abyss

“It is sold as the golden goal, but for some it is an existential abyss”

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Leo She is 79 years old and continues to work in the nut store she opened 51 years ago with her husband. Amadeoa 96-year-old “tavernkeeper”, may be the oldest active hotelier in Spain; After a lifetime of working, he continues to proudly say that he is in love with the union and that his thing is “a game” that feeds him spiritually. These two stories have gone viral on the social media profile of @comilonestvwhich takes time recovering people’s stories who “have spent a lifetime working” and continue to do so despite having passed retirement age. The comments that accompany these videos contain a mixture of astonishment and admiration, but above all they make it clear that these cases represent a not so small reality in Spain—dozens of users mention similar examples in their cities and nearby environments. The moment of the retirement It is often imagined as a desired goal after decades of work: a stage associated with more freedom, one’s own time, and the possibility of taking up hobbies or discovering new ones. However, for a part of the population, the arrival of retirement does not imply a total break with their profession. While some people completely disassociate themselves from their work activity, others choose to maintain a certain connection with it or even decide to continue working beyond retirement age. The economic weight The transition from collecting a payroll to receiving a pension implies, in many cases, a reconfiguration of the economy in many homes. Money then appears as one of the possible motivations among those people who choose to continue working when the opportunity to retire arrives. This trend has exploded in the last decade in the United States, where studies They point out how the number of workers aged 65 or over who remain in the labor market has grown. In fact, some statistics They point out that in 2024 just over 22% of adults over 65 were still employed, whether full or part-time. Meanwhile, in Spain, the last Active Population Survey (EPA) of 2025 has placed the employment among those over 65 years of age at historical highs, going from 5% to 14% in the last ten years. There are multiple factors behind this increase, but the economic factor appears recurrently in those who decide to prolong their working life. Antonio, a 67-year-old doctor who continues to practice in the private sector after retiring from the public system — and who prefers to keep his identity private — assures that “the economic issue usually weighs heavily” in this decision. Especially, he explains, because many people reach retirement with children still financially dependent. “It is very rare that at 65 years old people have their children already placed, emancipated and all expenses paid,” he points out. He assures that the situation has changed a lot compared to previous generations: “Before, when the parents retired, the children were already emancipated. Not now.” The delay in emancipation and the cost increase of life means that many families continue to have significant financial burdens even after reaching retirement age, which according to Antonio makes it “so common” in the health sector to maintain activity: “It is very rare for someone at 65 to say: ‘I’ll take my clogs and phonendo forever’.” However, reducing this phenomenon solely to an economic issue would be oversimplifying it for Gema Pérez Rojo, professor at the CEU San Pablo University and psychologist certified by the Official College of Psychology of Madrid. Although money matters—and a lot in some cases—the psychologist believes that it is a multifactorial decision and “it is rarely just about money.” A decision with different “edges” The reasons for continuing to work at retirement age rarely respond to a single reason. For Antonio, in fact, there are several: he mentions financial income, but also the need to stay active and avoid boredom —“What do I do at home 24 hours without any professional activity?”—, continue feeling useful, maintain a routine, continue practicing a profession that he defines as vocational or “wait” for his partner, who is not yet old enough to retire. Rosa María Álvarez Barral, a psychologist active in Venezuela, also does not believe that there is a “specific profile” of a person who chooses to continue their work activity beyond the age of 65. In his opinion, this is a decision that mixes motivational factorssocial and economic. “Work makes you feel important, valuable, distracted and continues to have interesting challenges,” he explains. Furthermore, he maintains that the profession can become an important part of personal identity and provide social recognition, especially in people with long careers or prestige within their sector. “Retirement is often sold as the golden goal of existence, but psychologically it is complex territory. It is not just a change of schedule; it is a metamorphosis of one’s identity.” This is how Professor Pérez Rojo explains how the arrival of retirement can be “for some a haven of peace and for others an existential abyss.” During working life, the profession is part of our cover letter. And after decades dedicated to a position, Pérez Rojo, who is also part of the Aging research group (BUENAVEJEZ), notices how “self-concept merges with role.” So, “when you retire you not only leave a job, you leave an identity.” Psychologist Álvarez Barral speaks of “symbiosis” or “marriage”: a “sense that your identity is linked to your profession.” This is the case of Nacho Valbuena, a journalist who, despite having retired three years ago, continues to collaborate with the media very actively. For him, vocation has been key and age has not represented an impediment, since he claims not to be able to live without practicing journalism: “I don’t think about age, I will be 90 years old and I will continue with this profession (…) It is very deep within me.” And the type of employment is decisive when facing the transition to retirement. Those who have held “jobs with a high load of physical or mental stress … Read more

In 1967 a war closed the Suez Canal for eight years. Half a century later, the Strait of Hormuz looks into the same abyss

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When war broke out between Egypt and Israel in 1967, fifteen commercial ships were trapped in the Suez Canal. The captains dropped anchor assuming they would only have to wait a few days for the fighting to end. They were right about the duration of hostilities: it was the Six Day War. However, It took eight years for the canal to reopen. When the ships were finally able to set sail in 1975, only two were still seaworthy. The rest had rusted so much under the desert sun that They went down in history as the “Yellow Fleet”. Almost sixty years later, history rhymes in the Persian Gulf. Ninety days after the war between the United States, Israel and Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz at the end of February, the most important maritime passage in the world remains closed. Dozens of oil tankers wait at anchor, waiting for a diplomatic agreement that always seems imminent but never arrives. The optimism trap on Wall Street The analyst Javier Blas, in your column for Bloombergexposes the dangerous complacency with which the world is facing this closure. The financial industry operates under an adapted version of Stein’s Law: “The Strait cannot be closed forever because it would cause too much economic damage; therefore, it will reopen soon.” The problem with this logic is that the economy has not yet inflicted the pain necessary to force peace. As Blas points out: For Washington: The war is proving politically cheap. The US economy is riding with quarterly growth of more than 4% and the S&P 500 index is close to historical highs, having risen almost 10% since the start of the conflict. For Tehran: Even as the currency plummets and inflation chokes the population, the Iranian regime has demonstrated for decades an almost inexhaustible capacity to absorb economic punishment when it considers it faces an existential threat. While the mediators seek an agreement in Islamabadinertia maintains the illusion of normality. The market has absorbed the disappearance of about 20 million barrels per day thanks to accumulated inventories and massive releases of strategic reserves. Qero the global tank is emptying. June: The end of logistics inertia If we do not see shortages on the streets it is due to pure physics of transportation: a supertanker moves at the speed of a bicycle. The fuel that the West consumed in the spring left the Gulf before the first missile fell. However, the data They already show the cracks in the system. Global demand fell by 5 million barrels per day in April, the largest consumption destruction since the COVID-19 pandemic. And the blow is already felt at home: Funcas warns thatIf the conflict continues, Spanish inflation will exceed 4% and growth will fall to 1.8%. In addition, the multimillion-dollar extra cost of fuel for airlines such as Iberia or Vueling directly threatens the waterline of Spanish tourism. The real precipice has a date: June. With the arrival of summer, the peak driving season and the massive use of air conditioning will collide with inventories at multi-year lows. Furthermore, a diplomatic reopening it would not solve the physical problem: Clearing the mile-wide Hormuz safe lane would require months of complex naval operations. However, the impact of this crisis goes far beyond the gas pump. As the physical shortage of crude oil becomes undeniable, the most serious repercussions are brewing in the bowels of the global financial system: The fracture of the petrodollar: The unwritten agreement of 1974, which guaranteed security in the Gulf in exchange for crude oil being sold in dollars and reinvested in US debt, is breaking down. Countries like India They are selling their US Treasury bonds to obtain liquidity and pay for much more expensive oil. The bond market: The persistence of energy inflation has skyrocketed sovereign bond yields. 30-year Treasury bonds in the US exceeded 5.15%. The cost of real life: If government bonds yield above 5%, 30-year mortgages are inexorably approaching 7%. This translates into more expensive loans, lower business investment and a paralysis of the real estate market. As several analysts warn, undoing the economic damage from Hormuz could require an induced recession to curb borrowing costs. The bypass of the desert While the world waits, some actors have already given up on Hormuz. United Arab Emirates has accelerated urgently the construction of a gigantic pipeline that bypasses the strait, with the goal of exporting 3.5 million barrels a day directly to the Gulf of Oman by 2027. It is “prudent planning for the worst scenario,” and a clear sign that Abu Dhabi believes the waterway could remain threatened for years. Half a century ago, no one imagined that 15 ships would spend a decade rotting in the sun in Suez for a war that lasted less than a week. Today, the world assumes that the Hormuz crisis will be a temporary blip. But as the days go by, the shock absorbers wear out and the financial markets creak. The oil is simply still waiting in the sea. Image | Photo by Jens Rademacher on Unsplash Xataka | The war in the East has reached an unexpected agreement: one where the US does not discuss Iran’s missiles, bombs or uranium

The genome of a Siberian Neanderthal reveals how they lived on the edge of the abyss

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The Denisova Cave, nestled in the cold Altai Mountains of Siberia, continues to be one of the greatest treasures for world paleonthropology, since it brings together a large number of samples that enrich our history. One of the latest discoveries points to how they were organized and they lived Neanderthal populations in this remote Asian region. Something they have done from the genome of a Neanderthal man from 110,000 years ago. How it was done. The protagonist of this new research published in PNAS is a bone fragment named D17 that was found in these Asian mountains. But in light of previous studies, this team has managed to greatly refine the precision of sequencing, achieving an astonishing 37-fold coverage. This in genomics means that each “letter” of your DNA has been read 37 times, ensuring that the genome we are looking at is extraordinarily precise and not plagued by the degradation errors typical in such old samples. The result. When comparing the D17 genome With other fossils, scientists were in for a surprise, since this individual was directly related to another Neanderthal from the same cave, known as D5, who lived about 120,000 years ago. Despite being separated by 10,000 years of history, the two shared a close genetic link. This tells us something fundamental about Denisova Cave, as it was not a fixed settlement or permanent Neanderthal “city.” Rather, it acted as a recurring base camp or historical refuge to which closely related groups returned from generation to generation, maintaining an unusual regional genetic stability. Endogamy. Perhaps most important in this study is the evidence about how the population was structured. Here D17’s genome shows the genetic scars of living in a very empty world, as Neanderthal populations were tiny and incredibly dispersed. And it is no wonder because we are talking about groups of 50 individuals. This lack of other nearby groups with which to reproduce forced the Altai Neanderthals to crossing paths between close relatives for millennia. The problem with all this is that, being such small populations, the genetic changes were fixed quickly, separating them evolutionarily from other Neanderthal populations in Europe at an accelerated rate. A crossroads. If we started this article by mentioning the Denisova cave, logically we must also talk about the Denisovans, which is the other extinct human species discovered there. Here the new genomic analysis of D17 also confirms gene flow with this mysterious species. In both the D17 and older D5 genomes, scientists have found undeniable genetic traces of interbreeding with the Denisovans. This depicts the Denisova cave not only as a recurring refuge for isolated Neanderthal lineages, but as a true prehistoric crucible, a crossroads where two human species met, interacted and left a genetic legacy that today, through the most cutting-edge technology, we are managing to decipher. Images | freepik In Xataka | We had always thought of Neanderthals as “scavengers”: more and more studies point to the opposite

An order from Beijing has just left it on the brink of the abyss

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A Chinese attack on Taiwan would be “a situation that threatens the survival” of Japan. Sanae Takaichi, Japanese Prime Minister, said it on November 9, and it was the trigger for a diplomatic outbreak between the two nations which to this day remains very tense. One of its victims has been tourism. what’s happening. Following Takaichi’s statements, the Chinese government advised its citizens to avoid traveling to Japan and it seems that they have listened to him. They count in Nikkei Asia that the entire ecosystem of businesses that made a living from Chinese tourism in Japan is suffering due to this dispute. Some owners of accommodations that had the full sign posted have found themselves with massive cancellations and the Chinese restaurants in the most touristy areas are practically empty. Why is it important. It is an example of how tensions between China and Japan quickly translate into very concrete economic impacts. Most of Japan’s tourism comes from China and has created an entire industry around it called “yitiao long”, which translates to “a dragon”. It is estimated that it moves around 54,000 million euros per year. the dragon. It is the name given to the tourism industry for Chinese citizens who visit Japan. They offer itineraries, restaurants, transportation, entertainment, accommodations and much more. The peculiarity is that the services are offered by Chinese-owned businesses, so everything is done in the same language and they even use Chinese payment systems to avoid having to change money. The fact that they are businesses so oriented towards Chinese clientele makes it difficult for them to pivot towards other nationalities. Tensions. China’s request not to travel to Japan has not been the only consequence after the prime minister’s statements. China has also pressed threatening aerial maneuvers and the decision of leave japanese zoos without pandasa measure that may seem trivial but has a great background. Goodbye to ambiguity. China’s response to the Japanese Prime Minister’s phrase may seem excessive, but Takaichi’s phrase implies several important details. The first thing is that it breaks with the tradition of previous leaders, whose position on Taiwan had always been ambiguous. On the other hand, the mention of the “survival-threatening situation” is not trivial. It refers to a legal figure that would allow Japan to use force in the event that China attacks Taiwan, even if it does not attack them directly. Image | Gije Cho, Pexels In Xataka | The United States may win the AI ​​race, but its problem is different: China is winning all the others

the strange inhabitants of the Antarctic abyss

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In the frozen, forgotten depths of the South Atlantic, an international team of scientists has achieved the unexpected: confirming the existence of thirty completely new marine species for science. Among them, a creature stands out that challenges what we know about life in the deep ocean: a spherical sponge covered in hooks, capable of catching its prey with such forceful efficiency that the team itself baptized it as “death ball”. We don’t know everything. With this type of news, science places our feet in reality, since although we have been populating this planet for many years, there are still things that we do not know. An example are these new species that show us that in the depths of the ocean we have a great mystery for humans and that there is still a way to surprise us with our planet. A predator. Most marine sponges They are considered “peaceful”filter feeding and causing no further harm to anyone. But the Chondrocladia sp. novfound more than three kilometers below the surface near Montagu Island, uses microhooks that act as a kind of “deadly Velcro” on crabs and other invertebrates, which it slowly absorbs. Visually, this is a sponge that is actually quite surprising, since it is white and has appendages ending in small balls. In this way, it managed to gain the attention of specialists who have described it as one of the strangest animals of the entire expedition. This is something that breaks with what a traditional sponge does that we all have in mind, which simply feeds on particles and remains in the water itself. But this new species is committed to feeding on other living beings and on those that are above the food chainas the study researchers point out. Technology has been key. Right now, accessing the seabed is a real challenge for humans. One of the great impediments is the great pressure that exists in that environment that becomes really hostile. But thanks to technological advances it has been achieved. This specific investigation has had a underwater robot named SuBastian and high definition cameras. The result of the expedition was thousands of hours of video and nearly 2,000 specimens among the images that had to be analyzed. But the species were not the most notable part of this research, since new hydrothermal springs, coral gardens with volcanic structures were also discovered, and a juvenile colossal squid was recorded for the first time. ​ Not just sponges. It is a fact that on the seabed there are many species that are truly strange, including the so-called ‘death balls’, but they were not alone in this rarity. Other species that surprised the researchers were the following: Zombie worms (Osedax sp.), capable of feeding exclusively on the bone tissue of whales and large vertebrates. ​ Rare mollusks, bivalves and black corals adapted to hydrothermal and volcanic environments.​ A complicated process. Verifying that these findings are true is not something easy to achieve. In this case, the findings were made this August at the University of Magallanes in Chile where specialists from eight countries applied accelerated identification techniques: from in situ imaging to genetic comparison, in a process that seeks to reduce the years of waiting to catalog new species.​ Images | @TuCpakoa In Xataka | We are clogging the ocean’s carbon toilet and it is something that is only going to cause us problems

Microsoft has never been so valuable throughout its history. And he has never been so close to the abyss

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The first computer of Satya NadellaCEO of Microsoft, was a VAX manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (Dec) in the late 1970s. That machine excited him in such a way that Nadella was clear about her future: she wanted to devote himself to computer science. More than that: I wanted to devote yourself to computer science and work for DEC. That could not be. The concept of microordoring the company was based on its own architecture, called Virtual Address Extension (hence Vax), but that technology ended up being crushed by which it would succeed at that time: the RISC architecture. The company tried to survive, but ended up being acquired in 1998 by Compaq and, a few years later, disappearing. The lesson that Nadella learned with Dec By the time the debacle started, Nadella had moved. After a brief period in Sun Microsystems, he began working in Microsoft in 1992 and was climbing positions until it ended becoming the company’s CEO in 2014. The funny thing is that now That past with Dec pursues him. This was recently confirmed at a meeting with Microsoft employees in which it confessed something important: “Our sector is full of practical cases of companies that were in their day and that simply disappeared. There is one in particular that persecutes me, called Dec.” In fact, he explained how “some of the people who contributed to Windows NT came from a DEC laboratory that was closed.” The Microsoft CEO thus answered an employee’s question about the moral situation in the company, which according to indicate in The Verge It is in historical minimums. Not in vain Microsoft has just suffered a massive round of layoffs with 9,000 affected employees. The curious thing, Nadella admitted, is that after 51 years in the market some metrics indicate that Microsoft is at its best. This shows Its stock market capitalization is around four billion dollars and places the Redmond company like the second or third —Intercambia positions with Apple, Nvidia remains unstoppable – company of the world in relevance. “But at the same time, when I think of the degree of difficulty that awaits us, to be able to navigate a changing industry, a changing technological sector and a changing economy, we have a very hard job ahead.” And they certainly have it. What happens if the software doesn’t matter when you are the largest company in the software world The main external threat for Microsoft is not that IA improves existing software products. It is to make them irrelevant. Nadella himself admitted it to saying at that meeting with employees that “all the categories we could have loved for 40 years may not matter.” Days later he talked about all this in a post on the official Microsoft blog. He titled it “Recomproming us with our why, ours what and ours“. The implications of paradigm shift are colossal for world software giant: Office and Windows: Traditionally its great sources of income, the productivity suite and its operating system can end up having no place in our world. If an AI agent can end up managing all office tasks, creating documents, analyzing data and coordinating the work without the need for the Office suite or even a traditional operating system interface, the base of the Microsoft business would be eroded. We would no longer use an application to do the job. We would say to an AI to do it, how is it starting to happen. Competitors without ties: The new AI companies are not weighed by the legacy of an office suite or a 40 -year -old operating system. These startups can design lighter, fast and totally native solutions in the AI ​​era. For Nadella it makes no sense “to be in love with what we create in the past.” The situation for Microsoft is certainly disturbing. Despite its multimillionaire investment in OpenAi, The relationship has evolved To turn both companies into uncomfortable allies that are sought their own B plans Like softbank, Nvidia or Oracle. For Microsoft, things have not gone so well: it has injected billions to end depending on the technology of another company that is also becoming direct competitor. He has bazas in his favor as his gigantic Azure infrastructure, but not even that ensures survival. The Microsoft’s pressure to reinvent itself It is huge. He already achieved it after the failure in the segments of Internet search engines, social networks or finally mobile phones, but now the black clouds appear again with the AI ​​boom. The funny thing is that Microsoft was the Big Tech that adopted the AI ​​paradigm shift with the necessary intensity. His bet – especially, by OpenAi – was extraordinary, but for them the threat is not that of a company that ignores the change, but that of one that perhaps made the wrong bets. At the moment it does not have a competitive foundational model, and that co -driver overload has not just set in the market. What will Nadella and your company do to react? You move, Microsoft. In Xataka | The marriage between Openai and Microsoft is broken at times. The problem is that both are still needing

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