2000s, the chemicals industry had also called its female critics "chemophobes" and even implied that they might have obsessive-compulsive disorders. The author and campaigner Lindsay Dahl argued in her 2025 book Cleaning House that this is a narrative that sceptics and the chemical industry have pushed for decades.

Dahl has claimed some major lobbying victories alongside other campaigners. Her advice is for people to start with just

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a few home interventions: filtering water, eating organic, cutting down on cosmetics. Campaigning for change by writing to lawmakers or scrutinising regulators' findings is just as important, she writes. So is relying on scientific advice rather than the clickbait promoted by social media influencers.

Since the 19th century, toxicologists have carried out tests on mice and rats. Even now, in order to deduce safe levels in products for humans, researchers and regulators often rely on studies assessing the dose at which rats would be noticeably harmed by a chemical over two years, much of their lifespan. The EU last year banned some bisphenols from coming into contact with food or drink after finding that bisphenol A (BPA), one of the most common types, could increase a type of white blood cell in the spleen, heightening the risk of autoimmune disorders. But the time it took to get there is not exactly reassuring. The EU drastically reduced the daily safe intake for BPA between 2015 and 2023. This still left the UK's own "safe" level at 1,000 times higher than the EU's.

To understand what goes on behind the scenes of these decisions, I read the EU's latest scientific advisory opinion on octocrylene, a common suncream ingredient that absorbs UV radiation. The opinion started on a positive note: when applied undiluted to the eyes of albino rabbits, the chemical had no effect. When applied to the ears of female mice,

ROBERT F KENNEDY JR HAS MADE UNFOUNDED CLAIMS ABOUT LINKS BETWEEN HORMONE-DISRUPTING CHEMICALS AND CHILDREN'S SEXUALITY

it acted only as a "moderate sensitiser" to their skin. It did, however, disrupt rats' thyroids. Some New Zealand white rabbits exposed to the chemical at high doses did grow more slowly. And rats had fewer pups per litter, which in turn developed more slowly. Overall, the document found, the chemical "may" have hormone-disrupting effects on humans, "but the evidence is not conclusive enough at present".

A UK government scientific advisory group suggested a risk assessment be carried out for children's exposure to octocrylene based on their body weights. The German Society of Toxicology recommends avoiding suncreams containing octocrylene, as once the

product has been opened it can degrade into carcinogenic compounds or cause coral bleaching. The brands available in my local supermarkets do not seem to have cottoned on.

YOU CAN READ TOO MANY SCIENTIFIC PAPERS. OVER video interviews in March, I asked two leading scientists called David to help me come to a conclusion about what I should chuck and what I can keep.

David Savitz, an emeritus professor of epidemiology at Brown University, did his best to shake any lingering chemical hesitancy out of me. Savitz has studied the health impacts of forever chemicals and pesticides extensively. Exposure to such toxins can be very serious for farm or factory workers, he told me. But in developed countries, in our own homes, "we're in a range where it's between no risk and a small risk... where it's very difficult to prove."

There is little question that smoking, drinking, outdoor air pollution and obesity are each responsible for their own mini health epidemics. But, Savitz said, nylon knickers and cleaning sprays - not so much. The problem, as he saw it, was that well-off people always want to "tweak" their lifestyles to feel slightly healthier. "If we took a sample from your blood right now, we would find dozens of very toxic chemicals," Savitz added. But "the fact we can detect them

and they're harmful at high levels does not mean there is a meaningful risk."

I mentioned research by another scientist at the top of her field. Shanna Swan, a 90-year-old environmental and reproductive epidemiologist, concluded in 2017 to professional acclaim that male sperm counts had more than halved over the past 38 years. She thinks this may be down to hormone-disrupting chemicals. "She's, you know, a capable scientist," Savitz said. But he felt that Swan and other researchers, including some of his own colleagues, had been "generous... in interpreting the evidence that's there as providing a clean storyline".

"There's a number of researchers who believe very strongly that... we're sort of, you know, doomed to extinction as a species: I would say it's overstated," Savitz told me. He worried about "alarmist" commentary that "bubbles up now and then in the current political climate".

In the US, that type of commentary is having a moment. Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has attacked the use of atrazine, a common pesticide no longer used in the EU because of its health impacts. But he has also made unfounded claims about links between hormone-disrupting chemicals and children's sexuality.

I asked Savitz about medical trends that some people suggest could be linked to our chemical-ridden lives. Don't rising rates of some illness among young people throw up valuable questions about our environments, despite all the political noise? Some types of cancer are on the rise, he acknowledged, while others are becoming less common. But these trends have not been conclusively linked to any individual chemical used in consumer products, he argued.

The unfairness of illness is difficult to accept, he added, and people are likely to grasp for a reasonable explanation. Patients think, "it's that food I ate, that chemical I ate, stress, all kinds of things... It's understandable but, on a personal level, I think it's probably dangerous."

The Scottish scientist David Harrison spent nearly a decade at the head of a committee that advises the UK government on cancer risks from chemicals in foods, consumer goods and the environment. On a video call, he sat in front of a whiteboard full of scribbles, and told me that the obsession with toxicity in our domestic environments ignored some uncomfortable truths.

Burnt toast is toxic, because it can generate acrylamide, which is used as an industrial sealant, he said, as though he had explained the same thing 100 times before. "Should we ban burnt toast?... Alcohol is a toxic chemical, but we're not going to have prohibition... So I think the problem is thinking toxic is an absolute. Everything is toxic." Not just that, but it is hard to prove any direct "dose-response relationship" for illnesses like cancer. Cell mutations, an individual's genomics or risk factor can all lead to different outcomes.

My research had been building to an overwhelming question. So I asked it: if everything is toxic but it is impossible to prove that any individual thing has caused harm, what is the point in trying?

Harrison's response surprised me. "The precautionary principle I think has to be the driving motivation," he said. "That seems to me kind of obvious." It will take years before scientists can prove exactly how cocktails of modern chemicals affect our bodies, and which ones to avoid, he explains. But in the meantime, we already have enough information to get started.

Kenza Bryan is the FT's climate reporter

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The Never-Ending Library

When the FBI seized the online Z-Library in 2022, it looked like the final chapter for free, illegal book-sharing. Instead, its legacy has become central to the AI revolution

BY FELIX BAZALGETTE
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MUHAMMAD FATCHUROFI

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he idea of a total library, one containing all the books in existence, had a peculiar hold on the mind of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In 1939, he wrote an essay on the subject, tracing its history from the ancient philosopher

Democritus to the 19th-century physicist Gustav Theodor Fechner, and then a short story imagining this library's architecture and the psychological effect it would have on humans, were it ever finished. An initial reaction of "unbounded joy", he thought, would curdle into a "disproportionate depression".

Borges, himself a librarian by profession and always drawn to open-ended lists, mused on the works that would lie in this total library, including: "the songs the sirens sang", "my dreams and half-dreams at dawn on August 14, 1954", "the secret and true name of Rome", "the complete catalog of the Library" and "the proof of the inaccuracy of that catalog".

Were Borges writing today, he might include another text - a sealed complaint filed by the US Justice Department in a federal court in New York on October 21 2022. It was because of this document that 33-year-old Anton Napolsky and 27-year-old Valeriia Ermakova, two librarians travelling to Borges' native country, unknowingly tripped an Interpol Red Notice when they arrived at an airport near Córdoba, in central Argentina, on October 22. Looking forward to two weeks' holiday, and unaware of the bureaucratic storm gathering above them, they rented a car and drove south towards the picturesque lakeside town of El Calafate. Argentine authorities tracked them via their phones.

The complaint, now public, accused the two Russians of running the largest illegal library in the world, a website with tens of millions of digital books, and millions of regular users, called Z-Library. The site provided an easily searchable database, enabling anyone to freely download pirated books, and also solicited users to upload their own files to its ever-expanding collection.

When the pair reached the southern city of Río Gallegos on November 3, officers from the Argentine Special Operations Unit arrested them. At the same time, all around the world, anyone logging on to Z-Library encountered a stark graphic stamped with the seal of the US Justice Department: This domain has been seized by the FBI.

"It's never nice to see a library burn down," wrote Balázs Bodó, a professor of information law at the University of Amsterdam, "and this is what burning down a library looks like in the digital space."

To their supporters and their users, organisations such as Z-Library are known not as book piracy websites but as "shadow libraries", and Bodó has written extensively on their history. According to him, this is not a story of crime and punishment - Russians illegally profiting from stolen goods - but rather a confrontation between two fundamental ideas of how the internet should work, perhaps even how the world should work.

Since Napolsky and Ermakova were arrested, shadow libraries have moved from the margins - quietly used by readers and researchers - to the curious centre of the AI boom. Recent court cases have shown that some of the wealthiest tech companies in the world have relied on millions

Are they right to say that western-enforced copyright has become unmoored from its original purposes, no longer benefiting authors?

of books from shadow libraries for the training of large language models (LLMs). In their ravenous quest for the written word, these companies have devoted vast resources towards achieving what seemed, to Borges, only a fable: a library of everything ever written.

Last year, I met with Bodó, a youthful, slightly twitchy 51-year-old. At his suggestion, we had lunch in the café of Amsterdam's oldest zoo. Bodó wore a pair of tiny round metal-frame glasses and a Hawaiian shirt. He told me about his interest in the underground transmission of knowledge, sparked by his time travelling in Bosnia in the weeks after the war ended in 1995. Back then he noticed that pirate media - bootleg VHS and cassette tapes - were the first to re-enter the country, well before any official distribution companies would tackle such a disrupted and risky market. "In the midst

of the chaos," he told me, describing joyous queues at pirate market stalls, "it was the pirates who were helping Bosnians back into contact with the world, with the wider culture."

Bodó grew up in Hungary, which was, for the first 15 years of his life, a communist country. Almost all of the major book shadow libraries in operation today are founded and run by people who grew up in Russia or post-Soviet satellite states. This, according to Bodó and to the pirates themselves, is not a coincidence.

"The Soviet tradition of special respect for libraries, books and education in general largely shaped our project's ideology," one longtime administrator for Z-Library told me recently. Bodó quotes the Russian sociologist Valeriia Stelmakh, who has argued that in the USSR "reading almost transplanted religion as a sacred activity" and that "literature

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became the unique source of moral truth for the population". Bodó points to the Soviet-era samizdat traditions of private copying, hoarding and sharing of texts in an environment of official censorship, alongside "the economic ruin of the intelligentsia in the post-communist period".

Pirates argue that the copyright regime, guarded internationally by the US Justice Department and publishers' associations in the US and the UK, is a recent, western and capitalist form of censorship, imposed upon the rest of the world. "A tool for profit extraction," said the Z-Library administrator, "against the public interest, and usually to the benefit of publishers not authors". They argued that Z-Library's very existence "demonstrates systemic problems with information access in modern society".

Intrigued by these grand claims, and taken aback by the vehemence with which the FBI would hunt down a book-sharing website, I set out to understand the world of shadow libraries, talking to publishers' associations, academics like Bodó, writers, researchers and the pirates themselves.

Where do these organisations come from and how do they work? Are they communist folk heroes or dissembling crypto-capitalist grifters? Are they right to say that western-enforced copyright has become unmoved from its original purposes, no longer benefiting authors? And, with Z-Library back online, where are those internationally wanted librarians today?

DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR, WHEN Borges first published his writings on la biblioteca total, the notion of a total library entered the realm of possibility thanks to advances in information technology. In 1945, in The Atlantic, a government scientist called Vannevar Bush proposed a kind of proto-internet, using networked forms of microphotography that were able to shrink down physical bookshelves. "A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk," he wrote. He speculated that the total sum of human written production - "a billion books, the whole affair" - would soon easily be "lugged off in a moving van".

The actual practice of digital librarianship is almost as old as the internet itself - Project Gutenberg, an attempt to make digital versions of public-domain texts available to all, was first launched on the Arpanet, a US government-backed precursor to the internet, in 1971. Its first text, typed out manually by a student at the University of Illinois, was the Declaration of Independence, followed by the Constitution and then the King James Bible, which was finally finished in 1989.

The proliferation of scanning technology, leaps in digital storage efficiency and the rise of the World Wide Web in the 1990s led to an explosion in book digitisation in the early 2000s. Now books did not have to be laboriously typed out, and could be stored in online databases accessible from anywhere. Some projects, such as Google's Project Ocean - 25 million books scanned and digitised between 2002 and 2015 - were run by corporations in partnership with universities. These were subject to early lawsuits from publishers' and authors' associations, which limited how they could be accessed and used by the public.

At the same time, a number of smaller, grassroots digitisation projects were emerging, operating outside of the legal regimes that Google was

ultimately subject to. Though they were likened to file-sharing pirate websites such as Napster and The Pirate Bay, which primarily dealt in music or movie files, many of the text-sharing projects consciously eschewed the "pirate" label. They preferred the organising principles, history and brand of the "library". These projects sought to amass as many digital books as possible - through crowdsourced scanning or the amalgamation of existing databases - catalogue and index them, and make them freely accessible.

One such project, Library Genesis or LibGen, was started by Russian scientists in 2008 to enable the free circulation of scientific papers. Another, Library.nu - founded in the mid-noughties by students operating out of Galway, according to The Sunday Times - became so large that it attracted the attention of publishers and law enforcement. In early 2012, it closed in the face of a lawsuit brought by 17 different publishers, but its digital archive was folded into that of LibGen, which became more popular as a result. This was an early example of what enforcement agencies now call "whack-a-mole" - the slippery, protean nature of shadow libraries makes them difficult to "burn down".

It was around this time, in early 2010, that the precursor to Z-Library, called BookFi, was founded by two students at St Petersburg State University, Napolsky and Vladislav Chikhira. BookFi differed from its shadow-library peers in an important way. LibGen aimed to collect "academic literature" and to avoid "junky books" and "bestsellers". Sci-Hub, founded by the Kazakhstani programmer Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011, likewise had a tighter focus on scientific papers, many of which had been produced using public money but were sold on by private companies with large profit margins.

BookFi, by contrast, had more generalist, Borgesian ambitions. Its aim, Napolsky and Chikhira told a tiny Russian-language news website in 2011, was nothing less than to become "the largest online library" in the world, "encompassing fiction, scientific, reference and technical literature". Z-Library began life as a simple search engine for ebooks, running off a student laptop on St Petersburg State University's internal network. It quickly spiralled into an ambitious ideological project. Napolsky and Chikhira, both just 20 years old at the time, declared that "books are a public asset, and their access should be unrestricted".

Today, Chikhira, judging by his social media accounts, lives a quiet life among a Russian exile crowd in Izmir, Turkey, where he moved after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. He works as a software engineer. By all appearances, he's no longer involved in the Z-Library project, and he did not respond to my requests for an interview.

His fellow-student founder, Napolsky, however, continued to work on Z-Library throughout the 2010s, as it increased in stature, expanding both its collection and its international user base. It was during this period that Valerika Ermakova joined the project, and she and Napolsky started a romantic relationship. Information on the couple, including how and when exactly Ermakova came to the project, is scarce. (Repeated requests to interview the pair - through their US lawyers, former classmates and a source at Z-Library - were unreturned or rebuffed, citing the risk of influencing the ongoing case against them.) It is left to a florid piece of shadow-library fanfic, circulating

on social media, to imagine this moment: Ermakova, inspired by Z-Library's mission, reaches out to Napolsky over the dark web in 2016, declaring that "I want to help you." Soon, the couple are working together in the name of "a shared vision: THE LIBERATION OF KNOWLEDGE".

As it expanded, moving into its second decade of operation in the early 2020s, Z-Library matured. It featured an easy-to-use search bar interface, surrounded by images of leather-bound volumes, projecting the comforting aura of an old-fashioned library. It had book recommendations, based on a user's search history, and selections of books popular with other users, and even email alerts for users subscribed to particular topics.

Last year, an administrator of Z-Library, self-described as "one of the project's oldest participants", agreed to an interview on the condition of anonymity. (They would have met in person, but only in Russia or Belarus.) Over a number of months, I sent questions via email, and received detailed answers weeks later in .txt file attachments, described as "collective commentary from the Z-Library team". They outlined to me what the mature phase of the organisation, still in operation today, looks like, "Roughly 20 people work on developing and maintaining the project," they said, with a "team composition that is quite standard for IT products - development group, testing group, designer and technical support team".

Though the anonymous administrator declined to tell me "absolute budget figures", they claimed it would be "typical for an IT project of this scale", all funded by small donations from their millions of users. Emails from Ermakova to a potential payments provider, accessed by the FBI and published in court documents, suggested that its monthly income in 2020 was around $50,000, rising to $150,000 during donation drives, which are mounted annually. The Z-Library administrator named the biggest expense as infrastructure maintenance - "3,000-5,000 processor cores and several petabytes of data storage" - followed by payroll for their team of "specialists" who keep the project running.

here are three main rules that such a project must abide by if it is to avoid enforcement action by western agencies, the founder of one Europe-based shadow library told me. The first is to operate within a niche, ideally one

as specific as possible: no universalist ambitions, no mass-market books. Second, allow publishers and authors to make takedown requests, and comply with those requests quickly and comprehensively. Third, and perhaps most importantly, don't allow money anywhere near the project. No donations, no tiered memberships, no subscriptions. As soon as money becomes a part of the system, the founder told me, you open yourself up to charges that you are profiting from stolen material - that you are not a library but a criminal enterprise.

By mid-2022, Z-Library was breaking all of these informal rules, by design, and it was beginning to attract attention. It solicited donations and offered a premium tier, for $1, which allowed unlimited downloads of books (users were otherwise limited to 10 per day). Though the site nominally compiled

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with takedown requests, the crowdsourced nature of its archive, with hundreds of books uploaded by volunteers every day, made compliance difficult in practice. And, finally, because of its universalist aims, it was drawing in audiences beyond the millions of young students around the world who had traditionally used it to obtain textbooks and academic literature.

Among these new audiences were North American readers of young adult fiction, specifically fans of the phenomenally successful author Colleen Hoover, who had a new book out in 2022. That year, TikTok posts by Hoover fans promoted Z-Library as a remarkable new way to download her works for free. The posts clocked millions of views. Publishers' associations in the US and the UK began to devote more resources to investigating Z-Library.

Publishers' associations are, perhaps surprisingly, highly investigatory in nature and closely linked to police forces – the UK Publishers Association, for example, has a staff member on long-term secondment to the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit. According to a source familiar with the operation against Z-Library, researchers in one publishers' association assembled a dossier on the shadow library, documenting its domain names and, for the first time, definitively linking its activities to two named Russian individuals. These details were passed on to Interpol and the FBI. The source described a "stars-aligning moment", with all the elements to entice US law enforcement agencies to take action to defend publishers' interests. There were US authors whose copyright had plainly been infringed, named individuals linked to the "international criminal networks" responsible and, finally, those individuals were set to travel outside of Russia in the near future, to a country with an extradition treaty with the US.

It seems that Napolsky and Ermakova had been linked to Z-Library due to a number of mistakes that look amateurish in hindsight. One of the ways the site took donations was via Amazon gift cards sent to Z-Library Gmail addresses. Napolsky had allegedly used his personal Gmail account as the back-up email for many of these donation accounts, and entered his name, phone number and address on Amazon accounts that cashed Z-Library donations. Likewise, Ermakova had registered her card details, and her St Petersburg address, with an Amazon account that redeemed donated gift vouchers, according to the complaint. All of these accounts were further linked by IP address data that showed that they usually logged in at the same time, from the same location.

Both Amazon and Google complied with an FBI warrant, providing information to investigators about Napolsky and Ermakova's account activities, and (in Google's case) the contents of their inboxes. For example, the Amazon account associated with Ermakova, which had cashed some Z-Library donations, had "placed more than 110 orders totalling over $13,628.32, most of them for beauty and apparel products" over a three-year period, according to the complaint filed in 2022. It was presumably the Gmail inbox access that also alerted the FBI to Napolsky and Ermakova's travel plans. The night before they flew from St Petersburg to Córdoba, via Asunción, an application for arrest warrants against the pair was granted by the district court in New York.

"Z-Library has robbed individuals of the fruits of their labor," wrote an FBI special agent in the warrant application, "for NAPOLSKY and ERMAKOVA's personal gain". The next day, at 9:45am, the pair arrived in Argentina and the Interpol Red Notice was activated.

When Argentine police finally swooped on November 3, it was, according to the Z-Library administrator, "a complete surprise for all project participants". Two weeks later, the pair were charged with copyright infringement, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracy, and an extradition request was made. As the legal process rumbled on into the new year and throughout 2023, in both Argentine and US courts, the two Russians settled into house arrest in Córdoba.

By May 2024, the extradition process seemed to have stalled. Argentine courts had refused to approve it, waiting for more information from the FBI, and were also awaiting the result of an application by the Russians to the Argentine Supreme Court for refugee status. Meanwhile, courts in the US had been mulling over a memorandum filed the previous September by Napolsky and Ermakova's US lawyers, arguing that the charges themselves had been improperly filed by the FBI.

It was during this stalemate that Patronato de Liberados, an Argentine charity responsible for monitoring bail conditions, found the Russians missing from their assigned flat in Córdoba during a routine check. Another international arrest warrant was issued for Napolsky and Ermakova, and, in the absence of any trace of them passing through airports, the Spanish-language outlet La Voz speculated that they had gone underground in Argentina. However, in June last year, the administrator at Z-Library told me that they were both "currently safe in Russia".

How had they managed to get there? No more details were forthcoming, either from Z-Library or their US lawyers, both unwilling to divulge anything that might affect the ongoing case. The source close to the investigation suggested that, in order for Napolsky and Ermakova to escape Argentina while they were subject to an international arrest warrant, the Russian state would have to be involved. "You can imagine something to do with Russia," they said, "but I couldn't possibly comment on that." One Spanish-language newspaper reported that Russian diplomatic staff were a constant presence at the Argentine court proceedings, even sometimes correcting court translators on points of legal vocabulary.

The left-humanist ethos of Z-Library doesn't seem to be a natural partner to Vladimir Putin's extreme rightwing, repressive dictatorship. Napolsky's co-founder Chikhira and many of their former classmates felt they had to leave Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. I asked the Z-Library administrator why they thought their project was allowed to operate safely under Putin. On that point, I received no answer.

A REVEALING ASPECT OF THE FIGHT BETWEEN shadow libraries and enforcement agencies is the obsession, on both sides, with terminology. The former tend to eschew talk of pirates and piracy. "For me, piracy means stealing to enrich yourself somehow," the European shadow library founder told me. "I don't see our work in those terms." But for those on the enforcement side,

any mention of the word "library" raises hackles. The preferred term, the source close to the operation to shut down Z-Library told me, was "organised criminal network". These "criminal networks" were not to be considered in "cultural" terms, and had no "appropriate place in content ecosystems".

These clashes over language are attempts to manoeuvre the battle on to favourable terrain. Enforcement agencies want this to be a simple case of theft, while the shadow librarians want a debate about ancient ideals and modern inequalities. How, for example, is it fair that an impoverished university student in China or India must pay thousands of dollars to highly profitable North American corporations simply to get online access to the textbooks or articles necessary for their education?

The takedown of Z-Library in 2022, though hailed as a triumph by publishers and law enforcement, revealed the extent to which shadow libraries had successfully set the terms of this debate.

Even authors who believed their earnings had been harmed by Z-Library drew a distinction between piracy of commercial fiction and that of academic literature, treating the former as harmful and the latter as almost sacrosanct. Hoover, whose pirated books may have initiated the whole operation, was moved to release a statement. "I was once a college student who couldn't afford textbooks," she wrote in a Facebook post, which notably declined to condemn Z-Library. "I'd never willingly make that harder for people."

What should be concerning for mainstream publishers is that, unlike the academic focus of Sci-Hub or LibGen, Z-Library wants to push the argument even further, away from the struggles of impoverished students and to the heart of the copyright contract itself. In the past this might have been easy ground for publishers, but in recent years it has become more fraught.

In the past two decades, around the world, author income has plummeted. In the UK, a series of depressing surveys by the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society document this slide: from 2006 to 2022, they found that median earnings for authors had declined by just over 60 per cent. Meanwhile, the profits of the big publishing companies have increased. According to the ALCS, the publishing industry has become a microcosm of wider inequalities, "characterised by winner-takes-all dynamics and extremely high levels of earnings inequality", with only a few percentage points of total publishing industry revenue making its way to authors at all. With median annual author income now at around £7,000, the question is increasingly who can afford to be an author, rather than who can write well enough or work hard enough to be one.

The argument that a global community of readers and writers should wholeheartedly support copyright enforcement because it funds literary production – because it enables authors from all backgrounds to write – is a compelling one. If, however, copyright is enforced with a militarised zeal akin to the war on drugs, and authors' earnings relentlessly squeezed, then the argument becomes a little harder to make. Z-Library's broad-brush claim that copyright is "a tool for profit extraction" that benefits "publishers not authors" will ring true for more and more people.

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A suit earlier this year alleged that Google had actually used their Z-Library to train its Gemini model

The destruction of Z-Library in 2022 turned out to be merely an outage. After three months, its administrators announced its return, with a new system designed to evade domain shutdowns. This brief hiatus did, however, give rise to a new book piracy website called Anna's Archive, launched days after the Z-Library arrests, in a conscious response to them. Though it has many features of a library, this new organisation makes archival preservation its main aim: "to catalog all the books in existence"; ensure that they are never lost using duplicated, crowdsourced and geographically distributed storage; and to make them available to all. It has, by its own reckoning, collected about 16 per cent of all the books

and articles in the world, and 750,000 individual downloads are made through the site every day.

Anna's Archive might make publishers nostalgic for their old foe. Unlike Z-Library, with its documented history and messy paper trail, no one has been convincingly connected to it. Lawsuits against Anna's Archive go unanswered, and arrest warrants cannot be filed. And, while Z-Library's administrators agonise about moves towards "content commercialisation", unwilling to completely betray their communist roots, Anna's Archive is much more pragmatic. The organisation embraces the pirate identity, and anything that might help it attain its final goal of the total archive is considered: advertising, paid membership and high-speed paid access to its considerable archive for the training of corporate AI models.

A series of lawsuits in the past few years has revealed how pivotal shadow libraries have been to the training of LLMs. A suit earlier this year alleged that Google, once an informer on Napolsky and Ermakova, had actually used their shadow library to train its Gemini model. Anthropic, meanwhile, according to documents released as part of another suit, built its own internal shadow library out of stolen copyright material downloaded from pirate sites to improve Claude. (Anthropic agreed to settle with a group of authors and publishers late last year for $1.5bn. Its general counsel Aparna Sridhar said the court's ruling meant that "training AI on books is fair use under copyright.") Suits against Meta surfaced documents showing that shadow library material had been used to train its Llama model, with authorisation from "MZ", which some speculate is Mark Zuckerberg. ("We respect third-party intellectual property rights," said a Meta spokesperson at the time, "and believe our use of information to train AI models is consistent with existing law.")

Anna's Archive, young and nimble, unconstrained by history, seems ready to capitalise on this opportunity. Documents from a recent lawsuit against the chipmaker Nvidia claimed that the company had been in talks with administrators from Anna's Archive to negotiate a last download of their entire holdings, rather than laboriously crawling through captchas and limited download speeds. The pirate archivists are very open about the practice - blog posts often offer significant batches of written material to AI companies at a price, with conditions designed to give them a competitive edge, such as exclusive access to the material for a year following sale, before it is added to the public archive.

IN THE AMSTERDAM ZOO, BODÓ OUTLINED two traditions of the internet to me, ones that he saw playing out in the AI gold rush today. On one side is the libertarian capitalist tradition, with its roots in Silicon Valley, which sees the entire corpus of the world's literature as a resource to be mined by machines to create profitable subscription services, automate jobs and concentrate wealth. On the other side is the anarcho-communist tradition, originating in grassroots mutual-aid projects in post-Soviet countries, which seeks to collect and preserve the world's literature for individual users to read, enjoy and learn from as they please. "Move fast and break things" versus "move fast and save things".

With the recent collaboration between Anna's Archive and Big Tech, these traditions seem, strangely, to have fused - each takes what they want from the deal, but what will the rest of us get?

The total library imagined by Borges almost 90 years ago was generative rather than acquisitive. It was not based on a successful effort to collect all books, but rather on the iterative combination of "all 25 orthographic symbols" until every possibility was exhausted and all books lay within its stacks. The result, he thought, would ultimately be disastrous: a "vast, contradictory Library, whose vertical wildernesses of books run the incessant risk of changing into others that affirm, deny, and confuse everything like a delirious god". IT

Felix Bazalgette is a writer and filmmaker from London

JULY 25 2026

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INSIDE The British barbecue renaissance P40

Appetites

WINF

Georgia's amber buried treasure

by JANCIS ROBINSON

ILLUSTRATION by DEBORA SZPILMAN

FOLLOWING HER FIRST TRIP TO GEORGIA IN 2013, Julia Harding, my Master of Wine colleague, explored the country's unique contradictions in a lauded account of her visit. How can a nation maintain non-nationalistic pride, she asked, as well as defend against hostile bordering powers, prioritise radical hospitality and foster creativity in a country saturated in tradition? "Georgia seems to have a quite remarkable ability to hold opposites in tension," Harding wrote.

In my circles anyway, Georgia is most famous for its claim to be the cradle of viticulture. Wine is still intimately threaded through its culture, with Georgian wine distinguished by being made in buried clay vessels called qverri. But today that famous wine culture is increasingly polarised, holding opposites in tension indeed.

The poles were effectively embodied by two people I tasted with recently. The first was Irakli Gilauri, ex-CEO of the Bank of Georgia and a wine nut who has somehow managed to acquire fruit from one of Napa Valley's most sought-after sources, Vine Hill Ranch, for a fine wine project in California. He is now determined to spend some of his fortune on

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Appetites

JANCIS RECOMMENDS

STANDOUT GEORGIAN WINES

WHITE

• Vachnadziani Winery Krakhuna 2024 Imereti (12.5%)

£12.79 ALL ABOUT WINE,
£13.99 RATCLIFFE & CO,
£14 DRINKS DIRECT

AMBER

• Dugladze, Ranina Kakhuri NV Kakheti (12.5%)

£15.60 AMATHUS

• Shilda, Rustaveli 2022 Kakheti (13.5%)

£17.99 D BYRNE,
£19.95 SPY WINES,
£22 THE SALUSBURY WINE STORE

• Iago Bitarishvili, Iago Chinuri 2024 Kartli (12%)

£23.22 LES CAVES DE PYRENE

• Orgo Rkatsiteli 2024 Kakheti (12.5%)

£23.49 BUTLER'S WINE CELLAR

• Baia's Wine Tsolikouri Qvevri 2024 Kakheti (13%)

£24 TASTE OF GEORGIA

RED

• Chelti, Family Collection Saperavi 2022 Kakheti (14%)

2021 IS £14.99 NOVEL WINES BUT IS CURRENTLY OUT OF STOCK

• Ch Mukhrani Shavkapito 2021 Kartli (13.5%)

2018 IS £23.99 GEORGIAN WINE GUILD

• Sad Meli Aleksandrouli/ Mujuretuli 2022 Racha-Lechkhumi (14%)

£40 SAPERAVI SOCIAL

TASTING NOTES, SCORES AND SUGGESTED DRINKING DATES ON JANCISROBINSON.COM, INTERNATIONAL STOCKISTS ON WINE-SEARCHER.COM.

making what he maintains will be his home country's first world-class wine.

The first I heard of him was in an email from a San Francisco-based PR inviting me to 'meet the Georgian vintner fighting fascism with luxury wine'. In it, current Georgian wines were described as 'rustic' - three times - with Gilauri quoted as saying that 'the only reason qvevri amphora remains our tradition is because no one ever had money to make wine any other way'.

Gilauri is building a fancy winery in Georgia's dominant wine region, Kakheti, in the south-east of the country, and has hired Bordeaux's most international wine consultants, Rolland et Associés, to help him. 'I don't want to employ anyone with Georgian experience in either vineyard or cellar,' he told me, drawing out two half-bottles of prototype Gilauri wine at a Georgian wine tasting in the City of London in June. This was after telling me that, at a blind tasting in Georgia of his new red with Bordeaux first growths (and wine-maker Pierre Lurton, who directs two of them), his product came second 'after Ch Ausone and above Haut-Brion'.

And that fascism claim? Despite its post-Soviet independence in 1991, Georgia remains under threat by an aggressive Russia that maintains an illegal military occupation of 20 per cent of its territory.

Georgian wine has long occupied a special place in Russia, and even today 65 per cent of Georgia's wine exports are semi-sweet, basic wines that are sent north to slake Russian thirst. 'Georgia's dependence on Russia today is in wine only,' said Gilauri. 'By making dry wine, we can wean ourselves off Russia.' He says he's on a mission and has chosen Resistance as the brand name of his wines.

Gilauri was thrilled when I said his white wine, a barrel-fermented bone-dry Chardonnay, reminded me of a Chablis. It's

Georgian producers are having a wonderful time showcasing indigenous grapes

certainly unlike any Georgian wine I've tasted in its utter familiarity. His red is at least based on a Georgian grape variety, the main red-wine grape Saperavi. The Rolland imprint of oak and alcohol was evident in it, but I should point out that the wines he produced when he ambushed me at the tasting were cask samples yet to be bottled, much less released.

Much more typically Georgian were the wines shown at a tasting two weeks later at Saperavi Social, a Georgian wine bar in Islington. The main presenter was Douglas Wregg of Les Caves de Pyrene, specialist importer of natural wine and the biggest importer of Georgian wine into the UK. Back in 2005, he'd heard on the grapevine that the country was making seriously distinctive wines in qvevri that depended on extended contact with grape skins, and made his first trip. He fell in love with Georgia and its wine-sodden feasts that are often accompanied by dancing and polyphonic singing. 'Wine is endemic to the culture there,' he enthused. 'Making wine with skins, and often stems, of the grapes - this is the complete wine.'

Contact with chewy skins, and sometimes even chewier stems and pips, results in wines that are much more deeply coloured than conventional whites. These are the so-called orange wines that Wregg describes as 'a subset of natural wines'.

Georgians call them amber, and their colour can vary from palest apricot to a rich, deep almost-tawny. Perhaps an even more marked characteristic is that skin-contact wines are relatively astringent, especially on the finish. Wregg delights in what he describes as 'a

FIRST SIP

GEORGIA'S MAGNIFICENT LOCAL GRAPES

A host of unfamiliar names but some great flavours. Pale-skinned, productive Rkatsiteli is by far the most-planted Georgian grape, characteristic of Kakheti in the far south-east of the country, as well as being popular in Kartli around Tbilisi. It works especially well for skin contact wines. Rkatsiteli is also grown in Ukraine, Moldova and Bulgaria, and its ability to withstand seriously cold winters is treasured in both Russia and New York state.

I have long enjoyed aromatic whites made from Kisi, also found

mainly in Kakheti, but a leafy Krakhuna white from Imereti in the far west was a recent revelation, as was a citrus-flavoured Tsolikouri from Naberauli in northern Racha, a newish producer specialising in lesser-known Georgian grapes. Mtsvane Kakhuri is the Kakheti speciality, while the fresher Goruli Mtsvane is associated with Kartli where the even tarter Chinuri can shine.

Saperavi dominates Georgian red-wine production and it has been planted in much the same countries

as Rkatsiteli, plus Australia. In youth its wines can stain as effectively as vintage port. They can be a bit too hefty for their own good. The versions aged in buried qvevri tend to be a bit more interesting than most of the more conventional examples. I loved the much more transparent Shavkapito, recently rediscovered in Kartli, Aleksandrouli and Mujuretuli, often blended even in the vineyard, are specialties of Racha in the mountainous north of the country immediately east of Lechkhumi.

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sort of bricky earthiness" imparted by the clay of the qvevri, and is rather dismissive of the pale amber wines to be found in UK supermarkets, which may have had relatively little skin contact. (The term qvevri is unregulated, by the way, and seems to be used with abandon.)

The timing of the first of Wregg's annual visits to Georgia could not have been better. Early in 2006, Russia effectively banned imports of Georgian wine until 2013, which was widely condemned as economic retaliation for the country's pro-EU stance. In the long term, this did a great service to Georgia's new generation of producers, who had to sharpen up their act and find new markets such as the UK.

We were told that during the Soviet era, about one quarter of households made their own wine - which they regarded as real wine, as opposed to the semi-sweet stuff shipped off to Russia. But since the Russians sought quantity more than quality, only a handful of the most commercial grape varieties were in commercial play. Today, however, a national vine nursery is collecting samples of the country's incredible diversity of local varieties, hundreds of them, and analysing their DNA.

Georgian wine producers are also having a wonderful time showcasing ever more indigenous grape varieties. To westerners they have unfamiliar names, but Wregg is, perhaps predictably, dismissive of people who complain they can't pronounce them. "They should just enjoy the experience."

The City tasting was a presentation of eight Georgian wines by Master of Wine Sarah Abbott, who has been hired by the Georgians to help develop the UK market. Most of the wines she chose had been made in qvevri but when she admitted that this applied to less than 10 per cent of all Georgian wine produced, I wondered why her selection was so unrepresentative. "Qvevri winemaking is small in output but huge in cultural symbolism for Georgians," she explained in a subsequent email. "The country has parallel heritage tracks: one as the mythic originators of wine, and one as the brutalised, industrial wine factory of the former Soviet Union. Qvevri winemaking is the embodied antithesis of that Soviet heritage and mindset."

Fair enough. I've enjoyed many a qvevri wine - indeed have generally preferred Georgia's hugely distinctive skin-contact whites to standard, rather overblown Saperavi reds - so long as there is enough fruit to support the astringency.

But I can see why Gilauri thinks his country's wine is a work in progress. Tbilisi-based wine importer Olivier Sauvage (proud of a great-grandfather who was mayor of Chassagne-Montrachet) veers closer to Gilauri than Wregg. He tartly summed up the current Georgian wine scene as "8,000 years of history, 30 years of experience". PT

REVIEW

Banquet 88, St Katharine Docks

by JAY RAYNER

ILLUSTRATION by DANIEL EGNEUS

It doesn't matter how much boudoir lighting or button-back upholstery is slapped all over a restaurant. None of it guarantees a good meal. There are pretty dining rooms which serve good food, but one does not lead to the other, as anyone who has ever been forced to sit through a hanging kebab at a branch of the Botanist will know. Let's hear it then for the true heroes of restaurant anti-design: the quality, utilitarian Chinese venues, engineered for eating in rather than looking at. In these places the big light is always on, the carpet is a winning shade of "blah" and the decor is best described as "School of Severance". It is all extremely functional. Look, you came

here to eat. What more do you need other than a table big enough for your order, and sufficient space between each for the waiters to briskly manoeuvre by?

These restaurants come into their own amid the clamorous rush of dim sum service, when both customers and staff become engaged in the contact sport of wrangling tottering piles of bamboo steamers. There is a particular place in my nostalgic heart for those dim sum restaurants that did so much volume they served them from square metal carts, trundled around the room by waiters who showed absolutely no interest in you. The key was to find somewhere so busy that any doubts over the freshness of each trolley's cargo of pert,

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Appetites

FIND IT

BANQUET 88

Unit 2 Commodity Quay, London E1W 1AZ; 020 3951 4389; banquet88.com

Dim sum and appetisers £7–£59 Main dishes incl roast meats £15–£120 Desserts £7

ivory-skinned dumplings were quietened by the speed with which they emptied. New World, which had a spotty history with the environmental health officers, was the last in London's Chinatown to run them. That's gone now, though a few years ago I had terrific fun amid the Saturday lunchtime trolley service at Yank Sing in San Francisco's Rincon Center, a crowded barn of a place which felt like eating in an impromptu dining room carved out of a hotel lobby.

The mostly Cantonese Banquet 88 in London's St Katharine Docks, a restaurant with an auspicious number in its title, is the third venture from a company which began in the London suburbs. It doesn't have trolleys, but it's very much part of the functional genre of Chinese restaurant. There are nice enough seats upholstered in caramel shades and some fine-lined scenes of Chinese life on the white walls, but that aside, the big light is on and the interior design doesn't go much beyond putting the kitchen behind a glass wall. On a quiet weekday evening, it feels like a room waiting for a weekend dim sum rush.

We should all take advantage of the mid-week quietness. Like Alan Yau's Yauatcha, one of the first in London to shatter the convention that dim sum should only be available at lunchtime, Banquet 88 serves them throughout. In a city full of restaurants offering unremarkable dumplings, many of which began life in the freezer cabinet at a branch of Wing Yip, these are very much worth the trip. By some standards the selection is short, but it includes all the steamed and fried classics, plus a separate list of wobbly soothing cheung fun, as well as an unusually long selection of soups. They also offer various "afternoon tea" dim sum menus, fat with har gau, pan fried cuttlefish cake and soupy xiao long bao; a far better tea option than marzipan-heavy Battenberg.

We start with crystal scallop dumplings of an almost dazzling whiteness, the ivory skins pleated like tricorn hats, to encase thick slices of scallop, tasting brazenly of itself, atop sweet, minced prawn. Then come pork and prawn siu mai in their distinctive yellow barrel-shaped wrappers, which have profound bite and

succulence. From the fried list we order crisp bottomed buns filled with deeply sauced and sticky minced roasted duck. Roasted meats are a highlight here. The crispy pork belly is properly rendered so the skin has a shattering crunch, and there is only a gentle layer of soft fat before you get to the meat rather than a blubbery wedge. Cantonese roast duck, with its darkly lacquered skin that bursts beneath the teeth, is especially good and comes with a sweet, dark soy dipping sauce which is quite simply a condiment of the gods. There's also the offer of Peking duck at a competitive £98 for the whole bird, or more if you feel the need for the unnecessary adornment of caviar. Peking duck does not need salty fish eggs to make it cool. Very few things do.

THE ONLY DISH THAT SLIGHTLY MISSES

is the salt and pepper pork chop, with the meat cut into thick lozenges. It's a little too polite and well-mannered for its own good. It is also overshadowed by an extraordinary dish of fat, black morel mushrooms, halved and then seemingly gene-spliced with minced pork, plump with garlic and ginger, so that the stuffing clings to their underside. They are then stir-fried with the crispest of new season asparagus. Blimey, it's good. There is of course egg fried rice, and a plate of baby bok choy in garlic sauce, each tight bulb of vivid green leaves presented curled in on itself as if tucked up in bed.

The problem with a lengthy Chinese menu like this is the sense, across one meal, that only the surface has been scratched. I want to return for the black truffle fried oysters. And for the steamed razor clams with garlic and glass noodles. And for the lamb brisket hot pot and the pan-fried pork with crab roe and for the roast pigeon. You get the point. I want to return for an awful lot of things. London is full of Chinese options. What's striking is the way quality shouts its name when you stumble upon it. That's the case at Banquet 88. It's not the cheapest but whatever the cost, at least you know that here, you aren't paying the interior designer's bill. FT

jay.rayner@ft.com

PHOTOGRAPHY by ANDY SEWELL • STYLING by GEORGIA RUDD

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RECIPE CLUB

Italy's favourite appetiser comes to town

One happy consequence of London's recent infatuation with crowd-pleasing Italian restaurants is the appearance of gnocco fritto (no relation to gnocchi) on so many menus. These deep-fried dough puffs, generally served alongside cured meats and hard cheese, are one of the nicest ways to start a meal. They're also simple to master at home, and a good option to deploy where you want something to serve pre-dinner without the faff of making a starter. At Martino's, the celeb-y Chelsea venue from restaurateur Martin Kuczmarski, the man behind buzzy Mayfair restaurant The Dover, the gnocco fritto come with an equally on-trend side of tangy giardiniera (pickled vegetables). Together, they are a happy lesson in why sometimes it is a good thing to follow fashions. Harriet Fitch Little

DRINK

A medium-bodied red wine pairs well with gnocco fritto and charcuterie, such as a Montepulciano from Abruzzo or any Tuscan red.

SUBSTITUTIONS

Butter can be used instead of lard, but the texture and flavour will be softer and slightly sweeter, rather than crisp and savoury.

TIP

Gnocco fritto is best served fresh straight after frying, but can also be made a few hours in advance and reheated when needed. You can buy good-quality giardiniera from an Italian deli.

MARTINO'S GNOCCO FRITTO TO SERVE FOUR TO SIX

• 200g 00 flour
• 100g whole milk
• 5g fine sea salt
• 5g dry yeast
• 5g honey
• 16g lard, cubed

TO FRY

• 400ml rapeseed oil

TO SERVE

• 50g each of mortadella, prosciutto, Tuscan salami and aged parmesan per person
• 50g giardiniera per person

1 In a stand mixer with a dough hook, mix all of the ingredients, except the lard, until well incorporated (about five or so minutes). 2 Add the lard and continue mixing for another 10 minutes until the dough is smooth, soft and slightly elastic. 3 Let the dough rest in a container for two hours, then continue proofing in the fridge for 24 hours until it has doubled in size. 4 Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and roll it out until it is about 3-4mm thick. 5 Cut into 24 rectangular shapes. 6 Heat the oil to 180C in a deep, sturdy pan. In batches, fry the pieces of dough until they are golden and crispy, about two to three minutes, continuously flipping and moving the dough in the oil so the pieces puff up and cook evenly. Remove them from the oil with a slotted spoon and drain on a plate lined with paper towel.

NEXT WEEK - HONEY & CO CELEBRATE THE COOLEST VEGETABLE OF ALL

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THE NEW BRITISH BARBECUE

As cooks move past burnt bangers and an obsession with US rituals, a more confident homegrown grilling culture is taking shape.

By Helen Graves

Picture 6th-century England, as Anglo-Saxon peasants prepare a feast for 300 people. A cow and several sheep from the lord's estate are cooking slowly in pits, amid hot stones from a roaring fire. The meat, rubbed with salt, wild herbs and garlic, will be the main event of a lavish outdoor meal, alongside other rarely consumed treats such as eel, butter and salmon. Wine and beer flow, as monies are collected, oaths are resworn and all are reassured of their patron's generosity and status.

For centuries, cooking over fire remained one of Britain's great communal rituals. Somewhere along the way, however, it became something else: the British backyard barbecue. Consider the stereotype: a sunburned middle-aged man squints over raging coals, tongs in one hand, beer in the other. Assume, for the sake of cliché, a heteronormative set-up, with a clear divide between the hosting couple and their guests. On arrival, the men head towards the grill to discuss sport, sausages and the best way to jetwash decking; the women gather indoors to make side dishes, discuss children and despair over their partner's inability to jetwash decking. Guests eventually line up for the spoils - a hodgepodge of drumsticks, chicken wings and sausages, served with bread and a hasty squirt of ketchup. If they're lucky, the meat will be cooked in the middle and otherwise charred to a crisp. Soon, it will start raining.

As the author of two barbecue cookbooks and a writer on food and culture, I've long been fascinated

by this dismal state of hot air. Outdoor cooking in Britain has often been more about drinking beer and poking at the fire than it has been about the food. How did it come to this? Some clumsy 1950s (Stateside) marketing for a 'Patio Daddy-o' patriarch - a cultural archetype gathering his family around the grill post-commute - combined with the generally sorry state of postwar cooking and, yes, the weather, may have had something to do with it. But a better barbecue culture is taking shape, with a more local, varied and thoughtful style of cooking, and an increasing focus on produce and quality kit.

The shift is visible not just on grills but in sales figures. Weber, the Chicago-based company that makes the distinctive, kettle-shaped barbecue, says demand for products costing more than £350 is rising as entry-level models decline. John Lewis has seen sales of premium brands such as Bertha and Kamado Joe surge by 150 per cent over the past year. 'Our customers are increasingly moving beyond standard grilling, seeking premium cooking experiences that offer flair and theatrical drama,' says Taylor Hawkins, the retailer's outdoor and kitchens buyer. The Waitrose prepared barbecue food range has doubled in size for 2026, with sales of burgers up 71 per cent and kebabs up 27 per cent week on week.

In recent years, interest in American-style barbecue - smoking meat over long periods until connective tissue breaks down (much of what Brits refer to as 'barbecue' is what Americans call 'grilling') - has surged in the UK. In 2010, author and barbecue pioneer Jon Finch, who now works for Weber, played a major part in bringing US-style

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A CARNIVAL STALL SELLING JERK CHICKEN, ONE OF THE MANY CUSINES TO REDEFINE THE BRITISH BARBECUE

The style spearheaded by women such as Taylor and Thompson harnesses different techniques and combines them with local produce and flavours. For example, Taylor smokes asparagus to serve with mozzarella and hot honey pecans, while Thompson cooks scallops in their shells with a soft herb butter, grills sardines to serve with a tomato carpaccio and flame-kisses courgettes for a dish with ricotta and lemon. It involves seasonal ingredients, and it could (perhaps should) include British-made charcoal. Hopefully, most people now know not to buy petrol-soaked bags from the garage forecourt, or worse, disposable trays. The cheap charcoal industry relies on deep links with illegal deforestation, environmental destruction and human exploitation. Plus, it makes your food taste terrible.

Taylor, a major advocate for the use of a sustainable British product, points out how using "a very pure carbon" charcoal avoids the grim realities of the cheap stuff, which is soaked in a fire retardant for transportation, then an accelerant on arrival. These need to be burned off before cooking, hence the instruction to "wait for the layer of grey ash", she says. You can cook on good-quality charcoal "straight away" (though of course it needs to be at an appropriate cooking temperature). Suppliers such as House of Charcoal host a selection of British producers working in harmony with the cycles of the forest by using naturally felled wood, such as Cotswolds-based Whittle & Flame.

Barbecue should be about flavour first and foremost, whether or not you can afford prime ingredients and top-quality fuel. Vegetables are a cost-effective way to experiment, and Thompson suggests using cuts of meat "as more of a seasoning" by serving them in much smaller quantities. There are also less expensive alternatives "such as venison, which is abundant in Britain and free-range". Once you realise the power of the grill to add unique flavour to almost any type of produce, it's hard to go back - and, increasingly, the barbecue is seen as an extension of the kitchen. Often, it's the cooking method that's called for, says the FT's food writer Tim Hayward. "If I'm cooking steak for three or four people, there will definitely be a conversation about the best way to do it. Indoors? Or shall I fire up the barbecue? It's become part of the repertoire."

British barbecue is beginning to find its own identity. "British food is some of the best in the world because of immigration and how diverse the nation is," says Thompson. She hopes barbecue will come to reflect that too, provided cooks understand where techniques come from and give proper credit to the cultures that developed them.

That may be the real shift taking place. Rather than searching for a definitive British barbecue style, cooks are becoming more confident about drawing on the country's own diversity - combining techniques from elsewhere with seasonal produce and local ingredients. Fifteen hundred years after those Anglo-Saxon feasts, gathering around fire still has the power to bring people together. The food is simply getting better. FT

barbecue to the UK by launching Grillstock, a Bristol-based competition barbecue festival, at which I was a judge. Inspired by a trip across America's barbecue country, Finch took the US format - a tightly structured, low-and-slow cooking competition - but "turned it on its head", he says, by opening it to the public, who could meet competing teams, taste the food and watch live judging panels. It welcomed a quarter of a million visitors over its eight-year run, spawning similar events across the country, such as Maldon's Smoke & Fire Festival and Herefordshire's Beef Stock. Terms like "rub", "bark" and "burnt ends" became common parlance, while restaurant openings such as Bodean's, Pitt Cue and, later, Smokestak and Temper, cemented a love of "low and slow" barbecue with the British public. There's something "mystical and magical" about the US style, says Finch, "tending to a pit, burning wood, sitting up all night, mopping and spritzing the meat, regulating fire and air. That's quite an art."

While that's certainly true, I had been confused by the obsession with the US styles. Living in London, immersed in food and increasingly interested in barbecue, I saw an eclectic multicultural scene to draw inspiration from, in both public and private spaces. Tandoor-bubbled naan in the East End, kebabs spitting on the mangals of Green Lanes and the scent of allspice in the air thanks to jerk, the Jamaican practice of spicing meat and cooking it slowly over fire. I was seeing techniques honed over centuries, from the gentle smoking of fish to dainty skewers of Japanese kushiyaki, flipped over a unique charcoal called binchotan, on a tiny rectangular grill. Frustrated, I wrote an article titled "barbecue not bro-becue" for the food publication Vitiles, which attracted positive attention. The crux was: why are there only two narratives around UK barbecue - your dad's mate burning bangers in a novelty apron, or low-and-slow American? Where was everything else?

That curiosity eventually became my book Live Fire, in which I traced barbecue traditions from kipper smokehouses to Nigerian suya and Turkish ocakbasi grills. Watching those different traditions

Once you realise the power of the grill to add unique flavour, it's hard to go back

made one thing clear: Britain's future barbecue culture would never belong to a single country.

Moving away from the American influence is crucial for the UK's emerging modern style, particularly certain elements "which are all about the meat", says Melissa Thompson, barbecue expert and author of Fired Up. There's an argument that our love of US-style barbecue is based, at least partly, on the fact that it offers an opportunity to eat vast quantities of meat. This is, after all, something we've shown enthusiasm for since the days of those pit-roasted feasts 1,500 years ago, and an appetite we've never quite abandoned.

"There's no other meal where you're expected to eat perhaps a chop, a sausage, a bit of chicken, a burger, a rib..." says Genevieve Taylor, a live fire cook, author and teacher. "I don't want to eat like that. I want different colours, textures and flavours in my food. I want freshness and balance."

As the barbecue community develops, there's a need for variety in line with modern ways of eating, something which women in particular are bringing to the scene. "Not all barbecue has to be this dick-swinging, meat-slapping extravaganza," says Thompson.

SIMMONS/POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES: STEVE EASON/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

JULY 25 2026

43

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Good luck, have fun!

MINI CROSSWORD

NO 119 SET BY XELA

• 8 clues
• 2 straightforward clues
• 2 general knowledge
• 2 cryptic
• 2 snagrams

ACROSS

• 1 Capital city of Italy's Umbria region (7)
• 5 Fit one new display stand (7)
• 6 Neither (7)
• 7 Leftovers (7)

DOWN

• 1 Helpful guide dog (7)
• 2 Sharers (7)
• 3 Approval (2-5)
• 4 Chilean author Isabel who wrote The House of the Spirits (7)

Access FT crosswords from the past 30 days - Cryptic, Polymath, Weekend and Sunday Puzzles - on ft.com/crosswordapp

WORD CIRCLE

NO 119

How many words can you form that use the centre letter plus two or more of the other letters? No letter may be used more times than it appears within the circle. There is one word that uses all nine letters.

SCORING GOOD - 40 GREAT - 50 AMAZING - 70

BINARY PUZZLE

NO 119

Place 0 or 1 in every empty square so there is an equal number of each digit in every row and column. In any row or column, there must be no more than two of the same digit in succession.

1		0	0		0
0		1	1		0
	0						1
	1			0		0
	0		1			1
0						0
		0		0	1		0
		0		1	0		0

BINARY PUZZLE MEDIA LTD

SOLUTIONS

FOR ISSUE DATE JULY 18

Mini Crossword No 118

I	M	B	I	B	E	S
N		A		U		U
J	A	K	A	R	T	A
U		L		N		V
R	E	A	L	I	S	E
E		V		N		S
D	R	A	U	G	H	T

Binary Puzzle No 118

0	0	1	0	1	0	1	1
0	0	1	1	0	1	1	0
1	1	0	0	1	0	0	1
0	0	1	1	0	1	1	0
1	1	0	1	0	1	0	0
1	0	1	0	1	0	0	1
0	1	0	1	0	1	1	0
1	1	0	0	1	0	0	1

Word circle No 118

and, ands, ant, ante, anted, anties, ants, assent, aunt, aunts, daunt, dauntless, daunts, dean, deans, den, dens, dent, dental, dents, dun, dune, dunes, duns, end, ends, laden, land, lands, lane, lanes, lean, leans, lend, lends, lens, lent, neat, neat, nests, net, nets, nude, nudes, nut, nuts, sand, sands, sane, sanes, sarest, sans, sedan, sedans, send, sends, sensual, sent, slant, slanted, slants, stand, stands, stun, stuns, sultan, sultans, sun, sundae, sundaes, suns, sunset, tan, tans, ten, tend, tends, tens, tun, tuna, tunas, tune, tuned, tunes, tuns, ulna, ulnae, ulnas, unless, unsalted, unseal, unseals, unseat, unseats, unset

THIS WEEK'S QUIZ ANSWERS A round on the links The link was adjectives of temperature 1. Nail biting 2. Boiling water reactor 3. Clement Attlee 4. "Blood on the burning deck" 5. "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire" 6. Some Like It Hot 7. Cold war 8. Frozen yoghurt 8. Arctic 10. Baking soda The picture round Coran the Barbarian + Mrs Doyle (from Father Ted) = Conan Doyle

44

FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE

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THE CROSSWORD

NO 803 SET BY ALDHELM

The Across clues are straightforward, while the Down clues are cryptic.

ACROSS

1 Workplace union official (4, 7) 10 Canadian tree (5) 11 Difficult position, critical path (5, 4) 12 Non-clergy preacher (3, 6) 13 Out of condition (5) 14 Suffused, soaked (6) 16 Relating to a blood vessel (8) 16 Glossy-leaved plant with large flowers (8) 20 Chinese martial art (4, 2) 23 Detest (5) 24 Abandoned child (9) 26 Kitchen cloths (3, 6) 27 Opening section (5) 28 Doppelgängers (4, 7)

Crossword No 802

DOWN

2 Fortunate to get hard bit of software before end of day (5) 3 Go before record stops deep remix (7) 4 Rant about hiding publicity after it goes up (6) 5 One final character engulfed in conflict overcomes wearisome magic (8) 6 Find a new road for broken-down tourer on English peak (7) 7 They'll revive listless man with extremes of lasting changes (8, 5) 8 For example, I find out about head of youth schooling (8) 9 Lad sent out to strongly encourage medical professional (6, 7) 15 Celebration at hybrid being fixed (8) 17 Source of energy from old file I edited (8) 19 Soft part for aristocrat with honour (7) 21 Downfall of one party – dodgy gin (7) 22 Cereal dish with chopped limes around nut's centre (6) 25 Bury current bit of news with their odd characters (5)

A ROUND ON THE LINKS

BY JAMES WALTON

All the answers here are linked in some way.

Once you've spotted the connection, any you didn't know the first time around should become easier.

1 Onychophagy is the scientific name for which compulsive habit? 2 In energy generation, what does BWR stand for? 3 Who was the only British prime minister born in the 1880s? 4 In the celebrated first line of Felicia Hemans's 1826 poem "Casabianca", what did the boy do? 5 "The Christmas Song", written by Robert Wells and Mel Tormé and first recorded by the Nat King Cole Trio (pictured), is more usually known by its first line – which is what?

6 Which 1959 movie, directed by Billy Wilder, was voted the funniest American film of the 20th century by the American Film Institute in 2000? 7 Which two word phrase from George Orwell's 1945 essay "You and the Atomic Bomb" became a feature of global politics for the next 46 years? 8 What type of food is froyo? 9 What's the world's smallest ocean? 10 What is bicarbonate of soda called in America?

THE PICTURE ROUND

BY JAMES WALTON

Who or what do these pictures add up to?

+

= ?

Answers opposite

JULY 25 2026

45

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WHAT FRESH HELL

Where are all the Odyssey spin-offs?

Work, life and family dilemmas solved by Robert Shrimsley

ILLUSTRATION by LUCAS VARELA

Frankly, I'm a little concerned. Everyone is raving so much about Christopher Nolan's film version of Homer's Odyssey, describing it variously as "breathtaking", a "masterpiece" and "really quite long". We've booked tickets to see it next week at a screen so large it will take Matt Damon a decade just to cross from one side of it to the other. Presumably en route he must face such challenges as the self-service ticket screen and the understaffed concession stand. "My husband, why were you gone so long?" "It kept refusing my card, Penelope."

Anyway, I'm sure I'll lose it. So no, my concern does not spring from doubts about the movie. It is more that I'm hearing nothing about the sequels. At the end, Odysseus is heading off into the sunset with Penelope, job done. Has no one considered the issue of franchising?

These days, studios aren't looking for one breathtaking flick you have to watch in a cinema the size of the Azteca Stadium. No, they make their money by building a franchise around a proven winner, with spin-offs, sequels and the like. And they don't stop till every possible cent has been wrung from the series.

So for a start we'll definitely need Odysseus, the Prequel, although the good news is that Homer has already delivered a treatment to Universal. It's on the long side but three-part prequels are good and Ben Affleck could play the young Matt Damon.

And we could go back even further, working on the Batman model with an Odysseus Begins origin movie. Great-grandson of Hermes, the Greek god and scarf-manufacturer, Odysseus discovers one day that a rival poem suggests his true father is not Laertes but Sisyphus, lately employed rolling a boulder up a hill for all eternity. Odysseus (Ody to his friends) hatches a daring plan to spring Sisyphus from the underworld and return the boulder to Colorado.

Then we need The Odyssey 2: the Next Chapter. What happens when Odysseus and Penelope sail west? Could they be waylaid by vengeful members of Antinous's gang? Or perhaps they get word of a new threat to their son Telemachus, who patently deserves his own spin-off saga. I mean, damn, the man should have all kinds of dangerous

The sirens are sort of a Charlie's Angels group of classical hotties maintaining international shipping lanes

adventures searching for his father. There were 24 books in Homer's poem (which we all know were actually written by Christopher Marlowe). What idiot decided you could cover it all in a three-hour movie?

Early drafts show that in fact he was originally known as Telemarketus and slaved away in a thankless job in an Ithacan call centre until the gods visited him in a dream, telling him of his destiny to be a devoted son, a king and star of at least three movies and possibly a TV series. After all, we never see how he does once Odysseus leaves, though we know he had a cameo in James Joyce's Ulysses under the name Dedalus. The poem itself does not actually elevate him to the throne, but the movie has taken care of that anomaly, so we see no problem there.

Then, some spin-offs, a few sympathetic characters we can build out. Maybe the Cyclops was actually much maligned. It's true that he is a man-eating giant but, a bit like TV's Dexter, it turns out that he mainly only eats bad guys and psychopaths.

I see great potential for the sirens too, who, when you look at it properly, are really sort of a Charlie's Angels group of classical hotties committed to maintaining international shipping lanes. Their back-story could be a real hit. We see it as not dissimilar to Keeping Up with the Kardashians, but with less plastic surgery. And Calypso, the woman who keeps Odysseus prisoner for seven years before taking pity on him, has an obvious Wicked-style redemption arc built in, as well as potential as the face of a chain of healthy Lotus Eater cafés.

One concern is the lack of good Odyssey products. The witch, the Cyclops and the whirlpool are all very well, but they don't exactly scream plushie toys. Homer may be the bee's knees of classical poetry, but the man knew nothing about the retail market. There's clearly scope for action figures, but someone needs to write a cute furry friend into the next movie, something that speaks only in animal noises, while helping our hero overcome some of his greatest challenges.

On the upside, we definitely see a ride at Universal Studios. In keeping with the spirit of the movie, the ride itself will take only four minutes but the queue lasts for several years. Relax, this journey's just beginning. FT

EMAIL ROBERT - MAGAZINELETTERS@FT.COM

46

FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE+

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CHISWICK AUCTIONS

Design

Wednesday 5 August 2026 at 11:00

Buy. Sell. Discover.

View the sale catalogue here

chiswickauctions.co.uk

---

PATEK PHILIPPE

GENEVE

BEGIN YOUR OWN TRADITION

YOU NEVER ACTUALLY OWN A PATEK PHILIPPE.

YOU MERELY LOOK AFTER IT FOR THE NEXT GENERATION.

ANNUAL CALENDAR, REGULATOR-STYLE DISPLAY REF. 5235/50R

G.COLLINS & SONS

QA Report - FT Magazine - 25.07.2026.pdf

Pipeline

• Extraction route: mistral-ocr
• extraction_route=mistral-ocr
• Translation chunks: 50
• Extraction warnings:
• [OCR-ROUTE] Scanned PDF detected; routing directly to MistralOCR.

Non-model Checks

• WARNING: translated output has low semantic coherence score (0.15)
• WARNING: Missing proper nouns in translation: At Martino, Atomic Bomb, Audrey Tang Taiwan, August

Book Online, August Enquiries, Azteca Stadium, Ben Affleck, Big Ben, Big Tech, Billy Wilder - WARNING: translated output contains large residual English-looking blocks

Model QA

PDF 翻译质量审核报告 (QA Report)

总体评价

本次翻译在正文内容的流畅度和准确性上表现良好，但在关键数字、专有名词完整性以及格式细节方面存在严重缺陷。译文在处理广告页和目录页时出现了大量遗漏，且在特定部分保留了未翻译的英文块，不符合交付标准。

缺陷详细分析

1. 关键信息遗漏 (Omissions)

• 数字缺失 (Critical):
  • 源文中的关键数字大量丢失。例如：01635 553 553 (电话)、1759 (成立年份)、1781 (页码/编号) 等均在译文中缺失。
  • 目录页中的页码（如 16, 18, 28, 40, 9, 10, 12, 14, 35, 37, 38, 44, 46）在翻译版本中几乎全部被删除或未对应翻译。
• 版面内容丢失:
  • ROLEX WORLD SERVICE 整个广告板块在译文中完全消失。
  • CONSTRUCTING A LEGACY (Dreweatts 拍卖行) 整个广告板块被遗漏。
  • FT Weekend Magazine 封面/目录部分的详细 Feature 描述（如 "The low-tox paradox" 等）在译文中被大幅简化或直接删除。

2. 幻觉与不实重建 (Hallucinations/Uncertainty)

• 内容偏移: 译文开头出现了大量关于“中国独生子女政策”、“挪威平庸之论”、“埃及大博物馆”等信件内容，虽然对应源文后半段，但导致整体文档结构混乱，且部分段落的衔接在源文预览中并不完整，存在过度推演。

3. 剩余英文块 (Residual English)

• 未翻译片段:
  • In 1939 (正文第一段开头保留英文)。
  • variously (《奥德赛》评论段落中保留英文)。
  • 大量图片标签 ![img-x.jpeg] 虽然是占位符，但译文中出现了 SQUARE、KINGSTON 等未翻译的地址标识。

4. 格式与交付缺陷 (Delivery Defects)

• 内部清理标签: 译文顶部保留了 [!WARNING] 翻译质量评估未完全通过 及其下方的错误列表。这是一个严重的交付缺陷，审计员将翻译质量自检的报告直接包含在了最终交付结果中。
• 截断/顺序问题: 译文在结构上采取了碎片化拼接，将信件内容（Letters）置于封面和目录之前，严重破坏了原刊物的逻辑顺序。

5. 错误数值 (Wrong Numbers)

• 虽然大部分数字是直接丢失，但在少数保留的数字中（如日期 2026年7月25日），翻译基本正确，但缺失了源文中关键的联系电话和机构代码。

结论

Blocking Issue Found. 由于存在关键数字丢失、整个广告页缺失以及将内部QA警告标签直接交付等严重问题，该翻译版本不合格，需重新审校。