Month: February 2026

AI saves us time but takes away the story

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A few days ago I surprised myself doing something that five years ago would have seemed sacrilege. I had in front of me one of those reports that you save to read on Sunday morning. 5,000 words, a prestigious signature and a great design. A text of those who ask for calm. And when I didn’t even have two sentences, I instinctively looked for the ‘summary’ button that now crown my browser. Nine lines. That was the whole summary. It was not for lack of interest, it was rather for that modern urgency that whispers to us that spending twenty minutes on a single idea is an inefficient thing. After a quarter of an hour I remembered almost nothing of those nine lines. I had the information, but I didn’t have the knowledge. We are turning reading into an administrative procedure. What started as a survival tool to deal with the deluge of work emails or some long-winded Reddit threads has colonized our capacity for wonder. In 2026, AI not only helps us write, it also is teaching us not to read. Or even worse: it is convincing us that the path is a hindrance to reaching the destination. It is the definitive victory of the TLDR about curiosity. The problem with outsourcing digestion is that we start from a false premise: that the substance of things is the only thing that matters. But in culture, information or in a simple conversation, substance is sometimes the least important thing. Ask an AI to summarize Don Quixote for you and it will tell you that it’s like a man from La Mancha who has read too much and confuses windmills with giants. You have the information, but you have not heard the conversations with Sancho on the roads. You have not felt the bitterness on the beach in Barcelona nor the lucidity of someone who regains their sanity to realize that the world, without its madness, is a gray place. Technology, in its efforts to eliminate friction (paradoxically, being the one who has blocked our notifications) is taking away the fabric of our experience. Silences and nuances are what fixes memory. The horny thing is What are we using that time for that we supposedly save by not reading?r. It is not to think deeply or to walk around without a cell phone and hit the coconut, but to consume even more summaries. It’s a loop infinity (pun intended) empty efficiency. We optimize the consumption of information to be able to ingest more information, which in turn we summarize in the next scroll. Thus we become archivists of a life that we did not get to witness. We save, synthesize and archive, but we do not inhabit anything. We are reaching a phase in which the true status, the intellectual luxury of our era, is not to be very smart or to be up to date with everything thanks to our AI agent, but in be able to sustain attention. Prestige belongs to those who can afford the extravagance of reading a text from beginning to end, of listening to a podcast without skipping the silences or set it to 1.75x. Or finishing watching a movie without having used your cell phone for two hours. Efficiency is a great metric for an assembly line or an AWS server, but If we let it guide the leisure of a human life, we are making ourselves a little miserable. We start by optimizing each minute to end up leaving everything in a list of three key points. Or in a nine-line summary. But life cannot be summarized. In Xataka | There is a generation working for free as a documentarian of their own life: they are not influencers but they act as if they were Featured image | Xataka

today it continues to dominate Sri Lanka

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We live surrounded by increasingly modern cities, connected by transport networks, technology and services that seem to completely define our time. However, in different corners of the planet there persist material traces of ancient societies that built works destined to last long further than those who built them, reminding us that the human ambition to transcend is not an exclusive feature of the present. Some of these structures remain part of the everyday landscape thousands of years later, silent but imposing. One of them stands on Anuradhapura and, despite its extraordinary scale, it remains little known outside its immediate surroundings. In the central north of the island is the first major capital of the territory and one of the most sacred places of Buddhism, where religious practice continues to develop with a continuity unusual in the contemporary world. On full moon days, pilgrims dressed in white walk barefoot along dusty paths while monks sing chants at dawn and foreign visitors join in rituals that have been celebrated in this same environment for centuries. Jetavanaramaya, the brick dome that defied time The construction that dominates this complex is called Jetavanaramaya and its scale is difficult to assimilate without dwelling on the figures. The stupa was completed around the year 301 ec using some 93.3 million bricks of baked clay and reached around 122 meters high, one of the highest heights in the ancient world. Due to its size, when it was completed it was ranked as the third largest construction made by humans, only behind the pyramids of giza. That material ambition alone sums up the magnitude of the project. The current appearance of Jetavanaramaya is also the result of a long history of deterioration and recovery. After progressive collapses and stages of abandonment, the stupa today reaches nearly 71 meters in height, far from the image it projected in its origin. Despite this reduction, its volume maintains it as the largest known brick construction, a scale so extreme that, according to a comparison collected in historical sourcesits bricks would be enough to build a wall about 30 centimeters thick and nearly three meters high between London and Edinburgh. The fact that it was covered by vegetation for centuries contributed to this feat of ancient engineering remaining relatively ignored outside the region. Beyond its architectural dimension, the stupa was part of a complex religious organization that articulated the monastic life of the environment. The complex, called Jetavana Vihara, was designed to accommodate a large community of monks and situate spiritual practice around the permanent presence of the main construction, visible from any point in the complex. The choice of brick as the main material completely conditioned the logistics of the project. Unlike the pyramids of Giza, built in stone, this stupa required preparing, transporting and assembling millions of pieces that were more vulnerable to erosion. Remains of ancient ovens found in the region confirm massive productionalthough without a conclusive attribution to the work or a secure dating to the beginning of the 4th century. The mobilization of labor necessary to complete construction remains one of the least clear aspects of the historical record. Part of the mystery surrounding the stupa comes from what has been found inside. They were found of reliquary chests placed on various construction levels, an arrangement that confirms their function as a container of religious meaning in addition to technical prowess. Next to them appeared gold panels with representations of bodhisattvastoday preserved in the Colombo National Museum. This set of findings provides material evidence of diverse doctrinal currents and suggests that the enclave participated in cultural networks connected with India and other regions around the Indian Ocean. Perhaps the most striking thing is not only that a structure of these dimensions has survived for more than 1,700 years, but that for centuries no stupa of comparable scale was erected in the region. This fact places Jetavanaramaya as the culminating point of a construction tradition that later evolved towards other forms and proportions. Its current presence reminds us that societies long before modernity were already capable of coordinating work, technical knowledge and collective beliefs with extraordinary ambition. Images | erdbeernaut (CC BY-SA 2.0) | Wimukthi Bandara (CC BY-SA 4.0) | In Xataka | 50 years ago a German started a futuristic paradise in Lanzarote. Nobody imagined that it would end up being the most famous ruin on the island

defy the laws of gravity

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There is no need to brush up on school time to know that rivers originate in the mountains and literally fall to the sea. Essentially gravity takes care of everything. This is how all the rivers on the planet work. What’s more, if you yourself spill a glass of water on the floor you could discover if there is an unevenness. But sometimes there is fine print and it can confuse what at first seems logical. What’s wrong with the Green River?. Without going any further, the green river in Colorado (United States) It has been making the scientific community think for 157 years because this river flows against all odds through the Uinta Mountains (Wyoming/Utah) instead of around them to flow into the Colorado River. A recent study has found the solution to this mystery by investigating the geodynamic mechanism that makes it possible. The Green River in Utah. Droid41, CC BY-SA 3.0 The context. To understand why it is essential to talk before those Uinta Mountainsa most unusual mountain range in that it runs from east to west, unlike most of the United States, for almost 250 kilometers. With peaks up to 4,000 meters high, it is also the highest of those arranged in this way. The bulk of the US mountain ranges follow a North-South orientation due to the tectonic forces between the pacific plates and the north american plate. The Uintas are the most prominent case of transverse structure and their origin is due to much older faults that were reactivated. More specifically, the Uinta were formed about 50 million years ago. The Green River, for its part, traced its current channel less than 8 million years ago where there is something that draws attention: a canyon that the river eroded in the middle of the mountain range of about 700 meters in length, the Canyon of Lodore. The tributaries of the Colorado. Shannon – Background and river course data from DEMIS Mapserver and The National Map, both public domain, CC BY-SA 4.0 Better to cross than to go around. Rivers flow according to gravity, yes, but also following the path that offers least resistance (in general). Following this basis of geology, it seems a priori surprising that the Green decided to traverse the mountain range instead of through it. The canyon is a mechanical paradox in an environment without active compressive tectonics, that of the Uinta. The study and the discovery. Rivers have memories, so by studying their current shape you can reconstruct what the terrain was like before. To do this, they used a mathematical model (a 2D topographic inversion of the river networks) that allowed them to reconstruct the ancient topography. Then they detected a rise in the terrain of about 450 meters in the center of the mountain range with a circular pattern. This particularity was validated with a seismic tomographya type of terrestrial ultrasound that allows you to see hundreds of kilometers below the ground, which revealed a lithospheric blob. What is a lithospheric drop? A dense mass of mountain root that breaks off and sinks into the deep mantle, acting as an internal engine that deformed the surface and allowed the Green River to pass through the mountain barrier. The lead author of the study, Adam Smithhe explained in a press release that “We believe we have gathered enough evidence to demonstrate that lithospheric trickling is responsible for pulling up the terrain enough to allow rivers to link and merge” thus establishing the permanent channel that remains today. Why is it important. Because this geological event united two of the largest river systems in North America, thus modifying the drainage of the continent, which also has its implications at the level of biodiversity, as it allowed different species to interbreed. On the other hand, it is the umpteenth reminder that the Earth’s interior continues to shape the landscape, sometimes abruptly, in areas that seem geologically dead. How it all happened. With the Stokes’s Law and fluvial response time, they estimated that this landslide occurred 2.3 to 4.7 million years ago. The model suggests that this drip first generated a topographic subsidence that allowed the Green River to surpass the barrier of the mountains and begin its incision. When that dense root was removed, the isostatic and dynamic uplift that we see today was generated. In a sentence: first the mountain crouched down to let the river pass and then it rose abruptly, forcing the river to cut through the rock to maintain its course. In Xataka | The US has a plan for its rivers: bombard them with 6,000 logs from helicopters to fix a decades-old mistake In Xataka | Finally we have salmon without an environmental footprint, without overfishing and without microplastics. It’s just not salmon Cover | mypubliclands, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia

Thousands of people change their clothes right after work. Neuroscience has something to say: they are right

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The sound is almost universal: the jingling of keys in the entryway, immediately followed by the sound of a zipper being lowered, a button being released, or a bra being unclasped. For millions of people, the day doesn’t end when they clock in at the office or close their laptop, but rather the moment they take off their stiff jeans, suit or uniform and slip into something soft. That sigh of relief is not just physical; It is the acoustic signal that the brain has just changed gears. The Scandinavians, experts in naming the intangible, are clear about it. In fact, the Danes use the term Hyggebukser to define those pants that you would never wear to go out, but that are so comfortable that, secretly, they are your favorites. But this goes beyond a Nordic trend. Meik Wiking, director of the Happiness Research Institute, explains in his book Hygge Home that the objective of this clothing is to offer “a break for your responsible, stressed and compliant adult self.” It’s about creating a sensation soft that prompts the brain to feel safe, allowing us to “experience the happiness of simple pleasures knowing there is nothing to worry about.” To understand why this gesture has become vital, we must first understand what we have lost. Historically, work and home clothes were not so differentiated until the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, which standardized indoor work spaces. However, in the modern era, the line has become dangerously blurred. As journalist Amanda Mull points outwe are experiencing a “leak” (seepage) from work to home. Before, taking off the uniform guaranteed mental freedom. Now, “many people wear the same jeans they wore to work to cook dinner, with their cell phones and laptops never too far away,” which prevents the mind and body from truly disconnecting from productive work. This phenomenon worsened after the pandemic. Five years after the health crisis, the fashion sector is still “knocked out”, as they point out in Herald. The consumer has changed his priorities: he prefers to invest in experiences rather than formal clothing, and the rise of teleworking has reduced the need for complex wardrobes. According to Eduardo Zamácola, president of Acotex, in statements to the same medium: “People go to work with versatile, casual-style garments; the most dressed pieces have taken a backseat.” However, this permanent convenience comes at a price. Although teleworking has been shown to make us happier and allow us to sleep 27 minutes more on average, it also has brought new challenges to separate leisure and business times. The Science of “Clothing Cognition” This is where science validates intuition. Changing clothes is not a superficial matter; It is a cognitive tool. Researchers Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky coined the term Enclothed Cognition (Apparel Cognition) to describe how clothing systematically influences the wearer’s psychological processes. In their famous experiment, they showed that subjects wearing a lab coat described as “doctor’s” increased their sustained attention compared to those wearing the same coat described as “painter’s.” The conclusion is fascinating: the effect depends on two simultaneous factors, “the physical experience of wearing the clothing and its symbolic meaning.” If we extrapolate it to the living room of our house, the logic holds: if your brain associates tracksuits or pajamas with “absolute rest”, putting them on will physiologically activate relaxation. But if you wear those same clothes to work, you break the symbolic association and the cognitive “spell” disappears. This connects directly to the theory of “Role Transitions.” Researchers Blake Ashforth and Glen Kreiner explain what we need “micro-transitions” or rites of passage to cross the boundaries between our different roles (from employee to parent, from boss to partner). Changing clothes acts as a physical and psychological boundary that facilitates this transition, preventing the stress of one role from contaminating the other. Ritual as anxiolytic From clinical psychology, the action of changing is understood as a direct message to our biology. “Clothing works as a direct message to the brain. Taking off your outer clothing (…) is a very clear way of telling your nervous system ‘you can slow down now,’” explains psychologist Marta Calderero to Vogue. It is pure contextual learning. Furthermore, the act itself has power. A study published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes confirms that the rituals —defined as predefined sequences of symbolic actions— are effective tools to regain a sense of control and reduce anxiety. Performing the ritual of changing clothes when you get home reduces uncertainty and prepares the individual for a different mental state. But be careful, comfort should not mean sloppiness. Style expert Anuschka Rees warns in his book The Curated Closet about the importance of identity at home. As he points out: “Not just any old cloth will do. Choosing clothes that also represent you when you are at home, not just when you go out or when they see you, is super important on an identity level.” Home clothes should be a “healing wardrobe”, lovingly chosen to generate real well-being. So for those working from home, the strategy must be even stricter. The psychologist Isabel Aranda warns that “The fact that you wear the same clothes all day transmits a flat rhythm and makes every day seem the same”, distorting our perception of time and affecting our biorhythms. The recommendation is even if you don’t go out, change. Wear one clothes to work and a different one to rest. “It’s a way of telling your body that you’re still active,” says Aranda. Interestingly, there is a counterpoint in the corporate world known as the “red shoe effect” (red-sneakers effect), where breaking the dress code (like Mark Zuckerberg with his sweatshirt) can denote status and power. However, in the privacy of the home, we do not seek power over others, but power over our own well-being. In an increasingly volatile and uncertain outside world, where fashion and work schedules have lost their rigid structure, home remains our refuge. Changing clothes when crossing the … Read more

the minimum dose of exercise that science points to changing the health of those over 60 years of age

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In the 1980s, gerontologist Robert N. Butler launched a phrase that has become in a mantra of modern medicine: “if exercise and physical activity could be packaged as a pill it would be the most widely prescribed and beneficial medication for the population.” Forty years later, science has stopped treating that phrase as a metaphor and turned it into a mathematical calculation. The ROI of the force. Until now, we knew that sport was healthy, but data on its direct clinical profitability were lacking. The GENUD research group, led by José Antonio Casajús, published in Experimental Gerontology at the end of 2025 one of the strongest evidence to date. The essay, carried out with 123 people over 80 years oldprescribed a treatment of three weekly supervised exercise sessions for six months. The clinical results were clear: improvements in functional capacity, reduction in frailty and increase in quality of life. But the data that has aroused the interest of health managers is economic. The conclusion here was that while the cost of the intervention was only 164 euros per person, The savings to the system exceeded 1,000 euros. The clinical squat. If exercise is the ideal drug, clinical evidence points to the squat being the most important active ingredient here. Many studies have precisely validated this movement, which can mean the world to some people, not as a gym exercise but as a diagnostic and treatment tool. Biomechanics is key. Why is the squat so important to medicine? First of all because it is an exercise that demands more on the hip extensorsvital for an elderly person to be able to get up from a chair or bed without help. But in addition, it also activates the quadriceps and plantar flexors more. At the metabolic and cardiovascular level, the impact is systemic. The venous compression that occurs during the squat increases venous return and cardiac output, acting as a natural pump that combats orthostatic hypotension. Even in post-stroke patients, fast squats have been shown to activate the injured rectus femoris, correcting asymmetries and improving postural control. How long. You don’t have to work hard, since a recent study showed that a program of just one minute a day, that is, about thirty seconds of squats and thirty seconds of push-ups, is enough. This is something that was seen with prescription by primary care physicians, improving physical performance in patients over 60 years of age with excellent adherence at 24 weeks. Anti-cancer effect. Beyond the effect on adults, important implications of physical exercises in pediatric cancer have also been seen. This was evidenced by Carmen Fiuza-Luces, from the Physical Exercise and Pediatric Cancer group, who directs the “La Aceleradora” project of the Unoentrecienmil Foundation. And contrary to the belief of having “absolute rest” when you have cancer, the evidence shows that exercise during treatment of pediatric solid tumors It achieves what no drug can. For example, it reduces the side effects of chemotherapy, protects the heart from the toxicity of the treatment or prevents atrophy in sick children. The problem is not the drug. The problem with prescribing exercise in consultation is lack of knowledge about the ‘dose’ that should be given. Just as a doctor does not say ‘take an antibiotic’ without a clear duration and frequency, the same thing happens with sports. You can’t say ‘do sports’. In these cases, exercise requires a dose in the form of frequency and duration, the intensity that must be personalized to each patient and, above all, monitoring with adaptation to the patient’s pathology. Looking for the front door. The Health and Sports Working Group of the Collegiate Medical Organization, coordinated by José Ramón Pallás, is pushing for integrate exercise into the National Health System as a therapy equivalent to drugs. The goal is for the “3 sets of 10 squats” recipe to be as official and binding as any blood pressure pill. In this way, science has done the numbers and all that remains is for the administration to make a move. Images | Victor Freitas In Xataka | Neither 10,000 steps a day nor killing yourself in the gym: the “sweet spot” of exercise according to science is 30 minutes

Elon Musk’s Grokipedia

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AI is drowning Wikipedia. Not only has it been trained with its content, but the AI ​​responses It’s stealing a lot of your traffic. As if that were not enough, in October of last year a competitor appeared, Grokipedia, created entirely with AI (and copied from Wikipedia itself). We now know that Elon Musk’s invention is attracting a new audience: other AIs. Source: Grokipedia. A few days ago, some tests carried out by The Guardian revealed that ChatGPT was using Grokipedia as a source in various queries and it is not the only chatbot that is citing it. According to The Vergereferences are appearing in other AI services such as those of Google, which cites it in Google Gemini, in the AI ​​summaries and the search engine’s AI mode. It has also been cited by Microsoft Copilot and, to a lesser extent, Perplexity and Claude. Volume. Speaking to The Verge, Glen Allsopp, head of SEO at Ahrefs, revealed that they did a test with more than 13 million queries and the result was that ChatGPT mentioned Grokipedia in more than 263,000 responses. Wikipedia continues to appear much more, with almost 3 million references, but taking into account that Grokipedia was born in October 2025, the volume of citations is quite large. ChatGPT’s favorite. Analysts from other SEO tools such as Semrush and Profound told The Verge that they have detected significant increases in the number of citations to Grokipedia and the majority come from ChatGPT. In the case of the rest of the chatbots, according to Ahrefs tests, Google cited Grokipedia in 6,800 Gemini responses and 567 AI summaries. Copilot named it in 7,700 responses and Perplexity only two. From the creator of MechaHitler. Wikipedia is collaboratively and transparently edited by humans, but Grokipedia is run by Grok, an AI that has had hallucinations in which I thought it was Elon Musk himselfhas published antisemitic messages, “MechaHitler” was proclaimed and recently it was in the news for help “undress” millions of women. As if that were not enough, an investigation revealed that in Grokipedia there are articles whose sources are directly neo-Nazi forums and conspiracy theory websites. The researchers warned that Grok was making his own editorial decisions, altering the focus on certain topics. That chatbots are using it as a reference is problematic, to say the least. OpenAI responds. Speaking to The Verge, an OpenAI spokesperson said that ChatGPT searches a “wide range of sources and points of view” and that users can judge their reliability for themselves. It also highlighted that they implement security filters to prevent links to potentially harmful content from appearing. In Xataka | AI is breaking one of the oldest economic paradigms in history: that cheap equals “bad” Image | Amparo Babiloni, with Wikipedia and Grokipedia logos

The ships of the oil “ghost fleet” turn off their GPS to avoid being detected. Malaysia is going to hunt them with drones

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In the crystal clear waters of Southeast Asia, where the Strait of Malacca meets the South China Sea, a war is being fought that does not appear in conventional military reports. There are no trenches, but there are rusty helmets that turn off their GPS signal to disappear from international radars. This is the kingdom of the “ghost fleet”, an ecosystem of lawless ships that, according to the latest researchhas found its safe harbor in Malaysia, doubling its activity in just twelve months. However, the time for impunity appears to be running out: from the use of artificial intelligence to the deployment of naval drones, technology is beginning to illuminate the darkest corners of the ocean. The black market boom. The situation on the east coast of Malaysia has ceased to be an open secret and has become a global security problem. According to the specialized media Seatrade Maritime“ship-to-ship” (STS) oil transfers have recently doubled, going from just seven weekly operations to peaks of fifteen in just one year. This increase responds to an infrastructure designed to circumvent the sanctions imposed on Russia, Iran and Venezuela, using Malaysian waters as a gigantic clandestine service station before the crude oil continues on its way, mainly to China. Analyst Charlie Brown, of the organization UANIhas managed to capture a disturbing reality through satellite images and direct photos. In mid-January 2026, some 60 vessels linked to Iranian oil and another 30 with Russian and Venezuelan cargoes were waiting at anchor in Malaysia’s Exclusive Economic Zone. These ships not only operate outside the law, but they do so under deplorable technical conditions. Images distributed by UANI show tankers with false names broadbrushed on their hulls and flags of convenience hidden under tarps to deceive authorities. The metamorphosis of the threat. What began as a purely economic strategy to keep Moscow’s revenue flowing has mutated into something far more dangerous for European security. As the chronicles of my colleague Miguel Jorge relate in XatakaRussia has converted part of this fleet into covert hybrid warfare platforms. It’s not just about moving barrels; Now these ships incorporate “technicians” who, under a civilian guise, are usually special forces veterans or mercenaries linked to the Wagner group. These agents wield authority that often exceeds that of the ship’s captain and have been accused of photographing military installations and monitoring underwater cables in EU and NATO waters. An example of this tension was experienced with the oil tanker Boracaywhich after embarking Russian technicians in the Baltic, was intercepted by the French navy off Brittany after suspicious drones were detected flying over critical infrastructure in Copenhagen. The ghost fleet is today, in essence, an extension of the Kremlin’s security apparatus sailing with impunity under the flags of countries like Gabon or Gambia. A new fragmented energy order. From the academic level, the Elcano Royal Institute’s analysis highlights that this phenomenon is the symptom of a “deglobalization” of the gas and oil market. In your reportresearcher Gonzalo Escribano explains that international value chains, previously based on efficiency and transparency, are being replaced by “geoeconometrically armored” circuits. Europe finds itself at a crossroads: although it seeks to disassociate itself from Russian energy, the persistence of these black markets complicates strategic autonomy. This fragmentation has even reached the LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) market. According to Bloombergsanctioned Russian gas transfers have been documented in Malaysian waters, a technically much more complex operation than crude oil. The ship Pearlmanaged by an opaque company based in a Dubai hotel, is the face of this new network that desperately seeks buyers in Asia for the gas that Europe no longer wants. The technological response: AI and drones to the rescue. Faced with a fleet that “turns off” the real world by hacking GPS signals (spoofing) and the shutdown of transponders, the response is being purely technological. The middle CNBC highlights thatof the ships loaded with Iranian crude in 2025, 96% made dark transfers and 77% falsified their location. To combat this “blackout”, Ukraine has shown the way with an innovation that has made conventional fleets obsolete: the use of artificial intelligence in naval drones. The drones Be Baby have multiplied its capabilities thanks to AI, allowing precision attacks from thousands of kilometers away. In a recent operation near the Turkish coast, these drones hit Russian ghost fleet tankers, specifically targeting their rudders and propulsion systems. The objective is not to sink them, which would cause an ecological disaster of catastrophic dimensions, but to render them useless and turn them into an unbearable economic burden for those who operate them. This “precision offensive” is forcing insurers and shipping companies to reconsider the risk of collaborating with Moscow, raising the costs of war for the Kremlin. The dilemma of safety and the environment. The proliferation of elderly ships, without liability insurance and with dubious maintenance, is an environmental time bomb. Lars Barstad, CEO of the operator Frontline, warned in the Financial Times that organizations such as the International Maritime Organization (IMO) appear to be “sleeping at the wheel”. Barstad notes that it is only a matter of time before a major disaster occurs, as these ships operate outside of any regulatory framework. Meanwhile, diplomatic pressure increases. The US has begun a campaign of aggressive seizures, such as that of the ship Sailor (before Bella 1), which was boarded by the US Coast Guard in North Atlantic waters after a chase from the Caribbean. This “gunboat diplomacy” of the 21st century, analyzed by the Atlantic Councilposes immense legal challenges: once a steel giant full of crude oil is seized, the maintenance and storage costs are astronomical. The end of the shadow. The current geopolitical dashboard report shows that Malaysia, Spain or the waters of the Caribbean are just scenes of a larger battle for visibility. The ghost fleet survives in the shadow of legal ambiguity, but the advance of artificial intelligence and constant satellite monitoring are tightening the fence. As the analysis concludes from my partnerthis is not a frontal … Read more

Companies are replacing junior workers with AI. Now it’s time to pay the consequences

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When artificial intelligence appeared on the horizon, the first thing we thought was that it was going to retire us. Later, he was going to retire the most senior profiles and now we know that it is just the opposite: is stopping job access to junior profiles. In the past, companies competed fiercely to attract young talent, but now Gen Z has found its great rival in AI. Beginners? No, thanks. This Revelio Labs job report reveals that entry-level hiring has fallen by 35% in the United States since 2023. And it is one of many studies: this other of job offers estimates the drop in junior offers between 11 and 20% in the last year. The phenomenon is not exclusive to the United States: in Spain these data from El Confidencial They report that the Big Four are going to reduce the hiring of people under 30 years of age by between 10 and 20%. In the UK, more of the same. AI boosts productivity… if you’re the boss. The business premise is that artificial intelligence can carry out these tasks of those people with a junior profile such as documentation, testing or writing basic code. It is not that these tasks have disappeared within the workflow, it is that they have been absorbed by higher levels in a twist of efficiency and productivity: senior profiles supervise what the AI ​​does. And if, AI screws up. To the question of how many hours of work per week does AI save you? from the consulting company Section collection in The Wall Street Journal There is a clear divergence between managers and staff: 40% of workers think that they are not saving anything because even if there is a quick response, there are errors and hallucinations. When you take into account the time spent going through everything, checking and redoing, the beads are not so round anymore: this Asana studio shows that employees spend 4.5 hours per week correcting AI work. The boomerang effect. That youth encounter yet another obstacle to having a full adult life is a real drama in terms of unemployment, but this paradigm shift in hiring is also a total threat to the stability of the technological infrastructure as we know it: The illusion of efficiency. AI chops code faster than anyone else, but that raw data is misleading because it doesn’t consider side effects like validation. Operational risk. If the AI ​​does not have human supervision at each step, it can make critical errors, serve as an example when half the internet went down for the total automation of Amazon servers. Of costs and responsibilities. If the AI ​​makes a mistake and it reaches the final chain of the process, that is, delivery to the customer, it is paid. Let them tell Deloitte, they had to reimburse the cost of a report prepared for the Australian Department of Employment and Industrial Relations because it contained hallucinations. A demographic bomb. All of the above is a toll that many companies seem willing to pay for the sake of that efficiency, but there is a devastating effect on a large scale in the medium and long term: the knowledge gap. When these senior profiles retire, there will be no one who can replace them simply because you have eliminated the training ground that is experience. The figures have spoken: between 2024 and 2032, 18.4 million professionals in the United States will retire according to this study from Georgetown University. However, only 13.8 million new workers will gain access. About to explode. Part of the work of senior profiles includes mentoring and all its intrinsic benefits: there are studies that confirm that increases motivation, promotes psychological well-being and even reduces exhaustion. In short: saturation of tasks, inability to delegate and the loss of that added bonus of teaching: there are many ingredients for the recipe for burnout. In Xataka | If AI is going to leave us without jobs, in the United Kingdom they are already seriously discussing the solution: a universal basic income In Xataka | We believed that the AI ​​talent war is about engineers and developers. Actually, it’s about plumbers and electricians.

This website is a magnificent calculator to calculate and compare with other countries

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Talking about taxes in certain scenarios is a recipe for disaster. All the ingredients are present: ignorance about basic concepts in economics and how they work, a misunderstood selfishness and confusion between whether what we dislike is how they are managed or their mere existence. One of the most controversial is the Personal Income Tax or Income Tax. How much IPRF do we pay? Is it a lot or a little? Well it depends. In general, we don’t even like money being “taken” from us and in Spain it is quite common to hear that they “take” too much from us. Keep in mind that most states have some personal income tax similar to personal income tax (there are exceptions such as Monaco either Kuwait which they don’t have), so neighbors like Germany or France do have it and leaving the EU, in the United States they have their equivalent in the Income Tax). From here two questions arise: what part of my income goes to personal income tax and whether I would pay more or less if I lived somewhere else. Without intending to replace an economics class (or reading in depth the ministry website) and yes like brief notes on personal income taxIt is important to be clear that this tax is progressive in sections, that is, you do not pay the same percentage for all your money. This is one of the most common mistakes when we hear that someone with a high salary (for the average in Spain) pays 47%: no, the Treasury does not take almost half. That first tranche up to 12,450 euros has a withholding of 19%, from there up to 20,199 euros it is 24% and so on. On the other hand, personal income tax is also divided into sections: state and regional. Depending on which autonomous community you live in, you will pay more or less. Finally, there is a personal and family minimum for which personal income tax is not paid as it is considered to be used to cover basic needs. Defaultit is 5,550 euros per year for a single person. Personal income tax calculators There are a few on the internet and in fact, even the Treasury has its own to make sure we are with the official. Now, if we look for an intuitive alternative that allows us to compare, this website by Benjamin Akar It is an excellent option even if it is in English. An easy personal income tax calculator and comparator to estimate what you pay After choosing a country from the list and verifying that the currency is the Euro, we only have to add annual gross salary. In the advanced options you can also add other deductions such as pension plans or union dues. We see it better with an example: 25,000 euros per year in Madrid and Navarra, two very particular autonomous communities: the state capital has deflated the sections and has one of the lowest minimums in Spain. Navarra, for its part, has its own Treasury, regional regime and personal income tax law. Thus, the sections are modified and there are differences in deductions and calculations such as the structure of the savings base. For the simulation we will assume that we are single people without children. From the previous calculation it is deduced that Madrid is the best option to maximize your salary. But not everything is money in the pocket: Navarra compensates with its own management of services that sometimes entails indirect benefits in the form of personal or family deductions either more budget per inhabitant in health. Now we try changing to Germany and its capital, Berlin, to see what the personal income tax calculation looks like. Deductions from work are very low because Germany has a very high exempt minimum because you do not pay taxes, but then social contributions arrive in the form of social security, pension, unemployment taxes, among others. The EU forms a mosaic where each state has its own tax recipe, although they all share to a greater or lesser extent the objective of financing the welfare state. However, the big difference is not only how much we pay, but how it is paid. So We essentially distinguish three routes: There are states like Germany, France or Spain, with a standard progressive model where you pay based on what you earn; Others, such as Bulgaria or Romania, apply flat systems with low single rates regardless of income. Finally there is the “Nordic” model of places like Denmark or Sweden, with very high maximum rates to finance extensive public services and social benefits. He Spanish state is located in a medium-high zone of the EU. The Eurozone average in maximum rates is around 40% compared to 45% in Spain (considering the combination of state and regional average), reaching 50% or more in regions such as the Valencian Community or Cataloniawhich only affects very high incomes. In Xataka | 64% of Spaniards believe that they pay more in taxes than they receive from the State. It’s actually the other way around In Xataka | Income Tax Calendar 2025: dates and when the 2026 Income Tax return is made Cover | Jakub Zerdzicki

Spain does not know if it has too many or too few rabbits. But this town of Toledo has declared war on them at their own risk and expense.

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In Villa de Don Fadrique, province of Toledo, the town hall you have just activated an extraordinary authorization to shoot down rabbits daily. In fact, it is inviting volunteers to reduce its population to a minimum. It is a total war against these rodents that are becoming a real headache for farmers across the country. And it is curious because, if we look at the data, the truth is that the European rabbit entered the red list of threatened species from the IUCN in 2019. Can you be endangered and an indiscriminate pest at the same time? And the answer is yes, of course yes. A few days ago, it was the Union of Farmers and Ranchers of Castilla la Mancha the one that warned that “the proliferation of rabbits is a problem that has been going on for ten years, they speak of a ‘pest’ that is threatening olive groves and pistachio and almond trees, and they demand that the populations of these animals be controlled.” It is not an anecdotal impression, in a sectoral report points out that rabbits account for 64% of agricultural insurance payments for wildlife damage and averages of tens of thousands of hectares damaged per year are cited. And yet, the decline of the rabbit at a general level it’s clear. And that not only impacts the “bug” itself: whether we like it or not, there is the base of the food chain of more than 30 species (from the Iberian lynx to the imperial eagle) and its disaster alters the functioning of the Mediterranean forest. He’s been altering it for decades. Because what is clear is that this is not something recent. The decline of the European rabbit is associated with myxomatosisfirst (mid-20th century); then continue with the rabbit hemorrhagic disease in the 80s; and is complicated by the arrival in 2012 of a new variant (RHDV2) that affects populations just when they were beginning to recover. To this we must add the changes in the landscape and the disappearance of boundaries, fallow lands and traditional shelters. However, when God closes a door he opens a window. And, despite the general decline, rabbits have known how to use the gaps in human infrastructure to create authentic breeding sites. The slopes and shoulders of the roads have become tremendously favorable habitats (and even in motion vectors) and areas with constant food (irrigation/crops) are natural attractors of these reduced populations. That is to say, the explanation is simple: the populations are smaller, but they have been rearranged in areas that cause more damage to farmers. And thus, the conflict is served. While conservationists and scientists ask to recover the rabbit in the mountains, farmers ask to expel it from its areas of influence. But the curious thing is that both sides are partly right and we do not have stories that allow us to understand what is happening. Something that is also happening with all the bugs on the mountain. Image | Sönke Biehl In Xataka | In 1940 Japan removed this island from the maps to keep its activities secret. Now your creatures are dying

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