Tired of being told that philosophy was just opinions, one guy set about collecting all the “philosophical facts” he could find. He got 200

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Philosophy has a reputation for discussing everything and the truth is that it is a reputation that has been hard-earned. However, it is not a matter of saying the first thing that comes to mind. It’s not even a matter of opinions, no matter how informed they may be. At least, that is the opinion of philosopher Bryan Frances. In fact, Frances is convinced that, in reality, philosophers only discuss details and minutiae: in substance, they agree on almost everything. But of course, it is not enough to say it: it must be defended. So he began to do something strange for a philosopher: instead of arguing it, he began to compile this enormous core of shared truths. That is, to make a list. But let’s start at the beginning. Frances’s thesis is that, as I say, there is great agreement among philosophers about the truth of many substantive claims. What’s more, he is convinced that, in philosophy, there is progress equivalent to that of any other science. That is, “based on facts.” The thing is that discipline — for better or worse — tends to revolve around the controversial. The curious thing is that he realized that not even the philosophers themselves were aware of this. And what a list… So, neither short nor lazy, he published ‘Philosophy as Fact-Based Discipline: 200 Philosophical Facts, published in Philosophical Studies‘: the list. A list of elementary truths pedagogically comparable to introductory science material. “It’s not the deepest,” but it’s (definitely) something cumulative and useful to understand. But, beyond that, it is also a way of reclaiming the discipline in a climate that repeatedly questions the role of the humanities in the body of knowledge. And what truths are those? Once we have made it clear that it is not about talking about deep truths (Does free will exist? Why being and not nothingness? etc…), the question becomes evident: what are they then? They are simpler things like, for example, what beliefs are (which come in many formats, they can be about almost anything or they can exist even if we are not aware of them), what evidence is (which are not just tests), what biases, emotions or faith are. It’s very interesting review the 200 facts because there are very interesting things about things that one had not asked: does believing in something make it true? Does the evidence have direction? Is suspending the trial a rational thing to do? Thought in action. But beyond the facts themselves, Frances’ idea is intelligent because it points to something singular: there is cognitive progress, an ultimate structure of reality to describe, a philosophical ‘holy grail’ to find. It’s not much, I admit. But the idea that the universe is not the horrible chaos it seems is (in its own way) comforting. Image | Alan Dela Cruz In Xataka | “A place of joy with pain”: the phrase that summarizes the Aztec philosophy to be happier in this life

get Nextory with Xataka Xtra

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At Xataka we always say that technology must be at the service of what we like. And in the newsroom we are very fond of devouring stories, both on screen and on paper and, increasingly, also from our headphones. Therefore, among the advantages of being part of Xataka XtraToday we want to talk to you about Nextory. If you join our community of subscribers, you have access to a Exclusive 45-day free trial period to enjoy its entire catalogue, with up to 20 hours of reading and listening included. Everything you will find in Nextory Sometimes we want to read, but we don’t have our hands free. Other times, we want to disconnect and take advantage of those dead moments on the subway or while we train. Nextory is a great option for those cases: 1.4 million options: A catalog of more than a million audiobooks, e-books and magazines. It is renewed often and you will find newly published books. The entire Planeta catalog: If you are a fan of great national and international authors, they have the complete catalog from the Planeta publishing house, with hits such as The City of Dead Lights by David Uclés or The Last Secret by Dan Brown. Compatible with all your devices: You can use Nextory on your smartphone or tablet, so you can take advantage of those gaps wherever you want to continue with the stories you have halfway done. Why try it now? The advantage of these 45 days free for the Xtra community is that they allow you to explore the service at your own pace and without pressure. Unlike the standard 7-day period, here you have a month and a half to delve into the catalog and see if it is for you without having to pay a subscription that starts at €7.99 per month. From my own experience, I tell you that it is ideal for training (I neither confirm nor deny that I have lengthened training sessions just to keep listening), traveling or for keeping up to date with magazines and books without accumulating paper. Join Xataka Xtra and start reading In Xataka Xtra We not only want you to be well informed about technology, but also to have access to tools to enjoy your free time. Nextory is a great companion for any xatakero who always has a long “to-read” list. Join ustake advantage of your 45 days gift and discover other options to read the stories you like. In Xataka | Best eBooks. Which eBook to buy and 11 recommended models

The ugliest and most hated building in Paris is its only skyscraper. Since they cannot demolish it, they have come up with another solution: make it invisible.

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For more than half a century, the Paris skyline has remained practically frozen. You may not have realized it, but in the historic center practically no building can exceed seven floors. This norm was born after a controversial construction of the seventies that provoked such public rejection that it changed forever the urban rules of the city. Today, that architectural experiment is once again at the center of the debate. And they have found a solution. The tower that should never have existed. In a city famous for its uniform horizon of six or seven-story stone buildings, the dark silhouette of the Montparnasse Tower It has been breaking the visual harmony of Paris for more than 50 years. Inaugurated in 1973 with 59 plants and nearly 210 meters high, the mass was born as a symbol of progress in a capital that was trying to modernize after the post-war period and transform the deteriorated Montparnasse neighborhood into a business district. The project had the political support of President Georges Pompidou and the Minister of Culture André Malraux, and had to demonstrate that the city could hug “the modernity of electricity”, fast trains and telecommunications. However, the result was an enormous monolith of dark brown steel and glass that stood out brutally above the urban fabric of the 19th century, almost immediately becoming the building most hated in the capital. Aging too quickly. As usually happens in hyperbolic projects that do not end well, the problem started even before that the tower was finished. The plan had been conceived in the fifties, but could not be started until the end of the sixties due to lack of technology, money and experience to build a skyscraper of those dimensions in Europe. When it was finally built, its late modernist aesthetic already seemed dated, and its dark color (compared by some critics to a nicotine stain) contrasted violently with classical Parisian architecture. It almost instantly became a crooked line of the capital. The black sheep. The public reaction was so negative that just four years after its inauguration, the City Council prohibited building buildings of more than seven floors in the city center, pushing out the skyscrapers towards the business district of La Défense. Since then, the tower has remained an urban anomaly or, if you will, a reminder to avoid: the only skyscraper in historic Paris. The most repudiated building in the most photographed city. Over the decades, many controversial buildings in Paris ended up being accepted and even lovedfrom the Eiffel Tower itself to the Louvre pyramid or the Pompidou Center. The Montparnasse Tower, on the other hand, never achieved reconcile with the Parisians. Jokes about its presence became part of popular culture: many say that the best view of Paris is from your viewpoint because it is the only place from which the tower cannot be seen. Others describe it as the box in which the Eiffel Tower arrived packaged. Even local politicians have called the building of “urban catastrophe”and for years proposals arose to tear it down completely. However, despite widespread rejection, the skyscraper has also maintained a curious cultural life. For example, the famous “French Spiderman” Alain Robert climbed the towerand has also appeared in movies and continues to attract tourists who climb to its observation platform to contemplate the city. An impossible demolition. You may be thinking about it. If Paris hates its own creation, why the hell hasn’t it been knocked down? As tempting as the idea of ​​removing the tower from the Paris skyline is for many, tearing it down was never an option. a realistic option. The reason? The building still houses offices, has a huge commercial infrastructure at its base and its demolition would involve a gigantic cost in addition to enormous logistical and environmental problems. Even those who would like to see it disappear acknowledge that it would be financially unviable. The tower is too big, too complex and too integrated into the neighborhood to simply erase it from the map. This reality forced the city and the promoters to look for an alternative solution: If the most hated skyscraper in Paris could not be destroyed, we would have to try to transform it. EITHER directly delete it. The solution: make it disappear. From this paradox was born one of the most ambitious urban renewal projects in the city. Because the strategy is not to demolish the Montparnasse Tower, but to radically alter your appearance so that, in essence, it is not “seen” and stops dominating the Parisian horizon. The plan, promoted by a consortium of French architects and accompanied by the remodeling of the surroundings designed by Renzo Pianoaims to replace the dark façade with a kind transparent crystal leather crossed by garden terraces, balconies and vertical gardens that visually fragment the volume of the building. The idea is quite clear: lighten its presence to the point that the gigantic brown block stop imposing yourself about him skyline. A “trick” worth 700 million. The transformation of the tower and the entire urban complex that surrounds it will exceed 700 million of euros and aims to convert a degraded environment (marked by an almost abandoned shopping center and an unwelcoming concrete platform) into an open space with squares, pedestrian walkways, green areas and new connections with the neighborhood. In this way, the tower will retain its structure original plan to reduce carbon emissions during construction, will incorporate more efficient energy technologies and add high-rise gardens and a rooftop greenhouse. The project has been caught for years between political debates, neighborhood concerns and architectural discussions, but the closure of the building to evict the tenants now opens the door to start of works. The strange fate of the Montparnasse mass. In short, more than fifty years after that giddy inauguration, the Montparnasse Tower is still being an anomaly repudiated in the city that banned skyscrapers after their construction. Paradoxically, that same singularity has also turned it into a species of unintentional icon … Read more

Why does your refrigerator dry out food and when is it worth buying a ‘low frost’ one?

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Nowadays most refrigerators are “No Frost”, but… what does this really mean? Perhaps what you have heard the most is that they do not make frost, but they also have other peculiarities with respect to the more traditional models. For this same reason, today we are going to review the differences between both types of refrigeratorswith the advantages and disadvantages in each case. How a No Frost refrigerator works No Frost refrigerators use fans that constantly remove the coldwhich prevents water vapor from condensing on its walls. Since there is a constant, dry air flow, moisture does not accumulate in the form of ice, which prevents us from having to remove it ourselves. In addition, many models have a system that allows you to eliminate small traces of ice if they appear. This No Frost system has some especially interesting advantages beyond not forming frost. By having a constant air flow, this cold air reaches all corners of the refrigerator equally, homogeneously, which allows all foods to be preserved better for longer. Now, it’s not all advantages. When using a No Frost refrigerator, it is advisable that we take into account that your air system is dryand by reaching all corners evenly it can dry out food, especially fresh items such as fruit, sausages or vegetables. We must also pay special attention to another point: No Frost refrigerators consume a little more because they have a resistance that heats up to melt the ice automatically. For this reason, we recommend looking at the annual consumption in kWh, and not only at the letter of energy efficiency. How a cycle refrigerator works Cyclic refrigerators (also called Low Frost either Less Frost by some brands) are the traditional ones, the traditional ones. They work through a refrigerant gas that travels throughout its circuit until it reaches the desired temperature, at which point the air flow stops. It does not work using fans, so they can generate less noise than No Frost. As the cold of these refrigerators is humid and they do not have a fan that constantly stirs the air, plaques of frost can form on the walls, which forces us to remove them manually so as not to compromise their efficiency and durability. Additionally, if too much frost forms, the refrigerator motor may have to work harder, which means possible increase in electricity bill. The good thing about these refrigerators is that by having a system that generates humid cold, food is usually better hydrated, preserving it better for longer. This occurs especially in fresh foods such as vegetables, which hold up better without drying out. The good of both worlds We can also find refrigerators that bring together the best of both worlds: hybrid refrigerators. In this case, they come with both systems, but separate: the No Frost system in the freezer and the cyclic system in the refrigerator. This prevents frost from forming in the freezer and allows the fresh food in the refrigerator to stay moist for longer. In other words: mixed models come with a No Frost freezer which prevents us from having to chip away at the ice that forms every so often and they also have a cyclical or dynamic refrigerator that prevent fresh foods, such as lettuce, from drying out. The good and the bad of both options, face to face No Frost Cyclic (traditional) THE GOOD 🟢 You do not need to remove the ice manually, the temperature is more homogeneous on all shelves and the food tends to cool faster thanks to the fan air system. They keep food fresh for longer and are usually quieter and cheaper. THE BAD 🔴 Their dry air can dry out fresh foods and they tend to be noisier due to the operation of the fan. Plus, they tend to be more expensive. They can form frost on your walls and can cause uneven temperatures on different shelves. Ideal for: Storing a lot of food in the freezer without the ice blocking the drawers or for families that open and close the freezer constantly, thus recovering the optimal temperature in a short time. Eat a lot of fruits or vegetables without losing moisture in a short time or if you want a refrigerator that makes little noise. We do the math to see which one can compensate you more. Each of the refrigerators has its advantages or disadvantages, so to see everything much clearer we are going to give a couple of practical examples. If you are looking for a refrigerator that allows you to use it without further ado, without worrying about removing frost every few months, a refrigerator with a No Frost system will compensate you much more. Actual use: Let’s say you usually freeze a lot of food. The accounts: No Frost refrigerators allow you to better recover the temperature by opening and closing the freezer many times. In addition, you avoid emptying it to defrost the ice every few months. So? It is a choice that lies in both the comfort and the usefulness of the freezer: fresh foods dry out more, but in exchange we have a freezer that better maintains its ideal temperature. If you opt for these refrigerators, at least have one or more drawers with humidity control, generally called VitaFresh or BioFresh. Although there are fewer of them in stores today, refrigerators that are cycled or have a traditional system can be very attractive, both for the preservation of certain foods and for other characteristics. Actual use: You don’t usually freeze a lot of food and you usually eat a lot of it fresh. The accounts: Having a cycle refrigerator allows fresh food to last better. In addition, by not using a fan constantly, they tend to make less noise. So? It is ideal if you consume more fresh foods than frozen foods or if you have the refrigerator next to, for example, the living room and you are looking for as little noise as possible. … Read more

We have found the “switch” of cellular aging. The secret is called protein AP2A1

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Regenerative medicine has a very clear objective ahead today: to look for the ‘button’ that can stop aging and allow us live much longeror at least have a better quality of life when we reach certain ages. And here the Japanese have a lot to say with a discovery that gives us more clues about how to preserve our cells much better. A new study. Everything that has to do with living a little longer, the truth is that it causes a little stir in the scientific world, and the article published in January 2025 in the magazine Cellular Signaling it was no wonder. Here it was shown how a team of researchers from Osaka University managed to identify a protein that literally acts as a cellular senescence switch called AP2A1. Our cells. Just as aging can be seen aesthetically, our cells also age through a process of senescence. Upon entering this state, the cells stop dividing, but do not die, since they become larger, more rigid and adhere strongly to their environment. And here a team of scientists has discovered the exact mechanism that causes this. Here the study has pointed to a protein as the culprit: AP2A1. A molecule that acts as a kind of biological transport truck that moves another protein, called β1 integrin along the fibers of the cell. That is why, over time, this process strengthens cell adhesion, causing the cell to become rigid and “old.” The revolution. The important thing here is that if the function of AP2A1 is suppressed in old cells, the biological clock reverses. That is, the cells decrease in size, lose rigidity, drastically reduce the classic markers of aging and proliferate and migrate again. Basically, they rejuvenate themselves. Furthermore, it has also been seen that if this protein is overexpressed in young cells, the result is great aging that accelerates. Your potential. Here the scientific team has seen that AP2A1 is not only emerging as a great marker that measures a person’s aging, but also acts as a direct therapeutic target. That is why some specialized websites such as Fight Aging! already analyze how blocking AP2A1 prevents inflammatory signaling typical of senescent cells. In this way, if we manage to inhibit this protein in the future, we could develop “anti-senescence” agents capable of extending our healthy life expectancy and combating age-related diseases, such as osteoarthritis. A long way. For now, this is something that has been estimated in cellular models in a dish in a laboratory, but it still remains to be seen how it works in the human organism with all the factors that intervene on a cell that is not isolated. What is clear is that the discovery of AP2A1 is a spectacular milestone in cell biology. We have basically found the button that controls the size and youth of cells in the laboratory, but the next big challenge for science will be to find out if we can press that same button, safely, inside the human body. And for that, there are still many years of research left. Images | National Cancer Institute Huy Phan In Xataka | While half the world is worried about aging, one industry is rubbing its hands: the elevator industry

The molecule that stores the sun for years and releases heat just when you need it

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In winter, raising the blinds to take advantage of the light and heat of the sun in the central hours of the day is a good idea to heat the house while saving on heating. Of course, as the afternoon passes and night falls, goodbye to the sun and its heat. From an energy point of view, it would be fantastic to be able to store the sun in a bottle to release its heat when needed. Something like this has occurred to a research team from the University of California in Santa Barbara, which has published its research in Science: a molecule that captures sunlight, stores it for years without loss, and releases it on demand. No plugs or batteries. Professor Grace Han’s group has synthesized a modified organic molecule inspired by DNA. It is called pyrimidone and is capable of capturing solar energy, storing it in chemical bonds and releasing it as heat in a controlled and reversible manner. In short, as if it were a battery. Context. The analogy of the bottled sun is for practical purposes one of the great problems of solar energy: the issue is not so much capturing it, but rather storing it because obviously there is not always enough sun to satisfy demand. And conventional batteries degrade, are heavy, carry inherent management risks, and are expensive (although now they are below minimums). What Han’s team is proposing is not new: molecular thermal storage, known as “MOST” for short, has been researched for years. However, until now no system had managed to combine competitive energy densities with release temperatures sufficient for real practical application. Why is it important. Because this research breaks two essential barriers that make MOST increasingly closer to being a reality: It has an energy density of more than 1.6 megajoules per kilogram, almost double the energy density of a standard lithium-ion battery. It releases enough heat to be able to boil water under ambient conditions. It is also soluble in water, which makes it potentially compatible with circulation systems in solar collectors. These properties open the door to uses such as domestic heating and domestic hot water (DHW), areas without an electrical grid or systems integrated into roofs. How it works. It is important to highlight that despite the analogies with solar energy, its mechanism is completely different from that of photovoltaic cells. Come on, it does not convert light into electricity, but rather it transforms it into chemical energy that it stores in its chemical bonds. The molecule, which was designed with computational modeling thinking about reducing it as much as possible, works as if it were a spring: upon absorbing ultraviolet light it undergoes a reversible change in its shape, passing into a high-energy state. The molecule can remain stable in that state for years until an external stimulus causes it to relax, releasing the accumulated heat. As Han Nguyen detailslead author of the article, “the concept is reusable and recyclable.” From Barcelona to California. The fact that the MOST have been in the laboratory for a long time is so true that in 2024 a team from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia published a paper in Joule on a hybrid device that integrated a MOST system directly into a silicon photovoltaic cell. The idea is that organic molecules (composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, fluorine and nitrogen) act on the one hand by storing energy and on the other, as an optical filter and cooling agent for the solar cell. The molecules absorb the UV photons that silicon does not use well, cool the cell and store that surplus as chemical energy. Thus, the solar cell generates more electricity and nothing is wasted: the system achieved a solar utilization efficiency of 14.9% and a record of 2.3% in MOST storage. Yes, but. That two independent studies separated in time work on the MOST shows that this technology is more than a mere laboratory concept: it is getting closer to having real applications. Of course, like any other innovation, it faces the challenge of scalability and costs, essential for eventual industrial deployment. In Xataka | Plastic solar panels have always been more of a dream than reality: China has just changed that In Xataka | Spain has just plugged in more batteries in one month than in three years: this is the plan to save our cheaper energy Cover | POT

“True friendship is like phosphorescence”

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I don’t know who you are or where you’re reading from, but I have bad news: it’s very (very) unlikely that you’ll win the lottery. The more you try, the better; but statistics say that your options they are very low. What you will have to deal with throughout life is to deal with complicated situations: duels, breakups, disappointments and a wide variety of emotions that will drag your morale to the ground. It will happen to you, me and the neighbor on the fifth floor, just as it happened more than eight decades ago to Rabindranath Thakur ‘Tagore’ (1861-1941), one of the Bengali literati and thinkers most important of all time. Throughout his life Tagore shone as an intellectual and achieved great achievements, including the Nobel Prize in Literature 1913. He also had the fortune of growing up in a cultured home, receiving a good education and traveling from a very young age. None of this, however, saved him from facing his own dark clouds in life: he was widowed at the age of 40 and several of his children died when they were very young. Not to mention that he had to live through the turbulent start of the 20th century. That’s why he knew well what comforts when one faces low hours. And that is why this phrase of his resonates in 2026 with a special force: “True friendship is like phosphorescence, it shines best when everything has gone dark.” What Tagore perhaps could not imagine is to what extent his words go beyond poetry to fully enter into the field of science. Over the last decades researchers from all over the world have tried to clarify what makes us feel happy, an ambitious multidisciplinary undertaking that has yielded results that would probably make the Indian writer nod. It’s not just that authentic friendship “shines” in the face of adversity. Thanks to it, we do it, with advantages both emotionally and physiologically. One of the tests more resounding the one who maybe is leaves her the most curious study developed by Harvard University, an investigation conducted with hundreds of subjects over more than seven decades to understand how people are formed and, above all, what leads us to be happy. For this purpose, in 1938, researchers selected a group of more than 700 young people (included everyone from college students to teenagers from deprived neighborhoods of Boston) and dedicated themselves to monitoring their physical and mental health for decades. Over time the study became more and more complex, expanding and including new generations. In fact it has become one of the experiments longest in historywith more than 80 years of development. Among those original ‘guinea pigs’ were people who succeeded in the business world, fulfilled their dreams of becoming a doctor, or enjoyed successful careers in the field of law. Others did not do so well in life: they fell into alcoholism or ended up developing diseases. What did their trajectories show? “That our relationships and how happy we are in them have a great influence on our health,” explains Robert Waldingerdirector of the study, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School. “Taking care of your body is important, but taking care of your relationships is also a form of self-care. I think that’s the revelation.” The experiment proves that, more than money or famewhat helps us most to enjoy satisfactory lives are “close relationships”, bonds that also have important advantages for our health. “They help delay mental and physical decline and are better predictors of a long and happy life than social class, IQ or even genes,” they explain from The Harvard Gazette. This maxim is valid for all members of the study, from well-off university students to young people from depressed areas. Experts identified a “strong correlation” between the prosperity of the study participants and “their family and friendship relationships.” “When we put together everything we knew about them at age fifty, it wasn’t their cholesterol levels in middle age that predicted how they were going to age. It was how satisfied they were with their relationships. The people who were most satisfied at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80,” adds Waldinger.. It may sound abstract, but as explains the psychiatrist to the BBC, there is a direct relationship between the quality of our friendships and our body. We live surrounded by stress, situations that tend to increase our heart rate and blood pressure. There’s nothing strange about it. It is a natural, physiological response, similar to the one called “fight or flight reaction”. The problem is that it is common for us to carry this state of nervousness, maintaining high levels of cortisol and inflammation, which affects our bodies. A good social network can be the perfect antidote to avoid this. “If something happens to me that has bothered me, that is stressful, I can go home and talk to my wife or call a friend. If they are good listeners I can feel my stress level go down. But if I don’t have anyone like that, if I am isolated and alone, what we believe is that the body remains in a low degree of ‘fight or flight reaction,’” reflect Waldinger. In other words: friendship is an antidote, while loneliness and isolation contribute to our state of stress. The Harvard study is not the only study that agrees with Tagore about the importance of friendship and to what extent it can help us through anxiety. Another researcher who knows the phenomenon well is Robin Dunbara renowned anthropologist from the University of Oxford who in the 90s presented a theory that maintains that humans cannot maintain more than 150 relationships simultaneously. Whether or not you share that idea (especially in the age of social media), Dunbar defends the healing power of friendship, something he maintained even in a trial from 2023: “Along with quitting smoking, the best thing we can do to increase our life … Read more

While the West debates what to do with AI in schools, in China there are already schools turning it into a child tutor

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Anyone who has been a child or a parent knows the scene: the flexo light on, an incomprehensible math problem on the table, tears falling from the frustration of not understanding a lesson or not being able to pronounce a foreign language, and a parent losing patience after explaining the same thing for the fifth time. In China they have found a way to turn it around, parents frustrated and exhausted by their workdays are delegating the academic supervision of their children to artificial intelligence. While in different countries there is a strong debate and fear about whether AI erodes critical thinking of students, the opposite is true in China: a 2025 survey led by KPMG revealed that more than 90% of the Chinese are optimistic about this technology. The phenomenon came to light and sparked debate on social media when a mother in Shandong province discovered her husband playing on his mobile phone while letting her Kimi AIa chatbot capable of processing two million characters, did his son’s homework. But this father is not an isolated case. Many adults are using AI not just to teach, but to do the dreaded “parenting chores.” Mr. Zhang, for example, admitted to using the chatbot Doubao to generate summaries of the Aesop’s Fables and print step-by-step images for your third grader’s craft projects. The market has responded with an avalanche of gadgets. Zheng Wenqi, a working mother, bought for about 375 dollars the “Native Language Star”, a device composed of a mask that muffles your voice in Chinese and a speaker that translates it into English to converse with your children. Others, like university professor Wu Ling, They invested $1,170 in AlphaDoga robot dog powered by the DeepSeek model that practices English, dances and keeps his only son company. There are even parents who have gone one step further by becoming creators. This is the case of Yin Xingyu, a mother from Shenzhen who does not know how to program, but who uses the technique of vibecoding with DeepSeek to create interactive English word games for her 6-year-old daughter, as well as generate personalized comics using the Nano Banana Pro imaging model. For the purist parents, devices have emerged such as the “Youdao AI Q&A Pen”, a smart pen designed from “asceticism”: it has no browser or games, it only guides the child step by step in their mathematical reasoning without giving them the direct answer. A multi-million dollar business in a gray area All this enthusiasm has fueled a runaway educational technology market valued at more than $43 billion. Outsourcing has left the homes to take to the streets and, until July 2024, The opening of about 50,000 was estimated “AI study rooms” across the country. In these establishments, children sit in cubicles in front of standardized tablets; They cannot leave until the indicators on the screen turn from red (errors) to green (correct answers). As detailed on CCTVthe “teachers” in these rooms do not teach, they are prohibited from explaining the subject and they act as mere supervisors and commissioned salespeople. To cope with the monotony of 6 to 8 hours answering questions, some children learn to play Go or Gomoku secretly on the same machines, often with the supervisors’ blind eye. However, former employees and parents report that in many of these centers, “artificial intelligence” is just a marketing façade to charge more, and children simply consume pre-recorded lessons on basic tablets. Behind these study rooms hides a business survival tactic. Many of these centers operate in a gray zone to avoid the strict “double reduction” policy. imposed by the government in 2021which banned for-profit tutoring to relieve financial and academic pressure on families. By arguing that “it is AI that teaches and not a human,” these companies dodge education regulators, registering under names of “cultural media” and avoiding words like “enrollment” or “classes.” Franchises are strategically expanding into peri-urban areas and small towns, where rents are low and parents are equally willing to pay for a place to leave their children. This mass adoption is no accident; is backed by a clear state directive. The Chinese government is promoting the integration of AI in education as part of a national strategy to accelerate its technological progress against global competitors such as the United States. The regulations are already on the table. Starting with the fall 2025 semester, Beijing will require a minimum of eight hours per year of AI education in all primary and secondary schools. The transition has been rapid and planned, with higher education leading the way: 99% of university students and teachers in China already use generative tools, and elite universities such as Zhejiang or Fudan have made AI courses mandatory and transversal subjects. Science supports this dive. An empirical study conducted with high school students in H city showed that the duration of daily use of AI tools significantly and positively influences students’ AI knowledge and algorithmic thinking. That is, constant exposure is already shaping your cognitive and technological abilities. The debate is served The families’ opinions are drastically divided. For many, AI democratizes education. Mothers like Li Linyun celebrate that the Doubao chatbot be a “24-hour, knowledgeable and extremely patient teacher,” which has saved him hundreds of dollars on human tutors and improved his relationship with his daughter. On the other hand, technological dependence terrifies educators and a faction of parents, who criticize that children are becoming lazy and losing the ability to think independently. In study halls, proctors notice that students, desperate to turn the screen green, resort to tactical memorization: repeatedly choosing incorrect answers by discard until the system approves them, without actually learning the concept. Added to this is the “AI illusion” and its hallucinations. Su Xiao, mother of a ninth grader, discovered that the general models They could invent historical data with complete confidence and fluency, or omit crucial data in mathematical problems, offering logically impeccable but erroneous results. This forced her to become a “cyber quality inspector,” … Read more

How to schedule a daily summary of your new newsletters sent by artificial intelligence to your email

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Let’s tell you how to create a summary of all the newsletters received in your email electronic using artificial intelligence. For this, we are going to use the service Make to create a workflow or workflow with a three-step automation. The idea is to have an email where we receive the newsletters, and configure an automation that once a day analyzes if you have new ones in your mailbox, sends them to an AI like Gemini to make a summary for you, and to send you an email to a second account with a summary of each newsletter you have. But before we start, I must remind you that when you do this, you will be sharing your email data first with Make, where you will link your account, and then with Gemini to give you a summary. It is something that you should take into account if you are a person who wants to take maximum care of your privacy. And if you don’t want to complicate things so much, remember that we have taught you how to make a timely summary of your newsletters with AI. This will not be programmed as we are going to show you today, but you will only need to link your email directly to an AI and write the prompt corresponding. You have to use two email accounts To create this automation you will need two email accounts. One will receive the newsletters and send an automatic email with the summary of each one to your second account. A practical tip is to have an account only for newsletters. With this, first you will prevent unwanted newsletters from reaching you and so much data from your main account being shared, and on the other hand, when you create this workflow you will not be linking the email that you normally use, only the one for the newsletters. And with this, when you configure the third step or module of our workflow, that is where you will have to put the main email to receive the summaries, while all the connections and content explorations will be where the newsletters arrive. Tag your newsletters You will also have to tag all newsletters that you receive. This way, you will have all the emails under that label, and then when creating the automation it will be easier to point out where the AI ​​has to read. For example in Gmail, go to the manage labels option and create one. Once you have created the label, simply label all the emails that are newsletters. So, sender addresses will be labeledand all the emails that arrive will go directly to the tag that you have created for the newsletters. Get the AI ​​API you want to use For this automation, also we are going to need the API of an AI to be able to use it in our project. In our case, we will follow the guide that we have made for you to get the free Gemini APIand thus use Google AI to process the newsletters and send you the summaries. You simply have to enter the website of aistudio.google.com and sign in with your Google account. When you do, in the left bar click on API keysand then at the top click on Create API key. By doing so, create a new project to link the key to and that’s it. When you have created the API, you will see that it appears in the list of API keys. You just have to click on the left, below where it says Clueand a window with the API will open, starting with “AIza–“. You can do this with any other AI whose API you want to use. Now, create your automation Let’s now move on to creating our automation. As we have been doing several times, we are going to turn to Make, as it is a platform that is easy to use and very versatile. In it we will create automations with Gmail and Gemini modules, and in all of them we will have to log in. We are going to skip these steps in the guide, but to log in with Gemini you will need to enter the API that we obtained in the previous step, and with Gmail you will have to log in and give the platform permission to read all your emails and be able to write them in your name. First the Gmail module The first thing we are going to do is create a new scenario in Make, and add module Watch emails from Gmail inside him. This module is used to make the automation read emails, and can be launched when you receive a new one. Now we go to the panel to configure this module. In him, in Folder you can put All mailso that it reads all the emails, but just below it says that it does not include spam and garbage. So make sure the newsletters don’t go there. In Label you have to choose the label Newsletters that we have created before in Gmail. As a criterion you can put them all, or those you have not read yet, and below mark the processed emails as read. Finally, you can set a limit on the number of emails to process. Save it like this, and in the next step choose if you want to process the emails from now on, all of them, or from a date. Now a Gemini module to do the summary We now go to the second step, that of create a Gemini module right after Gmail. Click on the + to the right of the Gmail module, among the options look for Google Gemini, and within its functions choose the option Generate a response. This is used to generate a response from some data you give it, which in this case will be emails labeled as newsletters. Now let’s configure this module. You will first have to … Read more

In 1885, Finland mistakenly built a lighthouse in Sweden, so its neighbor redrew the border to return it to them.

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The Market Island It is most particular. How Guinness certifiesalong with Koiluoto, is the smallest uninhabited island shared between two nations: Sweden and Finland, once integrated into the Russian Empire (became independent in 1917but the history of Finland is another story). Unlike other islands with this casuistry such as Hispaniola (shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic), its border is not more or less a straight line: It looks like an S, as you can see in the image that illustrates this article. The reason for this winding muga is a lighthouse. As a curiosity, the Market lighthouse It had its lighthouse keeper in charge of managing it until it was automated in 1977, at which time the island became uninhabited, beyond tourists who came to visit its impressive fauna. Located at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia in the Baltic Sea, Märket is halfway between the islands bordering the Swedish provinces of Uppsala and Stockholm to the west, and the Finnish archipelago of Åland to the east. The western part of the island is administered by Sweden and is also divided into two provinces: Uppsala and Stockholm. The eastern area corresponds to Hammarland, belonging to the Finnish autonomous territory of Åland. Although the exact date on which Märket emerged from the sea is unknown, geology is based in the postglacial rebound rhythm of the region (greater than 5 mm per year) to point to the 16th century. Märket barely has 0.033 square kilometers, spread over a surface of mostly smooth diabase rock, with a maximum elevation of about 3.5 meters above sea level. On its northern and southern coasts there are coves that serve as natural ports for small boats. To prevent ships from running aground on its reef, in 1885 the Tsar of Russia commissioned the construction of a lighthouse, designed by the Finnish architect Georg Schreck: the wayward Märket lighthouse. Stay with one piece of information: Schreck chose the highest point on the island to build it with all the sense in the world: it is the least exposed to waves and ice. The Märket Island lighthouse has caused Sweden and Finland to change their borders But before we go to 1885, let’s move to 1809, the moment when Sweden and the Russian Empire drew their borders in the Treaty of Fredrikshamn. According to this agreement, the borders would be fixed on geographical elements and the sea border would be fixed in the Åland Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia, with the islands assigned to the nearest country. The topographical description of 1811 ruled: that line crossed Märket exactly through its geographical center. This original border can be revised in the historical archive Histdocwhich houses the official record: Original Märket border. Official document of the governments of Sweden and Finland. Via Histdoc You don’t have to pay much attention to observe an abysmal difference between the original border and the current one. Now it is time to travel back in time to 1885 when, after enduring the harsh climate (even in summer) of the island, the construction of the lighthouse was completed. Then two other attached buildings would arrive, a warehouse and a machine room. There was just one tiny, tiny problem.: They had planted it on the Swedish side. Märket is (and always has been) an inhospitable island in the wilderness, not a place to pass through or stay. So no one bothered to solve this little problem until the 1980s. Specifically, the formal border demarcation process of 1979-1981 officially showed that the lighthouse was between 35 and 60 meters west of the central point of the islet: on the Swedish side. As you can see on the map, the buildings are marked in part B, entirely on the Swedish side. So in 1985 they resolved it amicably. A joint Swedish-Finnish commission decided to modify the border so that the lighthouse was on the Finnish side through an exchange of territories, which generated that characteristic S shape. The maritime borders could not be modified without affecting the fishing areas, so they were limited to the land. Since then, the border has been marked with perforations in the rock itself (doing it any other way is not feasible due to its meteorological conditions) for almost 500 meters. In Xataka | A man bought a desert island in 1962: he planted 16,000 trees and turned it into an anti-rich sanctuary In Xataka | There is a paradise island that you only enter armed. And the United Kingdom wants to “liberate” it from the United States Cover | Google Maps and tt_koski

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