culture

The culture of queuing in UK is so powerful that many British suffer a real cultural shock by “asking for the time”

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“The other day I go to the post office and everyone is sitting everywhere, in a corner of the room, etc … there is no tail.” So explained The British Tiktoker @edwardthelife What for him is “one of the greatest greatest cultural differences: the fact that in Spain” is asked at the same time. “ And it may seem an exaggeration, but (in the light of comments) it makes sense: “An English, even being alone, will form an orderly tail of a person,” said George Mikes and Check the anthropologist Kate Fox: The British loves to queue each other. Or, at least, they have them so within their cultural conception of the world that they make them by default, almost without realizing it. But does it make sense? The theory of tails. As it seemsthe first serious mathematical study on the queues was made by a Danish, Agner Krarup Erlang. His intention was to know how to dimension the telephone switches to attend optimally. At that time, the operators had to manage the calls manually and the intention of the Danish mathematician was how to reduce the queues without spending disproportionate. Since then we have learned a lot of interesting things. For example, now we know that common sense (the solution to bottles is to expand the number of lanes) It doesn’t always work. In the case of roads, for example, there is an optimal number for a certain amount of cars: if the number of lanes above that optimal lanes is wide, cars change too much lane and, in the end, the flow becomes slower. But in this case the two are tails, right? Indeed, the fundamental difference between the “English tail” (to call it in some way) and the “Spanish time” (to call it from another) is not that one is a tail and the other does not, but the rules that govern each one. The second, in fact, is still a social/virtual order without physical training. The English, requiring that all members physically make a line, allows us to better ponder the number of people in front of them. The Spanish, having verbal control, allows people to do things in the meantime (or to wait in more comfortable places). Is there any better than another? From what we know about virtual tails, order without physical formation usually Improve satisfaction of users (to the extent that you release the client from “being planted”). However, this system also encourages abandonment more than the other. That is why, when I wait for her It is not too long And therefore release user time does not make sense, a single long row (especially if there are several homogeneous attention positions) It usually favor the feeling of equity. ANDSa may be the most reasonable explanation. Because, in Spain, there are also physical tails. It is when the wait is long or when the physical space does not allow to create a tail easily when “asking for the time” emerges naturally. So I suppose that whoever has to take note of the Tiktoker comments is the mail itself. Most likely, neither space nor the time of waiting is the most recommended. Image | Xiangkun Zhu In Xataka | Charge 38 dollars an hour for saving a tail: the millionaire idea that was born after the launch of the iPhone 5

Toyota already knows that the gap with Tesla and Byd has its origin in its Japanese company culture

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We are living the future. The transition to the electric car and how this is being carried out will define what we will see in the coming years. With a changing political environment, hard emission regulations for Europe And a Chinese market that seems to Just look at borders insidethe investments that are made and the focus of how the future is faced will be key. Right now, saying what will be the design of a traditional car brand to ten or fifteen views is little less than adventurous. There are those who assume that Tesla has reached her roofthat Chinese manufacturers have complicated to follow Breaking barriers (economic and psychological in consumers) and that Toyota, very conservative, is the one who is playing the smartest game. And there are those that defend with cape and sword that Tesla has created a new way of understanding the vehicle, based on software. Also that China carries the front and that it is only a matter of time that we embrace throughout Europe the Byd, Nio, Xpeng and, of course, Xiaomi proposals. They are usually the same as they point out that Toyota is only taking the first steps of their decline or, at least, a logical setback given its brand strategy. Be that as it may, decade and a half will have to know who is right. However, we must recognize the latter who, in part, Toyota is concerned about how things advance internally. Also that you are taking measures to solve it. And that your business culture is key. The software as an example of a major problem We counted a few weeks ago that in Toyota they were worried about the way of working in the company. In their collaboration with Byd in China they had discovered that the company of the neighboring country worked at a devilish pace implementing changes in record time. They explained then in Reuters that much of the secret were in the evidence that each new change passed before being approved. While European manufacturers made thousands of kilometers before giving green light to each small modification, Chinese brands preferred put it as soon as possible on the street And, if necessary, apply changes when the vehicle development phase was already very advanced. That cultural shock is even more pronounced with Chinese manufacturers. Consulting specialized in the automobile market have already advanced to Toyota and the rest of Japanese manufacturers that their business culture, in which it is about working on the same concept and repeatedly improve it in search of perfection, is outdated. Then the Caseoft company already encouraged them to expedite the deadlines and think about electric cars from scratch and not only as a purely electric alternative of their combustion cars. This would allow them to save on components (applying plastic instead of more noble materials) and directly eliminate some of them (such as reinforcements that make sense not to transmit vibrations inside the car but lack them when what moves the vehicle is a combustion engine). On that path to adapt to the new times, Bloomberg Explain that Toyota has hired Code Chrysalisa Start Up based in Tokyo specialized in software development. That consultant says that Toyota has already understood the importance that software will play in the future but “remains slow.” Code Chrysalis is organizing intensive camps in Silicon Valley to improve the programming knowledge of Toyota employees With the latest ads about its upcoming electric cars and plug -in hybrids, Toyota confirmed that had worked in software completely renewed and anticipated that they would show more details when these cars are launched to the street. In the presentation of the new TOYOTA RAV4 It was specified that we were facing “the first step towards vehicles fully defined by software.” Already in May, Financial Times He echoed that Toyota had put a greater effort to evolve his software, understanding that in the future it will be a purchase value (if it is not already). With them, we knew that Toyota looked at Chinawith the aim of evolving and learning from those who have revolutionized the interior of their vehicles. Now we also know that, by the hand of Code Crysalis, the company is organizing camps in Silicon Valley to learn coding intensively and then try to replicate what they learned in its future models. However, in Bloomberg They point out that part of these chosen employees are disappointed Because they understand that efforts are still insufficient. In fact, the media indicates that the division designed to develop software has not been directly integrated into the vehicle development chain and that, among hands, have digitalization projects that affect the entire company. For some of the workers, the strategy is still too conservative. In your information, Bloomberg He explains that the company follows a too conservative philosophy in which those who have a long curriculum within the company are greatly rewarded and the labor harmony over risks. They put as an example the case of a worker interested in autonomous driving who, however, when he entered the company, he was doing a quality control of low importance quality. It is just another example of what Toyota defends as Kaizen philosophy. A business culture directly linked to a philosophical posture in which it is preferred to improve until the exhaustion is known before taking a new product and starting from scratch, on a blank paper. It is not accidental, therefore, that the company’s strategy is (at least for the moment) strikingly conservative. Toyota does not stop repeating that they will sell the proper car (electric, plug -in hybrid or combustion vehicle) In the right market. At the same time, what is undeniable is that they have a five years being the company that sells the most cars. The big doubt is whether in decade and a half we will be talking about the first steps of its stagnation or the winning strategy in front of a competition that launched into the arms … Read more

We have found in the Philippines the remains of an advanced culture of navigators about 35,000 years old

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When did the human being thrown into the sea? The human being has had a close relationship with the maritime environment from the dawn of history, but we know that this link comes from beyond what our collective memory reaches. We knew that in the stone age our ancestors were able to throw themselves into the sea. Now we began to see that perhaps their techniques were even more advanced than we thought. Advanced technology. A team led by Filipino researchers has found remains that would correspond to a prehistoric culture With advanced maritime technologies. This culture would have reached Mindoro, one of the Philippines that never in recent geological history has been linked to Continental Asia, at least 35,000 years ago. A variety of artifacts. The team’s conclusion is based on a series of objects found in Mindoro deposits, a medium -sized Filipino island located north of the archipelago. Among the objects found are human and animals, including marine animal shells; as well as tools made with stone, bone and the shells themselves. The team The existence stands out of a culture that will use shells as raw material in the manufacture of tools within the temporal framework of the finding. The deposits, which cover objects of various ages, also include azuelas made of the shells belonging to specimens of the genus Tridacnathe “giant clams.” The inhabitants of Mindoro would have reached this climax of their maritime manufacturing between 7,000 and 9,000 years ago. Dominating the seas. The fact that humans reached this island already implies an indication of a certain relationship with the marine environment, but the team also found rudimentary hooks made of bone, as well as objects that would have been used as weight in fishing networks. A “maritime network.” The team also found a more modern grave, about 5,000 years old. As explainedthe burial could be linked to others found in various parts of Southeast Asia, which would suggest “shared ideological and social influences and an emerging social complexity throughout a vast area from the continent to the distant islands.” The details of the study were published In an article In the magazine Archaeological Research in Asia. A different map. The last glacial period began about 120,000 years ago and would not end until about 11,500 years ago. During that period the volume of ice in the polar areas was greater, so the sea level was lower. Environments like Mindoro They serve as an important reference To know better how, where and when the human being achieved owner of the sea. The Pacific conquest. The discovery fits with the predominant hypotheses indicating that the human being began its expansion through the Pacific Ocean about 45,000 years agostarting from Southeast Asia to New Guinea and Australia. Of course, it would not be until many millennia later (about 3,500 years ago) that humans would begin to expand their habitat to more remote archipelagos such as Samoa or Hawaii. The new study gives us therefore valuable information about how the humans of that era achieved the inhabitants of Asia to achieve the necessary dominance of the sea to undertake the most recent and perhaps the most surprising of the great migrations, the conquest of the Pacific. Millennia sailing. We began with the question of when the human being was thrown into the sea. It is a difficult question to answer since technologies such as navigation could appear in different historical moments and in different geographical and cultural contexts. It may even that the first humans to navigate did not belong to our species, the Homo sapiens. Who then? Probably some species closely linked to ours as Neanderthals (Homo Neanderthalensis); or the mysterious “flowers of flowers” (Homo Floresiensis), more related to the H. erectus. The older indications What do we have and that date back about 700,000 years ago They are linked precisely with this group that would have inhabited the island of Flores, in Indonesia, not so far from the Filipino archipelago where we have now discovered a new piece in the puzzle of human navigation. . In Xataka | We have found 21 human remains of 6,000 years ago in Colombia. They do not look like any current living population Image | Manila / Gebco Athenaeum

Chile asked Chatgpt about their culture. The answer was so loose that Latin America has joined to create LATAM-GPT

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Observe the development of Generative It is most curious. In the United States they are large technological, and startups such as OpenAIthose who have marked the rhythm. In China, companies are also developing their modelsbut the government has a particular interest in Push this technology For technological purposes, of course, but also social and doctors. And now Latin America has joined to create its own Chatgpt. It will be called LATAM-GPT And the motivation to create this model is curious: a Chilean center did not convince a chatgpt response on Latin American culture. The question. “Describe Latin American culture in 500 characters.” That was, how we read in BBCthe request of some researchers from the National Artificial Intelligence Center -Cenia- from Chile to Chatgpt. His answer It was the following: “Latin American culture is a vibrant amalgam of indigenous roots, African influences and European heritage. It is characterized by its rich diversity in music, dance and gastronomy, reflected in festivals such as carnival and the Flower Fair. Its art, from muralism to literature, shows a deep connection with the history and local identity. The warmth, the sense of community and the celebration of community. pillars that enrich this dynamic and diverse culture. ” I have to say that I just asked for it and the answer is different, but pivot over the same points, such as the fusion of indigenous, African and European inheritances, the taste for music and dance, colorful gastronomy and traditions such as carnival to give rise to a colorful cultural mosaic. LATAM-GPT. This response did not satisfy CENIA researchers, who considered that, although it is a Llm Of great quality, “his understanding of the Latin American context could be enriched and perfected.” Come on, they are convinced that the answer, although correct in broad strokes, needs to qualify a lot to better reflect the peculiarities of the culture of each Latin American country because Chatgpt gave an answer too … Generalist. And that response for the region user will be LATAM-GPT. The intention is to be a Language model of and for Latin America and the Caribbean. The desire is that it addresses the common problems that language models have when interpreting idioms, cultural references and typical expressions of the Latin American context. Álvaro Soto, director of Cenia, states that US models hallucinate because Latin American data with which they have been trained are very scarce. “We do not seek to compete with Openai or one of the giants. We want an own model of Latin America and the Caribbean, with the cultural requirements and challenges that implies” – Cenia Goals. It is triple. On the one hand, what we have just mentioned: that it has a greater context when addressing issues related to the culture of each of the Latin American countries. On the other, that is open and public, allowing each developer to adapt applications to local needs in areas such as education, politics, economy or the environment. Finally, perhaps the most important for something that countries in the region are looking for: stop depending on foreign models and technologies. Mexico, for example, has put on the table the intention of carrying out different projects within a great umbrella called Plan Mexico which seeks to enhance the sovereignty of the nation in several matters, being the technological one -with its own semiconductor industry or of electric vehicles– One of its legs. Financing. With Latam-GPT, it also seeks to promote technological innovation of the region thanks to a tool that can help others seek to develop their potential. But of course, carrying out something like that requires money, and it is something that is not going to be left only in the Cenia. Chile has postulated as the leader of the project, but countries such as Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Costa Rica or Ecuador have not taken long to join. There are also Spanish and American institutions on this ship. It has financial support from associations and academic institutions of these countries, but there is also government support to develop this artificial intelligence. Several countries are immersed in Latam-GPT Resources. For training, researchers will use the infrastructure of the University of Tarapacá, in Chile. It will use a super -tank to train the model with more than 8 TB of data collected from public and private libraries. That training will take about 40 days and it is expected that, for summer of this 2025, LATAM-GPT can be accessed. Investment in infrastructure will be about 10 million dollars. Now, one of the problems can be the consumption of the training center. We have already seen in Spain that Not everyone looks good the installation of Data centers To train AI due to high consumption of both water and energy, but from CENIA they expose that consumption in the first of the two stages will be 135 kWh. The University of Tarapacá is in Aricato northern Chile, where there are A great energy matrix composed of renewables and the idea is to ‘throw’ of them to supply electricity. In addition, from the agency they comment that “the cooling system – of the servers – will not generate water consumption due to the availability of cheap and abundant energy in Arica. CO₂ emissions associated with training will be 0.96 tons.” Necessary? This would be, if the accounts are correct, that the training of this LLM will be more ecological than that of Google or OpenAi models, but there are some challenges ahead. One has to do with the protection of data they use to train the model. The researchers affirm that the main policy for the shelter of intellectual property will be transparency, with open sources that comply with the copyright laws And, at the same time, make automatisms of Anonymization of personal data. On the other hand, there are those who ask that all this … for what. Ulysses Mejías, of Mexican origin, is a professor at the State University of New York and has … Read more

135,000 years ago, humans had developed a key component of universal culture: language

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A way of thinking about thousands of languages ​​spoken by humanity is visualizing them as branches of a tree, thus drawing The evolution of these languages over time. If we move forward in time, we will see the diversification of some languages ​​and the death of others. If we invest the time needle we can see the branch or the common trunk that joins some languages ​​with others. For example, if we draw the history of Galician and Romanian, we will see in Latin the common origin of these languages ​​spoken in remote areas of Europe. We can do the same exercise looking for the common trunk between Latin and the Swedish. For this we would have to go to prehistoric times, to a common trunk we call protoindoeuropeo And what would have been spoken Around 5,000 years. However, this does not serve to unite all the languages ​​spoken by humanity in the same tree. We do not know of a link that one languages ​​native to the Americas, the languages ​​of Asia and Oceania or the African languages ​​with the protoindeuropean. We do not even need to leave Europe to find languages ​​without known relationship: we can draw the common origin of the Finn and Hungarian, but we cannot unite these languages ​​to the Indo -European trunk. That leaves us with two possibilities. The first is that perhaps humans began to speak time after beginning the migratory movements that would lead us to adapt to life in various territories, which would imply that several native languages ​​arose independently. That is, there are several independent trees. The second indicates that this common trunk exists, but changes in languages ​​and the absence of written testimony and time have erased all trace of this native language in the known, alive or dead languages. All languages ​​have a common trunk, but perhaps we never find out their characteristics. The question of the original language can be presented as the problem of the egg and the chicken: what happened first, the appearance of speech or geographical disintegration of the human species? The interconnection between language and expansion of humanity is not mere curiosity because answering a question can help us Date more accurately Two of the key events in human evolution. A recent study He analyzed the issue through a review of scientific literature published in the last 18 years. The work examined 15 genetic studies that through different methodologies They tried to answer the question of when the populations of H. sapiensThey began to break down and lose contact with each other. The 15 works included three based on the chromosome information and, the patrilinerally inherited chromosome; Three focused on mitochondrial DNA, inherited matrilinerally; and the rest studied the set of human chromosomes. The team made a meta -analysis, a quantitative study based on the results compiled in the compiled works, to obtain a new estimate of the last era in which in which All humanity shared spaces In the same region. The estimate indicated that this happened about 135,000 years ago. The team concludes from this data that human language had to have an origin prior to this original diaspora. They start from the idea that, if language had not existed in this origin, we should have found any human society without language or, at least, with a radically different communicative form from what we know as speaks. The details of the study were Published in an article In the magazineFrontiers in Psychology. An evolution in several phases But what exactly is speech? According to Explain the team itselfprevious studies had already pointed out that Other hominid speciesprevious to sapiens They had the ability to speak. The nuance is that this does not guarantee the existence of a language, however simple it is. The issue for the team is not when humans, H. sapiens Or other species, they began to emit sounds, but when they began to develop the language “as we know it”, that is, “combining vocabulary and grammar in a system”, a system capable of generating an indefinite amount of expressions based on their own rules. “Human language is quantitatively different because there are two things, words and syntax, which work at the same time to create this Very complex system”, explained in a press release Shigeru Miyagawa, study co -author. “No other animal has a corresponding structure in its communication system. And that gives us the ability to generate very sophisticated thoughts and communicate them with others.” Miyagawa and his team also refer to the archaeological record to support their conclusions. As they explain, the archaeological record that has left us evidence of the existence of the type of complex thought that supports the language, evidence that date back 100,000 years ago in time. The team refers to this to artifacts that denote a “symbolic activity”, such as objects in objects or the decorative use of the ocher, a pigment. We have known for a long time that H. sapiens It has not been the only human species capable of reaching these levels of abstraction. It is perhaps that is why The debate To what extent species like Neanderthals H. Neanderthalensis They could have developed speech or even language Be far from setting up. In your articleThe team indicates that, although the “complex behaviors” such as burials and body decoration They can also be associated with these species, ours would have been the only one to have systematized them throughout the population. In Xataka | We just found the lost link of human evolution: the first bone toolbox Image | Pxhere / Chivi1085

The culture of the tip

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The complaint was made a couple of weeks ago the lawyer Andrés Millán and the Youtuber Pablo Cabezali, who together add in their respective accounts of Lawtips and Cenandoconpablo Hundreds of thousands of followers in networks. In A video With more than 15,500 ‘I like you’ (and up) Cabezali explains how when on January 3 he was given the account in a rice in the center of Madrid he saw that the ticket marked 150.7 euros. The problem is that food, drink and VAT really added 137 euros. The remaining 13.7 were the “suggested tip”, which appeared by default already loaded and added. It is not an isolated case. In fact For a long time And especially in Madrid and Barcelona, ​​cities with a intense influx Of foreign travelers, it is not strange to find it. “A PERRADA” “A knife.” Thus they qualify what happened both Influencers in Your videoin which they also show the account of discord, an invoice in which the real amount of the command is written with the same source and size as that of the tip. Each concept is perfectly identified (€ 124.55 of consumption, 12.45 VAT and 10% extra “suggested tip”); But if the customer does not fix or does not even know how to read Spanish it is not difficult to interpret that € 150 is the sum of food, drink and VAT, without gratification. “This violates the law of consumers and users because prices should not induce error or deception. It must be clear what the price is, with taxes included. And if you want to suggest a tip should be with another font and size, separately, smaller. Thus it seems that what it cost is 150 turkeys. They clearly want to deceive, ” warns Lawtips. “Even if it were legal, I don’t cool to do these things.” Millán and Cabezali’s piece It has a clear intention of denunciation, but the truth is that the application of tips on the tickets (‘to the American’) has been installed for some time in some cities of Spain and not always with the purpose of “inducing to error”, as both appreciate Influencers In the specific case they are talking about. Moreover, invoices also circulate in networks in which the amounts that correspond to the tip appear well identified or even include Emoticons of more or less smiling faces depending on how much the final gratification amounts. A simple Google search arrives in fact to verify that the practice It is not entirely new. Nor isolated. In 2022 Rac1 already spoke of A group of restaurants Catalan that marked the tips on the ticket itself. In 2023 Efe echoed Another case from Madrid and shortly after the global consumer contributed A third example from Barcelona. One of the pioneer businesses that included tips in their accounts years ago in Catalonia acknowledges that since then they have been asked about the local model of Galicia or the Basque Country. In TripAdvisor they are also found Referencesas in the networks, beyond the head of Cabezali. A few days ago Carlos Peguer He denounced In their X account that “in Madrid they are putting in many sites the screws to pay and add tip.” “As if we were in failed states … it’s fine,” He added. Cases like that are just the most media. José explains to Xataka that when he recently asked for the account in a cafeteria in the Atocha surroundings they gave it to him with Tip Automatic: “You get in the dataphone, a large screen one, and pay With the waiter looking at you“ Not everyone applies it in the same way. There are cases that can be more or less misleading, such as the one they comment Cabezali and Millán; and others in which, in Tique itself paper, several options are offered to the client: add 0%, 5%, 8%or even 10% of tip. Clear and didactic. And where does this come from? The million dollar question. In Spain there has always been the concept of tip. And while it is true that it has traditionally been more associated with hospitality than other sectors in which gratifications (taxis, hotels, cast …) can also be included …) its payment is not as institutionalized as in the US or in closer countries, case, case of Germany or France. These cultural differences have already given rise to Some “encounters”. Two years ago It went viral The comment of an American waitress who complained that some Spaniards had left him ‘only’ 70 dollars of tip. In Spain that sum would be more than considerable, but the total account amounted to almost $ 700 and in the US it is usual for bonuses to 15, 20, 22 or 25%. “By God, I hate Europeans sometimes. This table only left $ 70 for a 700 account after spending hours at the restaurant. We should prohibit them from traveling until they learn how to behave.” To meet an account with a predefined space For “tips” like the one who accompanied the complaint of the American waitress, you don’t have to cross the puddle and go to the US. In Spain they are. And the big question is … why? There are several keys. A sum of factors The first is that the best known cases are given in cities such as Madrid or Barcelonawhich suggests that tourism and the influx of foreign clientele, willing to spend, with greater purchasing power and tip culture has much to say. It is not a strange phenomenon. In other cities, such as Mexico City, the influx of foreigners and digital nomads has already affected something much more rooted in its gastronomy: The spicy flavor of his rooms. There is another fact that points in that direction, that of foreign influence. In 2019 Mastercard and Alpha Research made A study on consumption habits and found that Only 10% of Spaniards They always give tip. In hotels it barely went from 30%. There would be two other … Read more

Johann Hari, journalist: “The idea that obesity is a sin is deeply rooted in our culture” | Health and well-being

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A couple of days after starting to take Ozempicsays the journalist and writer Johann Hari (Glasgow, 46 years old), he woke up with a strange sensation, unknown to him: he was not hungry. He got out of bed and went out to have breakfast at the bar, the usual breakfast, a chicken sandwich with mayonnaise. He took a couple of bites and couldn’t finish it. It was full. The medicine, belonging to that generation of drugs that have revolutionized The fight against obesity by imitating the effect of a hormone (GLP-1) that tells us when we are full, was restoring a lost perception: that of satiety. Hari tells this and other anecdotes about his experience with these medications in his new book Lose weight at any price. How Ozempic and other drugs are going to revolutionize our diet and our physical and mental health (Península), which reaches bookstores today. In these pages, the journalist, who has been overweight since he was young, embarks on a journey, accompanied by obesity experts and scientists who have participated in the development of the new drugs, for the benefits and risks of these treatments, the uncertainties that surround them and the uncertain scenarios that open in the field of health and beyond it. The journalist attends EL PAÍS by videoconference from London. More information Ask. He has spoken to many scientists. What has impressed you the most about what they have told you? Answer. Which obesity it really does you. Since I was seven years old I knew that being overweight is not good for your health, but I was surprised by the evidence of how serious it is. If you are obese, you are much more likely to suffer a heart attack, stroke, dementia and cancer. If you are obese by the time you are 18, you are 70% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. And diabetes is the leading preventable cause of blindness in the UK and limb amputation in the US. Q. He assures that these anti-obesity drugs are destined to be the defining medicine of our time, like birth control pills or Prozac at other times in the last century, for example. Why do you say it? R. Because obesity is the biggest cause of death in the Western world. And now we have a medicine that, if you take it, reverses it and puts an end to it. It’s amazing. So all of us who are overweight or obese have a choice, but we have to compare the risks of remaining obese with the risks of these medications and think about it a lot. (These drugs) They are going to have enormous effects. Q. How can they change our lives and our culture? R. The change is enormous. Jefferies Financial, which is a financial consulting firm, made a report for American airlines saying that they may have to spend much less money on jet fuel, because it costs more money to fly with heavier people and that is going to be a much smaller population. Also in Los Angeles there has been an increase in demand for jewelers to change and adjust wedding rings because people have lost so much weight that the rings no longer fit on their fingers. Approximately 20% of Americans have already tried these medications. This is huge. This is an astonishing scientific advance that will profoundly change society for better and worse. “The foods we eat are undermining our ability to feel full” Q. Regarding this negative part, he exposes some issues that the consumption of these medications entails, such as the risk of losing the culture of body positive or what would happen if people with eating disorders access these drugs that help them lose weight. Have you found answers to these questions? R. The invention of these drugs is like the discovery of fire. Fire is a great tool if I use it to heat my house, but it is terrible if I use it to burn my house down. And in the same way, when something as powerful as this is discovered, it will have great positive effects and great negative effects. If you are overweight or obese and start taking these medications, for example, you are 20% less likely to have a heart attack or stroke in the next 18 months. But you also mentioned something that worries me a lot: when you take these medications, you eat much less; and that’s good if you’re obese like me, but people with an eating disorderanorexia for example, if you are thin and start taking these medications, you can kill yourself with them. Therefore, one of the things we must do is regulate these medications very strictly. Q. The book also delves into what makes ultra-processed foods so addictive. Do they cause a kind of short circuit in our brain systems? R. If you look at a photograph of a beach in Spain in 1979, the year I was born, everyone is very thin and you wonder: where are the obese people? So, obesity was very low. Modern humans have been around for 300,000 years, but obesity was extremely rare. And basically, during my lifetime, it exploded. What happened? We know the answer: Obesity skyrockets everywhere people make a change, when they go from eating mostly fresh foods they prepared that day to eating primarily processed and ultra-processed foodsThat is, food is made up of chemicals in factories in a process that is not even called cooking, it is called making food. This new type of food affects us in very different ways. The foods we eat are undermining our ability to feel full and what these new medications do is restore the feeling of satiety. Q. And what about the industry’s responsibility in this context? R. Need regulate the food industry to prevent children from being exposed to these foods that make them sick and undermine their ability to feel full. I’m talking about a long-term solution and we … Read more

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