Month: July 2025

Nike, One Piece or the Simpsons are among them

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LEGO® is a brand that is characterized by having a huge amount and variety of sets, ideal for each one to find something that fits their tastes. To all this we must add that the Danish firm is in continuous change, adding new sets every little time That, to whom we are a fan, the bug of wanting to throw ourselves for for them. Among the last launches of the company, there are very prominent sets that belong to franchises with thousands of fans. Just then we leave you a selection with some of them, some in reserve: Nike Dunk X Lego®, with the iconic sports brand shoe, by 99.99 euros. LEGO® Mario and standard kartideal now that Mario Kart World has recently premiered, by 169.99 euros. LEGO® Krusty Burguerthe iconic local of the Simpsons, by 199.99 euros. LEGO® Going Merrytaken directly from the Live Action of One Piece, by 129.99 euros. LEGO® Westralswith an adult, his young and a built tree, by 69.99 euros. Nike Dunk X Lego® The first of these premiere sets we have with this collaboration with Nike, starring the iconic brand shoe. There is also a basketball ball on the set, as well as a minifigure And the occasional secret. A set that is composed of almost 1,200 pieces that we can buy right now by 99.99 euros. * Some price may have changed from the last review Lego® Mario and Kart Standard If we are Nintendo or Mario fans, surely it fits us This set taken directly from Mario Kart. With him, we will have a set of 1,972 pieces to enjoy this character and his kart, ideal to expose it on a shelf to show him in the face of visits. It is available by 169.99 euros. Mario Kart ™: Mario and Kart Standard * Some price may have changed from the last review Lego® Krusty Burguer The Simpsons also have their hole in Lego® with this set of Krusty’s hamburger local hamburgers. It is composed of 1,635 pieces loaded in the interiorwith many who surely get us more than a smile while we ride it. It is now available and we can acquire it for 199.99 euros. The Simpsons ™: Krusty Burger * Some price may have changed from the last review Lego® Going Merry Fans of one of the most important sleeves and anime in history have an appointment on August 1 with this set directly from the Live Action of One Piece. There are more than 1,300 pieces that include The minifigures of several characters of the Luffy crew And we can already reserve it for 129.99 euros. * Some price may have changed from the last review Lego® Westrals We close with a new set of the Harry Potter universe, Specifically this little family of tostrals With an adult, his breeding and a buildable tree. It is a smaller set than the previous ones (it has just over 500 pieces), but its figures have articulable wings. It is available by 69.99 euros. * Some price may have changed from the last review Some of the links of this article are affiliated and can report a benefit to Xataka. In case of non -availability, offers may vary. Images | LEGO® In Xataka | Your favorite series, comics and movies also in Lego: 15 ideal construction kits to mount yourself or give away In Xataka | Lego constructions to another level: the Technic series has the models with which any collector would dream

The Rimac Nevera R has two curious records. It is the fastest electric in the world and, at the same time, nobody wants to buy it

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He RIMAC Nevera r He has monopolized the attention of the whole world for his impressive speed and power figures. However, this electrical hyperdeportive, despite break speed recordshe has not managed to conquer the heart (or the wallet) of the wealthiest buyers. That produces the strange paradox that, while motor world fans celebrate the technological advances applied to one of the most brutal electrical hyperdeporters that have existed, the reality of their sales dazzles their track achievements. A world speed record that is not enough. The Rimac Nevera R has beaten the World Speed record For production electric cars, reaching an official brand of 431.45 km/h. However, the fridge R could not maintain Your domain in Nürburgringwhere it was overcome by the Xiaomi Su7 Ultrawhich became the Electric faster in rolling for the green hell of Nürburgring, despite being a superberlina and not a hyperdeportivo like the fridge R. Mate Rimac, founder of the Bugatti brand and CEO, acknowledged in a company statement that “Beating records is in our DNA, and we will not stop here.” However, according to The published by Bloombergdespite these achievements on the track the fridge R has not achieved the expected commercial impact. Why don’t Millionaires want the fridge r? One of the hypotheses that have considered Rimac is that the low demand can be related to the preference of high purchasing power for combustion hyperdeporters. According to collected CoachMate Rimac believed that “the market for electrical hyperdeporters is very limited. Most buyers in this segment still want the drama and emotion of an internal combustion engine.” This reluctance a embrace electrification In the hyper -sports segment it limits the potential market of the fridge R, however impressive their technical figures are. The Croatian brand acknowledges that “it is unlikely that we will manufacture another electric hypercoche in the short term”, reflecting the difficulty of convincing millionaires to change gasoline for electricity, even if it is 431.6 km/h. Only 40 units and record power. The RIMAC Nevera R is a limited edition based on the original fridge, but with an increased power in 200 hp with respect to the Original Neverareaching a total of 2,017 hp. As usual with the hypercoches, of the original fridge only 150 units will be manufactured, but in the case of the fridge R, its roll will be even lower, since it is a limited edition to 40 units, which underlines its exclusivity in the market of electrical hyperdeporters. The price of each unit is around 2.3 million euros more taxes, placing it at the top of the most expensive electric cars in the world. This combination of power and exclusivity has not been enough to convince the richest buyers, who seem to prefer other options. Porsche is worried about Rimac’s sales. In Porsche they are not satisfied with the sales figures of the refrigerator and motives are not missing. According to him annual report From Porsche, the German brand has 20% of Rimac’s shares, which makes it a part interested in the financial success of the Croatian company. “The profitability of our investments in Rimac depends on the commercial success of its models,” says Porsche report. The low sales level has generated a 46% collapse in the benefits up to 182 million euros. According to Autocar, in May 2024, the brand had only delivered 50 units of the refrigerator of the 150 that was going to manufacture. Before such a panorama, the additional 200 hp offered by the fridge R is not expected to be sufficient incentive for the millionaires to queue in the brand’s dealerships to take one. Maybe still Not the moment of electrical supercar. In Xataka | Bugatti has found a new reef: his clients are spent on average 500,000 euros on extras to customize his car Image | Rimac

The Wushang Dream was a mini -city

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There are shopping centers that are traveled. And there are others that are inhabited. In Wuhan, South of the Yangtsé Riverthere is one so big that it costs to locate it In a single idea. Not even the locals manage to agree: some compare it with a theme park, others with a vertical city. Those who already know him, simply call him by name: Wushang Dream was (武商梦时代). Actually, it is not just a matter of size, although the 800,000 square meters it occupies They do not go unnoticed. What makes it a difficult place to cover is its ambition. He doesn’t want you to pass, he wants you to stay. You don’t even need to plan what to do: you can ski, try traditional street food, ride a roller coaster that crosses several floors or take your children to a snow park without leaving the building. Between artificial snow and neon lights: this is how one day is lived in the Wushang Dream was It was not an improvised project. The Wushang Dream was is Fruit of six years of works and many concentrated ambitions. Behind is one of China’s most veteran commercial groups, which invested 12,000 million yuan (about 1.5 billion euros) with a clear idea: lift the largest “pure” shopping center of the worldaccording to its promoters, and turn it into a new cultural, gastronomic and entertainment axis. All that, in the center of Wuhan, just where two of its busiest streets cross. Since opening in 2022, the place has not stopped receiving visitors. According to the group’s own figuresit is one of the busiest spaces in the country and is part of the call “Gold triangle”Commercial of the city. The motto is clear: here it is not only bought. It comes to spend the day, or at least try. Because with its 13 levels, its 600 stores and its snowy park on a roof, it is not difficult to lose the notion of time. It is not necessary to go abroad to find strong emotions. Inside the complex, one can ski on snow slopes or slide by An ice cream. All this happens in differentiated, but well integrated areas: the WS Dreamland amusement park and the WS Snow Miracle space, which maintains a controlled temperature environment all year. The company ensures that the interior remains at about -5 ° C. More than an extravagance, the center seems to look for an alternative form of urban leisure. What are separate weekend plans in other places –ir to the park, pass through a store, dinner out – here it becomes a continuous experience. And if you do not see it, the building is responsible for reminding you: the mechanical stairs connect thematic areas, the posters indicate activities for children and adults, in each plant there are something else. One of the most unique areas of the complex is in the subsoil. It’s called “Chu Feng Han Wei” and it’s not just a food street. It is a complete recreation of Wuhan from the 80swith old posters, appliances from another era, shop windows with recorders, enameled thermos and tube televisions. Some visitors stop in front of their children and explain how things were “when they were little.” Others simply sit down to eat. Several of the premises that have a presence here are historical in the city: from the low -beef of Lao Wancheng to Sikimei vapor soups. Some have adapted their letter to the environment, with exclusive dishes that can only be tested in this commercial version of the past. Halfway between theme park and gastronomic fair, the area has become one of the busiest points in the center. Those who prefer the new to the nostalgic also find their land here. Among the more than 600 stores in the center, several have been presented as “First” in its category. Is, for example, The largest Sony store in the regiona space that not only exposes products, but allows you to try calmly. There is also a large space for Huawei, an urban design bookstore and even a Starbucks with personalized decoration for Wuhan. The result is a type of audience that not only enters by necessity, but out of curiosity. Young people looking for the latest releases, technology fans who compare prices and functionalities in situ, visitors who enter with the idea of “seeing what is” and end up doing sound, image or connectivity tests as if that were an electronics fair. Within the building there is also space for more visible innovations. Patrol do not make it vigilant on foot, but employees who move in equilibrium scooters. Visitor information centralizes interactive screens. And in some areas, logistics management incorporates Artificial Intelligence Models to anticipate needs depending on the time or volume of public. Everything looks for the same: that the center works as a miniature city, with its own rules, schedules and routines. At this point, it is difficult to pigeonhole the Wushang Dream was. Is it a shopping center? Yes, but it is also a theme park, an urban gallery, an architectural experiment and a place where many go without intention to buy anything. There may be its success there: in having turned a space designed for consumption into something more similar to an urban capsule where the day spends, see things or share time. Images | Hubei government | Wushang Group In Xataka | Someone wanted to build wakanda in real life financing it with cryptocurrencies: it ran out of city and without cryptocurrency

Spain studies the viability of its first conventional aircraft carrier. We can expect sitting

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There was a time when Spain was one of the great powers of the sea. Gone are those times when even The US feared, for various reasons, the Spanish Navybut these last times have resurfaced interest in strengthening security in this environment. Projects like him New Bac II Combat Ship They are ours and, now, Navantia has a new commission: studying the viability of the first conventional aircraft of Spain. It will not be easy, but the project is tremendously ambitious. Studying possibilities. A few weeks ago, and how we read in The countrythe Navy commissioned the public shipyard Navantia a viability study on the construction of an aircraft carrier. The shipyard must specify the technical characteristics of the ship and pass budget data that, subsequently, the Government must approve, but although all the details to be specified, as we read in The debatethere are already those who point to the modern French carrier Charles de Gaulle as inspiration. What Spain wants. Unlike the French flagship, the new Spanish carrier would not be a nuclear aircraft carrier, but it would have similar dimensions, with more than 260 meters in length and about 40,000 tons. What is clear is that, as we say, it will be the first pure aircraft carrier that the Navy will have, and this must be clarified. In 67, the US ceded the Labyrinth To the Navy, then Navantia built The ruinous prince of Asturias And, currently, we have the Juan Carlos i. The three have space for both helicopters and airplanes, but although they have a ramp, they have an important limitation: the airplanes that can land and deploy are the Stovl, which start the movement in vertical. And what is the problem? That limits the model that you can operate, and with current AV-8B Harrier II That they ask for the time, it is urgent to have an aircraft carrier that is able to house more modern fighters and without so much dependence on the United States. For example, the FCAS Developed together by France, Spain and Germany. If in the end it has a naval version, of course. According to EFEthe intention of the Navy is that it has a cover with capacity for up to 30 state -of -the -art aircraft. Officially, Juan Carlos I is a “Ampibio assault ship” India comes into play. As they point in Infodefensethe development of a traditional aircraft carrier (without being electromagnetic Like those who already operate China and USA) or with nuclear propulsion as the aforementioned Charles de Gaulle, it should not be a challenge for Navantia. “Simply” will be expensive, it will take time and will have a lot of steel, but the technology is more than settled. And here Navantia can have an advantage as “training”: Türkiye. Navantia has already made some designs for Türkiye, such as TCG Anadolu which became the jewel of the Turkish Navy crown and, as we read in Infodefensethe Spanish company would also be developing with Türkiye a traditional aircraft carrier of more than 300 meters. It will be something that serves to acquire even more experience in this type of vehicles. Strategic strength. Having a “pure” aircraft carrier is necessary for Spain in the current context of geopolitical tensions, even with allies that we considered as close as the United States. Within the European Rearme Processit is also something that makes sense, as much as countries and France and the United Kingdom have collaborated to “Add” your nuclear arsenals. An aircraft carrier, even A vehicle with a very expensive maintenanceit is an important element of deterrence due to its implications, something that we have recently seen in the Tensions in the South China Sea. To Japan, that for years It was a demilitarized nationalready started moving in this regard and has already presented its First aircraft carrier since World War II. For long. On the other hand, there is no hurry for this first Spanish aircraft carrier. Those hurries will arrive when the Harrier are retired, because the F35B Americans, but as we said, there is on its way to go. If everything is fulfilled, we would be talking about the first aircraft carrier for about fifteen years, but to reach that point the Navantia report must convince the government and he authorize its construction. Image In Xataka | The size of the armies of the main powers, summarized in this interesting graphic

I thought I had a problem with the ABS of my car, but it caught me in surprise to see that it was something completely unexpected: rats

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The ABS light flashing on the dashboard is never a good sign. Almost none Witter of the dashboard It is, but when the engine witness also adds, you start imagining four -digit figures in the workshop budget. The funny thing is that when I took my car to fix it, I discovered something that I never imagined what would happen: The rats ended up biting several cables Internal of my car. The initial diagnosis. When I arrived at the workshop with the warning lights on, the mechanic, after an inspection of the car, assured me that I could change everything The ABS system. A new one for my Seat Ibiza TDI 1.9 of 2005 can be a rather important expense, one of those expenses that you think if you better pass it, since it is dangerously approaches the price through which I could sell the car today. The price of the second -hand and scrapping ABS system, the thing changes. One can lead normally if the ABS does not work, but it is a risk for security, since it compromises the emergency braking and we do not have that help that the car gives us at critical moments, allowing our brakes to end up blocking. The real problem. After almost a week in the workshop and a more detailed inspection, the mechanic discovered the authentic cause of the failure: the ABS system cables and some that communicate with the engine They had been bitten. It was not a normal wear or component failure, but the rats had been roying the car cables. For a rat, gnawing cables and objects that are in its path is their day to day, since their teeth do not stop growing throughout their lives and need some means to polish their teeth. What a pity they had to run into my car. Unexpected, but in a way, relieved. What seemed like a serious problem with the brake system and the emergency light of the engine was solved with a cable repair. The joke came out for about 120 euros. A considerable relief compared to the complete change of the ABS that initially the mechanic had raised. From the workshop they repaired the damaged cables and the dashboard warning indicators were turned off. The background problem. Now the real challenge is not in the car, but in the garage. It is a private garage under a floors building where several vehicles park. Days before I had already seen a rat that was shot from under my car to a hole that is right next to my parking space. From the workshop they recommended preventive measures such as spraying in the vain motor or placing camphor balls, especially useful when the car remains a long time stopped. Of course, this should be done with the car standing and cold. I bought the spray as a temporary measure until they finished solving the hole in the garage. And now what. The priority is to cover the garage hole where the rats access, since the alternative remedies will be of little if the problem persists right next where I appear. Fortunately, it seems that garage insurance will cover the workshop spending, which good news for that part. In addition, we are already mobilizing the community to solve the problem of rats. I could have changed their garage directly, although things are not currently to make this decision lightly. We will see what everything is left. Cover image | Michael Fusert and Svetozar Cenisev In Xataka | The best -selling cars in 2024 and 2025 in Spain

The debate about whether it is better to walk quickly or walk slowly is settled. At least if what we are looking for is our health

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Walking is an exercise that not only has the advantage of helping us maintain good health, it is also affordable for people with difficulties to exercise in other ways due to circumstances such as age or rhythm. However An old debate persistsSI for extract the benefits of this exercise We can go with a relaxed step or if on the contrary a prescription rhythm is essential. If there are no reasons such as injuries that can be aggravated with sports, physical activity, even in “small doses”, it will always be better than inactivity. That is why the debate about the ideal of walking slowly suits us is easy to settle: walking slowly is better than not walking. Of course, experts tend to agree that, if we have the possibility, better to accelerate the step. Walking can help our health in different ways. Our heart health is, surely, the one that can be appreciated most to wear comfortable footwear and go for a walk, but it is not the only one. Walk has been related to a lower impact of diseases such as diabetes but can also have psychological benefits such as stress reduction or help Improve concentrationespecially when we walk through natural environments. But then what about the Benefits of walking quickly? Again, cardiovascular health is in the center of the debate. A study Recent in highlighting this is the one published in 2024 in the magazine Atherosisclerosis. The study, which had almost 20,000 participants, analyzed their mortality in a period of 9.4 years. The team responsible for the analysis detected an inverse relationship between the rhythm with which they used to walk and the risk of death and suffering from cardiovascular diseases. Studies that relate the rhythm of our gait with the benefits that walk gives our health They are diverse. Some also cover the relationship between speed and cognitive deterioration. Some examples are found in The review published in 2016 In the magazine Ageing Research Reviews. The team responsible for the analysis found a relationship between the speed of the passage when walking and the cognitive deteriorationalthough it was not conclusive about the existence of a direct causal relationship since it could also be cognitive deterioration that makes us walk more slowly. Lose weight Weight is an important risk factor in many diseases. That is why, although thinning does not have to imply that we will be healthier, it can be useful to reduce this risk or as a simple motivation towards healthier habits. Among them, exercise. If our goal is to lose weight, accelerate the step It can also be helpful. Of course, the context can be important, as a group of researchers recently discovered. In Your studypublished in 2024 in the magazine Sports Science & Medicine, They detected that Genetics could be decisive when reducing our weight through this type of exercise. Walking is an affordable and healthy exercise, but science finds more and more evidence that it is best to accelerate the step if we want to make the most of the benefits of our walks. Walking, even at a leisurely rhythm, can help our health, but can also help us take the habit necessary to direct us, little by little, towards a more active life. Step by step. In Xataka | The 10,000 daily steps were always a myth. Science already knows what the optimal number is Image | MARTINDALSGAARDSØRENSEN

The US and Spacex wanted to revolutionize the delivery of weapons anywhere in the world. A tropical bird had other plans

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Starship is called to be the ship-cohete that Put humanity on Marsbut years ago he caught the attention of Pentagon For something much more earthly: transport military merchandise from one point to another on earth. But what they expected from Spacex And the Pentagon was an enemy who put those plans in check. Tropical birds. Revolutionizing military logistics. After a series of incidents, in 2024 we witnessed something unprecedented. He Starship propeller rocket was intercepted with millimeter accuracy by a mechanical arm. This, which seems little thing, is the starting gun for the revolution of space missions because it promises to reduce costs and shorten times because the rockets are no longer disposable between missions. Long before achievement, in 2021, the Pentagon already showed interest in these capabilities. The United States Air Force had an internal program called ‘Rocket Cargo‘With an ambitious objective, but easy to explain: transport huge amounts of military load from one point to another on the planet in a matter of minutes. Suspense. We are talking about the ability to deliver up to 150 tons of load anywhere on Earth in a maximum time of 90 minutes, which would imply an unprecedented and unprecedented deployment, as well as A tremendous strategic advantage. However, something like this requires evidence beyond those that Spacex itself is doing with its ship-cohete, and the idea of the Air Force was to start trying these rockets in a Pacific Atolón. It is not going to be. How can we read in Reuterson that remote island at 1,300 kilometers southwest of Hawaii, at least 14 species of tropical birds live. And, according to biologists, Spacex and Air Force tests would damage these species that nest in the area. Atoll location And relocation. This atoll, called Johnstonhas only 2.6 square kilometers and is part of the National Marine Monument of the remote Pacific Islands, so, as a source of the Air Force confirmed to the American military magazine ‘Stars and Stripes’, they will have to look for a new ‘patio’ of testing. According to the FFAA spokesman to the American magazine, they are already “exploring alternative places to develop the program”. Mistreating atolls. It is not the first time That the activities of the Musk company damages the flora and fauna of a place. It happened in Boca Chica, Texas, in 2023, when an explosion ended both with nests and coastal bird eggs, which caused legal problems to the company. Problems that Musk reacted with his particular and curious sense of humor, stating that he would stop eating tortillas for a week to compensate. And the truth is that this is a small victory for the tropical birds of the Johnson atolion, since the atolls of the quadrant and their fauna did not have so much luck in the pastwhen they were chosen as Objective for nuclear tests During the cold war, ending with entire islands of a plumazo and causing the Fear of nuclear radiation long before the Chernobyl accident. Images | United States Army Chemical Materials Agency, Steve Jurvetson, Tubs In Xataka | The US is leaving Ukraine without help, so Ukraine has proposed something to Europe: you give me the money, I manufacture my arms

Until a couple of centuries ago, nobody had yet invented them

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It is one of those things that we give so however sitting that we may have never wondered: Why do books have chapters? The answer is, in reality, quite simple, and it has a lot to do with the way we have to tell stories and, above all, with a genuinely human aspiration, and whose origins date back to the beginning of time: make our lives easier. Chapter 1. We must clarify that when we talk about chapters, we are doing it in the broader conception of the term: we talk rather to divide a text into successive and organized points. As we are organizing this article, without going any further: in epigraphs headed by a title that summarizes the content of each section, he adds or clarifies it. But this was not always common currency. Nicholas Dames, author of the Book Scent. It is a legal tablet that dates back to the second century BC. According to Dames to An ABC podcastthe text had a “continuous law, but it was segmented and those segments had short titles.” That is, the first work of the chapters is to organize informative texts, to help the reader locate the information. This use began to spread, and thus we reached a parallel invention, the index: during part of ancient history, the most common support was the roll, sometimes it was accompanied by a list of chapters in a smaller scroll. Separate things. Dames explains That this separation in epigraphs was unheard of: two thousand years ago there was no current conception of writing and, for example, the words that appeared in the rolls were not separated, there were no spaces between them. The authors did not care about those things, the editors were in charge of the texts in the texts when undertaking a task called “capitulation.” It was these editors, sometimes scholars of the time, sometimes medieval monks, who divided the works into chapters to make them more understandable. The Bible, point and apart. What can attract attention, according to what countsIt is that the Bible was never divided into chapters, but that this action was carried out, in very different ways, between the fourth and thirteenth centuries. It was divided with innumerable ways, sometimes in long chapters, sometimes in short sections, which further confused the study and dissemination of a book that has already had a labyrinthine story. It was in the thirteenth century (or that is believed) when the one that would later be Archbishop of Canterbury, set the division into chapters that we know today. This division met critics as distinguished as the philosopher John Locke. And things changed. The Bible was a definitive turning point: for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the novel became an absolutely massive entertainment format, the authors They thought their stories with the division by chapters In mind, with attention placed on the rhythm. Subsequent forms of diffusion, such as deliveries novels or, at present, television series are already meditated from very first stages of the conception of the story with the division of chapters in mind. Header | Chapter VII of ‘Dracula’, Minotaur edition illustrated by Tomás son In Xataka | In Spain a book is published every six minutes. It is the symptom of a bubble that does not stop inflating

A new membrane makes it possible (and cheap)

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Neither open mines on the earth’s surface or pierce the background of the ocean. The next lithium fever may not require dynamite or excavators. Rather, something simpler: a thinner membrane than a hair, designed to capture the valuable white gold that drives the new technological era in which we live. A new path. A group of researchers from the National Argonne Laboratory of the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the University of Chicago They have created A membrane capable of extracting lithium from salt water with great efficiency and low cost. Like hair. This membrane is made of an abundant clay, the vermiculite, which costs about $ 350 per ton. But the secret is how clay has been manipulated: the team has achieved Peel the vermiculite to two -dimensional layers, from just a Metro Metro, which then stacked one over another. They placed microscopic pillars of aluminum oxide, which maintain the stable and functional structure even under water. How did they achieve stability? At this point you have to get a little more technical. The researchers infused the membrane with sodium cations, which changed their superficial load from neutral to positive. In this state, the membrane repels more strongly to magnesium ions (with load +2) than those of lithium (with load +1), which allows a much more precise filtration. In addition, by adding more sodium the pores of the material are narrowed, which further favors the capture of lithium and allows only the smallest ions, such as sodium or potassium. A very precious resource. Who has Lithium knows that part of world geopolitics dominates. If not, they tell China, that since the beginning of the century adopted a deliberate strategy large -scale investment throughout the value chain of critical minerals. The result of that bet is that, currently, China is the main world refining of 19 of the 20 strategic minerals evaluated by the International Energy Agency (IEA). However, the way to extract it is still Very expensiveslow, pollutant and Geopolitally unstable. Today, production is in the hands of a few countries, which staggers the global supply chain. And although sea water and underground salmueras contain vast lithium reserves, extracting it has so far an impossible mission: too expensive, too inefficient. Until now. The idea is novel, but not so much. China always carries the front, that’s undeniable. The Asian giant too The idea of extracting lithium from the sea has emergedbut with a completely different approach: a floating device that uses solar energy to boost extraction. The system, developed by the University of Nankín and known as Stles, generates pressure by solar evaporation to pass the lithium ions through a membrane with nanoparticles. Both projects share an objective – access the lithium dissolved in the water without resorting to traditional mining – but differ in its technology: one uses selective filtration with ionic load; The other, solar perspiration as a motor force. Together, they show that the future of lithium may not be in the subsoil, but floating on the surface of the sea, driven by avant -garde science. Dreaming of success. If it reaches the industrial scale, this technology could radically transform global access to lithium. Countries without mines but with coasts, underground salmueras or even wastewater could become new actors in the market. In addition, technology is not only worth for lithium. According to the equipment, the same principle could be used to recover other key minerals such as nickel, cobalt and rare earth, or even to purify drinking water eliminating pollutants. Image | Pxhere and Argonne Xataka | You have to wait 17 years for a mine to give results. China already has two decades of advantage

This album has been reproduced millions of times in Spotify but has not generated absolutely no benefit

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‘Crisis (The Worthless Album)’ by Valentin Hansen It is not, of course, a normal album. Because Hansen is not a normal musician. It is rather A performative artist that he plotted this conceptual album with a single objective: not generating benefit, not leaving a trace on Spotify, demonstrating how absurd streaming They are getting used to us. 30 songs. In 2021, the artist based in Berlin Valentin Hansen launched this ‘crisis (The Worthless Album)’ which consisted of 30 tracks, all of them of 29 seconds. Why this duration? He stayed for a second to monetize them, generate Royalties or to be registered in the metrics of the platform, according to the rules of use of the platform. But here comes the amazing: he used a smartphones hacked to reproduce the album countless times. And demonstrate that it would not even generate benefits. A design issue. As They count on contemporary100‘Crisis (The Worthless Album)’ won zero euros in total, but “not by accident, but for a matter of pure design.” Its purpose was to generate exactly that benefit. It’s about a criticism of the economy of streamingwhere an artist earns $ 0.004 per reproduction, but algorithms favor mainstreamto what is already established purely economic interests, which falls into a very complicated mousetrap to make profitable. “I want to show how broken the system is,” Hansen said about his experiment. Real songs. Hansen is a real musician. It makes a self -conscious and hyperproduced indie (in fact, ‘crisis’ has eight real songs, only that the tracks are interrupted every 29 seconds, as has been said, thus starting each song in three or four pieces impossible to make profitable) and, in fact, ‘crisis’ arose as a reaction to its most popular song, ‘Killing a Friend’, after 1,7 million reproductions, only got 2,000 euros. Hence the criticism of the Spotify payment system: said in an interview than the initiative Bandcamp Fridayin which the platform gives all its income to artists, is the most reasonable way to make money with music in streaming. Other experiments in Spotify. It is not the first attempt to play with Spotify’s legal possibilities and vericuetos: Royalties). All completely silent. The band encouraged their followers to reproduce the album in continuous repetition while they slept, generating royalties. The goal? Finance with that money a tour of free concerts. And it worked: in seven weeks and after about 5.5 million views, ‘Sleepify’ generated $ 20,000. Of course, Spotify did not like this sympathetic hairmade and eliminated the album of its platform, adducing violations of its content policies and commenting that, as an effect of the media impact of ‘Sleepify’, they had received a large number of silent albums. Spotify ended up modifying its legal section, prohibiting issues in full in silence. Spotify mandates. For what Hansen’s experiment serves is to talk about the absolute dominance of Spotify in the industry and how unfair it is, therefore, that he has so much power and can decide how artists are rewarded and in what terms. And how that benefits the platformbut not to musicians. Therefore, it is important that in the face of the propaganda that Spotify is democratizing and verticalizing musicdiscordant voices such as Hansen still dare to denounce an unfair situation with artists. In Xataka | We already know what the key to something that seemed impossible, to earn money in Spotify was: being an AI

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