窥探未来三大趋势，有哪些变化正在生活中悄悄发生？

The world's largest producer of cocoa, Ivory Coast,has found an inventive use for the cocoa plant that could power millions of homes.

象牙海岸（科特迪瓦）是世界上最大的可可生产国，这里的人们发现了一种可可的新用途——它可以为上百万户人家供电。

If you've indulged in a chocolate dessert lately, there is a good chance that its cocoa came from Ivory Coast. This West African country is the largest producer of cocoa in the world, where more than 40% of all cocoa beans originate. With more than six million people working in cocoa in the country, it is Ivory Coast's largest export by far. The country's cocoa beans have been fuelling people worldwide for decades, but now another part of the cocoa plant will soon be powering Ivory Coast.

如果你最近很喜欢吃巧克力甜点，它的原料可可就有很可能来自象牙海岸。这个西非国家是世界上最大的可可生产国，超过40%的可可豆产自这里。科特迪瓦有600多万人从事可可生产，这是迄今为止该国出口量最大的商品。几十年来，该国的可可豆供给着全世界，但现在可可厂的另一部分很快将为科特迪瓦本国提供燃料。

The coveted cocoa bean is just one small part of the cocoa plant. While the beans are exported to be made into chocolate bars, confectionary and drinks, the bean shells, pod husks and cocoa sweatings (a pale yellowish liquid that drains away during fermentation) are usually thrown away. Worldwide, the volume of cocoa waste is steadily growing.

令人垂涎的可可豆只是可可植物的一小部分。当豆子被出口加工成巧克力棒、糖果和饮料时，豆壳、豆荚壳和可可汗（一种淡黄色液体，在发酵过程中流失）总被当做边角料丢弃。在世界范围内，可可废料的数量在持续增长。

This waste is now set to become a significant part of Ivory Coast's transition to renewable energy. After successful pilot projects, Ivory Coast has begun work on a biomass plant which will run on cocoa waste. In the biomass plant, cocoa plant matter left over after cocoa production will be burned to turn a turbine and generate electricity, much like a conventional fossil-fuel power plant.

这些废料现在将成为科特迪瓦向可再生能源利用的重要组成部分。在试点项目成功后，科特迪瓦已经开始建设一个以可可废料为原料的生物质发电厂。在生物质能发电厂，那些“边角料”将被燃烧以转动涡轮发电，类似于传统的化石燃料发电厂。

Finding more uses for the waste products of one of the world's most-loved crops could help keep farmers supplying the chocolate industry for years to come – even as climate change makes it harder to grow cocoa. But even within a crop that faces many pressures there is a seed, or rather a husk, of hope.

尽管气候变化让种植可可变得更加困难了，但为世界上最受欢迎的作物之一的废料寻找用武之地，还是有助于在未来几年里保持农民对巧克力生产的热情。即使是很难种植的作物，也有希望的外壳和种子。

Busy means wealth?

忙碌意味着财富？

Busyness is a powerful social signal, though a somewhat counterintuitive one. At the turn of the 20th century, economists predicted that the ultimate symbol of wealth and success would be leisure—showing others that you were so successful that you could abstain from work. Instead, the opposite occurred. It’s not free time, but busyness, that gestures to a person’s relevance.

忙碌是一个强大的社会信号，虽然有点违反直觉。在20世纪之交，经济学家预言，财富和成功的终极象征是休闲，向别人展示你是如此成功，可以放弃工作。相反，而现在情况恰恰相反。不是闲暇，而是忙碌，成为了一个人的成功标志。

"Being busy made me feel like a valuable resource with abilities that were in high demand,” said Robbie McDonald, a 53-year-old from Vancouver who worked long hours at a nonprofit before the pandemic. “It fueled my insecurity and impostor syndrome. The busier I got, the more I would take on, for fear of seeming irrelevant. I definitely wore the busy badge of honor, complaining about it to colleagues and friends, but I was secretly proud that so many people relied on me to get things done.”

来自温哥华的53岁的Robbie McDonald说：“忙碌让我觉得自己是一个很有价值的资源，有着高需求的能力。”它助长了我的不安全感和冒名顶替综合症。我越忙，就越想做更多事情，生怕显得无关紧要。我肯定戴着忙碌的荣誉徽章，一边向同事和朋友抱怨，一边暗自感到自豪，这么多人需要靠我才能完成事情。”

Scientific research has shown that these busyness signals make other people think you’re important. In one of Bellezza and her colleagues’ studies, they found that people who get groceries delivered were perceived as busier and higher class, and a woman wearing a Bluetooth headset had a higher status than another wearing headphones. When people were asked to read imaginary letters from a friend, one letter described how “crazy busy” a person was, while the other said his life was “relaxed.” The participants thought the busy letter writer to have more money, have better skills, and have a higher social status.

科学研究表明，这些忙碌的信号使其他人认为你很重要。在贝列扎和她的同事的一项研究中，他们发现，那些选择送货上门服务的人被认为是更忙碌和更高的阶层，一个戴蓝牙耳机的妇女的地位比另一个戴头戴式耳机的妇女高。当人们被要求读朋友的假想信时，一封信描述了一个人是多么“疯狂忙碌”，另一封信则说自己的生活“很轻松”，参与者认为忙着的写信人要更有钱，技能好，社会地位也更高。

But the paradox and masochism of busyness is also laid bare: the study found that while people aspire to be more like a busy person, they also consider the busy person to be less happy. An obsession with busyness also taints how people spend what little leisure time they have, Bellezza said, by wanting leisure to accomplish as much as possible in as little time as possible—called “productivity orientation.”

但是忙碌的悖论和受虐理论也被揭露了：研究发现，虽然人们渴望成为一个忙碌的人，但他们也认为这些人不那么快乐。贝列扎说，对忙碌的痴迷也会影响人们如何度过他们有限的闲暇时间，因为他们希望能在尽可能少的时间内尽可能地达成休闲的目标，所谓的“生产力导向”。

The pandemic offered a rare window of opportunity for some people to become literally less busy, and perhaps more importantly, to get perspective on their cultural beliefs about busyness. Instead of being caught up in the inertia of always projecting a busy life, they had time to reflect on how they used busyness to define themselves—and how it led to stress and the conflation of productivity and self-worth.

新冠疫情为一些人提供了一个难得的机会，让他们不再那么忙碌，也许更重要的是，让人们思考自己从文化角度对忙碌的理解。他们没有陷入总是安排忙碌生活的惯性之中，而是有时间反思自己如何利用忙碌来定义自己，以及它如何导致压力以及生产力和自我价值的融合。

indulged vi. 满足；沉溺；放任

coveted adj. 梦寐以求的；垂涎的

confectionary n. 糖食,糖果店

paradox n. 似非而是的论点；悖论，反论；自相矛盾的人或事

leisure n. 闲暇；空闲；安逸 adj. 空闲的；有闲的；业余的

counterintuitive adj. 违反直觉的

preferably adv. 最好;宁可;更可取地

perceive v. 注意到;意识到;察觉到;将…理解为;将…视为;认为

counterintuitive adj. 反常的

imposter syndrome 骗子综合征;冒充者综合征;综合症

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