Month: November 2025

AI is turning us into editors of ourselves. We approve what we no longer know how to create

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Some time ago Spark, my email clientintegrated an AI response generator that learns from your style. It works surprisingly well. Since then I follow a simple rule: if the email comes from a human, I respond by typing. If it comes from a bot or mass mailing, I let the AI ​​answer for me. The fact is that it is increasingly difficult to distinguish which is which. And that’s where the real problem begins. Because it’s not about efficiency. It is about we have accepted, without realizing it, that communication can be symmetrical in its mediocrity. You write to me with AI, I respond to you with AI. We all save time. Nobody says anything quite real. I know too many people who have crossed the line: using AI not just for generic emails, but for everything: Tweets that sound like a corporate manual. LinkedIn posts with that unctuous and necessarily inspirational prose that smells of prompt wander from three paragraphs away. Proposals to clients. Reports to the boss. Slack messages that you used to write in seconds and now go through ChatGPT. They have become editors of their own communication. Creative directors of words that they no longer search for. And in a way it works, you have to admit. The report arrives on time. The proposal sounds professional. The tweet, for reasons unknown to me, achieves engagement. If the result is what counts, and it saves you time, what’s the problem? The problem is subtle. So subtle that almost no one notices it. Writing was never just about producing readable text. It was the friction of searching for the exact word, and in that search better understanding what you wanted to say. Writing was thought becoming visible, even to oneself. The effort to articulate was the effort to think clearly. I remember some articles in which I noticed that effort until I reached the result I wanted. An example is this 2019long before ChatGPT. That process matters. Now we delegate that friction. We give the AI ​​a vague idea and it articulates it for us. We just need to recognize if it sounds good, not generate it from scratch. We have gone from being authors to being approvers. Something atrophies when you stop looking for your own words. It’s not just personality or style. It is the ability to think accurately, because thinking well and writing well were always the same thing. When you externalize articulation, you externalize thinking. The worst thing is that it is invisible. There is no dramatic moment in which you stop knowing how to think. You just start to need a little more help each time. A little push to find the words. Then a full draft that you just “revise.” Then you don’t even check carefully because “AI makes it cool.” The argument is always the same: “but the result is good.” And yes, it may be. The report is understood. The proposal convinces. The tweet works. But There is a difference between a text that works and a text that you really thought. The first can get you a client. The second can make you understand something you didn’t know you thought. This is how an entire generation can lose the ability to articulate complex ideas without realizing it. Because each individual step seems reasonable. Every shortcut seems harmless. And the results, indeed, are acceptable. But “acceptable” has become the new standard. And in the process we have forgotten that writing was not just a means to communicate ideas that were already clear to us. It was the very mechanism to keep things clear.. AI is not making us worse writers. It is turning us into non-writers. And without writing, without that struggle to find the right words, pWe also lose the ability to have ideas worth writing down.. We have normalized an existence where we monitor our own communication instead of generating it. Where we approve instead of create. Where language is something that we recognize when we see it, but that we will no longer know how to produce from silence. And we call it productivity. In Xataka | I increasingly like technology that doesn’t want anything from me: the one that has a purpose and leaves you alone Featured image | Xataka

The best MediaMarkt deals on technology and entertainment during Black Friday, today November 23

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After the Day without VAT, MediaMarkt has once again celebrated its Black Fridaya campaign in which we can once again find many offers in technology and entertainment. In this article we are going to review, mentioning the five best bargains we’ve found. Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra by 989 eurosone of the best phones of the year with one of its best prices to date. PlayStation 5 Pro by 699.99 eurosthe same price as only the console on offer, but in this case it comes with a game. nintendo switch 2 by 479 eurosa good price considering that it comes with Nintendo’s most expensive game. Xiaomi 14T by 333 eurosa gem for such a complete mobile. Samsung HW-B66CF/ZF by 149 eurosa sound bar compatible with Dolby Atmos. Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra If there is a mobile phone that is standing out this Black Friday for its price, it is the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultrawhich on the other hand has earned first place in our Xataka NordVPN Awards 2025. By 989 euroswe are talking about a phone that has a very good screen with anti-reflective treatmentits processor is very powerful, its battery offers very high autonomy and its software is not only one of the ones we like the most, but it will be updated for seven years. Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra (256GB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links PlayStation 5 Pro The PlayStation 5 has once again dropped in price in all its versions. Even the PlayStation 5 Pro has done so too and can now be found on MediaMarkt for a price of 699.99 euros in its edition with the video game ‘EA Sports FC 26‘ in digital. In fact, if you buy it with the video game it costs the same price as if you buy it without it, since in other stores the console has a price of 699 euros. PlayStation 5 Pro + EA Sports FC 26 The price could vary. We earn commission from these links nintendo switch 2 But if what you want is the nintendo switch 2Be careful because MediaMarkt has the console along with the ‘Mario Kart World‘on offer for a price of 479 euros. It is practically almost the same official price, for a difference of 10 euros, that the console has without a game. And considering that this video game is Nintendo’s most expensive, it’s not a bad price at all. Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Xiaomi 14T Although it was launched last year and has a new generation, we cannot forget that the Xiaomi 14T Right now it is at a very good price. MediaMarkt has it for only 333 euros. It is a high-end mobile phone that stands out both for its 1.5K resolution screen and for its its cameras that are signed by Leicawhich offers a very attractive photographic result. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Samsung HW-B66CF/ZF Sound bars are very interesting accessories for televisions, since the sound section is usually the one that is weakest on TVs. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money, the Samsung HW-B66CF/ZF has dropped on MediaMarkt to 149 euros. And be careful, for this price it comes with a wireless subwoofer, offers a power of up to 370W and is compatible with Dolby Atmos. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | MediaMarkt, El Corte Inglés and Compradicción (header), Google, Amazon, WiZ, PocketBook, Samsung In Xataka | The best mobile phones (2025), we have tested them and here are their analyzes In Xataka | Best sound bars in quality price (2025). Which one to buy and seven recommended models from 159 euros

Roman roads changed the world. And this Google Maps from 2,000 years ago allows you to explore them

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What have the Romans given us? It’s not a question I ask myself when I can’t sleep, but the brilliant satire that Monty Python captured in ‘Brian’s life‘. He aqueductsewage, education, irrigation, health, wine, public baths… and roads. At its peak, it is estimated that The empire’s network expanded over 120,000 kilometersbut as excavation has been carried out, more and more remains of Roman roads have been found. On some occasions we have brought some “Google Maps” of the Roman Empirebut what we have in our hands today is the culmination of an anthological work that compiles some of the most important sources of the arteries of the empire and captures those roads is an impressive interactive map with almost 300,000 kilometers of roads. The tool is called itiner-eand it is something that can absorb us for hours and hours. The Google Maps of the Roman Empire If you have already taken a tour of the mapyou should know that it is a living element. As discoveries are made and the location of the tracks is determined, the team will update the map. But what we currently have is the result of more than five years of work carried out by a team with members from both the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Aarhus University of Denmark. In it study published in Naturedetail that it is “the most detailed and complete digital data set of roads in the entire Roman Empire” published so far. In fact, it exceeds the known length of Roman roads by more than 100,000 km thanks to both greater coverage at the focus and better spatial precision. Previously, the Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations (DARMC) mapped 188,554.7 kilometers. To do this, the researchers identified both the most important routes and the paths of archaeological and historical sources, locating them using both historical and current topographic maps. The main sources have been the Antonine Itinerary and the Tabula Peutingeriana, but the “milestones” and settlements close to each other (for example, limits of the empire, such as those near Hadrian’s Wall) are what have allowed researchers to assume the existence of roads that connected them. Other sources include summaries of the Roman road network in specific regions, maps from the Mapping Past Societies, the Barrington Atlas or the Tabula Imperii Romani, among many others. As a result of this work, the new map includes 299,171 kilometers of roads (to connect a territory of more than four million square kilometers), and they are divided as follows: 103,478 kilometers of main roads, 34.6% of the total. 195,693 kilometers of secondary roads, 65.4% of the total. And it is not that more than 100,000 kilometers have been taken out of the bag, but that roads that previously crossed rivers or were simple straight lines, have now been drawn with greater precision, adapting to the topographical peculiarities of the terrain. Now, although the work is amazing and we can see by playing with the different layers of information that many of the main roads coincide with current roads, the researchers confess that “only” the location of 2.737% of the Roman roads is known with certainty. That is why the vast majority of itiner-e roads show the legend “hypothetical” or “conjecture”, just before detailing the record from which they took the data. This certainty depends on: Certainty: segments well documented in the sources, which have been digitized with high spatial precision. Guess: segments with lower spatial precision due to a lower level of documentation. Hypothetical: paths that are speculated to have existed, but for which there is insufficient evidence to classify them within one of the above groups. For example, roads in desert areas where the infrastructure was less fixed and where several parallel roads have been found. But beyond satisfying our curiosity, something we can do with this map is… play. The team has including a function that is still in beta status and allows you to explore the time these routes took. To do this, we have to select between several points and select between four modes of land transportation: On foot at a speed of 4 km/h. By oxcart at 2 km/2. In an animal like a donkey at 4.5 km/h. And on horseback at 6 km/h. We can also select maritime routes with speeds of 2.5 km/h downstream and 0.6 km/h upstream. In the end, that rebel group from ‘Life of Brian’ was quite right when it came to saying that one of the most important things the Romans had done for them had been the deployment of roads. Because they were fundamental to speed up transportation within the empire’s domains, and that work is noticeable even today. They were the foundations on which we build our roads and urban centers. It is something that becomes clear when we observe that the only place in the empire in which there was not such an important or meticulous deployment, such as Africa and the Middle East, where trade on wheels was abandoned in favor of camel caravans in the 4th-6th centuries, has consequences today. Images | itiner-e In Xataka | Forma Urbis Romae: the gigantic map of Ancient Rome conceived in 1901 and still unsurpassed today

pretend you’re someone else

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In a way, the sappy Saturday afternoon movie cliché of “the strength is within” is a scientific reality that conditions the way in which human beings face challenges and problems. Brian Tracy, best-selling author of ‘Swallow that toad!‘ explains in his conferences that the first step for any significant change on a personal level is in self-image, that is, in the idea that each person has about who they are and what they deserve. According to the expert, this inner image directly influences what that person dares to do and the results they obtain. According to Tracy, to successfully face new personal and professional challenges, it is essential to transform the internal voice that defines us and the way we speak to ourselves. Changing that internal conversation is essential to changing the approach with which goals are faced and the motivation when it comes to achieving them. In the same way that a football team does not face a game with the same motivation when the entire audience fervently cheers it as when it is booed, the brain needs a vote of confidence to achieve positive results. Self-image shapes reality Self-image is not only how others see us, but a set of beliefs and perceptions that each person forms about their own identity and abilities. This image does not always match the one other people perceivebut it is just as important or more important. For example, if you define yourself as someone who “can’t achieve certain things” or “always fails,” your decisions and behaviors will be conditioned by that premise and, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, those limiting ideas will end up taking over. On the other hand, a positive self-image expands the capacity for action and allows us to make decisions with more confidence. The concept is summarized in a phrase attributed to the poet and playwright Jean Cocteau: “They achieved it because they did not know it was impossible.” If someone or oneself keeps repeating that something is not possible, is unfeasible, that one does not have the capacity to do it or that it will never be achieved, most likely is that it is not achieved or achieving it costs much more. It is not only important what we say to ourselves, but also how. According to the study carried out by Ethan Kross and his team at the University of Michigan, “when we treat ourselves in the second person we take greater distance from emotions and are more rational.” In this dialogue in the second or third person, using the pronoun “you” instead of “I”, activates a phenomenon called “distanced internal dialogue” that facilitates emotional regulation, reducing anxiety and internal fears, improving decision making. The key to this change in perception is that, by changing the way we address ourselves in the second person, the speech from “I can’t” to “you can” is changed. Kross’s later studies revealed that maintaining an internal dialogue in the second or third person changes the way we describe ourselves. The researchers detected that participants who used their name or a pronoun in this self-dialogue used more general qualifiers (“I am an optimistic person”, “I care a lot about learning”), and fewer traits linked to their social role (“I am a student”, “I am a mother”). Numerous research They demonstrate that internal dialogue directly impacts our ability to solve complex personal problems and challenges. Maintaining a positive and balanced dialogue helps to sustain attention, plan, self-regulate emotions and persist in the face of adversity. The scientific results They demonstrate that the internal monologue is not mere noise in your head, but has a direct impact on the results. However, in the same way that positive language in this internal dialogue improves results, negative language has the opposite effect. Negative self-talk that reinforces distorted beliefs can cause anxiety, block action, and affect mental and physical health. Paradoxically, it is much more common to use language with ourselves that we would not tolerate under any circumstances from anyone around us. Phrases like “you’re not good enough, you’ll never get that or you don’t work hard enough“are some examples of that self-inflicted abuse in internal dialogue. A recent analysis indicates that “the thoughts that are part of that internal dialogue are energy and if they generate guilt, anger or shame, they must be changed by thoughts aimed at changing your attention and your mental life in another direction.” In this sense, transforming the way we talk to ourselves improves our resilience and comprehensive well-being. Brian Tracy’s advice for changing your self-image includes identifying your limiting beliefs and formulating a new, specific self-image, with positive affirmations in the present tense and with emotion. Spending a few minutes a day visualizing yourself acting like the person you want to be reinforces that new internal reality. You’ve probably seen elite athletes on the starting line countless times saying to themselves, even out loudthat they will achieve their objectives. That visualization is part of your positive self-talk: “this is exactly what is going to happen because you are able to make it happen.” It is also essential to “act as if”, that is, to behave daily like that new person you want to be, with small habits that demonstrate that transformation. In Xataka | Lack of motivation is a problem for productivity. The trick to avoid it is simple according to science: start Image | Unsplash (Elisa Photography, Noah Buscher)

We have been talking about railguns for years without seeing their real damage. Japan just showed an image that says it all

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Japan is going through one of the most crucial transformations in recent decades: that of its rearmament. It is its most aggressive defense policy since Second World Warand the Ministry of Defense justifies because we are in the “most severe and complex phase of the last 80 years.” And there is nothing that better exemplifies Japanese rearmament than a cannon that, until not long agoit was science fiction material. The electromagnetic cannon. Reconfiguration. Starting in the 1990s, Japan stopped investing significantly in its Self-Defense Forces. He economic bubble burstthe “lost decade” and demographic difficulties implied that the military spending of 1% of GDP that they adopted after the Constitution of 1947 would be maintained. In 2023, things changed. As a result of geopolitical complexity, they decided that they would invest 2% of their GDP in rearmament. In figures, we are talking about about 271,000 million euros until 2027, but recently The target has been brought forward to March 2026. This reconfiguration will manifest itself in four dimensions: the aforementioned increase in military spending, the restructuring of the Self-Defense Forces, a relaxation of restrictions on the export of weapons and the expansion of long-range offensive capabilities. That’s where the railgun comes into play. Electromagnetic cannon. Like gunpowder, it fires a projectile that gains speed as it passes through a barrel. However, it uses electricity instead of gunpowder. Two metal rails form a circuit that, when closed by the projectile, generates an intense magnetic field. This produces a beastly force that propels the projectile at high speed, allowing hypersonic, precise and long-range shots. This speed would allow that would travel without detour even in the most unfavorable weather conditions. Japan has been investing in this field since mid of the 2010s, and a few weeks ago, the Japan Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency (ATLA) performed the first proof documented firing of a naval electromagnetic cannon at a real ship. Mounted in it JS Asuka test shipthe prototype is a cannon of 40 millimeters in caliber and six meters in length. It requires four huge energy containers to power the weapon and the projectiles used were small missiles of about 320 grams, stabilized by fins and without an explosive head. There is no need for an explosion: upon reaching those 2,300 meters per second, the kinetic energy is comparable to that of a 1,000 kilo car crashing into something at 140 km/h. Success. During them, the system achieved a record by firing projectiles at a speed of 2,300 meters per second. It is a speed of Mach 6-7, but in addition, they also pushed the useful life of the barrel to the limit. The estimate was about 120 shots, since it was established in previous phases of the investigation, but they got perform more than 200 shots without the system failing. ATLA had conducted open sea tests before, but never against a real target. And although they had already commented that the tests were a success, now they have shared photographs in which you can see the holes left by these projectiles. The target ship was in motion, but due to the enormous speed and stability of the projectiles thanks to the enormous power of the system, the entry holes allow an almost perfect view of the “cross” left by the projectile passing through the hull. Challenges. Now, understanding how a railgun works is easy, but executing it is extremely complex. It is a brutal technical challenge due to several factors: The stability of the barrel: the system generates tremendous heat, so dissipation systems must be effective enough not to compromise the integrity of the barrel. Wear and tear not only affects the speed and accuracy of the projectile, but can cause accidents on the boat itself. The energy: since it requires so much electricity to operate, it must have storage systems large enough to allow it to operate with the necessary power and during intense fire sessions. Miniaturization of the system: these cannons are extremely large and, although ATLA has managed to contain it quite a bit, mounting them on ships is not easy due to both the length of the cannon itself and the set of batteries required. Integrating a railgun into a ship is not easy. Perspectives. Currently, ATLA is working on evolving a system which might not be as far from the action as was thought a few months ago, and this miniaturization would allow it to be mounted on other types of vehicles, in addition to ground defense lines. But apart from as a weapon, the agency has mentioned that the concept of electromagnetic acceleration could be applied to other areas. For example, to the “mass throwers” ​​that would allow launching materials electromagnetically in space transportation. The problem is that other challenges are added, such as the imperative need to calculate the trajectory millimetrically or develop recovery methods for these goods. USA and China. And, although it may seem like another test of weapons, what Japan has achieved is a milestone. After fifteen years of research and some 500 million dollars invested in the technology, The United States left in 2021 the development of electromagnetic railguns (although they are now with larger versions). Japan has persevered and its testing demonstrates that the system can be viable in a real-world context. And another that has continued to develop this technology is China. They are keeping it more secret, but we have already seen images of Chinese ships with an electromagnetic cannon and power containers on the front. And that, precisely, it was these two countries that They are taking steps forward when developing this technology It’s not a coincidence. They are both engrossed in technological warbut also in a escalation of military tension that has been going on for months and that is leading both countries to accuse each other of invading their respective territory. Images | ATLA, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force In Xataka | Taiwan has had an idea if Beijing invades it: surprise China underground

Mexico desperately needed Mexicans to care about axolotls. So he put them on the bills

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The cultural phenomenon around Mexican axolotl It began with an apparently modest gesture: its appearance on a bill, part of a design process in which specialists in Xochimilco advised the Bank of Mexico to faithfully represent this unique species and its chinampero ecosystem. The initial intention was pedagogical and symbolic, but it ended up unleashing an unexpected enthusiasm of unknown dimensions. The creature that conquered a country. As we said, the emergence in 2021 of the axolotl on the Mexican 50 peso bill completely transformed the country’s relationship with a species that, until then, was known only by specialists and inhabitants from Xochimilco. From the first day of circulation, the design captivated millions of people, not only for its aesthetics, but for the soft and enigmatic figure of the amphibian that, unintentionally, embodied a mixture of tenderness, identity and cultural pride. Without millions in circulation. The bill became an immediate phenomenon: collectors, families and young people began to keep it as a small treasure, which explains why, more than four years later, the Bank of Mexico (Banxico) has announced through a report that 9.8 million Mexicans They keep or collect this bill as if it were a treasure and they have decided to remove it from circulation. In fact, the bank has detailed that 68% of those consulted, who responded that they keep or collect this paper currency, have one to five units. According to the calculation, if 9.8 million Mexicans keep a 50 bill, it is estimated that around 490 million pesos of this currency, or its approximate equivalent of more than 26 million dollarsare out of circulation. Hallucinatory. Awards. Its success even led to it being internationally awarded as ticket of the yearconsecrating what was already intuited: the image of the axolotl had connected with a collective sensitivity that went far beyond the economic. And behind that image there was a real animal, an axolotl called Gordaselected after a careful process of documentation and photography, which ended up becoming a national figure without anyone planning it. The daily life of la Gorda. Gorda currently lives in Axolotitlán, the National Axolotl Museumwhere she remains in a deep and well-kept fish tank where she is no longer constantly exposed due to her advanced age. Even so, those who visit it can recognize it by small white spots on its head, a feature that ended up becoming its hallmark. Its fame has generated a parallel ecosystem of objects and souvenirs (from stuffed animals to mugs and clothing) that have reinforced its presence in the country’s daily life. But beyond popular culture, specialists have remembered that admiration also implies responsibility: the axolotl is a extremely fragile speciesdependent on a specific environment, and its sudden notoriety only makes sense if it translates into greater awareness about its conservation. Gorda’s story shows that a single specimen can become a bridge between citizens and nature, but also that collective emotion must be accompanied by decisions that guarantee the survival of the species. An extraordinary creature. The qualities axolotl biologicalfrom its ability to regenerate limbs, tissues and even parts of the brain, to its breathing through gills, skin and mouth, or its condition as a salamander that does not complete metamorphosis, have made it a unique animal in the world. However, this singularity coexists with a critical situation: he Ambystoma mexicanum It is classified as extremely endangered and the destruction of its habitat has been constant for decades. Xochimilco, the only place where this species exists naturally, faces a combination of threats: accelerated urbanization, water pollution and the presence of invasive species that have decimated native ones since the 1980s. And more. Added to this are improvised interventionssuch as the release of axolotls without scientific protocols, which end in almost immediate mortality due to thermal shock, poor water quality or competition between specimens. The specialists they insist in which the conservation of the axolotl is not an act of isolated goodwill, but a technical process that requires strict control of the environment, genetic evaluation, slow acclimatization and comprehensive protection of the channels. The fragility of the animal reflects the fragility of the ecosystem that supports it. Restore Xochimilco. Scientists say that the conservation of the axolotl is inseparable from recovery of Xochimilcoand that evidence has led researchers and chinamperos to undertake shelter projects that recover ancestral agricultural techniques. These restored chinampas act as safe microecosystems where axolotls can remain free of contact with invasive species and with adequate water quality. The objective is not to create artificial reserves, but return to the environment its original balance so that the species can survive without eternally depending on human intervention. Xochimilco is not just a historical heritage nor a tourist postcard, it is a living system that regulates floods, stabilizes temperature, supports traditional agriculture and houses a biodiversity that depends on its continuity. The axolotl is only the visible tip of a problem much broader: if your home disappears, ecological functions on which the entire region depends will also disappear. The hype. Be that as it may, the social phenomenon of the 50 peso bill demonstrated that an image can change public perception of an entire species. Gorda became a symbol recognized by millions of people, capable of arousing curiosity, affection and an unexpected sense of identity. But the real impact is not in the collection of banknotes or in the objects inspired by the axolotl, but in the opportunity it opened to understand that conservation is a deeply cultural act: Only what is known is protected, and only that with which a bond is generated is cared for. The challenge in Mexico now is to convert that emotion into a sustained commitment. The bill gave visibility, and the restoration of Xochimilco will decide if that visibility has a future. The axolotl, meanwhile, has already occupied a place in everyday life, and now it is the country that must decide if it will also occupy a place in its future. Image | Dgzvs2012 In Xataka | We … Read more

There are exactly five things that you 100% haven’t dreamed of. And science already knows why

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He dream world It has its own rules. It is a place where the impossible seems to be the routine, but, paradoxically, some of the most mundane tasks in our lives become impossible to appear in our dreams. And this is something that can cause us many questions about why we have not dreamed of some specific things. The examples. We warn you that this is something that can break your head, because the question is obligatory: have you ever tried to read a text in a dream? (if you remember) o Have you taken out your phone to discover an incomprehensible interface? All this is not a coincidence, because in reality there are some things that we can never dream like we all expected (even if they are very real dreams). It has an explanation. science has several reasons in his lap to convince us why elements of modern life such as the smartphone or computer interfaces have little place in our dreams. Everything focuses on the fact that during the REM sleep phase the activity in the prefrontal networks of the brain are greatly reduced. And it is precisely here where executive control and language are ‘stored’. In this way, if during sleep these neurons are ‘asleep’, then we will not be able to read a text correctly or even hold a smartphone in our hands. When we sleep, it seems that we don’t want to work or be using our cell phone. This is because in this time range the activity of the limbic area, related to the emotional and visual part, is triggered. This results in the content of dreams leaning towards the associative, visual and emotional, rather than tasks that require a great analytical focus such as operating a complex interface. In this way, the material of our waking life is not literally copied from dreams, but rather is integrated in a selective and transformed way, prioritizing emotional charge over functional fidelity. The nightmare of reading. The same neurocognitive principle that we have seen is the one that explains another of the best-known phenomena: the inability to read texts stably. What is basically caused is that the characters literally ‘move’ or distort because the language networks are not being stimulated as much. This applies equally to numbers, mathematical calculations, or the simple task of looking at the time on a digital clock. Stimuli that require fine symbolic precision tend to become illegible or change constantly. Although some studies with lucid dreamers have shown that basic operations can be performed under experimental conditions, outside the laboratory, the stability of the symbols is almost non-existent. No smell or taste. While sight and hearing dominate the dreamscape, other sensory modalities are virtually absent. Systematic studies based on sleep diaries are consistent in showing that olfactory and gustatory experiences are extremely rare. Figures put its occurrence at approximately 1% of all dream reports. Even in laboratory experiments where the olfactory environment is manipulated during the night, most participants do not report smelling anything in their dreams, reinforcing the idea that chemical senses are a rarity in this state. The mirror. It is another quite common phenomenon in dreams: seeing yourself reflected in the mirror is something almost impossible to achieve. In dreams, this is generated predominantly “top-down”, that is, from the brain networks themselves and with very little or no sensory information from the outside. Because of this, high-resolution details, such as a reflected face, text, or an interface, tend to morph or distort as soon as we try to examine them closely. Visual stability is not the norm. The ancestral content. In stark contrast to the absence of cell phones or books, there is one type of content that seems to be overrepresented: threats. Dreaming about being chased, falling, facing dangers or even elements such as storms or snakes is extremely common. And on many occasions we remember it perfectly because we have precisely woken up at the moment sweating or with our heart pounding. This supports the known “Threat Simulation Hypothesis” (TST), proposed by philosopher Antti Revonsuo. This theory suggests that dreams could have an evolutionary function: serving as virtual “training” to rehearse how to respond to danger in real life. However, the scientific literature itself indicates that this hypothesis, although plausible and supported, is also the subject of debate and presents mixed results when compared between different cultures and environments. Images | Shane In Xataka | Years ago we discovered that our ancestors’ dreams were not like ours. There are now thousands of people trying to introduce biphasic sleep into their lives.

Your family tree is on every street

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Madrid, like most large modern metropolises, has been expanding by annexing population centers bordering. Each of these annexed towns has its own history and, some of them, leave curiosities such as that their streets are witnesses of the family tree of the family that owns the land on which an entire district would be built that in 2023 was home to some 143,000 inhabitants. The Usera district, located south of Madrid, is known today for its multicultural atmosphere, especially for the celebration of Chinese New Year organized by the Chinese community resident in the area. However, not many people have noticed a peculiarity in the names of their streets. A surname is repeated insistently in his street map: Usera. The reason is that, paraphrasing the writer and journalist Nieves ConcostrinaUsera, before being a neighborhood, was a gentleman. We can add that, in addition, he had a lot of family. The story of a family with a zip code In Usera’s street map we can find names like Nicolás Usera, Mariano Usera, Marina Usera, Luis Usera, Amparo Usera, Gabriel Usera and Isabelita Usera, all of them, as is more than evident, pointing out that the name Usera was not born by chance. It all dates back to the end of the 19th century, when José del Río, known as “Uncle Sordillo”, a landowner from the south of Madrid, left some land north of Villaverde to his daughter, Carmen del Río Fernández. This rich heiress married Marcelo Usera in 1904, the son of a fallen bourgeois family who had not long ago returned from ill-fated Cuba. Marcelo Usera had joined military service, like so many other young people of the time, where he continued in his military career until 1924 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. At the same time, the young Usera had already proven to be skilled in management, obtaining recognition with the livestock activities on the lands that his wife had inherited. As a curious note and examples of how much Marcelo Usera was prospering with the management of his wife’s assets, the Royal Academy of History collect that Alfonso A “Salamanca neighborhood” for the people However, despite this livestock success, the lands located south of Madrid were not profitable enough to be dedicated to cultivation. Inspired by the Marquis of Salamanca and its urban project that gave rise to the stately neighborhood of Salamanca, Usera decided to dedicate those lands little given to cultivation as a starting point for a settlement for a new working-class neighborhood with houses affordable for workers. Marcelo Usera Public School, built on land donated by Marcelo Usera Usera would take advantage of the facilities offered by the so-called “Cheap Houses Law” of 1911. Under this law, the landowner obtained tax exemptions and the transformation of rural land into developable land was facilitated, thus increasing the economic benefit due to the revaluation of the land. In this way, by promoting the construction of cheaper houses, he would not incur the economic problems that the Marquis of Salamanca’s project faced. As stated the portal of Telemadridthe first colony that the rich landowner planned was called “Colonia Salud y Ahorro”, although it finally ended up being called “Colonia Moscardó”. The urban development of this first colony followed the guidelines of the workers’ colonies of the time. A main street crossed by small perpendicular streets. A street map turned into a family tree As a soldier, Usera began naming his streets with the names of illustrious soldiers, mainly belonging to the Legion that he had founded years before. Millán-Astray. However, he soon ran out of military names, so he began to draw on his own family tree and those close to him. In this way, the Usera street map thus became a small family tribute: the main artery would be Marcelo Usera Street, which with its almost two kilometers serves as the backbone for the neighborhood, with which streets such as Mariano and Nicolás Usera, Marcelo’s brothers, intersect. Corner of Amparo Usera and Nicolás Usera streets Usera dedicated a square to his wife Carmen del Río. Deserved recognition for the heiress who owned the land on which it stood the new neighborhood. Amparo Usera, goddaughter of Carmen and Marcelo, has a street symbolically located parallel to that of her rich godfather and bordering her godmother’s square. As the content creator highlights selpide in the profile on TikTok from Madrid Secreto, Marcelo was not satisfied with honoring first-degree relatives. Numerous nephews of the landowner and urban planner such as Antonia, Gabriel, Luis, Marina or Isabelita Usera are also now street names. Even Marcelo’s maternal grandmother, Isidra Jiménez, and his sister-in-law, Marina Vega, appear in Usera’s street map. Once the names of the Usera clan had been exhausted, the honors began to be extended to friends of the family, such as Carmen Bruguera, José Anespere and Pablo Ortiz, and even to employees, such as Felipe Díaz who, according to what was published by Infouserawas the administrator who designed the layout of the streets and whose house is preserved there. His daughter, Perpetua Díaz, also has a street in the neighborhood. In addition to honoring his family and friends with street names as if they were little cards, Marcelo Usera also wanted to honor those who were directly involved in the success of the urban project. Among those names, Gumersinda Rosillo and Jesús Montoya stand out, two of the first inhabitants of the new neighborhood. In your videoSélpide also highlighted the name of Máximo Carazo, Usera’s first pharmacist, who provided clean water from his well to the inhabitants of the new neighborhood. Since its urbanization, this corner of the south of Madrid has been characterized by peculiarity of their street namess, who remember on every corner that being born into the right family can make a name continue to be remembered decades later, even if its only merit is having the right surname in the right neighborhood. In Xataka | The 25 richest families in the world, displayed in … Read more

The US industrial plan is crumbling because it is being eaten up by a new sector: that of insatiable AI

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Generative AI is stupid. Is Yann LeCun’s opinionone of the godfathers of the artificial intelligencewhich has grown tired of how the AI ​​majors seek AGI and it seems that he is going to set up his startup to achieve it. To make AI more “smart” you have to train it, and for that you have to build data centers. And boy is it being done. To the point that there are already those who calculate that the rise of AI threatens the plan of reindustrialization of the United States. AI walks or doesn’t walk. The United States has a plan: invest whatever it takes to achieve superintelligence before China. China is also investing, but while what it seeks is a cheap and functional AI to monetize nowwhat the US wants is artificial general intelligence, or AGI. That costs money and, above all, investment in huge data centers. One of the Donald Trump’s election promises During his two campaigns he orbited around the commitment to return millions of jobs to Americans. To achieve this, the opening of new factories on national soil through tax incentives and an “America First” policy that we have seen echo in the rest of the world in the form of tariffs. In Xataka SoftBank has always been characterized by very risky investments. And now he just abandoned NVIDIA Capital redistribution. ANDfactories are opening and reopeningbut perhaps not as many expected. In Bloomberg They point to a devastating fact: spending on new data centers has increased by 18% in the last seven months. This is a colossal increase, but it goes hand in hand with another fact: spending on new factories has fallen 2.5% this year. While large technology companies are committed to building data centers, the policies of recent months, immigration restrictions, withdrawal of support for electric vehicles and tariffs are generating uncertainty in the market that slows down investment aimed at opening other types of factories. Not only are factories not opened, but they are laid off. American manufacturing heavyweights are not only facing the biggest corporate tax hike since the 1990s, but are estimated to have lost 38,000 manufacturing jobs this year. Mostly in sectors such as electronics, automobiles or household appliances. In August alone, 12,000 people lost their jobs (and why don’t we include those from the video game industry here…). In Xataka Quietly, the great AI industry has found a gateway to Europe: the United Kingdom brutal difference. Estimates suggest that the monthly spending of manufacturing plants will situates at $18.8 billion, but while the trend is downward, if we look at spending on AI, we see a radically different scenario. Among the big four technology companies (Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet) $400 billion will go to AI infrastructure in 2025 alone. This is an increase of 60% compared to last year and it is not a peak: it is something sustained. In fact, the investment in 2026 is expected to be higher. There are other companies with their own plans, such as OpenAI what is the most valuable private company and can afford lose 11.5 billion in just the last 90 days which is making an investment of between 400,000 and 500,000 million dollars between 2025 and 2027. {“videoId”:”x9sjece”,”autoplay”:true,”title”:”CHINA is WINNING the TECH WAR because they planned it that way 10 YEARS AGO”, “tag”:”china”, “duration”:”721″} Help Uncle Sam. This AI boom is driving other directly linked sectors, such as the construction of the data centers themselves (someone has to build them as long as they do not use already manufactured facilities) and that of energy. Because these facilities need ridiculous amounts of energy to runso much so that Google wants to take them to space and China is submerging them in the sea to spend less on dissipation. Thus, reopening nuclear power plants or investing in modernizing gas turbines to supply data centers is on the horizon, but it is still something that does not impact the American worker, they are not new factories that need personnel. And part of the money needed is coming from the state itself. Recently, AMD announced that the United States Department of Energy had allocated 1,000 million public to power the infrastructure. And both OpenAI and NVIDIA have dropped the need for the United States to get involved to sustain this new industry, which is already awakening bubble feelings. In Xataka While the US reopens nuclear plants, China has already resolved the great limitation to the development of AI: energy Echoes of the 2008 blow. When we talk about such astronomical figures, it is very difficult to get an idea. It was already happening with the 70,000 million dollars that Microsoft paid to take over Activisionand if we now go to amounts of 400,000 or 500,000 million, things are going to get worse. What is evident is that, as we say, these investments fly over the fear of the bubble bursting. If in July of this year 37% of fund managers believed that we were facing a bubble, in October the figure increase up to 54%, although from the technology industry itself It seems that there is no one who brings sanity. Because it is spending a lot, a lot, more than during the dotcom era which did not end too well for many, and even figures as interested as Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, have commented that, while it is true that many are oversizing their investments, it is better than being left behind. Only time will tell how everything turns out, obviously, but the article Bloomberg It closes in a quite interesting way. Arno Hill, former mayor of Lordstown, a municipality where there was a large GM plant already closed and which is now part of SoftBank and Foxconn’s plans to create a data center, says that he does not know what will happen with AI, but that people will always need cars. Image | Google Data Centers In Xataka | The world of AI has a problem: there is no energy … Read more

In 2013 London announced its most impressive skyscraper. Back then, no one could imagine the danger that their crystals had.

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There are many stories of skyscrapers with very different endings than those on the plans, some terriblebut in the city of London one is still remembered for its closeness and chaos generated. The history of the so-called like walkie talkie (20 Fenchurch Street) is that of a building that was born wrapped in promises of modernity and ended up exhibiting one of the most unusual and dangerous design flaws in contemporary architecture. An experiment turned into risk. In the summer of 2013, when its glass façade was almost finished, London discovered to its shock that the skyscraper it had so much promoted had a big problem: acted like a gigantic parabolic lens, concentrating sunlight on a narrow strip of Eastcheap capable of melting plastic, deform metal and produce temperatures higher than those of a domestic oven. It was no joke. Parked cars, like the story that went viral Martin Lindsay’s Jaguarsuffered palpable damage, everyday objects began to melt, passersby spoke of softened shoe soles or feeling burns on their skin. You have to give it a name. The phenomenon was such that it ended up being baptized like death rayand it was not an exaggeration: the reflections generated up to 72 degrees Celsius on the street, creating a real danger for anyone passing by. The press documented the episode with fascination and alarmimmediately turning it into a media attraction that placed the building at the center of unprecedented scrutiny. The Walkie-Talkie (20 Fenchurch Street) A failure announced. Far from being an unforeseeable accident, Walkie Talkie It had been conceived with a concave curvature that any student of elementary physics would have pointed out as capable of concentrating light. Its architect, Rafael Viñoly, recognized shortly after the building had initially been designed with horizontal slats to avoid precisely that effect, but they were removed for budgetary reasons. Viñoly admitted also that the team did not have the appropriate tools to model the phenomenon accurately, limiting itself to approximate calculations who predicted a lower risk. The reality was very different, aggravated by the increase in solar radiation in London in recent years. In fact, the problem It was not unprecedented for the architect: already in Las Vegas his Vdara hotel had been accused to concentrate light until they burn the bathers. The skyscraper under construction And more. But in London the error acquired a incomparable public dimensionbecause it affected not a private complex but one of the busiest streets in the City. The urgent installation of a temporary mesh and the subsequent placement of slats on the facade They solved the problem, but they did not avoid the perception that it was a systemic failure, the result of a design process that had privileged aesthetics and costs over urban safety. The Sky Garden Emblem of a city in transformation. Even before the death ray episode, the Walkie Talkie was subject of criticism. Its silhouette, disproportionate and widened upward to maximize profitable views, stood like a sort of “sore thumb” outside the financial cluster, generating a visual impact that the own urban report had described as “significant damage.” However, the real controversy came after its famous Sky Garden: presented as a public contribution comparable to a vertical park. open to all, it ended up being more of a panoramic restaurant complex with controlled access and mandatory reservations. For many Londoners, it represented a symbol of the privatization drift of urban spaces: a supposed “public garden” that responded more to the logic of corporate luxury than to that of the common good. The complaints were so intense that the City even raised a structural reform of space to bring it closer to what was initially promised. A razzie. In 2015, amidst the accumulation of controversies, the building received the Carbuncle Cup for ugliest building of the year in the United Kingdom, a satirical recognition that underlined the extent to which it had become object of rejection collective. Even Sky News tried to fry an egg under his facade and his name mutated into a meme: Scorchie walkie. Over time, its image became associated not only with an aesthetic problem, but with a chain of opaque decisions and urban planning concessions that many consider a paradigmatic example of how not to manage the integration of a skyscraper into the historical fabric of London. The work of the Imperial The rebirth. Despite its rugged origins, Walkie Talkie has undergone a surprising public rehabilitation. In 2025, twelve years after the incident, visitors are lining up to enjoy from the Sky Gardennow fully integrated into the city’s tourist circuit. But beneath that normalization lies a story that could have been tragic. Later studies from Imperial College showed that, in a different meteorological scenario, the death ray could have cause serious injuryfires in nearby homes and even permanent damage to the skin and eyes. Only the chance combination of clouds and the orientation of the beam (which did not fall at its maximum point at street level) prevented major consequences. A reminder. The architecture was a warning about the critical role of climate modeling, professional responsibility, and the need to subject bolder architectural forms to much more rigorous evaluations. If today the majority of tourists who sgo to the Sky Garden They ignore that the building was about to become an icon of the disaster, it is because the city acted quickly and because luck intervened at the right time. In any case, the technical memory persists: Walkie Talkie remains a reminder that, in a dense, vertical metropolis, a miscalculation can become a massive riskand that contemporary architecture (when its interaction with the environment is neglected) can produce both wonders and invisible dangers. An uncomfortable legacy. In retrospect, the Walkie Talkie has ended up occupying a peculiar place in London’s recent history: it is simultaneously a tourist success, a design failurea case study in urban security and an example of the tensions between public interest and the imperatives of the real estate market. Its trajectory shows that a … Read more

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