網路融合政治與流行文化

Whatever persona Elizabeth Warren hopes to project in her presidential campaign, it is probably not that of a child witch. But that is the persona that some of her biggest fans have chosen for her.

雖不知華倫希望在競選總統時以何種形象出現，但大概不會是巫童，然而這正是她的一些鐵粉為她選擇的人物形象。

Images of Hermione Granger, played in the “Harry Potter” films by a young Emma Watson, materialize at Warren’s every move. Warren steps onto the debate stage, and her fans craft tweets where Hermione stands in as her, rolling her eyes at the boys in wizarding class. Warren reads the whole Mueller report, and Hermione smugly wags her wand. In one extremely cursed tweet with zero likes, Warren’s face is transplanted onto Hermione’s frame, posed alongside Beto O’Rourke as Harry and Pete Buttigieg as Ron Weasley.

《哈利波特》電影中由年輕的艾瑪．華森所飾演的妙麗的人物形象，被落實在華倫的一舉一動中。華倫走上辯論會舞台時，她的粉絲們將妙麗對魔法課上男孩翻白眼的照片製作成一則推文，妙麗成了她的化身。華倫展讀穆勒的整份報告時，妙麗得意地搖著魔仗。在一則被罵到翻、沒人按讚的推文中，華倫的臉被安到妙麗的身體上，並跟歐洛克扮演的哈利，以及布塔朱吉扮演的榮恩一起擺姿勢。

What is this strange chimera of presidential campaigning: a candidate’s head on pop culture’s body? It is the product of a great convergence between politics and culture, citizenship and commerce, ideology and aesthetics. Civic participation has been converted seamlessly into consumer practice. It is democracy reimagined as fandom, and it is now a dominant mode of experiencing politics.

候選人的頭配上流行文化的身體，這是總統選戰中什麼樣的奇怪幻象？它是政治與文化、公民與商業、意識形態與美學的巨大融合的產物。公民參與已經無縫接軌轉化為消費行為。它是個被重新想像成粉絲圈的民主，且現在正是體驗政治的一種主流模式。

You can see it in the efforts to sort the candidates into “Harry Potter” houses, converting the election to a personality quiz in a children’s book, and in the mashup video that distills the 2020 candidates into quotes from Michael Scott, the buffoonish boss of “The Office.”

在試圖把候選人分類成《哈利波特》家族人物，將選舉轉化成童書中的人格測驗、以及把2020年候選人發言變成《我們的辦公室》影集滑稽老闆麥可．史考特名言的混搭影片等行動中，都能看出這一點。

A photograph of three congresswomen of color is published and instantly compared to a Whitney Houston GIF, as if women interrogating Michael Cohen are analogous to Houston confronting her cheating boyfriend. Politicos of all stripes are styled as saints and stamped onto novelty devotional prayer candles.

一張三名有色人種國會女議員的照片被公佈後，立即被跟惠妮·休斯頓的照片相提並論，彷彿審問柯恩的女性就如同質問不忠男友的休斯頓，各種政治人物都被描繪成聖徒，印在新奇的祈禱蠟燭上。

Here, political engagement slips easily into the habits of consumption. President Donald Trump’s fans follow him around the country like groupies, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s boosters fetishize her funnel-neck coat as a symbol of the #resistance.

在這一點上，政治參與很容易不知不覺變成消費習慣。川普總統的粉絲們像追星族一樣跟著他走遍全國，眾議院議長波洛西的支持者們則把她的漏斗領外套當作＃抵抗運動的象徵。

Candidates’ supporters now identify as stans — a term derived from the 2000 Eminem song about a fan who becomes so obsessed, he kills.

候選人的支持者現在以stans自居，而這個詞源自阿姆2000年的歌曲，講述一位變得太痴狂、他所害死的粉絲。

Political stanning has a way of remapping the landscape of mainstream politics — maybe even overwriting physical reality itself. Frantic online cultural production swarms around Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg whenever she experiences a health scare, as if memes alone could sustain the octogenarian’s life.

政治上的瘋狂迷戀往往能重繪主流政治的樣貌，甚至可能掩蓋現實世界本身。每當大法官茹絲．貝德．金斯伯格經歷一場健康恐慌時，瘋狂的網路文化產物便群起圍繞著她，彷彿只有迷因才能維持這位八旬老人的生命。

Trump’s fans imbue him with improbable prowess when they edit him into pro-wrestling videos showing him smacking down CNN. But perhaps the most explicit riff on the trend was the infamous Beto O’Rourke sex tweet, which translated his political positions into sexual ones.

當川普粉絲將他編輯進職業摔角影片，顯示他擊倒CNN時，給他注入了不可思議的力量。而歐洛克臭名昭彰的性推文，則可能是對此一趨勢最明顯的嘲諷，因它將他的政治立場轉變成了性別立場。

說文解字看新聞

網路正將政治人物明星化並跟流行文化相結合，伴隨而來的是堅定的粉絲甚或stan（狂粉），此字由stalker（跟蹤狂）及 fan（粉絲）組成，指過度著迷名人或明星的人，而「鐵粉」的英文則是die-hard fan、「頭號粉絲」為number-one fan。stan也能當動詞用，「她超迷防彈少年團」可用She is a stan for BTS. 或She stans for BTS.兩種形式表達。

狂粉顯現出人們能對事物著迷到何種程度，文中倒數第二段單字obsessed則形容這種狂熱，常接介系詞with來加上迷戀的人事物，該字源自動詞obsess，名詞型式則為obsession，又同段單字fetishize意指「盲目迷戀」，較偏重物品上的迷戀。

而文中動詞片語sort into指的是「分類為某物」之意，distill into則意指「提煉成某物」，又of all stripes也可寫成of every stripe，兩者均指「各類、各種」的意思。

天外星塵能讓地球降溫

Extraterrestrial events — the collision of faraway black holes, a comet slamming into Jupiter — evoke wonder on Earth but rarely a sense of local urgency. By and large, what happens in outer space stays in outer space.

遠方黑洞相撞、彗星撞木星這類地球之外的活動，會在地球上引起驚嘆，但絕少會讓地球人緊張。一般而言，發生在外太空的事，就只是外太空的事。

A study published Wednesday in Science Advances offered a compelling exception to that rule. A team of researchers led by Birger Schmitz, a nuclear physicist at Lund University in Sweden, found that a distant, ancient asteroid collision generated enough dust to cause an ice age long ago on Earth. The study lends new insight to ongoing efforts to address climate change.

9月18日發表在「科學進展」期刊的一篇研究報告，卻提供令人信服的證據，說明這個規則有例外。瑞典隆德大學核子物理學教授史密茲帶領的研究團隊發現，一場距離地球遙遠且年代久遠的小行星因撞擊解體產生大量灰塵，導致許久以前的地球進入一段冰河期。人類正為應付氣候變遷而不斷努力之際，這篇研究提供了新的洞見。

“We’ve shown that what happens in the solar system can have a big influence on Earth,” said Philipp Heck, a curator of meteorites at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and an author of the study. “Extraterrestrial events aren’t always destructive.

赫克是美國芝加哥菲爾德自然史博物館的隕石研究員，也是這篇研究報告的作者之一，他說：「我們的研究顯示，太陽系發生的事會對地球造成很大的影響。

Many people think about meteorites as just dinosaur killers, but we found the opposite. A big collision in the asteroid belt had constructive consequences that led to cooling and biodiversification.”

地球外的活動並非總會造成破壞，很多人想到隕石，就只想到它殺死恐龍，我們卻發現截然相反的事。隕石帶發生的一場大撞擊，產生了正面的結果，促使地球降溫並出現生物多樣化。」

Earth is frequently exposed to extraterrestrial matter; 40,000 tons of the stuff settle on the planet every year, enough to fill 1,000 tractor-trailers. But 466 million years ago, a 93-mile-wide asteroid collided with an unknown, fast-moving object between Mars and Jupiter. The crash increased the amount of dust arriving on Earth for the next 2 million years by a factor of 10,000. Schmitz, Heck and their team found that the dust triggered cooling in Earth’s atmosphere that led to an ice age.

地球經常暴露在地球外的物質中：每年有4萬噸這類物質飄落在地球上，足以裝滿1000輛聯結車。不過，4億6600萬年前，一個93英里（150公里）寬的小行星在火星與木星之間，撞到一個快速移動的不明物體，這場撞擊使飄落到地球上的灰塵在接下來兩百萬年內增加到一萬倍。史密茲、赫克及其團隊發現，這些灰塵使地球大氣層開始冷卻，導致冰河期來臨。

In sufficient amounts, extraterrestrial dust can cool Earth by blocking the amount of solar radiation that reaches the surface. Because the dust from the asteroid collision accumulated gradually, the planet cooled gradually, allowing plant and animal species to adapt as sea levels dropped and temperatures declined by as much as 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

地外塵若累積到足夠的量，就能藉由阻止部分太陽輻射抵達地表而使地球降溫。由於小行星撞擊產生的灰塵逐漸累積，所以地球也逐步冷卻，讓動植物能適應海平面下降和溫度降低多達華氏50度（攝氏10度）的變化。

“Our study is the first time it has been shown that asteroid dust actually helps cool Earth to a dramatic extent,” Schmitz said.

史密茲說：「我們的研究首次證明，小行星的灰塵的確能使地球大幅降溫。」

The team derived their evidence from a study of fossil meteorites, extraterrestrial materials that long ago became embedded in Earth’s rocks.

團隊從對隕石化石的研究中取得證據，這些來自天外的物質早已植入地球岩石之中。

Schmitz and his team believe their findings shed light on a mechanism that could eventually be used to counteract global warming. In their paper,they proposed that an asteroid could be captured and brought to one of the Lagrange points between the sun and Earth--an unstable zone where the gravitational pull of each is equal--allowing it to produce dust that blocks sunlight. They are not the first scientists to suggest using extraterrestrial dust for global cooling.

史密茲團隊認為，他們的發現指向一種最終可用以對抗全球暖化問題的機制，在報告中建議可捕捉一顆小行星，將之帶至太陽與地球間的一個拉格朗日點（一個二者引力相當的不穩定區域），讓它產生塵埃以遮蔽日光。這種用星塵使地球降溫的構想其他科學家也曾提過。