which cars can circulate and which rest on July 18

Indeed, it is very likely that you have already guessed it, this weekend the Saturday Not Circulating Today scheme is reactivated. And the traffic control strategy with which the Mexico City Environment Secretariat (SEDEMA) seeks to stop pollution does not rest. What does this mean? Those who plan to go out with their cars will have to check, no matter what, the hologram of their car and the last digit of their license plate. Restrictions that are not limited exclusively to the 16 districts of CDMX, but also extend to various suburban municipalities on the outskirts of the State of Mexico. Specifically, the program also operates in: Atizapan of Zaragoza Coacalco de Berriozábal Cuautitlan Cuautitlán Izcalli Chalco Chicoloapan Chimalhuacan Ecatepec de Morelos Huixquilucan Ixtapaluca Peace Naucalpan de Juárez Nezahualcoyotl Nicolas Romero Tecámac Tlalnepantla de Baz Tultitlan Chalco Valley Likewise, remember that if your route includes crossing through any of these locations, the Saturday No Circulation Today will be applied to you. What cars and license plates does Hoy No Circula Saturday affect? As you surely know, the purpose of this initiative is to reduce the number of cars in circulation to mitigate emissions, with rules that are specific to that day on Saturdays. Because the obligation to rest does not affect all vehicle owners on the same weekend: the combination between the hologram, the last number on the license plate and the calendar is what determines whether or not you can use your car. Remember that Today Not Circulating on Saturday is not in effect 24 hours a day. The application hours run strictly from 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., so that outside of that period—during the night and early morning—the program does not limit vehicle traffic, as long as an environmental contingency or other extraordinary measure is not declared by the authorities that impose additional restrictions. For the specific case of July 18 from 2026third Saturday of the month, we are facing what is considered an “odd week.” That is, vehicles that have a hologram 1 and whose plates end in an odd number will be those who must remain out of circulation throughout the scheduled hours. If your car meets that combination, you will have to keep it stored until after 10:00 p.m. On the contrary, cars with holograms 0 and 00 can circulate without restrictions under the Today No Circula Saturday scheme. For their part, those with hologram 2 cannot circulate under any circumstances on Saturdays. In addition to the restrictions explained above, keep in mind that there are a series of exempt vehicles that can circulate completely freely without being affected by these ecological measures. In this group are: Electric, natural gas or hybrid technology vehicles Units registered with plates for people with disabilities All those intended for urban public transport services (including funeral services) Those dedicated to school or passenger transportation Those assigned to public security and/or civil protection The penalty for not complying with this regulation ranges from 20 to 30 times the Measurement and Update Unit (UMA), a range that approximately translates into a floor of 1,924.40 pesos and a ceiling of 2,886.60 pesos. Added to the hit to the pocketbook, the offender risks having the vehicle towed or impounded and the consequent loss of time involved in solving the administrative procedure before the security forces. What cars and license plates does Hoy No Circula Saturday affect? Failure to comply with the Hoy No Circula will be punished with a fine that ranges between 20 and 30 times the value of the Measurement and Update Unit (UMA), a figure that represents approximately 1,924.40 pesos at its lowest level until reaching 2,886.60 pesos at the highest limit. In addition, the driver risks having the car taken to the vehicle depot. Photo | Silas Lundquist In Xataka | The countries that pollute the most in the world, gathered in a detailed graph

Video game preservation has already been mortally wounded with Sony. The next blow comes from an entire country: Germany

Many times we have treated video games as if their availability was guaranteed, even when they depended on discs, digital stores and servers that could disappear. What we have seen this week reminds us that preserving them requires more than will: we need supports that survive and organizations capable of cataloging them, maintaining them and opening them to researchers and the public. Sony has decided to close one of those avenues for future releases. Almost at the same time, Germany has dropped one of the most ambitious public projects that existed to prevent that memory from being lost. The closure is already underway. The Internationale Computerspielesammlung, known as ICS, is in the process of dissolution after the public funding that supported it expired at the end of April 2026. GamesWirtschaft points out that The federal government refused to renew its share of support and the partners voted unanimously to dissolve the company. The decision does not erase the existing collections at once, but it does leave the shared database and the infrastructure that allowed it to be consulted without defined continuity, the future of which remains under legal and technical review. An archive of more than 60,000 games. The ICS gathered records and funds provided by institutions such as the Computerspielemuseum of Berlin, the USK, the game association and the DIGAREC research center. The collection encompassed cartridges, floppy disks, CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray, as well as boxes, manuals, associated materials and hardware. Of course, what could be publicly consulted since April 2019 was the digital database, not the games themselves. The physical pieces remain in the hands of the proprietary entities. The ambition went much further. The ICS aspired to gather in one place the funds that were still distributed among its partners and turn the whole into a stable tool for researchers, media and specialists. The plan included facilitating access through automated emulation and creating a permanent public headquarters in the German capital region. The complete leap was never consolidated: a repository already existed, but permanent institutionalization, public headquarters and the access provided through emulation were missing. That second phase remained uncompleted. The money did not find a stable outlet. The aid came from the Berlin Senate and the Federal Commissioner for Culture, but was linked to a temporary phase of the initiative. When the video game policy passed to the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space in 2025, it studied whether it could turn the ICS into a permanent institution. He ultimately concluded that the model was not economically viable due to the scale of the work required. Preserving also means guaranteeing access. The scenario left by these two movements does not only imply that there are fewer objects to save or fewer projects capable of organizing them. It also weakens the ability to consult, study and understand these games decades from now, when they will depend on hardware, documentation and systems that may no longer exist. The coincidence between Sony’s announcement and the fall of the ICS points in that direction: the video game memory does not disappear all at once, but when the structures that keep it available are removed, one by one. Images | Sei In Xataka | ‘Minecraft’ has achieved something revolutionary in the dynamics of the game: allowing its users to sit

The new Chinese model Kimi K3 is already number one in Frontend Code Arena. And it’s unleashing madness on the Internet

It seems like yesterday when DeepSeek R1 called into question an idea that many took for granted: that the race for advanced artificial intelligence It still had a clear owner in Silicon Valley. The emergence of the Chinese model helped trigger a massive sale of technology and led NVIDIA to suffer a loss daily capitalization unprecedented until then. As the months passed, that image lost intensity, but the message remained: the Chinese technological ecosystem was not willing to limit itself to keeping pace with the United States. The following notice now has a different name: Kimi K3. Moonshot AI has just presented a model with 2.8 trillion total parameters that, as soon as it arrived, was placed at the top of Frontend Code Arenaahead of some of the most powerful proposals from Anthropic and OpenAI. But the story is not limited to a classification: developers and fans are already using it to create interfaces, games and recreations that anyone can see and, in some cases, try. That’s where this article really begins. It is worth dwelling on the details of that classification. At the time of writing, Kimi K3 reaches 1,679 points in Frontend Code Arena, ahead of Claude Fable 5with 1,631, and GPT-5.6 Sol xHigh, with 1,618. The improvement compared to the previous generation is also striking: Kimi K2.6 was in 18th placewhile his successor leads six of the seven domains evaluated. For now, Arena maintains the label of preliminary result, so it is convenient to read this position as a very significant photograph, but still susceptible to change. We are not facing a universal programming exam, but rather a very specific test. Frontend Code Arena compares web applications created by different models and lets users evaluate which one solves the task better, which one works more reliably, and which one presents a better experience. That approach is especially useful for measuring visible and practical capabilities, but it also has obvious limits. That Kimi K3 leads here tells us a lot about its frontend performance, although it doesn’t automatically allow us to extend that advantage to complex repositories, backend, mathematics, or general reasoning. Outside of this specific terrain, photography remains favorable, although more balanced. Vals AI places Kimi K3 second among 38 models, with 74.70%just behind Claude Fable 5, which reaches 75.14%, and above GPT-5.6 Sol, with 73.12%. Artificial Analysis also places it among the most advanced systems in its classification, with 57 points and third place overall. Where Kimi K3 seems to feel most comfortable is in tasks that combine programming, visual context and several chained steps. Arena supports its ability to build web interfaces, while Vals AI also records high performance in agent programming tests. Moonshot adds that the model can traverse large repositories, use terminal tools, and review screenshots of its own work to correct the output on the fly. That last capability, which the company calls “vision in the loop,” helps explain why it excels at transforming visual references into interactive products. There are also several cautions before interpreting Kimi K3 as a definitive victory. Moonshot presents it as an open weight model, but those files have not been published yet and the company promises to release them no later than July 27. Nor should we confuse this openness with complete open source, because details about the license and the rest of the system are still missing. Its 2.8 billion total parameters belong to a sparse architecture that activates 16 of its 896 experts. The company itself recommends configurations with 64 accelerators or more, very far from what a conventional computer can offer. The community reaction helps understand why Kimi K3 is attracting so much attention. One of the most striking examples is a recreation of macOS 27 which works within the browser and which its creator attributes to a swarm of model agents working for about three hours. They add to it Ballista, an interactive panel with a 3D balloon and several comparisons against Claude and GPT. They are not independent benchmarks, but demos shared by their own creators, but they allow you to see what kind of results the model is producing outside the tables. To create something like the macOS simulation or the ballista game, we don’t need to model every element by hand from scratch. We can describe the resultattach a reference and commission Kimi to build a functional application, for example with HTML, JavaScript and various graphics libraries. The project is then tested, modified, and finally published or recorded for sharing. Kimi K3 can be used from Kimi.comKimi Work, Kimi Code or tools connected to its API, although it is not confirmed which specific environment was used in several of the examples we have seen. It is still early to turn this launch into a definitive change of leadership. Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sun They are still ahead in several evaluations, the Kimi K3’s weights are not yet available and many of its capabilities will have to be verified with more time. Even so, what we have seen is already difficult to ignore: a Chinese company can compete for leading positions, offer competitive results and get the community to transform that capacity into real applications almost immediately. The race continues, but the margin between its main protagonists seems increasingly narrower. Images | Kimi | Screenshot In Xataka | China has a plan to win the AI ​​war against the US. And DeepSeek is its champion

fill the Aral Sea with water to capture CO2

The disappearance of the Aral Sea, located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, is widely known as one of the greatest ecological disasters caused by human hands. Starting in the 1960s, the diversion of the rivers that fed it to boost intensive Soviet cotton cultivation transformed the fourth largest lake in the world into an immense saline desert. However, the consequences go far beyond biodiversity loss or local geographic changes. The climate impact. A study with a Spanish firm has put figures on a problem that goes far beyond desiccation, since the reality is that the dry bed of the Aral is a gigantic source of greenhouse gas emissions. And to put it in context, it has been seen that since the beginning of its desiccation has released about 748 million tons of CO₂a figure equivalent to the combined emissions of one year of Spain, France and Belgium. The biological mechanism. Historically, arid areas transformed into crops through irrigation, as occurred in Central Asia, have been counted as carbon sinks. However, when crossing the cycle of these irrigations with the emissions of the lake that they dried to exist, the global balance is completely reversed in favor of the emission of greenhouse gases. Something that we have repeated a lot is that lakes and wetlands act as natural sinks by retaining the atmospheric carbon that vegetation absorbs during photosynthesis, which ends up deposited and immobilized in the bottom sediments dragged by river networks. And now we are remembering this same mechanism. The problem. The water column acts as a physical plug that isolates sediments from atmospheric oxygen, and when the water disappears, that plug disappears. This causes oxygen to quickly penetrate the sediment layers and trigger an immediate biological response: communities of lethargic microorganisms “wake up” and begin to degrade the organic matter that had accumulated for centuries. It is during this aerobic microbial degradation process that the massive release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that has been accumulating for many years occurs. The Spanish team’s measurements corroborate this process, since, by analyzing sediments in a spatial gradient to the center of the wetland, the researchers verified that the most recently dried beds still retain a large amount of organic carbon compared to those that were exposed in the 1960s. The solution. One of the most emphatic conclusions of the work is that the current mitigation strategies in the area are not working. Efforts to plant vegetation on the old dry bed have practically zero CO₂ absorption capacity in this type of arid ecosystems and are not providing any real solution. For all this, the only way to stop microbial degradation and stop CO₂ emissions is to restore physical insulation, that is, cover the area again with water. The data. Researchers estimate that some 605 million tons of CO₂ still remain to be released if no action is taken, and preventing this massive leak requires a monumental, but technically feasible, intervention. The problem that has been seen right now is that the area’s obsolete irrigation network wastes up to 90% of the water it transports. That is why modernizing the entire infrastructure, which would require 8.5 billion euros, would allow us to recover around 50% of the original surface of the lake from 1960. And the result would benefit the entire planet. The financing. For pay for a water engineering project of this magnitude, the authors of the research propose using the avoided emissions themselves as a bargaining chip. And if it is possible to flood the wetland again and stop the emission of those 605 million tons of CO₂, that amount could be transformed into marketable carbon credits. Calculations estimate that the project would generate some 323 million tons equivalent in credits, whose value in the international market would range between 3,100 and 15,800 million euros. Images | Khusen Rustamov In Xataka | Climate change has a lethal side effect that we are only just discovering: it locks us in the house and prevents us from moving

It’s one of the most beloved television series of all time, ideal for a marathon, and it just arrived on Netflix

Without prior notice,’Friends‘has appeared in the catalog of Netflix. And without abandoning HBO Max, its usual home. Seven years ago, having all ten seasons exclusively was worth $85 million a year. But times have changed, and now the platform streaming one of the most followed and loved series in history also has the most views. And it was not just a Spanish thing: the sitcom returned to many international markets at the beginning of July, with five relevant exceptions: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and Italy. In a matter of days, the series has slipped into position 10 on the global list of Netflix’s most viewed series. A complete success that also hides some numbers worth studying. In 2015, Warner Bros. licensed all 236 episodes to Netflix for the United States and Canada. Four years later, the renewal for 2019 was closed without exclusivity in a range of between 70 and 80 million dollars. But it didn’t last long: in 2019, WarnerMedia paid 85 million annually for five years, 425 million in totalto take the series to its own platform, surpassing Netflix’s offer. Overnight, the series was exclusive to Warner. But Warner, now in the purchasing processis not the content giant it was then. In this way, million-dollar exclusives like this no longer make sense, at least from Warner’s side. It may not be the last of its kind that we see, but while we see how the HBO Max catalog expands to other platforms, we can review this pop culture icon (we recommend starting with season 3, the most balanced) and try to understand how its ending could put more than 50 million viewers in front of the television in 2004. In Xataka | Anya Taylor-Joy changes the chess of ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ for a chase with the FBI in a fast-paced streaming premiere

What happens to your body during the summer because of the heat

A couple of nights ago we had a thermal blowout in the city I live in. Many people around me noticed it. They heard the wind blowing against the windows and felt the temperature rise. I told them that I didn’t notice anything, that I always sleep very well. And it’s true, I sleep well. However, the next day I feel like I only slept 3 hours. This is not unusual, since high temperatures not only prevent us from falling asleep. Even if we feel like we’ve been asleep, the reality is that sleeping in the heat makes us wake up more tired for several reasons. Two reasons. There are two main reasons why it is difficult for us to sleep in the heat and, furthermore, we wake up tired. The first is insufficient cooling. At night, our body temperature drops, normally between 0.5ºC and 1ºC. This is essential for us to fall asleep. Therefore, if the ambient temperature is very high, we will not be able to cool ourselves properly. We may manage to sleep, but we will not rest properly. On the other hand, as homeothermic animals that we are, we have mechanisms that help us maintain our temperature within specific ranges, regardless of whether it is hot or cold. Two of these mechanisms, which are also closely linked to each other, are sweating and vasodilation. They are very necessary processes, which occur with more intensity when it is hotter. The problem is that, no matter how essential they are, when they occur too intensely, they can cause us some harm. Exactly, fatigue is one of them. The body is not cooled. Many of our physiological processes repeat periodically in 24-hour cycles known as circadian rhythms. Sleep is the best known of these processes.since every day we get up and go to bed at least once. A region of our brain known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus is the one that detects when it’s time to sleep and induces rest through various methods. For example, when it is daytime, the light that enters our retina tells the suprachiasmatic nucleus that we have to get up, which inhibits the release of melatonin, a hormone that helps us fall asleep. On the other hand, when the light falls, the opposite is done. The release of melatonin is stimulated. The thing is, melatonin is not the only driver of sleep. The suprachiasmatic nucleus also drives body cooling. If it is very hot, it is difficult to lower the temperature, but eventually it is achieved and we will be able to fall asleep. The problem is that during REM sleep, the body’s ability to regulate temperature It is practically deactivatedso we may wake up. Sometimes we don’t realize these awakenings. We feel like we can sleep warm. But we are not resting. Other times we do realize that we wake up and it is even worse. The tension on the floor. Vasodilation occurs to drive more blood close to the skin. This causes more heat to be conducted to that area. On the other hand, sweating is an excellent cooling mechanism. It consists of releasing a liquid composed mainly of water to the surface of the skin; which, once there, must evaporate. And what does that liquid need to evaporate? Indeed, heat. A heat that is extracted from within the body, thanks to this dilation of the blood vessels. This is magnificent. The problem is that excessive vasodilation leads to drops in blood pressurewhich greatly increase our feeling of tiredness. Furthermore, if we do not act accordingly, sweating can cause dehydration, which also makes us feel more tired. Or something worse. The fan may be a better option than air conditioning Solutions. There are many tips for sleeping in the heat, although they are usually insufficient when it is too suffocating. It is best to generate a current of air in the room between doors and windows and, if necessary, turn on a fan. Air conditioning is not so recommended. Taking a warm shower may also be good advice. Never cold, much less hot, as the body will have to invest too much energy to compensate for the temperature. With stifling heat, we are not about to waste extra energy. And, of course, avoiding heavy, alcoholic or spicy foods before bed is also a good option. Unfortunately, with these suffocating nights that we are having to livewe have no choice but to sleep in the heat. These tips can help us rest a little better, although they are not miraculous. You may also wake up tired. When you feel this way, remember the importance of combating climate change. Image | Magnificent In Xataka | These days I’m having a hard time falling asleep because of the heat. But put this device on and sleep soundly

Science believed that geomagnetic storms had a limit. A miscalculation had been hiding the truth for decades

It is well known that geomagnetic storms and solar winds can significantly affect telecommunications devices on Earth. However, we have always had one piece of information that reassured us quite a bit in that regard: the saturation of geomagnetic storms. This means that there is a limit beyond which, no matter how much the intensity of the storm increases, the harmful electrical currents that are normally generated in our atmosphere do not continue to intensify. It would mean that we have already seen the worst side of this solar phenomenon and, although it has been quite worrying, it has not been devastating. The problem is that now a team of scientists from NASA and Lancaster University has observed that, in reality, this saturation phenomenon was the result of a statistical error known as regression to the mean. It seems that the intensity of electric currents can continue to increase. And of course, that is very worrying. too far. The intensity of the solar winds is measured by spacecraft located at Lagrange point 1 (L1), much closer to the Sun than to the Earth. This is no coincidence. It was done on purpose, because it allows them to be detected with some margin of action before they impact our planet. However, there is a problem, since the intensity with which these solar winds actually arrive is not the same as that measured in L1. To know the real intensity with which they reach Earth, a calculation is made by extrapolating with distance. This gives us approximate data, but never exact. For them to be truly accurate, the intensity of the solar winds should remain constant all the way to Earth and that is not the case. They can intensify or weaken. All of this leads to a margin of error in the calculations. Furthermore, the very magnitude that is measured in the ships in L1 can already lead to calculation errors, which would increase this margin even further. Regression to the mean. When many calculations are made that contain errors, something known as regression to the mean occurs, where the most extreme values ​​are possibly overstated. That is to say, solar winds that were considered more extreme may not have been so extreme. On the other hand, the effects of geomagnetic storms on Earth are easy to measure accurately, since they are measured directly on Earth. And this is where the problems begin. We are relating values ​​on Earth with oversized data from the Sun. What we consider a maximum response on Earth is actually because the solar storms were not as big as they seem. That is why the curve is flattened. The scientists of the study that has just been published consider that with more real data on the intensity of the solar winds the curve would not flatten. It would continue to rise. Solar winds and electric currents. The Sun is surrounded by a gas made up of electrically charged particles, known as plasma. These are continually in motion, giving rise to what are known as solar winds. The problem is that, sometimes, when solar activity is very high, they move with much more intensity. So much so that they can shoot towards the Earth. Luckily, our planet has a magnetic field which, in principle, acts like a bubble, protecting us from those charged particles. It does what it can, but if the solar winds are very intense, because the great solar activity has unleashed a geomagnetic storm, the particles end up overcoming that barrier and reach our atmosphere. There, electrical currents are formed that are measured to analyze the effects of this activity on Earth. Auroras are the result of electrical currents that form in the atmosphere. From northern lights to satellite failures. When these charged particles reach Earth, two types of effects can occur. On the one hand, the northern lightswhich are the result of the emission of light in different colors when the atoms present in atmospheric gas molecules are excited. On the other hand, these currents can affect our electrical and telecommunications systems, causing problems of varying severity. There have already been some very serious phenomena, such as Carrington event of 1859in which telegraphic communications around the world failed. Already in the time of satellites, the largest was the Quebec blackout of 1989with which the entire electrical network of this Canadian province collapsed in just 92 seconds. We have to shorten distances. The authors of the study that has just been published point out that, to understand the true magnitude of geomagnetic storms and solar winds, spacecraft that measure their intensity must be placed much closer to Earth. They have already analyzed a million nearby data and the results have not been encouraging. Therefore, prevention is more essential than ever. And, taking into account that the saturation phenomenon that so reassured us is not real, what happened in Carrington and Quebec would be dwarfed by what could happen in the future. Image | Nithin Sivadas NASA Goddard Space Flight Center In Xataka | Auroras are seen across Europe, including the south, during the largest geomagnetic storm since 2005

the one that places Ulysses on the islet of Perejil for seven years

What if Ulysses was trapped on a Spanish islet? Yes, that Ulysses, the Homeric one, the same one who managed to stop the Greek army, who defeated Polyphemus with lies and avoided the misfortune of being drowned by siren songs. Discussion issue For decades, the thesis that it proposes is Victor Berard. In 1902 he published ‘Les Phéniciens et l’Odyssée‘ and in it he emphasizes that the Odyssey is not a story, it is a geographical document, a poetic painting but faithful to a concrete reality. And the key to everything is that triangular islet of 15,000 square meters, without drinking water, without inhabitants, 200 meters from the Moroccan coast. That is the island of Perejil today, remembered by many because in 2002 it was the protagonist of an armed incident between Spain and Morocco that was resolved on July 20, after an eviction by Spanish troops of the Moroccan gendarmes that had occupied it. Every little there is noise around the boulderso there will be some magic in there. Was Ulysses imprisoned there? One hundred years earlier, a French professor and the rector of the University of Salamanca agreed that Ulysses was kept locked up there and, in fact, that the name of Spain was born from there. This is big and I want to explain it well. Bérard baptized his method “topology”: under each Greek name he looked for the Semitic original, because the Hellenes, arriving later, translated the Phoenician toponym without completely erasing it. Applied to Calypso, for example, the method gives this: Ogygiathe island where the nymph holds Ulysses for seven years, is Parsley. The Odyssey cave fits with the royal cave—entrance 20 meters high by seven or eight meters wide, two interior rooms. And the nymph’s name comes from “kalypto”, which is to hide in Greek. Hiding Island. From there, Bérard maintains, comes “I-spania“. And from there Spain. From thesis to literature. Eduardo Gómez de Baquero, known as Adrenio after the character of Baltasar Gracián, was a furious columnist in magazines of the time, with thousands of columns. He summarized the discovery of the thesis in the Cartagena newspaper ‘The Era‘, on June 10, 1902. Seventeen days later, Miguel de Unamuno signed in the magazine ‘Around the World’ your own article“Spain-Parsley and the Island of Calypso”, published on June 27, 1902 (its reissue can be found, volume VI). The great of the Generation of ’98, philosopher and total writer, puts the tie to the thesis, celebrating Bérard’s ingenuityand sneaks in an anecdote from his Greek teacher Lázaro Bardón about the Guadix River (Semitic + Arab + Spanish. From Arabic wadia word that is usually used interchangeably for both valley and river). He only has one but: he prefers Basque. According to him, Spain comes from “ezpaña”, lip, due to the shape of the peninsula on the map of Europe. And accept the rest. On July 25, 2002, five days after the Perejil crisis was resolved, El País took the opportunity to republish the article by Unamuno. It is curious because serious philology had barely documented it. Already in 1904, reviews of Bérard’s book in the ‘Revue des Études Anciennes’ and the ‘Revue des Études Grecques’ separated the wheat from the chaff. The principle of topology seems unquestionable to them: yes, human settlements follow laws that derive from their environment. It’s just that in the application to this specific case, not so much. Georges Radet said that admiration that prohibits criticism is not worth much. Ogygia, that nonsense in question. The location of Ogygia remains one of the most disputed questions of the Odyssey. A study by the University of Malta counts at least twelve candidate islands throughout history, from Ozoni (Greece) to Corfu. It is that island that exists everywhere and at the same time nowhere, the prison for the daughter of Atlas that also served to trap Ulysses. And here, the investigation placed Bérard and, later, the author LG Pocock as the responsible for identifying Ogigia with Parsley. The dominant candidate since Antiquity is another: Gozo, in the Maltese archipelago, already proposed by Evémerus in the 4th century BC and by Callimachus in the 3rd BC Strabo and Plutarch, meanwhile, placed Ogygia directly in the Atlantic Ocean. A recent volume from the École française d’Athènes closes the historiographic debate: Bérard’s theory has no support in the literary tradition and no one took it up afterwards; Its value today is to serve as a counterweight to the “Greek miracle” and to an ahistorical reading of Homer—especially from the more nationalist German prism. Explain where Spain comes from. The good thing is that that thesis may well help us identify another name. The origin of “Spain” is documented. The thesaurus of historical toponymy of the Ministry of Culture places the consensus on a Semitic root – Ugaritic, Phoenician or Hebrew – from the second millennium BC, although it disputes the meaning. The most popular version, that of Samuel Bochart in 1646, is “land of rabbits”: it is based on Catullus, who calls the peninsula “cuniculous.” Others read “northern coast” or “metal coast.” And a nuance that Bérard ignores is that the Phoenician word “is-pan-ya” never appears in any registration. So it is pure linguistic reconstruction. From Bacchus (Bacchanal theory), from the god Pan… Iberia is the town of the Iber River and Hispania is many more things: the Phoenician theory says that Hispania was the nomenclature adopted by the Romans. Isidore of Seville focused more on native origin. The founder, Hispalo, son of Hercules, was the one who coined it by accident, when moving Hispalia to Hispania. And, thus, the beautiful Hispalis and current Seville would have given its name to our entire great nation. It is impossible to clarify completely. The islet remains. 74 meters high, rock and bushes and a cave capable of housing 200 men according to the Mediterranean route of the time. And parsley, of course, the plant that gives it its name in Spanish, which according to the Odyssey itself … Read more

Europe wants to put an end to the particular Iberian exception of the Spanish train. And Spain has a clear answer: no.

There are investments and investments. More or less necessary. More or less large. But there are also more or less viable ones. And, of course, the Ministry of Transport considers that the European Commission’s proposal to change all roads from Iberian gauge to international gauge is anything but viable. And they have a good reason: 30,000 million euros. What does Europe want? In October 2025, The European Commission presented its project to cement, once and for all, the connection between Madrid and Lisbon with high-speed trains. After many delays, if the plans are fulfilled and both cities end up being united in 2030 with a single train, high speed will arrive on this line 20 years late. In the writing The bases that the routes must follow are reflected and there is an important paragraph in them: With the ambition to fully integrate the Lisbon–Madrid high-speed rail connection into the broader high-speed network in Spain and France, adopting the European standard nominal gauge of 1,435 mm is a key step. In this way, the competitiveness of long-distance passenger traffic will be strengthened. By connecting Portugal and Spain, and extending to France, the Lisbon–Madrid high-speed rail connection has a clear cross-border and Union dimension In it it is clear that we are talking about the Madrid-Lisbon line but on the occasion of this text, public entities must study the economic viability of migrating the railway network to the international gauge and definitively abandoning the Iberian gauge. The answer. No. Simple and concise. According to The Countrya medium that claims to have had access to internal documents of the Ministry of Transportation, the Government’s response to this migration is a resounding “no.” The reasons are as simple as that it would take 30 years of works and an investment of 30,000 million euros to reverse the Iberian exceptionalism of the Spanish and Portuguese train. In the documents that Spain will present to Brussels, it is specified that the matter is not viable in its entirety or in part since the possibility of installing “third threads or lanes to achieve mixed widths” was contemplated, they explain in the medium. No, no and no. They explain in The Country that the Ministry of Transportation rejects all the options that have been put on the table: Changing exclusively the lines of the European corridors: it would leave, according to Transport, more than 5,000 km of the network isolated. Implement a mixed width with third rails or threads: discarded due to the complexity of the work and the high maintenance cost Change all Iberian gauge roads: Transport considers it unapproachable although it has been the most studied option because it is ideal. What is this track width? Spain, since the 19th century it has lived in an Iberian exceptionality next to Portugal. Throughout this century, the railway was gaining followers all over the world. During its expansion, the lines were built with different track widths, taking into account the particularities of the terrain. In Europe, the number of tracks built with a width of 1,435 mm multiplied and ended up becoming established. Everything above it is considered “wide gauge” and below it as “narrow gauge” because those 1,435 mm were accepted as the standard. This is how the international gauge was born. In Spain, however, we chose to build our railway network on a track gauge of 1,672 millimeters, defended by three engineers who were entrusted with the task of projecting the future of the Spanish train. They argued that a wider track width allowed the use of more powerful locomotives and that this was essential in a mountainous country like ours. And the consequences? The consequences were immediate. Already in the middle of the 19th century From Portugal they asked Spain by letter to desist from building their roads with this new gauge because they would be isolated from Europe. And the problem, evidently, was greater for Portugal, which was dragged along by the Spanish decision. Spain, as you imagine, did not give up and now lives between three gauges of road: the international one (for about 4,000 km of high speed), the Iberian one (for 13,000 km of Cercanías) and the metric width (1,210 km for especially mountainous terrain). This is a problem for connectivity between tracks because trains cannot jump from one to another, except for the Talgo Avril. And it’s an advantage. At least for Renfe. And Renfe can take advantage of this particularity in some very specific points on the Peninsula. For example, in Madrid-Galicia, international gauge and Iberian gauge are used, already in the Galician part. Only Renfe has trains that can jump from one track gauge to another, so competition is eliminated. And the same will happen in Portugal. The connection between Madrid and Lisbon is being built on an international gauge but the Portuguese high-speed line between Lisbon and Porto will operate on an Iberian gauge. This leaves Renfe as the only company that could operate a Madrid-Porto train passing through Lisbon without the need to transfer. Now it is better understood why Renfe will invest in converting the Avrils fixed gauge on variable gauge trains and why Transportes believes that Portugal is a great market opportunity. Photo | Falk2 In Xataka | Renfe offers its juiciest contract: 4,000 million euros to buy trains. And everything indicates that he will not stay in Spain

is leaving us without sleep

With the increase in temperatures, it is normal to start tossing and turning in bed, desperately searching for the cold side of the pillow or surrendering to the air conditioning at three in the morning because nothing cool comes in through the window. What until recently we considered a simple summer annoyance has become a measurable, quantifiable and science-backed phenomenon, since global warming is literally robbing us of hours of sleep. It has been analyzed. This is not an exaggeration based on a few bad nights, but rather the scientific community has cross-referenced millions of biometric data with global weather records to confirm that nighttime heat is eroding our quality of life. This conclusion has not been reached with simple surveys, but rather A study has chosen to analyze more than 7 million sleep records obtained through activity bracelets in 68 countries. The conclusion was that, as nighttime temperatures rise, the duration and quality of rest plummet. And it is the most normal thing, since our body needs to reduce its core temperature to initiate and maintain sleep and, when the outside environment is too warm, this physiological process is blocked. More tests. Other research published in Naturethat analyzed 23 million days of sleep records put exact figures on the problem. Here they saw that, for every 10 °C increase in ambient temperature, sleep problems skyrocket, drastically reducing both the total duration of rest and, what is worse, the deep sleep phase, which is responsible for the physical and cognitive restoration of our body. Many factors. Although the temperature increases for everyone equally, it does not affect us in the same way, as a review points out published in Sleep Medicine. One of their conclusions is that in older people the capacity for self-regulation is naturally lower, and that is why it is much more difficult for an aging body to dissipate heat and adapt its core temperature, making them much more vulnerable to tropical nights. Sex also influences, since studies indicate that the impact on sleep loss for each extra degree of temperature is significantly greater in women than in men, due in part to physiological differences in thermal regulation and hormonal factors. Socially. If we cross all this data with the economic level, we can see that in developing regions the loss of sleep is much greater, which makes us revive the term “air conditioning gap.” And those who cannot afford cooling systems or live in areas with poor infrastructure suffer the impact of the heat to the fullest. Climate change. We can’t just blame the summer, as organizations like Climate Central have started to calculate exactly how many of these hours of lost sleep bear the direct signature of anthropogenic climate change. Their recent analysis shows that global warming is multiplying the frequency of these abnormally warm nights, and it’s not just that it’s hot in July, but that nighttime minimum temperatures are rising at a faster rate than daytime maximums. That is to say, we are facing a major public health problem, since chronic loss of sleep not only makes us feel bad the next day. It has been shown that not sleeping properly is linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, mental health problems, cognitive decline, and an increase in work and traffic accidents. Images | Ron Lach In Xataka | Global warming has stepped on the accelerator at an unprecedented rate and we are getting closer to the point of no return

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