convinced

In Italy someone built a “fake” Roman amphitheater. It ended up with visitors paying €40 convinced that it was original

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for a while Arcugnanoa small town in the province of Vicenza, could boast an exotic attraction within the reach of very few municipalities, not even in Italy: a spectacular Roman amphitheater with its stone steps, columns, statues and even a pond. The complex had supposedly been built before 393 AD and its surroundings hid Greek and Neolithic pieces. Behind such a discovery was an equally fascinating figure: a scholar known as Franz Von Rosenfranz in the artistic circuits. The problem is that this Rosenfranz was actually called Franco Malosso and the supposed amphitheater was a decoration built with plaster, concrete and blocks. Dating back to 2005. To understand what is perhaps the craziest story so far in 2026 in Italy, you have to go back two decades, to 2005when Malosso found a surprise in the garden of a villa in Arcugnano. Or so he supposedly claimed. That year a landslide exposed the remains of what looked like an ancient archaeological site. Suspecting that the underground was hiding something, good old Malosso began to excavate and recovered a Roman amphitheater. Or at least, we insist, that’s what counts a crazy story that has ended up falling under its own weight. The man who built this fake Roman theater and charged visitors up to €40 is now in prison. Franco Malosso constructed the 5,000-square-meter site near Vicenza, Italy, using modern stones artificially aged to appear ancient, concrete columns, plaster statues and an artificial… pic.twitter.com/YqWXr6vzRr — Architecture Hub (@archpng) July 25, 2026 A Roman amphitheater? Exact. To be more precise the “Anfiteatro marittimo berico Porto degli Angeli”, which is how was promoted years later the site for the pride of the neighbors and the enjoyment of those visited fascinated by the history of ancient Rome. His magnetism was more than understandable. The supposed amphitheater had wide stone steps, columns, statues and a pond. The story circulated that the complex had been built before 393 AD and that vestiges of Greek origin or that dated back to the Neolithic had been found in the surrounding area. In a double historical twist, it was even said that Julius Caesar had passed through that same area when he returned to Egypt. with Cleopatra or that Juliet Capulet lived there when she was a teenager. Great, right? Yes. Too much. In fact, it sounded so spectacular that it didn’t take long for suspicions to fly over the Arcugnano amphitheater. In 2016 The Carabineri investigated the site, archaeologists analyzed the supposed Roman structures and satellite images were also used to study how the area had changed from a bird’s eye view in recent years. The conclusion was clear: there was no Roman amphitheater, just a recent construction built with more will than skill. a decoration. The Roman steps had actually been built from modern stone blocks that someone had treated to give them an aged look. The statues were made of plaster and the columns were basically made of fiberglass and concrete. The pond was also somewhat old, having been excavated in recent years. In summary, the Berico Maritime Amphitheater was basically a decoration built without much historical criteria. A hoax that worked. That someone would build a (more or less exact) replica of a Roman amphitheater in the 21st century is curious, but if the history of the Berico site has aroused the interest of the world press, it is because Malosso managed to convince others that that construction was Roman. What’s more, it is said that he received up to 40 euros for visiting it and managed, it is not clear how, that the local authorities included the supposed amphitheater in a guide and a promotional app, according to reveals the newspaper Corriere della Sera. “Italy’s laughingstock.” The result is that what seemed like a tourist attraction has ended up becoming a source of ridicule for the municipality. Paolo Pellizzari, who was then mayor, recognize in Il Giornale di Vicenza that when the deception was uncovered “we became the laughingstock of Italy.” However, he also defends that Malosso acted with skill: “He had hidden the operation very well and the land was his property.” Much of the work was also done without permits or going through the municipal technical office. “It was presented in a captivating way and promised gold and gold,” he says. Why is it news? Because history has written a new chapter. And not exactly good for Malosso, who now He is 69 years old. The case has been in court for some time and in 2021 the Supreme Court of Cassation confirmed a sentence of two years and four months in prison for the alleged archaeologist for illegal construction, falsification of works of art and building in an environment with landscape protection. Now, once Malosso’s request for parole has been rejected, the sentence is now effective. In fact, has entered in Ventimiglia prison. What does he say? In 2016, shortly after the controversy broke out, La Stampa interviewed Malosso, who assured that in reality there was no deception or that that was never their intention. “That is not the amphitheater, it is a garden with elliptical shapes, a model of what was once there, probably below, described by several poets and writers as ‘the great amphitheater,’” he justified. The great mystery. The big question is how on earth his deception could escalate to the point of sneaking into an official travel guide or even attracting visitors willing to pay 40 euros. Beyond the concrete columns and plaster statues, experts remind that the context also lacks meaning. “An amphitheater in the countryside, far from an old urban center, is false,” explains to The Country Jacopo Bonetto, archaeologist. In fact, to be strict, we should not even talk about an amphitheater: the Acugnano structure, shaped like a crescent, fits much better with the characteristics of the Roman theater. Not to mention the nonsense of some of the temporal references supposedly shared by Malosso. For example, the press claims that he even told tourists … Read more

TikTok has convinced us that we need 50-minute showers. The WHO has a much stricter limit

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Social networks from time to time viralize a challenge or habit that for many people was not on their radar. The latest of these is a huge Gen Z self-care trend that has been dubbed “Everything Shower” or in Spanish as the “hygiene Olympics”. The concept is simple, since it focuses on transforming the shower into a mega-beauty ritual that includes exfoliation, hair removal, hair masks, deep cleansing and hydration with showers that last 50 minutes. It’s going more. Under the premise of self-care and mental relaxation, this practice has gone viral as the definitive routine to “reboot” the weekend. However, if we put this trend through the scientific filter, the picture changes drastically. From both a public health and sustainability point of view, 50-minute showers are not a reward for your body, but rather a punishment. A dermatological disaster. It may seem contradictory, but exposing the body to water for almost an hour does not hydrate and, in fact, does the opposite. Here the dermatological consensus suggests that prolonged exposure to water, especially if it is hot, and the continued use of surfactants in gels and shampoos, very negatively affects our skin barrier. Why this damage is caused is well documented, since spending 50 minutes under the jet causes transepidermal water loss. By aggressively removing lipids and natural moisturizing factors from our skin, the outermost layer of our skin becomes dehydrated. But in addition, the excess of this wash alters the pH and destroys our skin microbiome, which are nothing more than bacteria that protect us. Its consequences. With this dehydration of the skin, the only thing that is achieved is having a greater risk of xerosis, which is nothing more than having chronically dry skin, but also a feeling of tightness, peeling and itching. Without going any further, in people with sensitive skin or a tendency to atopic dermatitis, a ritual of this type is the perfect one-way ticket to a severe outbreak. Three minutes. The experts they are clear that the ideal shower should be short, just between 3 and 5 minutes and always with warm and not boiling water. And they go one step further in terms of the use of soap, since they recommend soaping focused exclusively on the areas of greatest sweating, such as the armpits, groin or genitals. In fact, they point out that, for most people, a daily shower with soap all over the body is not even strictly necessary to maintain good health. It is not sustainable. If the impact it has on the skin is worrying, the environmental impact is simply a catastrophe. If we take out the calculator and take into account that a 10-minute shower has an average consumption of 200 liters of water, we can know that spending 50 minutes doing this hygiene ritual can cost 1,000 liters of water per person. It is an exorbitant figure that clashes head-on with any policy to protect the scarce water resource, not to mention the enormous energy cost of heating that amount of water. The referent. To put this waste in perspective, just look at the WHO guidelines through its WASH program, which establishes a shower of 5 minutes or less as a reference for sustainable hygiene. To give us an idea, the average daily consumption goal set by the organization to cover all the basic needs of a person is around 95 liters of water in total. Images | Armin Rimoldi In Xataka | The extreme hygiene of the modern world was supposed to have caused allergies: ancestral DNA has something to say

“This is the first time China has proposed a new principle for the chip industry.” Not everyone is convinced

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Huawei’s path in recent years has been most curious. After being ostracized by the West and being the target of the trade war between the US of Trump’s first term and China, has become the company that thank the United States because of how vetoes have boosted Chinese technology. Because Huawei has become one of the pillars of all the technology companies in the country and they are not satisfied with making chips: they want to lead a new paradigm with a Tau Law that challenges the Moore’s Law. But behind the promises, there are those who can only see one thing: marketing. The Tau Law. My partner Laura exemplified it perfectly. If the chip is a city, the transistors are the buildings, and the cables are the roads, Moore’s Law says: “make buildings smaller to fit more into the same space.” What Huawei proposes, however, goes in another direction: “buildings can no longer be much smaller, so instead let’s make cars travel faster on the roads, and redesign the urban layout so that they travel less distance.” Huawei’s bet is that cars take much less time to go from one building to another, reducing times tremendously so that the chip, without the need to work on smaller lithographs, is much faster. Inside that Tau LawHuawei proposes the LogicFolding architecture, focused on shortening the wiring of the critical paths to increase the density of the transistors. Qionists. And the company is tremendously proud of this to the point that He Tingbo, Huawei’s chip director, affirms that “it is the first time that China proposes a new principle for the global chip industry.” Because, until now, Moore’s Law was the one that prevailed in lithography leaps, but if instead of concentrating on achieving the very complicated objective of making everything smaller, companies focus on shortening the “routes”, the density objective can be achieved in other ways. In fact, Huawei maintains that, before LogicFound, it took three years to go from 126 to 155 million transistors per mm2. In 2026, and with the new architecture, they jumped directly to 238 per mm2. Equivalence, not parity. And if the question is why Huawei is pushing this when there was already another viable way, the answer is that that proven way was not as viable for Chinese companies. Due to the technological veto, they cannot access the most sophisticated machines in Europe ASMLso they can’t “print” chips in advanced lithography as easily as TSMC can, for example. Thus, they have looked for another way to achieve that density, but something important is the terms. Because there is talk that Huawei would reach a transistor density “equivalent” to that of 1.4 nm processes, by 2031, and that is the key. They would be “equivalent” in density and there would be no lithographic parity. With raised eyebrow. In any case, Tingbo is proud of the logo and believes that it can benefit the entire Chinese technology ecosystem, but it makes an appeal. The directive states that “there remain many open questions that no organization can address alone. The tool chain, standards and economic models require contributions from more than one company.” For its part, and as we see in The Registerthere are those who do not see that revolution in the Tau Law. Although they see what the Chinese company is proposing as interesting, they affirm that it is more of a hybrid movement between reality and marketing because “Huawei had to get creative” to overcome the limitations and “they are going in the right direction, but this density is created through packaging and not by making smaller transistors“Indeed, this is what we already had, but they point out that the result will not be equivalent to a true 1.4 nm node from TSMC or Intel in issues such as energy efficiency and temperature. Future. In fact, as our colleagues point out Xataka Mobileit is in thermal management where Huawei is encountering some major problems. But well, the company’s intention is that the results of this Tau Law allow massive AI clusters that they behave as a single chip by 2035 and that the upcoming Kirin chips for consumption also benefit from it. Image | IBM (edited) In Xataka | While the industry obsesses over power, TSMC is clear about where the future of chips lies: in efficiency

“Do you see horses today? Remove all barriers and over time people will be convinced”

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Volkswagen needs to sell electric cars. Many. As many as I can. Next year, European Union emissions regulations threaten significant fines for the company if they do not lower their CO2 records. And that is leading the company to push hard for the client to adopt this new technology. With all kinds of strategies. The horses. This is what Martin Sander has compared, Head of Sales, Marketing and Aftersales at Volkswagen from 2024, the combustion car in an interview given to the British media Auto Express. He has done so to exemplify why he believes that bad decisions are being made when it comes to pressuring the adoption of electric cars. “Do you know when horses were banned? Since when has it been banned to buy horses? You can buy a horse today. But over time, more and more people realized that a vehicle was much better to get from A to B than a horse. Now I look out the window and I don’t see many horses, I mostly see cars.” With these words, Sander wanted to make it clear that he considers that electric cars are better than combustion cars, but that forcing the customer to switch to electric cars may not be the best option. Remove the barriers. In his interview, Sander is clear about what Europe should do: “How can you convince the customer of a new technology if you only talk about the date when it will no longer be allowed to use those vehicles – vehicles that you have been using for the last decades (referring to combustion cars) – anymore? Remove all barriers. Let’s talk about what we need to convince customers: charging infrastructure, talking positively about the advantages of electric cars and the price of energy… over time, more and more customers will be convinced.” That is to say, Volkswagen’s sales chief is committed to letting the product do the talking and rejects the idea of ​​putting a deadline on combustion engines because, according to him, it should be the market that chooses without political pressures involved. This position of Sander is not new. Last March he already made statements very similar to Autogazzetean Italian media outlet to which he stressed that prohibiting the technology already present does not help customers view electric cars favorably. A theory that is not new. How our colleagues collect L’AutomobileFor the German manager, the debate on whether or not brands should jump to electric cars is adulterated since the European Union forces them to change the roadmap they would have followed if the new emissions regulations did not exist. This position has been repeated by the industry on numerous occasions. Already in 2023, when it seemed that the European Union was moving towards a complete ban on combustion engines, Carlos Tavares, who then directed Stellantis, pointed out that “The electric car by law is not the solution”. Even within the Volkswagen Group itself, those who only sold electric cars have defended it. Mate Rimac, owner of the company that bears his name that sells electric supercars and that for a few weeks It is no longer under the German umbrellahe assured a long time ago that Their cars were not selling because their customers felt attacked due to the pressure to jump into the combustion car. Yes, but. Although Sander’s words suggest that the electric car should and can convince yourself to the customer of a combustion car without the political pressures, one would have to wonder if Volkswagen would have invested billions of euros in new platforms, electric cars and factories if the European Union had not previously proposed a ban on combustion engines. And in the automobile industry, technology has rarely been imposed without political pressure. The truth is that If today we use unleaded gasoline It is because the manufacturers were forced to use catalysts and it ended up being ban the sale of leaded fuel for being too harmful. The Clean Air Act in the United States is now more than 50 years old and if Tesla is still alive it is because there Manufacturers like Toyota were forced to register a minimum of electric cars more than 20 years ago. They need to sell. However, the fact that the head of Volkswagen sales compares the combustion vehicle with a horse to demonstrate how outdated the proposal is compared to the electric car is not coincidental either. Last year, the European Union delayed the fines to be applied to all manufacturers that exceeded the limit of 93.6 gr/km of CO2, taking into account the average number of cars sold. For every gram exceeded and car sold, 95 euros were added. This led to fines of around 1,500 million euros for the company.. With the flexibility of the normthe EU will take into account the average emissions per car sold in the 2025-2027 period. That is, the manufacturers were able to pass the first year but they need to compensate it between 2026 and 2027 if they do not want to pay the fines. This forces Volkswagen to sell many more electric vehicles in the remainder until December 2027, which explains its offensive with electric cars under 25,000 euros. Photo | Volkswagen In Xataka | European car manufacturers faced billion-dollar fines in 2025. They have postponed them thanks to fear

A bank convinced people in a poor town in the US to spend their savings. Now it’s full of millionaires

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Stories of lucky breaks and millionaires there are manybut they almost always have a common denominator: we speak in singular. That is why what happened in a small town in Florida whose families were going through serious difficulties to get ahead is so special. Even today, the enclave continues to seem like a nondescript and inhospitable town. But don’t be fooled, a large number of millionaires still live there among the people. And all thanks to Coca-Cola. Quincy and the banker. This is the name of the town in one of the most fascinating stories of the United States economy. There, in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s and with part of the census in serious difficulties, a figure appears who was going to change everyone’s lives. Your name: Pat Munroean astute banker, a businessman who focused on a key detail to convince all citizens. No matter how impoverished they were in Quincy or how dire the financial situation of the families, the man observed that almost religiously, people spent every penny on a nice ice-cold glass of Coca-Cola. What if that devotion turned it into a stroke of luck? Coca-Cola in a bag. The sugar giant It went public in 1919 at $40 a share.but a conflict with the sugar industry and its bottlers caused a 50% drop shortly after, when it reached $19 per share. Put another way, there was a time in history when Coca-Cola was trading for less than cash in the bank and its stock was extremely cheap. And among others, Munroe was at the right time. The bargain of the century. What did he do? Invest. The man began to acquire Coca-Cola shares as if there were no tomorrow. However, he did not do it alone. He encouraged all his acquaintances and friends of acquaintances in town to buy a stake in the company. Focusing on bottom line profits and brand power, Pat Munroe kept buying and buying. And as he did so he kept telling everyone in Quincy who would listen to him to buy too. He took advantage of the trust and respect the community had for him and went on a crusade to get anyone who could to get on the Coca-Cola train. Loans for shares. The man was so sure of his success that every time a person went to his bank to ask for a loan, encouraged him to accept another in exchange for shares. Farmers, shopkeepers, teachers: absolutely anyone who could spend money was tempted by Munroe. For the banker, the fact that Coca-Cola shares were at $19 each was an opportunity that no one in the city should escape. That is why he never tired of urging people to buy and, almost as important, to remain firm in the decision regardless of the market fluctuations that occurred in the short term. The ball Finally, the banker’s observations turned out to be a historic success. Quincy, an eminently agricultural city, not only stayed afloat in difficult times thanks to Coca-Cola dividends, brought a wealth that is still studied in universities. In fact, the enclave became the richest city per capita in the entire United States for a time, and dozens of its inhabitants were nicknamed “the secret Coca-Cola millionaires.” People who trusted Munroe’s good eye and invested all their money (and what they didn’t have), and who amassed enormous fortunes with those first shares, which they then passed down from generation to generation, turning them into the eponymous Coca-Cola millionaires, ones who, effectively, established entire dynasties of financial prosperity that transcended generations. How much are we talking about? It is difficult to speak in total terms, but to give us an idea of ​​the money, in 2013 it was made a study evaluating what happened in Quincy. The results showed that a single share with reinvested dividends was worth $10,000,000. $270,000 in pre-tax cash dividends would be sent to the owner by sending a check for approximately $67,500 in March, June, September and November of each year. Thus, if the great-grandmother and the great-grandfather on duty had acquired a round lot of 100 shares for between $1,900 and $4,000, depending on the purchase price, they would have more than a billion dollars, excluding the effects of estate taxes. By the way, the current value is considerably higher, since the stock has more than doubled its price since then and the quarterly dividend now exceeds $0.53 per share. Money for crisis. That investment has been a lifesaver every time a tough time approaches. When the local economy was supported by coca and the crisis arrived, tail dividends. In fact, these assets have supported the city through every recession since. When crops failed, it was Coca-Cola money that kept people employed. When the national economy collapsed, it was Coca-Cola’s cash that allowed people to stay in their homes. When times were good and Coca-Cola was cheap, they bought more shares. Quincy today. It is a unique story, because it is unusual. Every family that amassed a fortune then passed it on to their children and grandchildren, in some cases through direct donations and in others through the use of trust funds. Even the bank where it all started has a Coca-Cola on display and, according to data from the early 2010s, a staggering 65% of trust assets under management were still invested in Coca-Cola stock. Quincy’s appearance today is not much different from the Great Depression era. It remains a quiet and eminently agricultural city with a population around to 7,000 inhabitants. But don’t let your eyes fool you, some of the grandchildren whose families built an empire, that of the secret Coca-Cola millionaires, still walk through those streets. A version of this article was published in July 2025 Image | PXHere, Ebyabe, PXHere In Xataka | Jeff Bezos asked his parents for their life savings to found Amazon. They only asked him one question: “What is the Internet? In Xataka | Madrid may … Read more

Italy has convinced Olympic nutritionists to put cheese in every risotto

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Brazilian snowboarder Pat Burgener has summed up better than anyone the paradigm shift that separates the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing 2022 and those in Milano Cortina 2026. In a video that has gone viral, it contrasts two scenes: in one, the Swiss Nicolas Huber stoically endures the endless nasal tests in the Chinese health bubble; In the other, Burgener appears enthusiastically tasting Italian food in the Olympic village. He’s not the only one. Austrians Stefan Rettenegger, Johannes Lamparter and Thomas Rettenegger have documented on social networks how they unapologetically enjoy local cuisine and even Italian-style naps. The contrast is total. The restrictive and purely clinical environment of four years ago has given way to an authentic Mediterranean feast. And at the epicenter of this culinary revolution in the Olympic villages, there is an undisputed protagonist that crowns each pasta or risotto dish: mountains of grated cheese. Far from being a simple gastronomic whim, the decision to replace the classic synthetic energy bars with portions of cheese wrapped in Olympic logos, or to snack muffins rich in proteins baked with this dairy, responds to a calculated nutritional and commercial strategy, As detailed in a report in The New York Times. If Italian food had an athlete competing in these Winter Games, it would undoubtedly be cheese Grana Padano. This cured dairy, often considered Parmigiano-Reggiano’s less expensive sibling, has literally colonized the event. The strategy goes far beyond putting cheese wedges on Olympic buffets. The intention of Mirella Parmeggiani, marketing manager of the consortium that manages its production, is to position this food, which Benedictine monks began to make in the 12th century, as a true “ally in the healthy diet of sports enthusiasts.” To achieve this, the Organizing Committee of the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games has signed an official collaboration agreement with the Grana Padano Consortium. The organization considers this entity a firm “ambassador of Italian taste throughout the world” and highlights that they share fundamental principles of sport such as commitment, passion and generosity. But the agreement also has a geopolitical dimension. Italy will reach a record of 70 billion dollars in 2025 in agri-food exports. And the DOP (Protected Designation of Origin) system of the European Union protects more than 850 Italian products under strict standards of origin and elaboration. In the case of Grana Padano, the milk must come from specific regions in northern Italy and the cheese must mature for at least nine months. In fact, only in 2024 were exported 2,685,541 Grana Padano wheels to international markets The message is clear: cheese is protein, but it is also national identity and gastronomic diplomacy. Marketing genius or real nutrition? Seeing this display of gastronomic diplomacy, it is inevitable to ask: are we facing simple marketing genius or is there a real scientific basis that justifies the constant presence of cheese in high-performance Olympic menus? From a nutritional point of view, Grana Padano provides approximately 33 grams of protein per 100 grams of product, without carbohydrates or sugars and with a high concentration of calcium and vitamin B12. Sports nutritionist Saúl Sánchez points out that parmesan and Grana Padano They are placed among the cheeses with greater protein density – 32 grams per 100 grams in the case of Grana Padano – and maintains that its saturated fats should not be demonized in the context of a varied diet. From the sports fieldswimmer Gemma Mengual has described cheese as a “superfood” for elite athletes, while karate fighter Damián Quintero highlights its usefulness both before and after training. The technical explanation usually focuses on casein, a slowly digestible protein that progressively releases amino acids, contributing to prolonged muscle recovery. In the Nutrimi Forumone of the main scientific meetings on nutrition in Italy, Dr. Maria Letizia Petroni defended the approach Food Firstwhich prioritizes natural foods over the systematic use of isolated supplements. In that context, he mentioned cured cheese as a rich source of leucine and proteins of high biological value useful in post-workout recovery strategies. The milky labyrinth and the “protective matrix” The success of cheese in sports clashes, paradoxically, with the controversial scientific debate on the consumption of liquid milk in adulthood, what many experts already call the “dairy labyrinth.” While some studies associate a high consumption of full-fat dairy products with certain metabolic problems, cheese is saved from this screening thanks to the so-called “dairy matrix”. Modern science has discovered that the saturated fat in cheese does not behave in the body the same as that of an ultra-processed product. The bacteria, vitamins and polar lipids produced during maturation alter the way the body absorbs these fats, mitigating inflammation. In addition, it solves the big problem with milk: lactose. While in countries like Spain lactose intolerance affects around 30% of the population, the long fermentation process of Grana Padano (often more than 24 months) makes it a natural product lactose free and highly digestible for athletes around the world. The evidence, under the papers One of the studies most cited in this conversation was published in 2024 in the Journal of Exercise Science & Fitness. He tested 35 untrained young men during four weeks of strength training combined with cheese supplementation. Participants who consumed a dose equivalent to 13.4 grams of protein from cheese three times a week showed improvements in body composition and reductions in total and LDL cholesterol compared to the lower dose group. However, it is worth clarifying: the study was not carried out on elite athletes, the sample was small and no significant additional improvements in strength were observed compared to training alone. The authors themselves pointed out the need for broader research. In the field of aging, a systematic review published in Nutrition Research observed that dairy protein may help increase lean body mass in older adults. It also found small benefits associated with vitamin D in functional tests. However, the results were not consistent in all the trials analyzed. In other words, there are interesting … Read more

The US was convinced that China was testing nuclear weapons, and now it has proof

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Washington and Moscow maintained an unwritten rule which has now been broken: if a test was carried out, the world had to find out. For decades, the global strategic balance was sustained by fragile agreements, mutual distrust and red lines that no one wanted to openly cross. When those limits have started to fadeeven the slightest hint can alter the stability that seemed guaranteed. This is how the accusations begin nuclear. A tremor reopens the ghost. The story we tell it last week, but now, a priori, there is more data to support Washington’s rhetoric. The United States has toughened its accusation that China conducted an underground nuclear test low-yield on June 22, 2020 near Lop Nur, Xinjiang, supporting in detected seismic data by a station in Kazakhstan that recorded an event of approximate magnitude 2.75. Washington maintains something that for them is evidence: that the signal cannot fit with an earthquake or mining explosions, and that Beijing would have used “decoupling” techniques to dampen the seismic signal and make detection more difficult, although it admits that it cannot precisely determine the performance of the supposed detonation. The treaty that does not bind. The background of everything is the Treaty of the Complete Ban on Nuclear Tests of 1996, the same one that prohibits nuclear explosions but has never fully come into force due to lack of ratifications, despite the fact that the great powers claim to respect its initial spirit. For its part, the international supervisory body detected two small seismic events separated by 12 seconds on the indicated date, but also recognized that They were too weak to attribute them with complete certainty to a nuclear explosion, which leaves the dispute in a technical field where the public evidence is, to say the least, ambiguous. Strategic pressure without New START. The accusation comes after expiration of the last treaty that limited the strategic arsenals of the United States and Russia, and at a time when the Trump administration seeks to promote a new agreement that also include China. From that perspective, publicly detailing the alleged test can function as diplomatic leverage to force Beijing to sit down to negotiate. At the same time, it serves to Washington to open another perhaps more disturbing scenario: to warn that it will not accept to sit idly by what it has called an “intolerable disadvantage” if others carry out low-yield tests while the United States maintains its moratorium in force since 1992. In other words, whether it was a real nuclear test or not, the powers seem be taking positions now that there are no pacts involved. The debate about pressing the button. In fact, Trump has hinted that the United States could resume tests “on equal terms” if China and Russia are also carrying them out, a possibility that worries arms control experts who fear breaking the post-Cold War taboo and trigger a new test race. The discussion, therefore, is not only technical, but political: if Washington responds with its own detonations, it could legitimize other powers to do the same, eroding decades of informal containment. Nuclear balance in transformation. Although the Chinese arsenal (estimated around 600 warheads) is still lower than that of Russia and the United States, its rapid expansion It worries Washington, which interprets any low-yield tests as part of a strategy to modernize and perfect its nuclear force. Beijing denies having crossed the line and defends that it respects its moratorium. And, meanwhile, the debate over clandestine testing reveals an increasingly fragile international system, one where distrust and opacity technology weigh almost as much as the weapons themselves. Image | Planet Labs, Google Earth In Xataka | Satellite images leave no room for doubt: China’s nuclear renaissance is already visible from space In Xataka | The United States is convinced that China is conducting nuclear tests. The problem is that you can’t prove it.

the Dutch philosopher convinced that saving snails is saving ourselves

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Before the arrival of Westerners, in Hawaii there were more than 700 species of snails that were nowhere else. Since then, these Pacific islands have suffered all the human processes that have existed and to have occurred: from the most orthodox colonization to a totally accelerated globalization through rapid urbanization, intense militarization and tourism, a lot of tourism. The result can be summarized in just one figure: today, 60% of those snails have become extinct and those who remain are in frank decadence. Chronicle of many foretold deaths. By the early 20th century, populations were decimated, but still abundant. The boom in rats in the archipelago, the rapid changes in habitats and, above all, the arrival of the pink wolf snail (a foreign predator) have meant that the 200 or 300 species that survive do it in very isolated areas or, directly, only in ‘conversation labs‘. In one of them, in a trailer on the outskirts of Kailua and in the care of David Sischo, director of the snail extinction prevention program of the state, lived George (the last known individual of the species Achatinella apexfulva). He died there on January 1, 2019. That shocked those who were in the archipelago and, among them, Thom van Dooren. The cuckoo species trap. This professor of environmental humanities at the University of Sydney was dedicated to the study of everything that birds could teach us, he realized George’s trick. The same trap as Sudan or what other animals. He realized that “There is value in saving charismatic speciesamong other things because they are very useful for raising awareness among the population and raising funds. But, as recently explained in an interview“we cannot forget that mass extinction also and above all affects invertebrates, which constitute 99% of animal life and are essential for pollination, soil fertilization or the nutrient cycle.” What we can learn from snails. For van Dooren, what the snails are “slowly and gently” teaching us is to think in the long term, to use the forces of others and to understand that if we do not think about the systemic (the preservation of habitats), we will have to fight very difficult battles one by one (apply “violent care” to species to avoid their extinction) But, above all, it gives us three very specific ideas: Being late is a problem: if we act when the problem is already “stopped”, everything is more difficult. If we have to ‘triar’, we have already arrived late: When we put ourselves in “emergency mode” we have to prioritize what can be saved over other considerations because we have limited time and resources. And intensive interventions do not fix the cause: we can rescue, replace, conserve… but if we do not change the underlying pressures we are only postponing the end. Snails can teach us precisely that: that at the end of the day, the important thing is to be clear about what we want and value. From there, it’s time to act accordingly. If not, we are condemned to live in our particular ‘Noah’s ark’. Image | Marina Grynykha | BBVA In Xataka | They identify the smallest species of land snail in the world: it is around 0.5 mm high and its discoverers needed brushes and a microscope

Michel Foucault was convinced that “visibility is a trap.” And without knowing it I was talking about our lives with AI

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I never thought I’d write this, but I’ve been thinking about it for days. Michel Foucault more than I would like. And a back pain is to blame. It was a couple of weeks ago, it was one in the morning and the house had been quiet for a while. That’s where the puncture came. I could have woken up my wife who was 30 centimeters away and, well, she is a doctor; I could have searched on Google; I could have even asked on an Internet forum. And yet, I opened ChatGPT, asked what was bothering me, and shortly after turned off my phone to go to sleep. And I fell asleep right away. But a few days ago, this analysis by Javier Lacort about ChatGPT Health It left me thinking. Not because AI was fully entering the world of health and “medical advice” (something that, on the other hand, I knew firsthand); but because of something that was commented on in it: that “we prefer to ask a chatbot have to wait three weeks for an appointment or have to bother a friend at eleven at night. It hurt a little. There was something interesting there. Eleven at night; one in the morning “The ChatGPT Competition”, Lacort continued“it’s not so much with the doctors as with the emotional support network that we used to have. We asked our mother, our partner, the friend who studied nursing.” But for some time now, “upsetting someone has become emotionally costly.” That last phrase is devastating because it contains the key to something that goes far beyond chatbots with medical uses. Something that goes through Millennials’ problems with calls, with the fishmongers, with sex or with any interaction that is not mediated by a screen: the deep cultural aversion that the modern world has generated to ‘social friction’. And it is curious because, although only in recent years do we see the most striking consequencessociology and cultural analysis have been pointing out what was happening for decades. We have Norbert Elias, for example, who I was convinced that (as part of the prolongation of the civilizing process) the thresholds of shame and discomfort are shifting. What fifty years ago was perfectly normal—calling without warning, asking a favor from an acquaintance, interrupting someone with a question—today borders on the intrusive. What’s more, today we have internalized it. Sennet spoke of the decline of the public sphere (we know how to handle ourselves in privacy and in public transactions, but not in the middle ground); the sociology of emotionstalks about the success of therapeutic lexicon and how that has changed the way we relate; Hartmut Rosa cblame social accelerationprecariousness and lack of time, the loss of effectiveness of reciprocity networks. That is to say, we have many theorists thinking about the same thing: that we are a new type of subject. A subject who has internalized the rules, who manages himself, who evaluates his relationships in terms of emotional cost-benefit and who, above all, experiences direct reciprocity as something frictional, uncomfortable and potentially invasive. And, just then, chatbots appear. I’m not talking about the technology behind it, nor its ultimate nature: I’m talking about the same historical process that has created subjects like this, has created something that “listens to them”, that “is empathetic”, that does not judge them and that helps them as and when it can. Honestly, it would be strange not to throw ourselves into his arms. Can Foucault help us understand all this? Google DeepMind That’s where, I’m afraid, Foucault becomes interesting. In his courses at the Collège de France from the late 70sthe French philosopher explored a whole series of different dimensions of power that, although not obvious, were inseparable from the Modern State. In the past, the State was mainly about controlling borders and collecting some money. But not anymore: now the State manages populations (what it called ‘biopolitics‘ and includes things such as vaccination programs or birth policies) and, at the same time, deals with each subject in its particularity (the so-called ‘pastoral power‘ who through family doctors, social workers, school counselors or psychologists listen to us, advise us and “lead us”). He called the combination ‘governmentality‘: a power that (excuse the ‘expletives’) is at the same time totalizing and individualizing. And those, totalizing and individualizing, are features that seem half-made of technological solutions such as ChatGPT Health. A chatbot that, on the one hand, advises users about their problems, listens without judging, guides us in micro-decisions and knows us (or ‘pretends to know us’) in our particularity; and, on the other, it performs triage, implements protocols, normalizes thresholds, generates aggregate data and, in a short time, will integrate with insurers and health systems. Pastoral and biopolitical, at the same time. And with an incredible infiltration capacity. The difference, and this Foucault could not foresee, is that now this power does not depend on the State, but on a corporation. What was previously a community or ecclesiastical function, then partially state, is now outsourced to private, for-profit infrastructures. It is a privatization of power. The tentacles of the State In the previous section I said that “Foucault could not foresee it”, but I think that is not accurate. It is true that when this thinker theorized about “pastoral power” or “biopolitics,” he was thinking about public officials operating in state institutions. But the wickers were there. After all, Foucault himself, in his last courses (especially in ‘Birth of biopolitics‘, dedicated to analyze ‘neoliberalism’ as arts of government), described a decisive mutation of our time: the State no longer thinks of itself as a provider of services but as a guarantor of the conditions for the market to function. The functions that were previously assumed directly (educate, heal, advise, care) can be outsourced to private agents. In this sense, chatbots are neither an accident nor a distortion; are the logical culmination of the historical process of the development of modern power. From a very specific formulation of … Read more

There are more and more people convinced that we are wrong about Pompeii. And they have more and more compelling arguments

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“It was daytime anywhere in the world, but there the darkness was darker and thicker than any other night.” Those words of Pliny the Youngerremain almost 2,000 years later the best description of the hell on Earth that was, according to traditional historiography, the days of August 24 and 25 on the slopes of Vesuvius. Preserved under thick layers of volcanic ash and pumice, Pompeii has given us many surprises since 1748 when Charles III ordered the systematic exporation of the city. But what no one could have expected is that on August 24, 79, the Pompeians would dress in wool. With wool? These are the conclusions of the latest work by the tropos group of the University of Valencia: after analyzing 14 tracings of different victims of Pompeii, the researchers they came to the conclusion that the majority of the victims were wearing two layers (tunic and cape) and that both were made of wool. Furthermore, it was a very heavy wool. That is, with a very dense plot. The cold of Pompeii… in August? As I’m sure you have noticed, at the beginning of the article, just when I was about to say the date of the eruption, I added “according to traditional historiography.” And it is not a rhetorical device. Traditionally, following the letters that Pliny the Younger sent to Tacitus explaining the death of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, it has been assumed that the eruption took place on August 24. However, in recent years evidence of a possible autumn eruption has been accumulating. The last one was a charcoal inscription with the date October 17. In that sense, the discovery that the Pompeians were dressed in wool could be understood as an argument in favor of the autumn eruption. Although it doesn’t have to. And yes, it is true that it sounds strange to be dressed in two layers of wool in a normal August in the Gulf of Naples. However, the authors do not agree. In Live Science, without going any further, several experts explained that “they wore wool because it was what was worn.” It is a common, resistant and, above all, fashionable textile. In fact, the same UV hastened to add that it is well possible that wool was used as “protection” against a “harmful environment” (ash, gas, heat) and not only against the cold. So we don’t know when Vesuvius erupted, right? The truth is that no and that, if you allow me, is very interesting. Pompeii is, without a doubt, the most studied Roman site in the world and, despite everything, there are many things that escape us. That fascinating combination between knowing or not knowing is exactly what attracts us most to the tragic city that in two nights in the year 79 ceased to be so. Image | University of Valencia In Xataka | 2,000 years later, Pompeii continues to reveal fascinating things: the latest is a blue room for unknown uses

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