broken

Our attention span is so broken that a thriving industry has emerged: “distraction-free” keyboards

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In 2024, more than 90,000 books. It is estimated that in the United States the figure was much higher and reached three millionincluding self-published books. Those numbers make something very clear: the world has been filled with writers. Those who write also do so in many ways. The traditional typewriter has practically disappeared to give way to the computer, and the versatility of this technological product has made the experience more personal than ever. The blank page, but on the screen Thus, while some write on the desktop computer, others do so on the laptop, but in that experience the details matter a lot, such as the type of keyboard used – with the popular mechanical keyboardsfor example—or, of course, the application that each one uses to write. The famous case of George RR Martin with the mythical and very old WordStar It is almost anecdotal, because currently there are many much more modern rivals. Microsoft Word is the obvious choice, but rivals have tightened significantly in this sector. Thus, a huge number of applications and services designed for writers have appeared, such as Scrivener, Ulysses, iAWriter, Manuscripteither Ghostwriter. In many cases, one of the focuses of these applications was not only to help the writer in areas such as the structure of the novel or the organization of the characters and plot. They also usually have a distraction-free mode, which usually manifests itself with the digital version of the blank sheet of paper: the interface is completely empty, without toolbars or menus. Just a cursor blinking and waiting for us. Welcome to distraction-free keyboards These software applications are also accompanied by some hardware devices specifically aimed at writers. They are a modern version of traditional typewriters: products designed entirely to do one thing and one thing only: write. Freewrite Traveler. These “distraction-free keyboards“They usually integrate small screens on which the text we are writing is displayed, but there is nothing else we can do with them. They have internet connectivity, but only with the objective of being able to synchronize those texts with the cloud to save them. No web browsers, no social networks, no (supposedly) distractions. All of them try to create a “concentration bubble” so that whoever writes can focus exclusively on it. The clear reference in this segment is Freewritefrom the company Astrohaus, which manufactures several models of keyboards without distractions with this proposal. In them we normally have: Internet connectivity Small flash memory but enough to store several manuscripts Internal battery Screen: usually e-ink, but also LCD This electronic ink screen of various models makes it more comfortable to have long writing sessions and contributes to long-lasting battery life. The most notable alternative to FreeWrite machines is Pomeranianfrom the Japanese company King Jim, which has launched some of its models on crowdfunding platforms such as IndieGogo. Pomera DM250US These are, however, devices with a high price for how specific they are. Here it is likely that the limited production batches make these products more expensive, but still its price/performance ratio is not remarkable. The Freewrite Traveler, for example, is priced at 602.95 euros in the official Freewrite store. Pomera’s recent rival – with an LCD screen – has an official price of $449, almost 400 euros. There are even ones with a much higher price, like the Ernest Hemingway, which has a price of $1,206.95. At Xataka we have contacted three users of these devices: two of them English-speaking, and a young Spanish man. All of them have purchased and used at least one of these types of keyboards without distractions or a similar alternative, and they have been kind enough to share the experience with us. Looking for a digital substitute for the notebook and pen Ilia Epifanov, writer and editorhas published more than 30 works, including short stories, books and even comics. When he decided to buy one of these devices, he tells us, “I was looking for a compact machine that would allow me to write without distractions.” He discovered the Freewrite devices“but the price seemed high to me, and I was also looking for something more portable. He ended up deciding on Nokia E7a smartphone launched in 2011 that had a physical keyboard that could be folded out under the case. “It’s small, well made and evokes nostalgia,” he commented, “although it certainly has its limitations.” He admits that he wouldn’t recommend it to most people, especially since the keyboard isn’t suitable for use for long periods of time. But for this user, one of the keys to this old device is that it is old and most of its applications are useless today. That makes me approach it solely as a keyboard without distractions, because as he says “I love its simplicity: you unfold the keyboard and just type.” Carl Dilkington —pseudonym that use on Reddit our second guest—is a freelancer who writes both professionally and as a hobby. He also began to look for alternatives to write without distractions, and started with the cheapest and least technological: a notebook and a pen. He soon realized that this did not seem practical to him, and after searching for devices of this type he opted for the Freewrite Traveler, which he chose for its portability but which “if I’m honest, I chose it over others for aesthetic reasons. I just liked the way it looked, and I thought that if I was going to spend a good part of the day looking at it, I wanted to like its design.” These types of products “don’t work magic,” he confessed. “You still need to force yourself to sit down and write, and that will always be a complex task. And that’s the real problem. We let computers distract us because we want to avoid the difficulty of writing. Eliminating those distractions doesn’t eliminate the desire to be distracted, and the world has plenty of additional sources of distraction that we can subject ourselves to.” It is an important reflection, and reveals … Read more

For years Russia accustomed its citizens to a distant war. Thousands of gas stations have just broken that illusion

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Since the war between Russia and Ukraine began, the majority of Russians have been able to experience the war almost as background news, without much impact on their daily lives. However, that distance has been broken. And the fact is that queues of cars that stretch for hours, and even days, at thousands of gas stations in the country are forcing millions of people to feel, for the first time in such a direct way, the real cost of the conflict. What is happening. Ukraine has escalated since May their drone attacks against Russian refineriesand the result is a fuel crisis not seen since the last years of the Soviet Union. According to calculations According to the Financial Times, the shortage already directly affects some 50 million Russians, around 35% of the population. Almost 50 regions had imposed some type of restriction on gasoline sales by the end of June, and several of them have rationed the supply according to the vehicle’s license plate, alternating between even and odd days. Strain. Images circulating on social networks show waits of up to 36 hours in some areas, such as Chita, in the Transbaikalia region, according to collect Deutsche Welle. According to the media, there are those who spend the night in the car so as not to miss their turn, and some have even begun to sell their place in line for sums of up to 35,000 rubles (about 400 euros), according to testimonies cited by the same media. The tension has led to fights between drivers, and some regional authorities have had to improvise desperate measures, such as that of a Siberian governor who ordered hot food to be distributed to those waiting in line, while in the south of the country Cossacks with their traditional fur hats have been used to maintain order at gas stations, according to they claim from FT. Attacks. The origin of the problem lies in the pace and precision of Ukraine’s attacks. On July 6, a drone reached the Omsk refinery, the largest in the country, located 2,500 kilometers from the border, which gives an idea of ​​the reach that kyiv has gained. According to the Ukrainian General Staff, aforementioned By Kyiv Post, the attacks have already disabled 42.7% of Russia’s projected refining capacity, and a Bloomberg analysis places 24 of the country’s 34 large refineries that have been hit in about a hundred days. Consulting firm Energy Aspects estimates that Russian crude oil processing has fallen to its lowest level in 21 years. Despair. Moscow has chosen to downplay the crisis in public. Putin himself acknowledged on Sunday that there are “some shortcomings,” although he insisted that they are not “critical.” Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak attributed the queues to panic buying and speculation, not a structural supply problem, according to collect DW. However, the Kremlin itself has had to take measures that contradict this discourse, as it has banned exports of gasoline, diesel and kerosene, and has skyrocketed its fuel imports from Belarus, which in June were 141 times higher than a year earlier, according to share the Financial Times. The front also notices it. The shortage has even reached Russian troops deployed in Ukraine. And according to share Kyiv Post, some soldiers have seen their fuel supply reduced to just 20 liters per vehicle per day, when before they received what they needed to carry out their missions. In fact, a soldier stationed in the Zaporizhia sector claimed that his unit has gone from 20 liters to between 10 and 15, which forces them to travel up to 11 kilometers on foot to get water and supplies. Other soldiers say they buy gasoline from local residents at prices between 200 and 300 rubles per liter, well above the official price, according to share the middle. The impact is also noticeable beyond the gas stations, from taxi drivers raising fares, regional airlines warning of price increases, to even Russians who, in rural areas, are buying draft horses or bicycles as an alternative to the car, according to collect DW. Cover image | Reuters and Alexander Melekhov In Xataka | The men who closed the new Chernobyl hole: “Destiny gave us an opportunity to test ourselves to the limit”

Alcalá de la Selva is the living portrait of a broken tourist model

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“There are people who come because they are overwhelmed by so much heat.” He says it José Edo, Councilor for Culture and Heritage of Alcalá de la Selvaabout his own people. He is not talking about weekend tourists: he is talking about people who buy a house in a municipality of 382 neighbors because he can’t stand the summer where he lives anymore. Alcalá has become, in the mouth of one of its own rulers, a climate refuge. The problem is that this “refuge” has a water network designed for 500 people, not for the more than 6,000 it hosts each summer. A pipe about to burst where it is impossible to perceive a real demographic boom. Nobody registers nor are there any census changes. What there is is a ski resort ten minutes away, eight kilometers away, and a wonderful golf course at 1,475 meters above sea level. It is just a car ride away from half of the Valencian Community. Recognizing someone on the street at this time? Risky sport. The numbers that don’t add up. Alcalá de la Selva, which does not have a jungle but does have a cool climate due to its altitude (1404 m above sea level) and being located between two mountains in the Gúdar mountain range, next to the Alcalá river, belongs to Teruel. It is one of the many Aragonese towns with white and stone houses that grows every summer. However, few grow as big as this one. From 350 to 6,500 peoplea couple of years ago, as recognized by the City Council. And without counting nearby campsites or hostelsE. That is multiplying the population by seventeen, an increase of more than 1,600%. Tourism makes money, right? Not exactly: regional and state financing is calculated only on those registered. The City Council charges the IBI and water and garbage rates from its inhabitants, but neither the Provincial Council nor the State allocates an extra euro to the services consumed by such growth. Furthermore, it depends on Teruel for everything and cannot grow much more on a stone hill. A town designed to have no neighbors. The municipal urban planning itself admits it bluntly: “There is hardly any need for a first home”recognizes the document that Alcalá presented to the European contest Europan in 2011, when the town had 513 registered inhabitants and already admitted peaks of up to 5,000. María Amparo Atienza Chisbert, from the PAR, the Aragonese Party, governs from the 2023 municipal elections. And they recognize a model problem that is suffocating them. The mayor of Cosuenda (Zaragoza) and that of Canfranc (Huesca) described exactly the same asphyxiation with governments of a different color. The El Castillejo golf coursemunicipal, 9 holes, inaugurated in 2003, is the highest in Spain and has incredible views. The Valdelinares ski resort, the closest and with 14 slopes, opened in 1970. And neither facility exists for the 382 winter residents. Along with the historic center, scattered seasonal occupation developments grew since the 80s and 90s, chalets that clean and open at Easter, in August and on snow bridges. The rest of the year, as you know: closed tight. This summer, there is also an eclipse. To finish with a certain irony, it is worth remembering that the Gúdar-Javalambre region, where Alcalá is, isIt has become one of the seven official points in Aragon to see the total solar eclipse on August 12. The area dresses up before the first total eclipse visible on the peninsula in more than a century. Aragon expects about four million visitors just for the phenomenon. Rural reservations in the area already exceed 90% for the days of the eclipseand some rural houses will bill in August 2026 up to four times more than a normal August. When it’s all over, the cold will return, the streets will be empty, the store and pharmacy on duty will no longer have to double stock, and will endure the downpour until the next bridge. The municipality has its own historical story – they fell at the hands of the anarchist “The Avengers” of the Iron Column, so that months later General Varela took the town under Franco’s mandate – and is today one of the many victims of a self-fulfilling wish regarding tourism in an emptied Spain. The national context. According to estimates, Spain will close 2026 with around 100 million tourists, a historical record, and between June and September alone, 43 million international arrivals are expected. Tourist housing reservations Airbnb types have doubled since 2018while hotel overnight stays only increased by 8% in the same period. Yes, since May 2026, all tourist homes advertised on platforms need a unique registration number, the NRUA, required by European regulations, but this has not stopped growth. Although in many regions vacation rentals are “losing its appeal“, the Bank of Spain itself warned that this type of accommodation displaces the traditional rental market, as is the case of Alcalá de la Selva, a miniature version of a country that builds for those who visit it three weeks a year, and that bills cleaning, water and roads to those who stay to live the rest of the remaining three hundred and forty-five days. It is easy to think that cities like Malaga live in worse situations, with almost 30% of the rental market. The reality is that, proportionally, Alcalá de la Selva is congested by more dangerous numbers. Image | Alcalá de la Selva City Council In Xataka | Spain promised them happiness with its airports increasingly full of tourists. Until someone calculated how it affects rents

Oviedo has already broken its heat record for May and AEMET warns that this has only just begun

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Let’s stay with a figure: 34.3. It is, almost certainly, the most important data of the week. On Thursday, May 21, 2026, the thermometers of the city of Oviedo They recorded a temperature of 34.3 degrees. 1.8 ºC more than the highest temperature ever recorded in May in the capital of the Principality. AEMET is convinced that between today and the weekend will be reached again (or even exceeded) this temperature. And yet, this is only a tiny part of the story. Because the real story is that, in a region structurally protected by its oceanic climate, records are being broken in ways we would not have been able to imagine. And that’s without the country being in a ‘heat wave’. What is happening? Although There is some controversy with the namewhat is happening is called ‘heat dome‘. That is, a subtropical anticyclonic ridge, anomalously powerful for this time of year, which is trapping very warm air above our heads. Europe is bearing the brunt, it is true. Countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands and the British Isles they are seeing temperatures between 10 and 15 degrees above normal. If everything goes as predicted by the models, the May records of half of Europe are going to explode on the 25th of this month. And, of course, we are noticing that. As the haze falls on the Canary Islands (right at the eastern vertex of the dome), a good part of the country will suffer considerable heat. We talk about more than 34 degrees in Asturias and the Basque Country and 38 in the Guadiana valleys. The Guadalquivir valley is already above 35. And, as I say, all this without heat waves. Despite the magnitude of the episode, AEMET does not rate it like a heat wave in peninsular Spain. It is not. We already know that the operational definition requires exceeding the 95th percentile of daily maximum temperatures for the July-August quarter for at least three days and, of course, we are not going to go to that extreme. What does all this heat tell us? Let’s be honest. For Andújar or Badajoz to reach 38 degrees on May 21 is rare, but not exceptional. But for Oviedo to reach 34.3 is a very different thing. It shows, above all, that the Cantabrian coast is beginning to stop being a “climate refuge.” Why is all this important? In addition to an underlying climate issue, this warm episode is important because it is dangerous. The first extreme heat of the year is the deadliest because the population has not gone through the period of physiological acclimatization produced by progressive exposure to summer heat. That is, because it is May and the Iberian summer has truly begun. Image | Tropical TidBits In Xataka | The Gulf Stream is dying. Someone’s idea to solve it dates back to the 1950s: closing the Bering Strait

Spain has broken records in youth employment. The bad news is that one in three unemployed people is already over 50 years old

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Unemployment in Spain has been chaining months of good news. In April, the number of unemployed fell to 2,357,044 people, falling below 2.4 million for the first time since June 2008. The story, seen from afar, is that of a labor market that has finally left its worst unemployment figures behind. However, that story has a blind spot. When the data is broken down by age, the initial optimism gives way to reality: the labor market is improving, yes, but not for everyone equally. The workers over 45 years they continue to fall behind, and the latest data of the State Public Employment Service (SEPE) confirm it. Senior unemployment is close to 60% of the total. Of the slightly less than 2.35 million unemployed counted in April 2026 in Spain, 1,376,550 unemployed were 45 years old. This represents 58.4% of all registered unemployment. In other words, six out of ten unemployed They are over 45 years old. The bad news doesn’t end there. Within this group of people over 45, one in three unemployed people is already over 50 years old. To put into perspective what that percentage implies, we must compare it with what happened in the same month among those under 25 years of age. Youth unemployment has improved its percentages with a drop of 10.2%, with 19,284 fewer young people on the SEPE lists. If we return to the data for those over 45 years of age, we find that only 19,990 people in this age group they found a job, but in this case the decrease has only meant a drop of 1.43%. That is, given the progressive aging of the active population in Spain, those over 45 years of age are the largest group, so although the number of people who have found employment are very similar, the weight as a whole is very different. Less unemployed, but more chronic unemployment. At the end of the first quarter of 2026, the segment of those over 55 years of age was close to 4.93 million employed people. This represents 22% of all workers in the country, with 242,500 more people than a year before. These are figures that reflect that, on the one hand, the active population is increasingly older and, on the other hand, he is retiring later and remains in the labor market for longer. The second bad news for those over 45 years of age is that those who lose their job at that age have enormous difficulties in recovering it. In March 2026, those under 25 years of age signed 308,094 contracts, compared to the 367,204 signed by the group over 45, which doubles the percentage of the active population in number. That leaves us with one conclusion: senior hiring is proportionally tiny. He Labor Market Report for People over 45 years of age 2026 prepared by the SEPE, indicates that this group will exceed 11 million employed during 2025, more than 50% of the total number of workers. Even so, this massive presence in existing employment does not translate into the same rate of access to new opportunities. This is an indicator that the barriers to the reintegration of those over 45 into the labor market continue to be insurmountable. once you lose your job. Proof of this is that 53% of the 755,500 unemployed people over 50 have been looking for a job for more than a year without finding it. Youth unemployment breaks its own record. The scenario for those under 25 years of age is diametrically opposite. unemployment among those under 25 years of age It closed April 2026 at 24.53% with a total of 169,693 people, the lowest figure in the entire SEPE historical series. In year-on-year terms, it represents a drop of 14.2% compared to April of last year, when there were 197,674 young people unemployed. A decade ago, in 2015, the youth unemployment rate in Spain stood at 44.4%. This sustained decline has no equivalent in any other age group, which makes youth employment one of the great successes of the Spanish labor market in recent years. In aging it is a determining factor. As the data show, age defines large differences in the impact of unemployment between the different segments of the active population, but this differentiation also means that unemployment punishes some communities more than others, with a special impact on emptied Spainwhere young people have moved to the large industrial hubs. By province, Zamora stands out strikingly because more than 62% of its unemployed are over 45 years old. Pontevedra and La Coruña also present very aging unemployment structures. In Xataka | There is a man who has been working for the same company for 85 years. And he has no plans to retire. Image | Unsplash (Hasan Mrad)

He wrote several bestsellers on productivity. Eight years later he denies it: “Our definition is broken”

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Cal Newport He has been obsessed with productivity for decades. And yes, ‘obsessed’ is the word: a Georgetown computer science professor does not publish three books in less than five years if he does not have an almost unhealthy fixation with the subject. In a very short time, he became one of the most recognized ‘gurus’ in the field and his works (‘Deep Work‘, ‘Digital Minimalism‘ either ‘A world without email‘) could be found in airports around the world. Then one day, suddenly, saw the light. What if it’s all a huge joke? Newport doesn’t say it exactly like that, of course. But, as you will see immediately, It’s in the subtext of everything he says. in recent times. Because under the idea that it is only moving from ‘individual advice’ to ‘structural diagnosis’, there is something else: a basic problem. What really is productivity? As Newport explainsin the factory or in the field, productivity was measurable and easily comparable. Henry Ford, to give the most obvious example for an American, was able to justify the enormous investments that his continuous assembly lines required because they had figures and data. The problem is that the world doesn’t work like that anymore. In the mid-20th century, knowledge workers began to become the most powerful workforce and measuring their productivity is much more elusive. And, to solve it, organizations resorted to a shortcut: If I see you working, I assume you are being productive. Or, to use Newport’s wordswe have used a definition of productivity that is no longer “the use of visible activity as a rough approximation to useful effort.” And then the pandemic arrived. For our expert, COVID was the turning point. life anxiety, the exhausted workerschained zoom calls, silent resignation…the world had been focused on ‘perform being busy‘ and suddenly there was no one looking at you. Suddenly, nothing we did made sense. But as behavioral psychology has taught us, when something we usually do stops working, our first reaction is not to stop doing it. It means doing it harder, more often, with more insistence. These six years have shown us that it was a dead end. And what do we do? For Newport, the answer is clear and is based on three principles: do less things, work at a more natural pace and obsess over quality, value and excellence. If what we do has become a malicious proxy that only ends up burning us, we have to stop doing it. Newport calls it ‘slow productivity’ because, as he said, he is obsessed with productivity; but also because, deep down, it is still in the same scheme. Because, after all, who can decide to work less? As Vivian Song denounced“Newport barely holds those who design the culture of overwhelm accountable.” EITHER, in the words of Joshua Kim“‘slow productivity’ is less a work strategy than a marker of privilege.” The interesting thing about all this is the diagnosis, the recognition (from the very heart of the management publishing industry) that what we do does not work. Now we have to take the problem seriously and find a solution that really works for everyone. Image | Andreas Klassen In Xataka | “Doing nothing” is a great technique to improve your productivity. Neuroscience is clear

burnout is the new symptom of a broken system

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“It doesn’t give me life.” This phrase, repeated almost like a daily mantra, has become the universal excuse to cancel a meeting with friends, postpone a call or justify an unanswered email. What used to be a specific fatigue after a hard week is today, as the journalist Ana Morales points out in her book Marital status: tireda lifestyle that we have completely normalized. However, behind this apparent everyday life lies an unprecedented social and public health fracture: an epidemic of chronic stress and burnout that is taking its toll on our bodies, our minds and our way of relating. The x-ray of the collapse. In Spain, the data paint a suffocating reality. 40% of workers in our country link their stress, anxiety or depression directly to your job. To put the magnitude of the problem in context: the European average is 29% and only four countries on the entire continent – ​​Greece, Finland, Cyprus and Poland – surpass us in these rates of work distress. Despite the seriousness of these figures, the weight continues to be placed on individual resilience instead of investing resources in organizational and structural solutions. But this collapse is by no means an Iberian anomaly; It is a real unstoppable global trend. Internationally, an overwhelming majority of the adult population confesses to being overwhelmed by purely everyday factors: 70% point to the general economy as a very or somewhat significant source of stress in their lives, 63% point to money and finances, and 55% to family responsibilities. The impact is so profound that stress devours hundreds of billions a year in Western economies, reducing not only productivity, but the quality of life of an entire generation. When perfectionism becomes an executioner. Society often judges burnout under a moral lens. The psychologist Teresa (@unraticoconteree) warns that what we call “laziness” It’s actually emotional exhaustion from spending too much time on “automatic mode” taking care of everyone but yourself. This wear and tear is nourished by self-demand, a trait traditionally applauded in our society. However, clinics and psychology specialists They warn that a self-demand excessively subordinates our self-esteem to our achievements. Sufferers develop critical self-talk, paralyzing fear of failure, excessive rumination, and dichotomous thinking. The end result is a toxic perfectionism in which no achievement seems enough, generating a constant feeling of dissatisfaction and emotional blocks. The “quarter-life crisis.” The impact of this pace of life is especially harsh on generations millennial and zeta. This is known as the “Quarter-Life Crisis,” a transition period that occurs between your mid-20s and early 30s. According to Newport Institutethis crisis manifests itself through identity confusion, fear of the future and the feeling of being left behind compared to the achievements of others. It is a stage where the “fear of missing out” (FOMO) collides head-on with disappointment. From psychology portals They point out that these young people They face a toxic cocktail of recessions, climate crisis and consequences of the pandemic. Furthermore, adolescents have replaced alcohol or tobacco consumption due to behavioral addictions such as doomscrollingisolating himself in front of the screen. At the university, the burnout student translates in cynicism and a strong feeling of incompetence. The gender gap: they burn more. Both in classrooms and offices, burnout has an undeniable gender bias. The investigations show that Female college students are at significantly higher risk for burnout, cognitive decline, and emotional decline compared to their male peers. At work, things don’t improve. There are studies that show that almost half of women in management positions reach the burnoutwhile in men that figure is much lower. And it is no coincidence, since women carry much more than their work responsibilities. They come home and continue working, just without anyone calling it work. According to psychologist Bárbara Tovarwomen carry a historical cultural mandate of dedication and sacrifice to prove their worth, which leads them to feel guilty every time they try to rest or disconnect. A body in constant war. Stress, from an evolutionary perspective, is a survival mechanism designed to save our lives in the face of imminent dangers, activating the release of adrenaline and cortisol. The problem is that today’s predator is not a lion, but the mortgage, work or uncertainty. When stress becomes chronic, the body enters a state of “allostatic load”brutal wear and tear at the cardiovascular, metabolic and immune levels. The body develops resistance to glucocorticoids and the immune system collapses, drastically reducing NK cells (our first line of defense against viruses and tumors) and T lymphocytes. As if that were not enough, a neuroinflammation loop is triggered that alters the brain and facilitates the development of depression. Medical research has been going on for five decades studying the burnout. Today we know that the classical distinction between burnout (exhaustion from work) and clinical depression is increasingly diffuse; institutions like Mayo Clinic either the University of Navarra They emphasize that the burnout It should not be treated solely as an employee’s failure to manage their stress; It is a responsibility shared with the organization, derived from unaffordable workloads, lack of control and poor communication. From digital silence to obsession with comfort. In the face of suffocation, the “maximalists of silence”who maintain the “Do Not Disturb” mode permanently. It is an act of mental hygiene: each interruption on the mobile phone causes a “cognitive hiccup” and it can take the brain 23 minutes to regain deep concentration. In parallel comes the cozymaxxinga viral trend to create havens of extreme comfort and dim lights that activate the parasympathetic nervous system to reduce cortisol. However, science warns against extreme fads such as “dopamine fast” radical, which lacks a neurobiological basis. Instead, they propose “slow dopamine” (reading or cooking) and prioritizing the “regularity” of sleep over the eight-hour obsession to avoid “social jet lag”. Rest as a preventive action. The academy is clear: we need to move away from psychosocial risk to preventive action. Emotional education, both in classrooms and in the workplace, is presented as a vital strategy … Read more

The rental market is so broken in Spain that more and more tenants are facing a reality: record overcrowding

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In Spain he increasingly lives more lonely people. And every time he lives more people crowded also. I know: it sounds contradictory, but that is the curious reality drawn by the studies that are in charge of ‘x-raying’ the country’s homes. As paradoxical, counterintuitive and even ironic as it may be, statistical observatories such as the INE or Eurostat confirm that while a part of Spain is forced to live in overcrowded conditions, sharing a house or even fourththe number of single-person households is growing at such a speed that in a few years they will probably be the most common in Spain. That tells us a lot about how the country, its society, the economy and (also) the residential market are changing. Overcrowded Spain. Among its many functions, Eurostat is responsible for reviewing every year how the overcrowding data from the different countries of Europe. Said like this, the concept ‘overcrowded’ may sound subjective, but its technicians have a clear guideline to distinguish what is (and what is not) a home. ‘overcrowded’. In general terms, a home is considered saturated when it does not have a room for each couple, for each adult or for each two young people of the same sex. In Spain that is a reality they deal with more and more people. Especially if we talk about people who live in rented houses. A percentage: 9.5%. The data from Spain leave two clear readings. The first, positive one, is that in our country the overcrowding rate It is much lower than that of other European nations. At a general level (if we take into account all types of housing, owned and rented, both in the free and regulated markets) Eurostat calculates that 9.5% of the population Spanish resides in ‘overcrowded’ houses. Although in practice this is equivalent to millions of people, it is far from the 16.8% average of the 27 EU countries or the ratio of states such as France (10.8%), Italy (24.3%), Portugal (12.7%) or Germany (11.7%). That’s the positive part. The negative part is how the indicator has evolved. In Spain the overcrowding rate has not stopped growing in the last five years until it is at its highest level in the last decade. For reference, in 2018 marked 4.7% and in 2016 it was at 5.4%. The EU average has advanced at a much slower pace. In fact, it has been practically stagnant for years. around 16.8%a value somewhat lower than that recorded in 2016, when it was around 18%. A tenant problem. The Eurostat data They reveal something else: although there is no market that escapes overcrowding, not everyone suffers from it equally. Its incidence is especially high when we talk about people who reside in homes rented at market prices. That is, without taking into account protected housing. In that case the overoccupation rate shoots up to reach 20.5%. What does that mean? That a fifth of Spanish tenants who have rented houses on the free market live in what Eurostat considers overcrowded conditions. Once again, the figure is below the EU average (23.8%) or the rate of nations such as Italy, but it exceeds the indicators for France (18.6%), Germany (18.3%) or the Netherlands (8.3%). And again too stands out for its evolution. Beyond the comparison with the rest of the EU, the reality is that this 20.5% is considerably above the 12.5% ​​in 2016 and represents the highest value since at least 2014. Spain General overcrowding rate Overcrowding rate among tenants in the free market 2016 5.4 12.5 2017 5.1 12.4 2018 4.7 12.8 2019 5.9 16.3 2020 7.6 18.8 2021 6.4 15.4 2022 6.6 14.9 2023 7.6 17.5 2024 9.1 20 2025 9.5 20.5 What is the reason for this increase? A sum of factors, as stated this week The Country in an analysis on the increase in overcrowding in Spain. One of those (crucial) elements is how the housing market has performed in recent years. Idealistic reveals that in general the price of rents has almost doubled in the last decade, at least if we talk about nominal values (without taking into account the effect of inflation): from €7.7/m2 in April 2016 we have gone to €15/m2. In highly stressed markets, such as the one from Palmathat increase has been even more pronounced. The increase in housing prices (extended to both the rental and purchase markets) directly influences the behavior of families. Not only does it limit the options that those looking for housing can choose from, it also complicates emancipation and assume the rent of an apartment without sharing expenses. Not to mention that the imbalance between supply and demand can lead some landlords to opt for renting single rooms and makes it difficult for families who, after growing up (due to reunification or the birth of children) aspire to a larger apartment. A more populated country. There is another key factor. The increase in the overcrowding rate coincides with the general growth of the Spanish registry. According to the INE, at the beginning of 2026 they resided in the country 49.57 million people. Not only is this 440,000 more than a year before, it also represents “the maximum value in the historical series,” in words of the INE. This growth is also supported by immigration, which broke its own record. In January, the foreign-born population exceeded the ten million of people. Why is it important? Although inflation may have led some families to rent part of their homes to make mortgage payments more bearable, it is not unreasonable to think that this increase in migration explains in some way the rate of overcrowding. The economist José García Montalvo remember in The Country that the foreign population tends to group together in support networks and part of the migrants who arrive in Spain choose, at least at first, to settle in the homes of people they already know. “So where three live, five end up living,” he illustrates. In any case, the phenomenon … Read more

Last year, almost no robots finished the Beijing half marathon. This year one has broken the human world record by seven minutes

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The half marathon world record is held by Jacob Kiplimo with a time of 57:20 achieved just a month ago in Lisbon. This Sunday a humanoid robot called Lightning ran that distance in 50:26achieving for the first time a milestone that had never been achieved. Robots seemed clumsy and unable to outrun humans, but that is no longer true. And it’s just the beginning. Robots are already faster than humans. In the half marathon held on Sunday, April 19, 2026 in Beijing, the absolute dominators were the humanoid robots. Lightning not only broke the human world record by almost seven minutes: he managed to arrive 17 minutes before the first human runner to cross the finish line. The first three classified They were also Lightning models developed by Honor. From disaster to excellence. The first edition of this same event, the Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon, It was an absolute disaster for humanoid robots. Only a third of those who ran it managed to finish the race, they were controlled remotely and ran at a pace much lower than that of human runners. This year things were very different: more than 100 robots were presented and most finished the test, but also almost half ran autonomously and several managed to surpass even the best human runners in the world. This is Lightning. The winning robot measures 169 centimeters, weighs 45 kg and was specifically designed to adapt to complex terrain and move at high speed. Its legs measure about 95 cm and its proportions are designed to imitate the stride of elite human runners. It has a liquid cooling system which curiously has been adapted from the one found on Honor smartphones. Du Xiaodi, engineer in charge of this project at Honor, explained that “Running faster may not seem significant at first glance, but it allows technological transfer, for example in structural reliability and cooling, and eventually in industrial applications“. Not everything went well. The race, however, also had moments in which the robots failed. One of them collided with a nearby vehicle although he managed to stabilize himself and continue walking. The H1 model from Unitree, the most famous humanoid robot manufacturer in China, collapsed as it approached the finish line and had to be removed from the road. One of the Lightning models hit a barrier after crossing the finish line, and some other robots they had difficulties with the curves and unevenness of the route. The event also served as a test bed for batteries, joints, motors and algorithms that control these machines. Industrial applications. Xiaodi mentioned it but also Liu Xiangquan, professor of robotics at the University of Science and Information in Beijing. According to him, these long-distance races allow the resistance and behavior of these robots to be evaluated, something essential for their application in industrial environments. Here not only speed is evaluated, but also the aforementioned resistance, stability or the capacity for autonomous navigation in uncontrolled environments. But a key component is missing. Although the demonstration and milestone is fascinating, what this field needs most is other things. For example, advance manual dexterityperceive the real environment in unforeseen situations and be able to perform varied tasks and not focus so much on repetitive movements. Industrial robots are already good at that, but here we are looking for much more versatility because at the moment these robots They are not able to fold clothes or put the plates and cutlery in the dishwasher with sufficient speed and dexterity. China continues to set the robotic pace. The Asian country has completely devoted itself to the world of robotics. Dominate this segment and its companies They manufacture 80% of global production. In recent months we have seen spectacular demonstrations such as the one Unitree carried out with a dozen humanoid robots at a martial arts show. Sunday’s half marathon is one more element of that narrative and that message that China is leaving to the world: robots are our thing. And in a year, what? Breaking the world record is very striking, but this event tells another story: that of how in just one year Chinese manufacturers have managed to improve their models in an amazing way. If everything continues to improve at this rate, it is difficult to predict what the robots that run the next marathon will be capable of, but it seems logical to think that at this point the athletic ability of robots will be absolutely amazing. Image | CGTN In Xataka | In China they are not satisfied with creating advanced robots: a company has developed a head that gestures like a human

is that Iran has “lost the keys” and without them the balance is broken

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There are only a few maritime passages in the world capable of altering the global economy in a matter of days, and some of them are so narrow that they could fit inside a large city. Through those corridors they circulate every day hundreds of ships loaded with energy, raw materials and essential goods. Their fragility is such that a large military deployment is not necessary to alter them: it is enough that something stopped fitting so that the entire system suffers. Closed… but not by what it seems. For weeks, the international focus has been on whether the Strait of Hormuz was open or closedbut the reality could be much more disturbing: that Iran is not fully in control of the shutdown it caused. After laying naval mines in response to attacks by the United States and Israel, the passage was practically paralyzed, raising energy prices and giving Tehran a powerful tool of pressure. However, this same strategy has generated an unexpected situation in which, according to Iran has slippedthe blockade no longer depends only on a political or military decision, but on a technical problem that is much more difficult to reverse. The concept of “losing the keys”. Because the core of the problem is how the mines could have been deployed: hastily, disorganized and, in the worst case, without a record. accurate of your location. Some were even able to move through ocean currents, further complicating their location. So, this weekend counted the new york times that what in theory should have been a controlled closure of the strait has become something more chaotic and disturbing, where not even those who placed the mines know with certainty where they all are. The metaphor of “losing the keys” is not rhetorical, but rather a quite literal description of the situation that has been heard. in embassies in Tehran: Iran has blocked the door, but can no longer open it easily. An effective weapon against. He use of minescombined with the threat of drones and missiles, managed to reduce maritime traffic to a minimum and generate strong global pressure, but that strategic advantage began to turn against Tehran. To mitigate the impact, Iran has maintained limited corridors and spread supposedly safe routes, even allowing some ships to pass under certain conditions. Even so, the traffic flow has not been normalizedbecause the risk remains too high and uncertainty about the location of the mines persists. The technical limit of a modern war. Basically, something that we have been counting these weeks: the elimination of naval mines is one of the more complex operations in the military field, and not even powers like the United States have sufficient capabilities to quickly clear a road as critical as Hormuz. In this context, the Iranian situation is even more delicate: its own technical limitations, aggravated by the attacks to its naval infrastructuremake a quick reopening unfeasible. This introduces an unexpected factor into the negotiations, since the “technical limitations” mentioned by its leaders are not a diplomatic excuse, but a real obstacle. Unstable balance with risk of escalation. The result is a scenario extremely fragilewhere a partially blocked strait depends as much on political decisions as an out-of-control minefield. Neither Iran nor the United States have a clear image of how many mines there are or where they are, while Tehran retains the ability to plant more with small boats that are difficult to track. Of course there is also an option that no one rules out. Now that it is the United States that has decided to block Hormuz. Iran could be playing its cards, because the normal thing is that all the mines are mappedand that Tehran simply does not trust Washington and refuses to take any steps before receiving concrete concessions. And in all these scenarios, Hormuz becomes an area where any error, accident or incorrect calculation can escalate quickly, because the problem is no longer just who controls the passage, but that no one has full control of what happens underwater. Image | Jenikir In Xataka | The most buoyant market right now is selling streaming and satellite images of US movements to Iran. In Xataka | Commercial aviation is based on very old aircraft. The Iran war is going to make it even worse

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