Mobile Tech & Gadgets

Goodbye to ultra-processed foods and spending on snacks

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We knew that drugs like Ozempic either wegovy They were changing the scales of thousands of people around the world without having to undergo surgery, but what we were not so clear about was how they were doing. transforming the shopping cart. Something that fully affects the domestic economy and a change in habits that is undoubtedly the final objective of these medications. A new study. Made in Denmark and published in JAMA Network Open has put figures to a phenomenon that market analysts had been sensing for some time: these medications they not only reduce appetitebut they structurally modify what we buy, how much we spend and what sections of the supermarket we visit. His method. Until now, much of what we knew about the diet of GLP-1 users came from what they themselves reported in surveys. The problem is that sometimes humans lie or even our memory fails to remember what we really eat on a daily basis. To avoid this bias, a team led by Kathrine Kold Sørensen, from Copenhagen University Hospital, decided to go to the source of truth more objective: purchase receipts. The result. The study analyzed more than 2 million transactions from 1,177 Danish participants. By comparing receipts before and after starting treatment (between 2019 and 2022), the researchers detected an obvious change in pattern. The highlight without a doubt was the reduction in the purchase of ultra-processed foods, which fell from 39.2% to 38%. And although it may seem like little, in the control group without the drug, consumption increased. Reducing ultra-processed foods meant that the basket was filled with real food, which increased from 46.9% to 47.8%. This was combined with fewer calories being purchased per 100 grams by reducing sugar, saturated fat and carbohydrates. On the other hand, proteins began to increase. A hit to the pocket. If the Danish study focuses on nutritional quality, other recent reports focus on the economic impact. A Cornell University study published in December 2025, based on data from Numeratorreveals that the impact on spending is immediate. In the United States specifically, households with patients taking Ozempic reduced spending in supermarkets by approximately 5.5%. If we break down this reduction, spending on salty snacks, sweets, industrial pastries and cookies plummeted between 10 and 11%. On the other hand, there was a slight increase in the purchase of yogurts, fresh fruit and protein bars. Why doesn’t it happen? The key is not just willpower. Spanish experts such as Cristóbal Morales and Joana Nicolau, cited by the Science Media Center Spain, they explain that the mechanism is physiological, since the drugs act on the brain’s reward system. In preclinical studies in animals they already showed that, under the effects of GLP-1, rats lost their usual preferences for foods that are rich in fats and sugars. In humans, this means that the impulse to buy, to buy that bag of chips or that soda, simply disappears or is drastically attenuated. The small print. Not everything is good news regarding these drugs, since, as has been repeated on different occasions when treatment is abandonedpurchasing patterns partially revert to the previous ones. That is why the change in habit seems to be “rented” to the duration of the pharmacological treatment. Additionally, the study has limitations inherent to the observational design, as it does not test direct chance and there is potential “selection bias.” And people willing to share their purchase receipts and start these treatments are usually more motivated by initial health or receiving parallel nutritional advice. Images | Haberdoedas Ishaq Robin In Xataka | If you want a “miracle” weight loss drug, you no longer turn to Ozempic: the competition is beginning to surpass it

China has been writing an endless novel about how to overtake Europe for 16 years, and it has become a political weapon

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Somewhere on the Chinese internet there is a science fiction novel which has been written since 2009 and will probably never end. It is titled ‘Illumine Lingao’ (临高启明, translatable as “The Morning Star of Lingao”) and accumulates millions of words distributed over thousands of chapters. It does not have a single author: it has been written collectively by hundreds of people, mostly engineers, technicians and military history fans who have been contributing chapters, technical corrections and secondary plots over almost two decades. It has generated more than 1,400 derivative works. And it has never been translated into any Western language. What is it about? The premise is simple: more than 500 21st century Chinese citizens, armed with modern technical knowledge, travel back in time through a wormhole to the year 1628, to the death throes of the Ming Dynasty. They settle in Lingao County, on the island of Hainan, and from there they unleash an industrial revolution that alters the course of history. The goal: make China reach modernity before Europe. How it arises. The text began to take shape in 2006 as a discussion on SC BBS, the oldest military-themed forum in China, from a question that struck a chord: “What would you do if you could travel to the Ming dynasty with modern knowledge?” The debate crystallized three years later in a collective writing project led by a user known as Boaster, whose real name is Xiao Feng. The first installment was published in 2009 on Qidian Chinese Network, the country’s largest web literature platform. In 2017, China Radio, Film & TV Press published the first volume in print format. What makes it special. What sets ‘Illumine Lingao’ apart from other time travel fantasies is its obsession with technical detail. The chapters include long discussions on how to make nitric acid from scratch, what materials are needed to build chemical synthesis towers, or how many tons of industrial equipment would be needed to begin mechanization without prior machines or tools. Chinese readers have dubbed it “the encyclopedia of time travel.” Some critics They consider it “a unique phenomenon of contemporary Chinese literature.” But… what sensitive chord does this work touch? Needham’s puzzle. In 1942, the British biochemist Joseph Needham He traveled to China as a diplomatic envoy. During those three years he discovered that the Chinese had developed techniques and mechanisms that preceded their European equivalents by centuries. The printing press, the compass, gunpowder, paper money, suspension bridges, toilet paper… all had emerged in China long before Europe even conceived of it. Needham returned to Cambridge and documented this in ‘Science and Civilization in China’, 25 volumes that asked why modern science and the industrial revolution developed in Europe and not China, if China was so far ahead. This question, known as “Needham’s puzzle”, touches the most sensitive nerve of Chinese historical consciousness. Historians have proposed dozens of answers. Some point to geographical factors: while Europe competed fragmented into rival states that stimulated military and commercial innovation, China remained unified under a bureaucratic system that did not need change to survive. Others point to philosophical reasons: Confucianism valued social harmony over disruption. And some say that the key difference was European access to the resources of the American continent. For Chinese intellectuals, the “Great Divergence”, the moment when Europe overtook China, is not an abstract problem for historians. It is the question that explains the “century of national humiliation” (1839-1949), the opium wars, the burning of the Summer Palace and the Japanese occupation. That is why in ‘Illumine Lingao’ we travel to the Ming dynasty: 1628, sixteen years before the dynasty collapsed due to the Manchu invasion. For these Chinese intellectuals, the Ming dynasty represents the fateful fork: it is the moment when China chose the wrong path and Europe took the lead. Rewrite history. ‘Illumine Lingao’ belongs to a literary genre that enjoys enormous popularity in the chinese web literature: chuanyue (穿越), time travel stories in which contemporary protagonists use their modern knowledge to alter the course of history. In China, this genre has an implicit nationalist charge. It is not about looking at the past or resolving temporal paradoxes, but about correcting it, giving China a second chance. ‘Illumine Lingao’ takes this premise to the extreme: the documentation of each step with obsessive technical rigor turns the novel into something more than entertainment. It is a manual and a manifesto. A manifesto of a specific party. More than entertainment. As has been analyzed in academic circles, ‘Lingao’ reorganizes the historical narrative of Chinese socialist construction around the framework of industrialization and technological progress, with a clear nationalist sense. Its roots are in the so-called Industrial Party, which is not a real party, but rather a label to designate a current of thinkers, online commentators and influencers who share a vision of the world based on industrialization as a supreme value. For them, the material transformation produced by industrialization is an objective measure of national success. At the beginning of this century, its area of ​​theoretical development was the Internet, going against the grain at a time when the Chinese economy was betting on low-cost manufacturing and foreign direct investment. At that time, the idea that China could manufacture advanced semiconductors It sounded like science fiction. The Industrial Party made the leap to public influence in 2012, when the news website Guancha It began to include party members among its editors, defending the Chinese government from ultranationalist positions. Cultural battle. ‘Lingao’ has also largely become a political tool. When in 2011 a high-speed train rammed another convoy from behindcausing 40 deaths and 192 injuries, the Government wanted to manage the information so that the idea of ​​prosperity at any cost was not clouded. But on social media, negative opinions about the accident even surpassed state censors and They questioned the idea of ​​”progress” that the government maintained. Was the speed of development exacting an unacceptable price in human terms? ‘Illumine Lingao’ became a reference text in … Read more

The question is not whether you poop glyphosate, but how much glyphosate you poop. We have been measuring this popular herbicide wrong all our lives

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In those wheat macaroni that are in your shopping basket, in the jar of lentils or even in the beer there may be traces of glyphosatewhich is probably the most used herbicide on the planet. Weeds are common in agriculture and this chemical is highly effective. However, you can minimize its presence by avoiding ultra-processed cereals, opting for local products from the EU or better yet, buying organic. We were looking wrong. We know that glyphosate is present in the environment and the European Union regulates the limits maximum residues, but the reality is that there has always been difficulty in accurately measuring how much reaches our body. Because until now, we almost always looked in urine. This international study published in Science Direct The focus has changed to feces and here things change. Feces are the black box. Because this research has revealed that feces are a much more precise black box for the analysis of glyphosate in humans than urine and reveal an alarming reality: exposure to glyphosate is much higher than official statistics say. Urine testing was just the tip of the iceberg. The reason for this is how our body absorbs and rejects it: glyphosate is expelled through the feces due to its low intestinal absorption rate. Since it cannot pass through the wall of the intestine to reach the blood (from there it would go to the kidneys), it remains trapped there and ends up expelled in the feces. In a 24-hour period, 90% leaves in the feces and only a small amount reaches the urine (between 0.5% and 6% in humans). Why is it important. Because the international standard for monitoring glyphosate it’s urinewhich implies an underestimation and therefore an underestimation of the risk. Furthermore, this finding affects not only people directly related to agriculture; it is enough to consume common products present in the diet. And it doesn’t just affect humans: the study also shows its presence in farm animals, domestic cats and even bats, which means that the herbicide is moving throughout the food chain. In short: the study forces us to rethink how we monitor the presence of chemicals when safeguarding public health and the ecosystem. Modus operandi. This study proposes the use of feces as an alternative and potentially better matrix than urine for glyphosate and its metabolite AMPA (until now, the usual). To do this, they analyzed 716 human fecal samples and 249 animals from 11 countries (10 European and Argentina) taken in 2021. The research team used an advanced analytical chemistry technique called hydrophilic interaction chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (HILIC-MS/MS). Thus, glyphosate was detected in 71% of the European samples and in 100% of the Argentinian samples and are much higher than those present in the urine samples for the same individuals, 35% and 86% respectively. They saw glyphosate in conventional and eco farmers, residents of agricultural areas and general consumers. An alarming biological conclusion. If there is one thing that is clear from the study, it is that if 90% of glyphosate is in the feces and not in the urine, it means that this chemical spends much more time in direct contact with the digestive system than we thought. And therefore, the current safety limits are probably based on incomplete and undersized data, which underestimates the real health risk. It is not only the toxicity itself (which is low), but also the cumulative effect on the microbiota and long-term cellular damage. And glyphosate can act as a selective antibiotic that alters the intestinal microbiota, killing beneficial bacteria and allowing the proliferation of pathogenic ones, is cataloged As it is probably carcinogenic to humans, it can act as an endocrine disruptor to our hormonal system or induce oxidative stress. In Xataka | We have a problem with pesticides in agriculture. And a bigger one with the panic they generate In Xataka | The big problem of agriculture in Spain is the one that nobody wants to address: it rains less and less and we want to plant more and more Cover | Giorgio Trovato and Ibadah Mimpi

The US consumed 60% of all the chips it produced to go to the Moon

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In the context of the Cold War, developing an ambitious space program was more than just technological exploration and innovation: for the United States it meant demonstrating its hegemony over the USSR. And he took it very seriously: officially spent almost 26 billion dollars between 1960 and 1973 (the equivalent about $257 billion today). Before and after Apollo. Simply put, the Apollo program was colossal and it shows in both its achievements and its legacy. Because beyond the milestone of humanity’s arrival on the moon, the list of inventions he brought under the arm was impressive because either they are still used today or they laid the foundations for today’s technology. For example, although NASA did not invent freeze-dried foods, they did. gave them a twist to maintain its flavor and texture while reducing its weight. Also brought the refrigerated suits that are used today for people with multiple sclerosis and PBI as a star fireproof materialsomething they arrived at after the death of three astronauts in the Apollo 1 fire and which is today used in firefighter suits. Or the airless tires. If we focus on computing, the fly by wire It was a paradigm shift to embrace digital, the standard in today’s aviation. NASA changed the computer industry. And if food had to be lightened, stylizing the on-board computers was something providential. Plus, do it without compromising power. So they built the Apollo guidance computer with a promising but still little consolidated technology: integrated circuits with the first silicon chips. Yes, those that we have even found in the soup for decades. The Apollo program he did not invent the microchipbut it did make it possible have a huge supply. Much of the chip production went to NASA. In fact, in 1963 the Apollo project had already achieved take over 60% of US supply of chips. Bridging the distance, like what happens today with AI. The US army supported the proposal, which integrated chips into its missiles Minuteman II. The production contract fell into the hands of Texas Instrumentsforcing the industry to move from “artisanal” chip manufacturing to mass production. Towards total democratization. The combination between NASA and the Pentagon was the total catalyst for standardization and cost reduction. In fact, in 1962 a single microchip could cost at least 120 dollars. By ’68, prices had plummeted less than two dollars. This enormous need, together with the importance of their application in strategic sectors, caused both NASA and the army to demand absolute reliability of the chips from the companies behind them, such as Fairchild or Texas Instruments. This is, put them to tests like extreme temperatures or G-force. It was Moore’s law at its finest. NASA moved the industry forward a decade. The push from NASA and the Pentagon reduced the cost of microchips by 98% in less than 10 years. The result? That they went from cutting-edge technology to landing on more basic and modest electronics such as calculators. According to John Tylkoengineer and technological historian and current professor at MIT, if NASA had not existed we would still have integrated circuits and Moore’s Law would have been fulfilled… much later: “But perhaps we would not have had it in 1965. Maybe we would have had it a decade later.” In Xataka | Four astronauts are going to undertake an unprecedented journey to the Moon. They have no intention of stepping on it In Xataka | We have been deceived by the distances of the Solar System: the closest neighbor to Neptune is Mercury Cover | Flickr

The perovskite had been failing inside for years. The solution was in the octopuses

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For more than a decade, perovskite cells have been the great promise—and great frustration—of clean energy. In the laboratory they already compete with silicon, but they always failed in the same way: they degraded too quickly. Now, a discovery breaks with what is established. The solution has not come from a complex industrial machine, but from a molecule that octopuses and squid have been using for millions of years to protect themselves from chemical damage. The sabotage that comes from within. According to the study published in Advanced Energy Materialsthe problem is not just air or humidity, but a chemical reaction that is activated within the device itself. When sunlight hits the perovskite, highly energetic electrons are generated. These electrons can react with residual oxygen trapped during manufacturing—a process typically performed in air—to form superoxide radicals (O₂·⁻), extremely reactive chemical species. These radicals attack the organic cations that keep the perovskite crystalline structure stable, initiating its decomposition. The entry point. The damage does not begin on the visible surface of the panel, but in a key region known as the buried interface, the point of contact between the perovskite and the tin dioxide (SnO₂) layer, responsible for extracting the electrons generated by light. As emphasized Nanowerknot even the best external encapsulation can stop this process: oxygen is already present inside the device from the first moment. To further complicate the problem, tin dioxide itself contains oxygen-rich defects that, under illumination and heat, migrate into the perovskite and accelerate its degradation from within. Taurine to the rescue. Faced with this scenario, the team of researchers from the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology opted for an unusual route in photovoltaic development: seeking inspiration in biology. The answer came in the form of an ultrathin layer of taurine, a sulfur amino acid present in octopuses, squid and other marine organisms. According to Interesting Engineeringin nature taurine protects cells from oxidative damage, just the same type of threat that was degrading perovskites. Located at the interface between tin dioxide and perovskite, the molecule functions as a smart chemical shield. A defense cycle that does not end. The study details, based on density functional theory (DFT) calculations and laboratory experiments, a two-step protection mechanism that is especially relevant. First, taurine intercepts superoxide radicals as they form. Its chemical structure, called zwitterionic—with positive and negative charges in different parts of the molecule—allows it to electrostatically attract these radicals and convert them into hydrogen peroxide, a much less aggressive species for perovskite. Secondly, the process addresses an additional problem: the molecular iodine generated during the degradation of the material. This iodine tends to form compounds that further accelerate the collapse of the structure. Taurine reduces that iodine back to iodide ions, chemically stable and much less harmful. Most notable, as Nanowerk points outis that after completing these reactions, taurine is regenerated. It is not consumed or degraded in the process, but rather returns to its original state, creating a closed radical neutralization cycle that can be repeated throughout the operational life of the device. From theory to real power. The benefits are not limited to durability. The presence of taurine also improves the electrical functioning of the cell. By chemically binding to both tin dioxide and perovskite, it acts as a molecular bridge that reduces defects at the interface, those small sinks where electrons are lost as heat. In practice, this translates into fewer electronic defects, nearly doubled electron mobility in the tin dioxide layer, and charges that survive longer. The best device achieved efficiency 24.8%, with 1.18 volts in open circuit and a high fill factor. Figures very close to current records, but with an important difference: it lasts much longer. In stability tests, taurine-treated cells retained 97% of their efficiency after 450 hours of continuous operation at 65°C. Under real ambient conditions, they maintained 80% of their performance for more than 130 hours, more than five times longer than conventional cells subjected to the same tests. The story has some scientific irony. While industry refined increasingly complex solutions, biology had already been solving the same problem for millions of years. If this strategy can be scaled and adapted to industrial manufacturing, the future of solar energy could depend as much on engineering as it does on biology. Sometimes, to move towards the Sun, it is enough to look at the bottom of the sea. Image | Unsplash and freepik Xataka | The dark side of solar energy: we are creating a 250 million ton mountain of garbage

He is 82 years old and has earned 746% betting on a mine that doesn’t even work

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Canadian Eric Sprott has multiplied his investment in Hycroft Mining by eight thanks to the precious metals boom. And its stake is now worth more than $2.1 billion, despite the fact that the mine has not been operating for years. Numbers. Sprott is a veteran investor commonly recognized as the “gold magnate.” In 2022 it invested $28 million in Hycroft Mining. Today its participation exceeds 2.1 billion dollars, having achieved a profitability of 746%. The company’s shares have soared more than 425% in the last two months and have accumulated a rise of more than 1,500% since the tycoon began to expand his position last summer. A mine that does not mine. Hycroft owns an open pit deposit in northern Nevada that has been operational since the 1980s, but the company has not mined gold since 2021. Instead, it reprocesses previously mined ore that remains on the surface. Most of its reserves are underground and the company lacks a defined plan to resume mining operations. In fact, it has not generated income since 2022, when it had a turnover of just $33 million, according to data from Bloomberg. Gold and silver rally. Hycroft operates as if it were “a huge underground ETF,” according to defined Brian Quast, precious metals analyst at Bank of Montreal. Gold and silver prices have reached all-time highs over the last year, and investors are looking for any way to get exposure to this rally. Even if the mine is not operating, its reserves gain value with each rise in prices. Sprott has been defending investment in gold and silver for decades, and this bet has placed him among the few billionaires who have been able to capitalize on the current boom. From almost bankruptcy to stock market stardom. Just like account Bloomberg, Sprott’s initial investment came as Hycroft was close to insolvency. Together with AMC Entertainment, which had plenty of liquidity after the meme stock phenomenon, the Canadian ended up saving the company from its creditors with this investment. The announcement skyrocketed the shares almost 100% in the premarket, although the enthusiasm did not last long, as by the end of 2022 the value had fallen below half the entry price. Sprott sold a fifth of his position, barely recovering his investment. For three years, his bet remained stagnant while the price of gold rose without stocks following suit. Searching results. Last summer, Sprott changed strategy. Between June and January it has invested an additional $187 million to almost double its stake to exceed 40% of Hycroft’s capital. “I am doing everything possible to expand my position to the maximum,” declared in October to Tony Denaro, content creator dedicated to finance. Their move coincided with new drilling results that identified higher-quality silver deposits than expected and areas with expansion potential. AMC stared. The other major investor, who rode the wave with Sprott in 2022, was the AMC cinema chain, although it did not suffer the same fate. In December, when his Hycroft shares finally turned positive after years of losses, he sold 80% of his stake to Sprott for $24 million. Adam Aron, CEO of AMC, justified the operation ensuring that it was “the right time to monetize and reallocate capital” to its core business. Two months later, that block of shares is worth $172 million. The gold fortune. Although precious metals are on the rise, few big fortunes have been able to take advantage of the boom. According to the report UBS Global Family Offices 2025, these types of asset structures barely allocate 2% on average to precious metals. Only a few investors like Sprott or Hong Kong’s Cheah Cheng Hye have bet heavily, as share Bloomberg. For Sprott, Hycroft’s spotty track record is precisely its biggest draw, because as gold and silver prices rise, the likelihood increases that reprocessing will become increasingly profitable, opening up more possibilities for monetizing underground reserves. “You cannot find a more leveraged and significant reward,” said the investor. in the interview with Denaro. Cover image | Palisades Gold Radio and Leonie Clough In Xataka | Seven of the ten largest fortunes in the world in 2026 are due to AI: this illustrative graph makes it very clear

Mercadona and the rest of the supermarkets spend tons of paper on receipts that no one reads. Now they want to change it

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You go to the supermarket, you buy a couple of things (just enough for dinner), you go to the checkout, they give you the ticket, you put it in your pocket and you leave with the bag in the direction of the parking lot. Pure routine. Our daily bread. If the employer’s retail achieves its objective, there is one element of that scene, however, that will change radically. Which? That ticket that you will end up throwing away without even reading it. What has happened? Every year supermarkets print millions and millions of strips of paper in which in many cases only a handful of articles appear, so they end up in the garbage can without anyone having even looked at them. It is a waste, a waste of resources. For chains like Dia, Lidl or Mercadona, but also for the environment. So Asedas (Spanish Association of Distributors, Self-Service and Supermarkets) has had an idea: they want us to start printing receipts only when the customer requests it. What do they want? The news I advanced it on thursday theEconomist. Asedas has proposed to the Government that it slightly tweak the regulations that regulate tickets so that they are no longer printed systematically. That does not mean that they are no longer issued or that the customer no longer has a receipt that clarifies what they have purchased and how much they have been charged. The change would focus on support. The idea, clarifies Ignacio García, head of Asedas, is “that the ticket continues to be generated electronically for control purposes, but that it is printed on paper at the consumer’s request.” That is, the user can request the physical or digital ticket. Right now, remember theEconomistthe regulations provide that supers deliver the receipt in two ways: either in paper or digital format. What’s happening? Since not all clients are in favor of handing over their data (including email) to the chains, in the end they have no choice but to print it. Not only that. The employer’s data They show that many of the times we go to the supermarket we buy only a handful of items, so the receipts show small transactions, for low amounts that we do not even review. Result: those papers end up in the trash as they are printed. It is not even strange for the customer to reject them when the cashier offers them to them. Is it that serious? “Our companies have been confirming for years that, in about a third of operations, the ticket is abandoned at the checkout line,” confirm Garcia. It is not surprising if we take into account the data on the shopping basket managed by Asedas. According to their estimates, 30% of the operations registered in supermarkets respond to almost urgent visits, during which we take home at most four products and spend less than 10 euros. In 60% of cases, purchases involve between five and 25 products with average tickets of between 10 and 50 euros. Only the remaining 10% actually respond to large purchases. In practice, the fact that all operations end up reflected in a receipt means that the supers generate about 5 billion tickets that require the use of almost 4,500 tons of paper and a million-dollar expense. Is it important? Beyond the millions of receipts that are printed each year and the cost that this entails in tons of paper and euros, Asedas’ proposal is interesting for at least two reasons. To start with who throws it. Asedas presume to be “the first food distribution business organization in Spain” and cover 19,200 retail stores and 495 wholesalers. Between your partners Companies such as Mercadona, Lidl, Aldi or Dia appear. Another key is that its idea is in line with what is already done in other European countries. For example, in 2023 France said goodbye to the generation of tickets by default precisely because of the amount of paper it consumed. That doesn’t mean they no longer exist, but they must be requested. In the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden there have also been changes related to the generation of receipts. In Spain itself, some large chains they take time moving towards the digital ticket. Images | Xataka Mobile and Wikipedia In Xataka | There was a time not too long ago when the future of supermarkets seemed like Amazon Go. Now Amazon Go is dead

the dark history of mercury in the fashion industry

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When we think of Alice in Wonderland one of the most recognized characters is ‘Mad Hatter’‘, an eccentric character with a top hat and a label that says 10/6. And although it may seem that the author of this story wanted to give that characterization to the famous rabbit, the truth is that all hats at that time had a serious problem which made them look too much like the classic rabbit. What’s behind. And the reality behind the character is much murkier and less colorful than in Disney or Tim Burton films. The expression “mad as a hatter” was not a literary invention in this case, but a quite popular medical diagnosis for the timesince for centuries the hat industry suffered a silent epidemic that led to serious neurological damage. and the culprit it was mercury. The ‘carroting’. To understand why hatters fell ill, we must look at how the felt was made between the 17th and 20th centuries that would give rise to hats. The raw material was usually rabbit, hare or beaver fur, and in order for these furs to become a high-quality, rigid and durable felt, they were subjected to a chemical process called “carroting”. This name came from the orange color of the carrots that the skins acquired when treated with a hot solution of mercury nitrate. But logically it was a death trap for the workshops of the time, just as collect NIOSH historical archives. Security issues. Although there are now strong regulations regarding safety at work, if we look back it was not like that. And the treatment was carried out in a poorly ventilated space, which caused mercury vapors to be released when the acid mixture was heated with the skins. By not being able to escape through any ventilation slits, the professionals who were constantly working with the skins ended up inhaling the mercury vapors. It was not a one-time accident, but rather a chronic exposure that accumulated in the body and directly attacked the central nervous system. A new reality. Although in the popular culture of the time the profession was directly related to being completely crazy, the truth is that current toxicological reviews indicate that chronic mercury poisoning produces a devastating and very specific clinical picture. And the hatters did not simply become ‘eccentric’, but also had Danbury tremorswhich are uncontrollable muscle spasms and intentional tremors that prevented fine movements. But there were also personality changes making pathological shyness, extreme irritability, depression and emotional lability the norm. The countries took note. Logically, this is something that had to be regulated to guarantee the safety of workers. France was one of the pioneers by prohibiting the use of mercury in the manufacture of hat boxes in 1898, but in Anglo-Saxon countries the industry was quite resistant to change. And the resentful. In the United States the process remained in force for decades. In this case, it took World War II for the tables to turn and it was not until 1941 when the use of mercury was definitively abandoned in key states such as Connecticut. But the reason was not the safety of its artisans, but rather that the war required a large amount of mercury to manufacture detonators, which forced the hat industry to look for substitutes such as hydrogen peroxide, as detailed in the industrial records of the time. Alice’s Hatter. It’s tempting to think that Lewis Carroll designed his character as a textbook case of erethism, but the evidence suggests otherwise. A classic analysis published in BMJ puts the dots on the i’s in this case, pointing out that Carrol knew the popular expression “mad as a hatter”, since he lived in a time where hatters with tremors were a visible social reality. However, the character of Alice in Wonderland It doesn’t quite fit the medical profile. The Hatter in the book is hyperactive, talkative, euphoric and a lover of riddles. Mercury erethism, on the other hand, is characterized by extreme shyness, social anxiety, and depression. It is likely that Carroll took the figure of the hatter and the idiom to create a caricature, but the identification of the character as “mercury poisoned” is a reading that we have made a posteriori. In Xataka | If you have ever thought that AI is useless, science has something for you: an antidote to cobras

The hypermarket is quite mortally wounded in Spain. There is an absolute winner: the Mercadona model

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For years the plan was to take the car, go to the hypermarket on duty and spend a couple of hours walking through its aisles to collect everything we needed and a few other things that we could find because there was almost everything there. is passing away by leaps and bounds. From the boom of the hypermarket to its decline. It was the 90s when they became popular, but there has been a change in purchasing and consumption habits that were catalyzed by the pandemic. The 2025 data from the consulting firm NIQ (former Nielsen) collected by El País They speak of a share of 10.2% of total sales in Spain. And last year it grew by 1.2% unlike the previous year, where it fell by 2%. The problem, in addition to its small piece of the pie, is that the majority of food distribution channels in Spain grew more. The heirs of hyper. These Mercasa studies date from spring 2025 cited by The Economist where they reflect that supermarkets already concentrated 91.8% of the commercial surface in the state. And it is not the only one: the other alternative is proximity formats. It is true that the NIQ data shows that the medium supermarket (between 300 and 799 square meters) fell more than the hypermarket, but its share is four points higher. The small supermarket (less than 300 square meters) and the large supermarket (between 800 and 2,500 square meters) are the big winners: the former rose two tenths with a sales increase of 9.1% and the latter did the same by nine tenths to reach 57.1% of the market and 7.6% of turnover. Here there is an absolute winner: Mercadona, whose new openings exceed 1,500 square meters and which has also been transforming its 1,600 stores for years to replace the smaller ones. And its strategy is paying off: its share has risen to 29.5% in 2025 despite having 10 fewer stores. The Mercadona effect or how efficiency kills size. This change in trends opens a new battle for proximity: the growth is in the 1,500 square meter supermarket aka the Mercadona model or in the convenience store. Growing no longer means opening more centers, but rather having better centers: it pays more to close 10 stores because you have more efficient stores. On the other hand, last mile logistics is gaining weight: it is easier and more affordable to serve an online order with a network of small stores scattered throughout the urban center than from a distant hypermarket. In addition, the franchise format allows chains to expand their brand without assuming operating costs. The consumer has spoken. The NIQ consultancy reflects clearly this paradigm shift: purchase occasions per household have grown by 11% in 2025 and units per basket have decreased by 7.6%. In short: we buy more times but less quantity, a trend that benefits local stores and penalizes hypermarkets. Kantar’s reading points to factors such as smaller homes, a higher average age, an urban context that favors this type of purchase over American car culture. The chains are moving. The fact that the hypermarket is in decline, reducing its weight in the market, directly affects the operators that exploit this format, such as Carrefour and Alcampo, followed by Eroski and El Corte Inglés. In NIQ figures, the first lowered its share two tenths to 7.2%, the second fell from 3.1 to 2.9% and the Basque chain fell one tenth to 4.3% and El Corte Inglés did the same two tenths, to 1.6%. So they are adapting to this paradigm shift: In Xataka | Mercadona has understood that Spain no longer wants to make its potato tortillas. And he is making gold with it In Xataka | Years ago Mercadona decided to conquer the market with its white brands. And that is making gold for some companies Cover | Carrefour

For centuries price has been a sign of quality. Generative AI is breaking that rule in dozens of sectors

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For centuries, price has served as a cognitive shortcut. If something costs a lot it is because, for one reason or another, it must be worth a lot. An Armani suit, Bang & Olufsen headphonesa McKinsey report. The number has always served to convey certain information to us before seeing the product. It was compressed reputation. With the arrival of generative AI, that is ending in many sectors. Today a logo can cost 15 euros or 15,000. And be the same logo. A market analysis can come from a consulting firm with offices on three continents or from a guy in pajamas who knows how to wear Deep Research. The report may be indistinguishable. In fact sometimes the second one will be betterbecause the guy in pajamas understands the sector and the consultant assigned the junior who was free. AI is breaking the link between production cost and final result. Something very similar to what Antonio Ortiz, AI popularizer and former final boss of this house, in “Artificial Intelligence and unlinking effort and result“. If anyone can generate in minutes what previously required teams, weeks, and invoices with many zeros, price no longer communicates much about quality. It’s starting to be noise. and this will force a signal migration. From ‘how much’ to ‘who’, to ‘how’ or ‘why’. The questions that will matter are going to be “who signed this?”, “what process followed?”, “what human decisions were behind it?” That is, the process will become the product. It is already beginning to be seen with design studios that They obsessively document any iterationor consultancies that not only sell you the deliverable but also also access to the reasoning of their partners. More and more we are digital artisans who charge for showing how we work and not only for what we deliver. AI has made production almost free, so we are being flooded with digital content of all kinds, so scarcity shifts to criteria. Knowing what to ask for, what to discard, what makes sense and what doesn’t. to good taste. AI can do almost anything, and what it can’t, it will learn next year. Deciding well what to do and what not to do is still expensive. There, for the moment and luckily, there is no shortcut. Featured image | Xataka In Xataka | The AI ​​of 2026 brings an uncomfortable truth: the most useful will be the one that watches us the most

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