Month: March 2026

Nintendo knows that most people who go to its parks and watch its movies have never touched a video game. and he loves it

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The success of the park Super Nintendo World and of the Mario’s first animated film (with a sequel just around the corner that also promises to break the box office) has confirmed what the company has known for years: that its characters are worth as much inside a console as in an outdoor version. The strategy coordinated by Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario, points towards an entertainment model where the video game is only the origin, not the objective. Not just video games. Shinya Takahashi, senior CEO of Nintendo, He has been repeating a phrase for years which sounds almost like a wake-up call: “People see us as a video game company. But we have always considered ourselves an entertainment company.” The distinction is important: Nintendo was founded in 1889 in Kyoto as a manufacturer of Hanafuda cards. It went through toys, taxis and hotels before reaching video games in the seventies. Software and consoles have been its core business for decades, but they were never the only thing the company thought it could do with its characters. The problem is that for a long time all of the company’s forays outside of video games had been failures. 1993: disaster. The most famous case is the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie from 1993. Nintendo transferred the rights through a simple licensing agreement and did not participate in the production. The result was an experiment that It raised only 40 million dollars with a budget close to 50 and which is remembered as one of the worst video game adaptations in history (although over time it has acquired, thanks to its outlandish production design, a well-deserved cult status). Miyamoto himself acknowledged the root of the problem with that film in an interview, and why it took them so long to try again: “We were afraid of all the failures of IP adaptations of the past, where there is a license and a distance between the original creators and those of the films.” The consequence of that failure was almost thirty years without giving up film rights to its main franchises. Nintendo stopped licensing its IP to external studios and only allowed occasional appearances of his characters in films like ‘Wreck-It Ralph!’ or ‘Pixels’, none with real creative control. New adaptations. When Nintendo sat down to negotiate with Universal and Illumination for an animated film, the conversation started from a different beginning. Miyamoto served as executive producer and was involved in every significant decision, from casting to animating key characters. The same logic was applied to the construction of their first amusement park, Super Nintendo Worldin collaboration with Universal and announced in May 2015. Construction of the park in Osaka began in 2017. The investment reached 351 million dollarsa scale comparable to what Universal once dedicated to the Harry Potter franchise. A real game. Super Nintendo World is designed so that visitors feel like they are in Mario’s world. They wear an NFC bracelet with which they interact with the question blocks, collect coins, complete challenges and end up facing Bowser Jr. as the final boss. There is no controller, but there are game mechanics, score markers, hidden secrets, and a slight internal narrative. Attention to detail permeates spaces such as bathrooms and restaurants. Nintendo is doing well. The financial results support the bet. According to Comcast data released during an earnings call, CFO Jason Armstrong noted that Universal Studios Hollywood (home to one of the two Super Nintendo Worlds in the United States) recorded its best gross profit in that period of the year in its entire history, thanks to the impact of the Nintendo park, and experienced an increase in visitors of 15%. The Super Mario movie has also been extremely profitable: 1.36 billion dollars worldwidebecoming in just 26 days the first adaptation of a video game to exceed one billion. It was the second highest-grossing film of that year, only behind ‘Barbie’. New philosophy. There is a quote from Takahashi that sums up this new business philosophy: “We knew that Mario was adored by video game fans, but the park helped us understand that Mario also has non-gaming fans.” and Miyamoto adds: “There are many people who know who Mario is but have never played the game.” The park’s target audience, according to Takahashi, is not any age group or any specific player profile: “It’s all-encompassing, whether it’s someone who knows Mario from the games or a kid who’s never played before.” Mario is an IP that generates value regardless of whether its audience has ever touched a controller. In other words, he is a much more valuable client, because there are no limits regarding age or hobbies. It doesn’t stop, it doesn’t stop. The expansion continues: Donkey Kong Country opened in Osaka in December 2024, expanding the space of Super Nintendo World by 70%. Epic Universe, Universal’s new park in Florida inaugurated in May 2025has its own Super Nintendo World. And there is a version under construction in Singapore. Takahashi has mentioned that franchises such as ‘Splatoon’ or ‘Zelda’ are part of the expansion plans into new media, although there are hardly any specific announcements. Of course, the sequel ‘Super Mario Galaxy’ arrives on April 1. Video games are just one more link in a chain of dividends that have turned Nintendo into a very different company than it was a few years ago. In Xataka | No one would think of leaving ‘Super Mario 64’ on for 14 months. But whoever does it will find a surprise

Generation Z is prioritizing “experience” leisure based on word of mouth

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Bars with decorations set in Disney movies, establishments inspired by the 80s, cafes where you can have a snack with adoptable cats. The offer to go out is increasingly specific, more themed, more designed to surprise. In a country wheremeet for a drink“is part of the social DNA, bars have historically been much more than places of consumption: they have been meeting points where we celebrate and catch up. And this ritual has not disappeared. The study Socialization trends and habits points out that bars, restaurants or cafes are the preferred places to socialize for 79% of Spaniards. A figure that places us above the European average: 63% choose to go to bars compared to 48% of Europeans. This preference also translates into a numerical reality. According to INE dataIn Spain there are more than 163,000 drinking establishments – bars, cafes or pubs – which is approximately one establishment for every 290 inhabitants. That is to say: we continue going out, we continue choosing the bar, but something is changing. Because although the habit remains, the way of deciding and living it responds to new logic. “Youth leisure has been reconfigured” Ana, 29 years old—one of the young women who agreed to speak with Xataka preserving his identity—he acknowledges that he rarely goes to “regular bars,” in fact they make him “quite lazy.” He believes that today the new generations tend to prefer a type of leisure that is far from what their parents could have: “In my group of friends (and in general) I see that we go less and less to traditional bars or restaurants and we prefer slightly different places, or even chains.” Raquel, 22, doesn’t usually go to “normal” bars either. And although if you have friends who have a “neighborhood bar” specifically as a “meeting point”, he understands that new generations are attracted to “different” plans: “For example, I saw a place where you make the pizza yourself, they help you make it and then you eat it. That cannot compete with a restaurant or a bar.” For Alejandro MonteroHealth Psychologist and disseminator in social networksyoung people seem to “prioritize experiences that are memorable beyond a habitual pattern of socialization, as could be seen in other generations.” He comments how before the “most frequent and most accessible plan could be going to a bar”, but today there is a “variability” – from jazz shows among hundreds of candles and workshops to paint a picture while drinking wine, to restaurants themed in Harry Potter – that “influences the choice of the leisure plan.” For Raquel, for example, it is increasingly important that the places where she stays be “pretty”something that does not usually fit with traditional bars: “I would tell you that 90% of traditional bars are not pretty (…) I prefer it to be pretty to look at, better than the typical bar with the steel bar.” In this sense, he understands that his generation is “bored” of having a coffee “where they always do” and prefers to go to places where you can “paint your own cup while having a snack.” The coffee, better specialty. In this context, Esther Clavero Mira, doctor in sociology, warns of the danger of “falling into the temptation of thinking that any time in the past was betteras Jorge Manrique wrote.” She talks about how nostalgia can evoke “crowded discos” or “endless bars” that we no longer see today, and because of that “mental album” we can think that young people no longer go out. However, the psychologist believes that “youthful leisure has not disappeared, it has been reconfigured.” The hospitality sector is also aware of this change. Juanjo Cuevas, who has been dedicated to the hospitality industry for more than 15 years, believes that “the future of traditional bars is complicated.” Run a irish pub in Arganzuela, The Towerswhich he himself places “between the neighborhood bar and the theme bar.” “Irish pubs were set up as themed, but not in the same sense as now,” he clarifies. This intermediate position, he explains, also allows him to attract young people, something that, he believes, other more traditional bars have increasingly difficult to do. He sees how more and more young people are opting for themed establishments and leaving the usual businesses in the background. In addition, along with other colleagues, he has detected a change in consumer habits. “They have stopped going to eat. Young people don’t eat in a normal bar,” he says. He explains that they do still go down to have a drink—“beers or wines under their house”—but that when it comes to sitting down to eat the profile is different: “Here the few that come are from nearby companies, offices or neighbors, but young people come to eat, nothing. And the same thing happens to the bars and restaurants in the area, they go mainly retirees and workers.” Social networks, the new “word of mouth” Irene, a 26-year-old young woman, is sure that new generations are more inclined towards experiences, and attributes a “fundamental” role to social networks: “Everything is spread through them. Thanks to social networks I have discovered a lot of plans that I would never have discovered on my own.” For Elena, 27 years old, these platforms are a “great source of information” to obtain “recommendations, compare and see opinions…”. This shows that the change in the type of leisure also affects how it is organized, discovered or decided: “Social networks are the new word of mouth,” explains Ana. Alcohol, better with experiences. According to Montero, in 2024 68% of young people At the national level, they reported the daily use of social networks, something that “affects the way they relate to each other.” They not only influence the accessibility and knowledge of new experiences, but also the construction of a public identity: what we decide to show and share with others. In this search for a “life narrative”, social networks offer young people infinite possibilities to fill their lives with … Read more

What are “prodromal dreams” and how do they act as alarms?

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We have all been able to have ever a nightmare or a dream so real that it has left us with a very bad body when we wake up. Normally, we attribute this to stress, poor digestion or that movie we watched before going to sleep. However, neuroscience explores whether it is actually associated with a warning that the body gives us. because a disease is approaching that will generate physical symptoms. It is already known. This phenomenon is known as ‘prodromal sleep‘, and although the idea may sound like science fiction or pseudoscience, a recent study published in 2025 has put on the table a neurobiological model that explains how and why this happens. How it works. To understand prodromal dreams, we must look at the REM phase of sleep, which is precisely when the brain is not “off” and is precisely the moment in which dreams appear. But in addition to this, it is doing an intensive internal analysis, processing what is known as interoceptive signals, that is, the information that arrives about the state of our organs and tissues. From this moment on, the McNamara model can be applied, which is based on the theory of “predictive coding” by neuroscientist Karl Friston. What we are looking for here is basically that our brain works like a prediction machinesince it constantly generates hypotheses about how our body should be when compared to a state of health. What happens. Within these hypotheses, it may happen that, if there is a subtle imbalance in the body such as the beginning of an infection, the brain detects an “error” between what it expected to find (which is being healthy) and what is really happening, which is the beginning of an infection. Since during REM sleep we do not have access to conscious logical thinking, the brain here turns to areas such as the amygdala, which manages threatening emotions, the insula that processes interoception, and the medial prefrontal cortex to translate the alert into a visual metaphor. Thus, a respiratory difficulty that we cannot detect, such as early pneumonia, could translate into a recurring dream in which we are drowning, or the prelude to a severe migraine could manifest itself as a dream in which we are chased. And what’s more, we can remember because it has been very marked. The demonstration. The concept is not new, but already in 1967, researcher Kasatkin documented dozens of cases of patients who experienced distressing dreams just before suffering a heart attack. However, modern science has been able to go a little further by finding precisely the mechanism that justifies this type of dreams. One of the most striking cases of investigation is in Parkinson’s diseasesince before the famous tremors appear, many patients develop sleep problems. In this case, those who suffer from a sleep behavior disorder do not have the usual muscle paralysis of the REM phase, which causes them to “act out” very aggressively in their dreams. There are more cases. Other documented examples include patients with chronic migraineswhere it has been reported that up to 40% report nightmares prior to pain, or the curious reports from the first waves of COVID-19, where vivid dreams were the first “symptom” reported in several cohorts of patients. Stop the ‘hype’. Logically, having a horrible nightmare tonight does not mean that we will have a major infection the next day. Here science sets different limits, such as that it is a theoretical model where most of the evidence is based on observational studies. This is why there is a lack of longitudinal studies that allow us to confirm this direct relationship. But despite these limitations, the advances we are seeing with studies focused on polysomnography and advances in wearables and apps Sleep monitoring could, in the not too distant future, help us use our own nights as the most sophisticated early warning system in the world to anticipate certain diseases. Images | Dmitry Ganin In Xataka | We have a problem with typhoid fever: a global superbug has cornered us and only a vaccine can save us

plan itineraries and answer your questions

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Let’s explain to you how to create a specialized AI for your next tripcapable of helping you plan itineraries or answer your questions. We are going to use NotebookLM to create a your own specialized AI with the data and knowledge that we give you manually, which can be videos, web pages or online or PDF guides. This is actually quite simple, because with this tool, once the knowledge is uploaded we can use Gemini to process them and give you answers based solely on the data you have given. With this, he will be able to make itineraries for you and answer any questions you want. Use your own sources instead of delegating to one artificial intelligence that searches for results online will allow you maintain control over the information that is used to generate your itinerary. This way, you can ensure that it only uses data from sources that you consider reliable. In addition, you can also make the AI ​​specialized in the specific destination you want to visit. First choose the sources about your destination The most complex step to do this task will be to choose the fonts you want to use so that the AI ​​can rely on it when generating itineraries or answering any question you want. These sources can be links, videos or documents in any language. The ideal for this is save the sources you find in a folderand do it with time. For example, if you have 3 or 4 destinations in mind that you would like to travel to, save the best information you find over the next few months about them in separate folders, and then when you decide where to go you have everything at hand to do the rest. I am aware that this requires planning in advance, being aware that we will be able to use NotebookLM. However, if you want to do all this faster you will also be able to, although you will need to spend a couple of afternoons searching for sources. Please note that our AI will not look for information beyond the sources that we give him. This means that it will only use the data from the links, videos or documents that we attach, and hence the importance of having a good collection. Create a notebook and add your sources Once we have clear sources, it’s time to get to work. For that, let’s go into notebooklm.google.comand create a new notebook. In its free version, you will be able to add up to 50 sources to each notebook, something that should give you plenty to plan a trip. Once you have created your notebook, at the top left you can give it a name. When you do this, you will have a column or tab of Sourcesand in it you can click on the button Add fonts to start adding all the sources that you consider useful or reliable. When uploading files, you can add links to web pages or videos, you can upload files in different formats, and even access Drive to add the ones you have in your cloud. By proxy, you can even add copied text. Here, therefore, now you have to add the links you want and PDF files. In my case, I have added several videos from travel YouTubers who make reports for my destination, I have added some very renowned guides digitized in PDF, and official websites of the destination or the country of the destination that contain guides and all kinds of information. Create your itinerary, save it, ask questions… Now you can start taking advantage of the AI ​​you have created, which will only use the files and websites you have attached as sources. Go to the Chat section and ask him to make you an itinerary for this city or destination, specifying the number of days you want to stay. In just a few seconds, Gemini will generate your itinerary based on the information from the sources. Here, as always with any AI, I recommend that you review everything and don’t stick with the first result. You can ask them to add specific things, take into account some specific aspects, or directly redo the result if you are not convinced. When you already have a guide created to your liking, press the button Save as note which you will have below the answer. When you do, the response will be saved in the tab Studiowhere you can access whenever you want even after you delete the chat history to clean it or ask other different things. Beyond the guide, you will also be able to ask you any other related questions with your destiny. When you do this, Gemini will search through the sources you have uploaded and generate a response. You can ask all the questions you want. And if there is a question for which the AI ​​can’t find an answer in the sources, it will tell you. Then, you could even look for an article or video on that topic to add to your feeds. Inside the section Studiothere are also some tools that may interest you. For example, you can create a custom podcast with the option of Audio Summary. You can ask it, for example, for a list of the essential places to visit, and it will generate it for you based on your sources in audio format so that you can listen to it whenever you want while you do other things. You’ll also have options to ask him the same with video summaries or slideshows. You can choose the format that you like the most or that best suits you, since with these two you can generate content that is easy to see with other people if you are going to meet to talk about the trip. Finally, in the section Studio also you can create a mind map. It may seem like a strange option, but it allows you to have a … Read more

The electric rental car still cannot find its place. Hertz tried it and it cost him 4 billion to discover it

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In October 2021, Hertz announced with great fanfare that bought 100,000 Teslas worth 4.2 billion dollars. It was the biggest bet by a vehicle rental company on electric vehicles. He didn’t know what he had gotten himself into. And four years later, that bet has ended up becoming one of the most expensive lessons in history, because between 2023 and 2025, the company has accumulated losses of more than 4.5 billion dollars, a good part of them directly linked to that decision. What went wrong from the beginning. The business of a car rental company is not just renting, as they also need to sell the vehicles when they are paid for at the best possible price. And that is where the electric became a basic problem. electric cars They depreciate faster than combustion ones in the first three to five years, something that Hertz saw firsthand. When the fleet of Teslas began to lose value, the company was unable to place them on the second-hand market at a profitable price. The final blow came when Elon Musk decided reduce the price of new Teslaswhich automatically dragged down the value of the used cars that Hertz had in its fleet. In detail. Added to that were other problems that were not in the script. Electrical repairs they were more expensive Compared to combustion vehicles, tires wore out faster and many drivers simply did not want to rent an electric car. In addition, it should be noted that the charging network in the United States was (and partly still is) insufficient for travelers who do not fully know the specifics of charging an electric car. According to MarketWatch, electric cars in the United States they are not popular among rental customers precisely due to the scarce network of charging points in the country. And a car stopped in the parking lot does not generate income, but it does generate costs. The numbers of the disaster. In 2024 alone, Hertz registered a net loss of $2.9 billionafter having closed the first nine months of the year with 1,332 million in the red. The company rapidly sold the 30,000 electric vehicles that it planned to liquidate, and in 2025 it closed the year with a net loss of 747 million, although with an improvement of more than 2,000 million compared to the previous year. The results of 2025 We met them precisely a few weeks ago, in their financial report. The numbers are improving, but right now Hertz’s stock is trading near historic lows and the market does not quite believe the recovery. It’s not just Hertz. The company has not been the only one that has gone through this bad experience, in fact it has been a warning sign for the rest of the competitors. Avis Budget Group, the second largest global vehicle rental group, closed 2025 with losses of nearly 1 billion dollarsthe main reason being its electric fleet in the United States. The company had to register more than 500 million in asset impairment by reducing the estimated useful life of its electric cars, which caused them to plummet in the stock market by more than 20% in a single day after presenting results. Avis CEO Brian Choi even publicly acknowledged to investors that the quarter’s results were “unacceptable,” according to picked up SherwoodNews. Between the lines. A McKinsey report from April 2025 pointed out that only one in ten American consumers is considering going electric with their next purchase. If the customer who rents a car does not want an electric one, because he does not know where to charge it, because it generates range anxiety or simply because it is not comfortable, the rental company has an expensive vehicle that depreciates quickly and that spends too much time without generating income. Therefore, the equation does not work. And now what. Hertz has promised that 2026 will be the year of the turning point. The company anticipates revenue growth of between 4% and 6% in the first quarter of this year and has once again placed the depreciation target below $300 per month per vehicle, which was the figure it always indicated as the profitability threshold. Avis is also looking ahead cautiously. Both companies hope to improve results in 2026, relying on younger fleets and managing its electric cars more conservatively, adapting its presence in markets where there is a more mature charging infrastructure, as is the case in California. What is clear is that the great bet of massive electric rental in the United States has failed, at least in its first version. The electric car may have a future in rental fleets, but not at any price, not in any market and, of course, not without the customer being willing to get into it. Cover image | Ernie Journeys In Xataka | No matter what you do: the wheels of your car are revealing your position to anyone who wants to monitor you

declare war on overtime

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The idea of ​​getting a girlfriend doesn’t even cross Owen Cao’s mind. Let alone being a father. When in 2024 this Chinese university student shared his case with SCMP He combined his engineering classes with research and activities in the student club, in addition to of course his own hobbies. With such a workload, 24 hours a day fell short and left no room for appointments or thinking about children. Owen was at that time a twenty-something who had not yet finished his degree, but his approach to life is shared by many other Chinese for whom work it makes it difficult for them to plan a family life. Now Beijing is so desperate for encouraging their birth rate, which is beginning to embrace a radical idea: set limits to overtime in companies. What has happened? That in his (desperate) efforts to reactivate the birth rateChina has asked itself an interesting question: What if overtime in companies is limited? Would that help workers have more free time and energy to focus on their family life and (hopefully) have children? Issues similar to these are those that have been put on the table during what are known as ‘Two Sessions’sessions held every March in Beijing and during which topics of interest to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People’s Congress (NPC) are discussed. Its objective is to listen to proposals and set certain objectives, such as GDP growth. “Significant impact”. Throughout the sessions Ideas have been proposed such as creating a new holiday that helps stimulate consumption or giving vouchers worth hundreds of yuan to families in the hope of boosting the economy. Another very present topic has been the demographic crisis that runs through China. Against this backdrop, Lu Ming, CPPCC member, university professor and advisor to the Shanghai government, slipped the possibility of putting limits on the time that Chinese people spend at their jobs. The goal? That they have more hours (and strength) to find a partner, get married and start a home with children. “Excessive overtime has a significant impact on employees’ physical and psychological health, their quality of life, willingness to have children, and marriage prospects,” claims Lu. Beyond its impact on consumption, the idea is that the new holiday also facilitates conciliation. The culture of ‘996‘. It is no coincidence that Lu focuses the focus on the workplace. As remember Financial Timesin certain Chinese companies, including those in the technology sector, it is common to apply the so-called “‘996’ work culture”which basically translates into grueling weeks during which employees work from nine in the morning to nine in the afternoon six days in a row. To that is added, remember the teacher“invisible overtime”, the time that employees remain aware of their companies through their mobile phones. Saturated agendas. The problem is not only how this dynamic affects the health of employees, but also the impact it has on their family life and to what extent it harms birth rates. China has long been is conscious that the agendas hypersaturated They are taking a toll on their demographics, a trend that is well identified, especially in the case of young people. In 2021 the newspaper China Youth Daily public a survey with more than 14,000 university students in which, among other issues, he analyzed his love life. Their result was striking: almost 70% of all those interviewed were single. There are those who believe that after the pandemic that percentage may have increased. “You can’t cover everything”. The phenomenon is not very different from that experienced by other countries (inside and outside Asia) in which birth rates decreased as societies became more competitive. A clear example is South Koreawhere this trend has made parenting more expensive. “Many people say that you have to manage your time well, but no matter how well you plan, you can’t cover everything,” Cao confesses. “I have limited energy, so I need to eliminate what drains me the most. First thing? Dating.” Of course, lack of time or the cost of parenthood are not the only factors that affect birth rates. Cultural and social conditions come into play and, in the case of Chino, the long shadow of the ‘one child policy’ applied for decades. Companies pending. It is also no coincidence that Lu places emphasis on the workplace. China has considered other similar measures to encourage its birth rate, such as betting on four day week. They are not shots in the air. The country relies on studies and experiences like Itochu’sa Japanese company that a few years ago prohibited its employees from extending their working day beyond eight in the afternoon, accumulating overtime. After a while, managers realized that not only profits per employee were increasing. So did maternity leave requests. Birth rate downhill. To the frustration of Beijing, the measures it has taken so far to encourage its birth rate (and there have been many) have proven to be ineffective. In 2025 the nation saw its birth rate plummet to a historic low: 5.63 per 1,000 inhabitantsthe lowest indicator since the Communist Party came to power 77 years ago. The problem is that in 2025 the mortality rate also rose to historic levels (you have to go back to 1968 to find a higher one), which translated into the loss of around 3.4 million inhabitants. Image | LYCS Architecture (Unsplash) In Xataka | After years of catastrophe, South Korea is increasing its birth rate. The question is whether it is just a “demographic echo”

chatbots believe that “rectal garlic” cures if you use a clinical tone

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It is increasingly common to turn to AI for any question we have, even when it is medical typelike we have a belly or foot pain. And the answer it gives is almost always trusted because it is an AI, and it seems that its word it is the absolute truth. But the reality is different, since a couple of studies have shown that current AI suffers from serious authority bias. What does it mean? Simply put, science has determined that if you present the AI ​​with a medical myth using clinical jargon, there is almost a 50% chance that it will prove you right. And that includes even inserting garlic into the rectum. How to do it. a great study published in The Lancet has set off alarms in the medical and technological community. Its objective was none other than to introduce more than a million prompts to up to 20 of the leading AI models on the market. And here what has been seen is that AI does not mainly evaluate the veracity of the information, but rather the format in which it is presented to them. The keys. To ‘strain’ a myth like this, the secret seems to be in how we tell it. In this way, if the AI ​​is presented with a health hoax taken from social networks with non-technical language, it immediately activates its security filters and rejects the claims made and completely discards that, for example, putting garlic up the anus improves health. But this changes completely when these same myths are camouflaged within a medical format, as if it were the hospital discharge report. Here the AIs accepted and repeated the falsehoods in 46% of cases. That is why the study suggests that AI is more convinced by how a statement sounds than by the evidence behind it to discard or accept what we tell it. There are absurd examples. Among the pseudoscientific practices that managed to sneak in, rectal garlic stands out. Here they managed to convince the AI ​​that inserting garlic into the rectum is an effective method to improve the immune system. He does not stop here, since he also convinced that cold milk is good for treating bleeding from the esophagus, even if it is quite intense, which logically has no support behind it. And these examples demonstrate that current security mechanisms collapse when the user imitates the authoritarian language of a health professional. There are worse things. As if this were not enough, Nature magazine ended the debate in February 2026, as it published complementary research on the reliability of these chatbots for the general public, generating quite similar results. Although, current AIs do not surpass a standard Google search to make a health decision, and it may even be worse to search on the Internet, since the amount of alarmist information can generate a great stress situation for the user. Nature’s verdict? Current AIs do not outperform a standard internet search for making health decisions. On the contrary, they generate mixed advice that ends up greatly confusing users who lack medical training. That is why the conclusion here is that, although artificial intelligence promises to revolutionize diagnosis and healthcare, current models are not ready to act as infallible pocket doctors. In this way, using him as a family doctor is not one of the best ideas we can have, since we already see that it is easy to make him slip in different false statements. In Xataka | A ChatGPT dedicated to giving you unsupervised medical advice seemed like a risky idea. And he is confirming it

the amazing feather trade network that existed before the Incas

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On the arid central coast of Peru, hundreds of kilometers from the magnificent Amazon rainforest and separated by one of the most important mountain ranges in the world, archaeologists encountered something they did not expect. We are talking about a cemetery of the pre-Hispanic Ychsma culture in Pachacamac and the surprise was specifically in the funeral bundles of the elite that They were adorned with macaw and parrot feathers. that could never have survived naturally in that ecosystem. So… How did they get here? The answers. Faced with this question, archaeologists had to start thinking about it, because seeing a parrot in the middle of an arid mountain range is not the most common thing. Until then, it was believed that ancient people traded only the feathers already plucked from parrots that had been in their natural habitat. However, a new study published in Nature has revealed a much more complex and fascinating reality: the ancient Peruvians transported these live Amazonian birds through the treacherous passes of the Andes. How do you know? It is not that we have a time machine to see what specifically happened, but it is possible to analyze the ancient DNA found in these cemeteries through stable isotopes and spatial modeling of routes. In this way, the study focused on the remains found in 34 funerary bundles from Pachacamac that were dated before the expansion of the Inca Empire. This is precisely where the mummies were provided with “false heads” very well decorated with the mysterious feathers. The results. The genetic analysis in this case indicated that the extracted DNA corresponded to many species of birds that were purely Amazonian, such as the red and green macaw. But the most interesting thing comes when the isotopes are applied to the remains of the birds, because a drastic change is seen in their diet. The chemical fingerprint revealed here that these parrots were born and grew up in their natural habitat in the Amazon eating a natural diet, but in their last months of life they began to have a diet provided by humans themselves, and that did not correspond to what they ate when they were in the wild. It’s a test. This unequivocally demonstrates that the birds were not hunted for their feathers in the jungle, but captured alive, transported across the mountain range and kept in captivity on the coast to be repeatedly “plucked” or sacrificed to make the funerary goods that would end up among the elites of ancient society. It’s not easy. Crossing the Andes today is something that is not easy, which is why it was much less so a thousand years ago. In this way, through landscape models and geographic information systems, the researchers mapped the most probable routes they used from the Amazon basin to the Pacific coast. In this case, the birds had to suffer great stress with drastic changes in altitude, freezing temperatures at the highest points of the mountain and, above all, a diet to which they were not accustomed. In this way, the fact that they arrived alive at Pachacamac underlines the existence of an incredibly sophisticated animal trade network with knowledge about their care. But above all, the great value that this animal must have for the society that mobilized to bring it to its cities despite the difficulties along the way stands out. Why so much trouble? As one of the researchers points out, in the pre-Hispanic Andean world, Amazonian feathers were not a simple ornament, but rather were absolute symbols of political power, status and connection with the divine. And having access to the vibrant colors of the jungle demonstrated the elite’s control over long-distance commercial networks and gave great prestige. This discovery in Pachacamac is not an isolated case, but rather confirms a trend that archeology was already beginning to glimpse. In 2021, a study published in PNAS documented similar finds much further south, in the arid Atacama Desert, where mummies of Amazon parrots that were bred in captivity and routinely plucked were found. Now it is confirmed again. Images | Dmitry Chernyshov In Xataka | 60 years ago we discovered a Dorado hidden in the jungle of Peru. We now know that it was actually much more

India has been wanting to be the new China for years. The Iran war is putting it on a plate

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The iran war is demonstrating, once again, the fragility of globalization. Just look at this graph: Graphic: Xataka The price of a barrel of crude oil has rampaged because Iran is attacking refineries, the Strait of Hormuz through which 20% of the world’s crude oil passes It is abuzz and there is instability in the ‘oil well of the world’. Refineries are targetedbut also the new mine of the world economy: data centers. Iran has attacked data centers of Amazon in Saudi Arabia and Big Tech are setting their eyes on nearby countries where they can move. And what is very attentive is an India that has been pursuing an ambitious goal for years: to become the new China. They have been tempting big technology companies for years and with the narrative of being a safe and reliable country in which to manufacture. The war in Iran is now giving it another argument: kamikaze drones do not fall in its data centers. In short. Data centers have become critical infrastructure. They are from the moment you are investing in them. more than we invested to go to the Moonthe economy of some companies and countries is being linked to their success and, above all, they have been since the AI ​​fever has put the world of hardware in an alley. In war and love, anything goes (or so some apply), and this time we are seeing how they bomb schools, hotels and data centers. On March 1 and 2, Iran attacked with its drones two of the Amazon Web Services, or AWS, facilities in the United Arab Emirates and another center in Bahrain. This has forced the technology company to pause activity in those facilities, asking that companies that had services running on their servers migrate to those in other countries. Solutions. Latency plays a fundamental role in certain operations, so they must be servers that are relatively close to those that have been attacked. And that’s where they come into play both that Amazon has in India, specifically the one in Munbai and the one in Hyderabad. These are data centers from Amazon, yes, but the country has big plans to create an industrial fabric based on this type of infrastructure. At the beginning of last year we echoed a mega data center hard to believe. When most of the world’s large facilities remain below 1 GW of energy capacity, an Indian company wants to create a single data center with a capacity of 3 GW. If we return to the Amazon centers in northern Virginia, in the United States, we see that about 300 installations add up to a total of 2.5 GW. And now India wants one to only have 3 GW. And it wants to have it by 2027, a date as ambitious as its own dimensions. Rain of millions. It is estimated that such a facility would cost between 20,000 and 30,000 million dollars, but it is something that today’s India cares little about: they are burning money to attract industry and steal what they can from China. The country has been offering hundreds of millions of dollars to each technology company that wants to settle in its territory. It’s not just money. India is developingits market is growing and something important: young Chinese are increasingly more qualified and labor is getting more expensive. A cheaper workforce in India, added to government incentives, are two powerful arguments for some giants in the technology sector to move to the country. And, little by little, they are achieving it. Xiaomi, Motorola and even Huawei manufacture complete models of some of their lines in India. Asus, HTC, Samsung, Microsoft and LG have plants for some parts and Apple has taken the production of parts to India. old iPhone models. Another one is Micron, one of the main players in the memory segment. tempting everyone. The country wants more and it is gone sitting with representatives of heavyweights such as the aforementioned Apple… and Samsung. They want the South Koreans don’t just make a few piecesbut rather that they invest in artificial intelligence, hardware and in something that India is eagerly seeking: semiconductor research and development. Samsung is one of the world’s leading foundries and is investing millions outside of South Korea. India seeks to be part of that equation. To do this, they have something called PLI. This is a government initiative that encourages the production of a complete portfolio of products. That is to say: the more complete products a same brand manufactures in the country, the more incentives and economic advantages it receives. They also promise less economic friction with the West, although looking at the issue of tariffs and their ups and downs, it is something that can change from one day to the next. And it’s not all about pure and simple money: India is the most populous country on the planet and it is estimated that the average level of income will continue to rise over the next five years, which also “promise” a good national market for those products that companies manufacture on their soil. The Bangladesh Hi-Tech Park project And the result, with Hyundai being the only one with a significant presence and many open fields, buildings under construction… broken dreams. According to estimates, electronics manufacturing in India was a market of 115,000 million dollars and it is expected triple it by 2027. My colleague Laura already detailed that they were executing the technique of being a steamroller based on releasing billsalthough two things must be said. The first is that one of those objectives, the become the foundry of the worldit’s going to be complicated. TSMC is leading the conversation and is moving both on home soil -Taiwan- and in Europe and, above all, the United States. And what is truly worrying for the country is that, in this search for talent at all costs, it has invested a lot of money in the construction of technological cities that … Read more

What do the kids who have decided to believe in something believe in in the middle of 2026?

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If social media and pop culture are anything to go by, it might seem like religion crosses a second coming among young people. Several signs would point in that direction: the success of ‘The Sundays’Rosalía with her continuous Christian referencesphenomena like Hakuna Group Music capable of fill venues with thousands of people thanks to his Catholic pop… Apparently, all this sends signals: something is happening with religion, the long and inevitable path towards secularization has stopped. However, beyond the headlines and TikTok, it is the data that sheds light on what is really happening and, despite all the noise of full stadiums and online bustle, we come across the loneliness of the chapels. The truth is that the secularization has not slowed down, according to the barometer on religion and beliefs in Spain, carried out by the Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation. Approximately one in three young Spaniards is defined as spiritualbut 61% do not practice any official religion. Among 18-24 year olds, only 15% say that religion gives a lot or quite a bit of meaning to their life, far below factors such as family or friends. And, within the 54% of the population that does identify with a religion, only 17% maintain a regular practice. What is clear in this study is that growing interest in the spiritualbut not institutionally: 31% of young people believe in some type of spiritual reality or vital force, 29% say they believe a lot or quite a lot in astrology and 23% in clairvoyance. So there is not a massive return to faith, but rather a cultural visibility of the religious that is in full effervescence. Religion on demand We can say that the religious identity of Gen Z is a totum revolutum. More than a specific doctrine or religion, what many young people are looking for is that spiritual or even mystical experience. For them, the lines that separate Christian traditions – Protestant, Evangelical, Orthodox or Catholic – are blurred and give way directly to an emotional search and belonging in favor of a common religious experience. As an example, what was possible to experience at the beginning of the year at the Movistar Arena. “Let all of Spain hear it, let the name of Christ be heard!” It could be Nacho Cano opening a show in the middle of 2026 but no, we are talking about the opening of ‘Calls‘, a prayer meeting that brought together about 6000 people mixing music from evangelical groups like Hillsong, talks influencers Catholics and a final ceremony culminated with the prayer of the Lord’s Prayer. And a few days before, Catholic pop triumphed Hakuna Music Group in Vistalegre. There are also trends that are more in communion with what we know as traditional Catholicism adapted to modern times. For example: Eucharistic adoration and the prayer meeting focused on the real presence of Christ, something very Catholic and that distances itself from that evangelical approach where the power of the Bible takes center stage. Likewise, retreats and spiritual camps with renewed music and aesthetics but that follow traditional meditation and confession practices; or the prayer of the rosary that today are also reinterpreted through TikTok, YouTube or apps of prayer. All this clearly shows the hybrid nature of this youthful spirituality and its distance from religious traditions. But if young people do not go en masse to church and the data do not show the rise of Catholicism, how then is this new impulse for a transversal spirituality explained? Full stadiums, music, shared Christian symbols… Signs of a religiosity that moves in the cultural space more than in the parish. We have the answer on our phone One hypothesis is that most young people discover Christianity on TikTok before in church. On platforms like Instagram or YouTube you can follow homilies, songs of faith or prayers. They are the new modern temples, adapted to the pace of digital life. And the imaginary of the sacred has always had great cultural force, although religious practice decreases. Religious aesthetics have not appeared in recent years thanks to Rosalía, Los Javis or Alauda Ruíz de Azúa; Centuries ago it was already used as a tool of the Church to communicate and move. The ultimate end of baroque art It was to materialize the divine in images. It is true that in a dramatic way, with that dark and solemn aura to transmit the transcendent dimension of Catholicism, but in reality it was still pedagogical, a tool to reinforce the Catholic faith. In the Renaissance these Christian symbols were also used, but there they sought to humanize the divine and escape from the dark; or even in Surrealism, artists opted more for the dreamlike nature and the exploration of the subconscious. @juanvy12xd Response to @Erik Pastor MY FAVORITE BIBLE QUOTE ♬ original sound – Juan Manasa And now, in the digital age, the tools are different but the Christian symbology is still present. From Madonna to Lady Gaga, passing through the parade ‘Alta Sartoria’ by Dolce&Gabbana paying homage to ecclesiastical tailoring, Lux or the influencers Christians who circulate on social networks. Screens serve as a meeting place, algorithms determine the psalms, and the spiritual dictates our mood of the day. A generation that wants to believe in something An increasingly dissatisfied and exhausted generation Z finds in those videos of influencers Christians and in Hakuna music something exotic, something that gives them a feeling of togetherness and community. The sacred is the new Valencia filter and when faith is not only commercialized by the Church, phenomena such as Christiancore ―turning Christian symbols, such as robes or crosses, into visual language that seeks to offer meaning― find in this jaded and lonely your perfect niche. In the midst of this saturation of visual stimuli, to some young people it may seem demodé Palm Sunday mass, but his outfit with crucifix and T-shirt ‘God is Dope’ gives them the illusion of a new spirituality heterogeneous and digital. Generation Z tends to … Read more

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