ended

These potatoes could only be bought in prison. They were so good that they ended up generating a black market outside of prison

by

There is a food product in the United States that for decades could only be purchased if you were in prison or knew someone who was. And no, it wasn’t any illegal substance or a domestic missile launcher. It was a bag of chips. Especially good, yes. Prison potatoes. The Whole Shabang are potatoes whose flavor combines salt, vinegar and barbecue sauce (in the style of all-dressed chips popular in Canada, where they are manufactured), and which Keefe Group manufactured for years to sell exclusively in American prisons. Keefe Group is a company specialized in supplying the prison population that has existed since 1975, when it began selling instant coffee in a Florida prison. When the inmates came out and wanted to continue savoring The Whole Shabang, they discovered that they did not exist outside the prison. The potatoes began as a flavor within the Moon Lodge line, a brand that Keefe produced for prison commissaries. Commissary world. Within the walls, the product became something that went beyond the mere appetizer. The commissary is the space in prisons where inmates can freely spend the funds they have in their accounts. Potatoes were so popular that some inmates began to develop recipes made from the available products, with proper nouns like “chi chi” (improvised soup with ramen and potato). Cult. After its first appearance, for yearsformer inmates scoured the internet looking for them, posting requests on the Keefe Group Facebook page and organizing groups asking for them to be put up for sale. Except for occasional auctions on eBay, getting a bag was almost impossible without going to prison or visiting someone. In 2012, Keefe publicly acknowledged that he had a cult product on his hands, but he has not yet made it available for sale to the general public. Four more years later, the accumulated pressure finally made them give in and they began selling The Whole Shabang online. The price in online stores (at the moment it is not found in regular grocery stores), $18.99, is far from what it costs in prison, where the bags are much cheaper. The question is… do they taste the same in freedom, where competition abounds in the snack market and you don’t have the feeling of privilege at having found something genuinely tasty within the walls of prison? The prison business. The prison market in the United States moves about $1.6 billion a year, concentrated in three large operators: Keefe, Trinity and Aramark. Keefe It doesn’t just sell snacks.but also provides electronics, clothing, as well as hygiene products, telecommunications and software for penitentiary centers throughout the country. And it has experienced some controversies in its history: prisons receive commissions from suppliersso whoever wins a contract to distribute in a prison is not necessarily the one who offers better prices to the inmates, but rather the one who pays the most to the prison establishment. To Keefe, specifically, has been accused to take advantage of the fact that prisoners have nowhere to buy cheaper and the products experience a consequent inflation. The other luxury product. The Whole Shabang phenomenon raises a curious question: why does something produced for a captive market end up fascinating those who have the possibility of accessing any product in the world? Well, just like luxury: an object accessible to very few acquires symbolic value that goes beyond its real properties. In prisons, the mechanism is the same but taken to the extreme, and removing all the glamour. In fact, inside the prisons, The Whole Shabang functioned as a bargaining chip, as an alternative currency. Long live the fries. In Xataka | The María Islands: the “Alcatraz” of Mexico where the most dangerous criminals in the country ended up

You thought you ended up liking beer out of habit. Science has seen many ways to acquire this taste

by

There are many people who cannot stand certain foods, such as the hated broccoli or cauliflower, which for some is inedible and they do not even understand how someone could like that. This also happens when you first take a sip of coffee or a drink of beer whose strong flavor can put anyone off. However, a few years later, that same bitter drink is part of the daily routine or even a pleasure, as is the case with beer. How is it possible? This is the question we can ask ourselves about these sudden changes in taste, and the truth is that it is quite documented under the term “acquired taste“. These two words explain not only why our preferences change, but also how our brain is capable of rewriting its own danger alerts to transform rejection into a reward. Survive. To understand why we learn to love certain flavors, we first have to understand why we hate them in the first place. Much of the blame lies with food neophobia, which is nothing more than the fear or refusal to try new foods, since although in childhood we usually label it as “being picky”, from an evolutionary point of view it is a sophisticated defense mechanism. If we look back to prehistory, children put anything they found in their mouths; like a new berry or a bitter plant, they were very likely to end up poisoned. That is why any bitter taste for our brain is a sign of toxicity and, therefore, we must reject it. Although this is not the case, as is the case with many foods. It’s genetic. The interesting thing is that this rejection is programmed from the factory and has a very strong genetic component. This has been seen in studies done on twins who demonstrated that childhood food neophobia is highly heritable, estimating that heritability by up to 72% during early stages. This genetic predisposition is often associated with a lower acceptance of diverse flavors and textures, and a more restrictive diet in childhood. But genetics only deals the cards with which we will later play in a great environment, since 28% of the probabilities leave a margin for environmental factors. Hacking the brain. The question here is that if biology has programmed us to spit out coffee because it is bitter… Why are many people hooked on it? The answer lies in the brain mechanisms of flavor learning and memory, since our brain constantly evaluates the post-ingestion consequences of what we eat. This is what explains, for example, that if we vomit a lot after eating a tortilla, we begin to put it aside later because we associate it with illness. But if we drink something bitter and, instead of getting sick or dying, we get a boost of energy like with caffeine or a social disinhibition like with alcohol, the brain updates its database and points out that the risk was worth it and that we achieved something positive. Repeated exposure. In order to introduce new foods into a diet that is being developed, as occurs in children, science suggests that Consistency destroys this disgust that generates. However, visual exposure alone is not enough to break this ‘phobia’, rather repeated oral contact is necessary for the nervous system to adapt and accept the food. To facilitate this process, humans have thought of techniques such as, for example, sweeten foodand that is why the fact of adding sugar to coffee or drinking it with milk arises. This acts as a neuropsychological bridge to signal to the brain that these are safe calories. The social model It is one of the most important tools to intervene in our tastes. Here studies in infants suggest that seeing parents enjoy an unfamiliar food significantly increases acceptance in babies. And the reasoning is quite simple, since if the adult eats it and does not suffer damage, the food is considered safe to continue eating. And as you grow up, a large part of the flavors acquired in adolescence, such as beer or traditional dishes, are adopted because they are strongly linked to contexts of socialization and group acceptance, since if a friend takes it and nothing happens to him, it is because everything is fine. Images | Louis Hansel In Xataka | Not all processed foods pose a risk to our health. Some tricks can help us choose the best

Every time the Vatican has warned of the danger of a technology, that technology has ended up changing the world. It’s up to the AI

by

Let’s do a little memory. The 15th century was ending and The Christian Church found the printing press wonderful.almost providential. The adoption of that invention by ecclesiastical institutions was enthusiastic because it allowed them to amplify their mission. It didn’t take long for the discourse to change noticeably. in the bull Inter multiplies In 1487, Pope Innocent VIII praised it but warned of its risks: the same thing that served to spread the word of God, could serve to spread heresies and false ideas. It was then that censorship was introduced according to which no book should be printed without the approval of the ecclesiastical authorities. That laid the foundations for the future Index librorum prohibitorum which established a list of prohibited works for all of Christendom. That didn’t go too well. Martin Luther precisely took advantage of that divine invention to distribute your propaganda during the Protestant Reformation, and if this movement ended up being successful it was undoubtedly thanks to the printing press. It is not in vain that Luther is considered the first author of best-sellers of history. The encyclicals in the face of technological advances Let’s move forward. In 1891 Pope Leo XIII published his encyclical Rerum Novarumpossibly the most famous social encyclical in history. In it the pontiff focused on the rights of workers as response to the disturbing Industrial Revolution. He denounced the concentration of wealth and new technologies “in the hands of a few,” and warned that this was turning workers into slaves. Let’s keep moving forward. 90 years ago, Pius XI launched his act Vigilanti Cura (1936), dedicated exclusively to cinema. It recognized the technological progress that cinematography represented, but warned that if it was not strictly regulated, it would become the greatest instrument of moral corruption and mass manipulation in history. That message would be accompanied by the encyclical Miranda Prorsus (1957), by Pius XII, which extended that warning to both radio and televisionwhich had as much or more capacity than cinema to be beneficial but also toxic to humanity. There have been other social encyclicals related to technology: Pacem in Terris (1963) by John XXIII spoke of the atomic danger, while Evangelium Vitae (1995) by John Paul II was a wake-up call against eugenic biomedical techniques and embryo manipulation. The curious thing is that most of these encyclicals were published many years after certain technological advances had occurred. That would make one think that there are one or several encyclicals dedicated to the internet, mobile phones or social networks. There are not, although these topics have been mentioned by the last Popes in other messages. Arrives Magnificent Humanitas Therefore it is surprising that Pope Leo XIV has dedicated an entire encyclical to artificial intelligence. He has done it just three years after ChatGPT was launched, and he has also done it with a unique title: Magnificent Humanitas (2026). A fact: Robert Fracis Prevost, Pope Leo XIV, graduated in mathematics in 1977 from Villanova University in Philadelphia. This encyclical follows a very clear historical line of argument: on many occasions in which a disruptive technology appears, the Vatican adopts the role of “ethical brake” and tries to warn of something relevant: technical and technological advances must be subordinated to human beings. In Magnificent Humanitas the discourse is known and reasonable: warning that large AI companies They will end up imposing their moral vision on the entire planet. It is not just that hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) or companies like OpenAI or Anthropic dominate this market in the commercial section: it is that this dominance also translates into a form of influence that is even more worrying than cinema or television were (and are). The encyclical also warns of how AI is causing a “cognitive displacement” in which human beings end up preferring that algorithms think for them instead of making a reflective effort. The text is very long (40,000 words, which is approximately equivalent to a novel of about 150 pages) and ambitious, and covers many more areas, but the univocal message is that of a warning about the dangers of this technology. If one looks at this entire catalog of papal warnings from a historical perspective, it is impossible not to see the paradox. Most of the technologies that the Vatican once denounced as existential threats ended up, in the end, making the world a better, more prosperous and more connected place. The printing press democratized culture, the Industrial Revolution raised the global standard of living, cinema and television enriched the collective imagination, and biotechnology saves lives. History shows us that these bad omens of the Popes never came to pass completely, but we must be careful. The value of these encyclicals is not in their ability to predict the future, but in their function as ethical counterweights. It’s okay and necessary that someone warns about the risks, because those dangers were and still are real. Image | The Holy See In Xataka | Spain has been a Catholic country for more than 1,500 years. “The Change” now wants to turn it into an evangelical one

has ended with closed stores, fights and tear gas

by

In 2026 it is no longer strange see long lines of people who spend the night outside the stores of a certain brand waiting for the launch of one of their products. What is not so common is to see them at the doors of a youth watch store to a watch that costs 400 euros. Triple that of the average of their watches. The launch that occurred this weekend was not just any launch, what all that people who were waiting patiently at the doors of the shops I longed for the Swatch Royal Popa watch that emerged from the alliance between Swatch and Audemars Piguet, a Swiss firm whose royal oak from which this model is inspired, starts at 20,000 euros. Such a fuss has been made to achieve this, that even the police have had to use tear gas in some stores. Luxury watchmaking for generation Z Swatch has been partnering with luxury Swiss watch brands for years to bring haute horlogerie to a generation Z more familiar with smartwatches than with traditional mechanical watches. From there collaborations such as the MoonSwatch with Omega in 2022, with Blancpain and now with the prestigious Swiss manufacturer Audemars Piguet. According to published the medium of fashion and trends #Legendthe MoonSwatch series created by Omega for Swatch sold more than one million units in its first year and generated around $275 million in revenue. Given such success, the Swiss brand wanted to replicate the recipe with the Royal Pop by Audemars Piguetand get a “luxury” watch adapted to the taste of generation Z. The Royal Pop transfers that haute horlogerie aesthetic to eight pocket models with Swatch’s characteristic colors, at a price between 385 and 400 euros. A seemingly simple and affordable proposal to wear a luxury piece on your wrist that, however, has exceeded the capacity of Swatch stores from all over the world, to the point that the brand had to make a call for calm from their social networks. MoonSwatch with developed by Swatch and Omega Going for a 400 euro watch that already costs 2,500 on Wallapop The collection was put on sale with a restriction of one watch per person per day. That limitation, far from slowing down demand, triggered it. In Barcelona, ​​hundreds of people had been camping for days in front of the store and the Mossos d’Esquadra they had to intervene and order the closure of the premises. In Paris, the police used tear gas to control about 300 people, and in Milan there were fights between clients and security. The local press from Seville said that long queues also formed in the center of the city. According what was published by The Wall Street Journal, Most stores sold out in a matter of minutes and Swatch preemptively closed stores in the United Kingdom, the United States and Europe. A few hours after the launch, Royal Pop was already appeared on Wallapop for a resale price of between 600 and 2,500 euros, and on eBay some pieces were ordered for 17,000 euros. The dynamics of this second hand massive sale has been identical to that of the launches of limited edition sneakers or other exclusive products: buyers with knowledge of the market grabbed the first places in the queue days before their launch and bought and resold immediately, taking advantage of the shortage in the first units. According to collected Reason Whysome of those who were legitimately interested in the watch complained about the way in which Swatch had organized the launch: “What happened in the stores in Madrid is a shame. Zero security control, mafias sneaking people by the dozens into the first positions and zero concern for those truly interested in the watch and not in resale. It’s time to sell the collection and never touch a Swatch again,” declared one of the people waiting in line at a store in the capital. A success as a product, a failure as a brand The Royal Pop chaos is a case of success and failure at the same time. If you look up the definition of “dying successful” in a dictionary, a Swatch logo will appear. The collection created together with Audemars Piguet has been a resounding success and shows that Swatch’s recipe to try to attract generation Z to the world of luxury watchmaking is the right one. As and as they point out in Marketing InteractiveWith this strategy, both brands win because Swatch ensures large sales in the present, while Audemars Piguet positions itself as an aspirational brand for a new generation of potential. buyers in the future. The problem is that the management at the Swatch points of sale has been a disaster lacking any foresight, to the point of requiring the intervention of the police to avoid greater evils. This lack of foresight in such a strategic launch makes the customer feel reluctant to participate in the next campaign because they do not want to have to spend days camped in front of the store to get their unit, even more so when the product is targeted to an audience who, in the near future, aspires to wear an Omega, Audemars Piguet or Blancpain watch on his wrist. In Xataka | Some OT contestants did not know how to read a clock hands. Science has clues as to why it is becoming more common Image | Swatch

The day Spain wanted to be Spielberg doing science fiction. It was such nonsense that Tarantino ended up claiming the film

by

In 1982, during the filming of Fitzcarraldo In the Amazon jungle, Werner Herzog heard a completely real proposal from several local indigenous people: they offered to kill Klaus Kinski to put an end to the problems he was causing on set. The German director rejected the idea, but years later he would admit that for a few seconds he seriously considered accepting the offer. The impossible movie. In the mid-80s, Spanish cinema was still very far from Hollywood. Science fiction blockbusters seemed to be the exclusive territory of Spielberg, George Lucas or Ridley Scott, while comedies and much more modest films in terms of media predominated here. Then the director Fernando Colomo appeared and decided do exactly the opposite of what seemed sensible: raising a medieval science fiction epic with aliens, castles, special effects, international stars and the largest budget in the history of Spanish cinema up to that point. The result was so enormous, chaotic and Martian that it ended up becoming a symbol first of absolute failure…and decades later in a cult film claimed even by Quentin Tarantino himself. movie poster Spain in Hollywood style. The dragon knight was born as a completely improbable idea: mixing the myth of Sant Jordi with Encounters in the third phasemedieval fantasy, absurd humor and romantic science fiction. The story began with a spaceship mistaken for a dragon in the middle of medieval Europe and a silent alien (played by Miguel Bosé) falling in love with a princess after accidentally kidnapping her. Colomo came from triumph with the comedies of the Madrid Movida, but decided to launch into a gigantic project by Spanish standards. The budget is over exceeding 300 million of pesetas, a crazy figure for the time. Huge sets were built, models and storyboards that were unusual in Spain were designed, and some of them were experimented with. the first digital effects of national cinema. The problem is that Spanish cinema in 1985 simply did not yet have the necessary industrial infrastructure to build something like that without everything exploding into the air. Martian Bosé, Keitel sunk and Kinski unleashed. The casting seemed like an international frenzy. Harvey Keitel accepted the project at one of the lowest moments of his career after working with Scorsese. Miguel Bosé finished turned into an alien because Imanol Arias “did not have the face of an alien,” according to Colomo himself. And then there was Klaus Kinski. The German actor arrived at the filming as a ticking bomb human. He constantly insulted the team, shouted “What a shitty movie!” During the days, he demanded more money, disappeared when he wanted and turned any technical delay into an attack of fury. Apparently, he only respected Miguel Bosé (and for being Picasso’s godson) and the gypsy animal caretakers on the set. To give us an idea, Keitel even offered to pay out of pocket to settle one of Kinski’s contractual tantrums. The atmosphere was so unbearable that Colomo tried to film all the German scenes before meals so I can have a quiet lunch without him. History left the moment when Kinski finally finished his sequences and left the shoot, when the team celebrated his departure. opening bottles of champagne All wrong. The film was shot amidst constant rain, delays, cost overruns and situations almost surreal. An extra was about to drown during a sequence on a lake because the armor was too heavy and he couldn’t stay afloat. An electrician managed to rescue him at the last moment and then used that anecdote for years to demand work in new Colomo films. Not only that. The castle where they were filming was so poorly located that the crew had to upload loading material on exhausting days every morning. Miguel Bose I could barely breathe inside his spacesuit and diving suit it continually fogged up. Meanwhile, money was disappearing at breakneck speed. What had started as an ambitious fantasy ended up becoming something of a kind. suicide expedition where every day seemed to bring a new logistical disaster. The final failure. When The dragon knight It hit theaters in 1985, the reaction was brutal. Part of the criticism destroyed her describing it as a botched, absurd and inoperative fantasy. Although the film was relatively seen and became the seventh highest-grossing Spanish production of the year, that it wasn’t enough to recover such a crazy budget. To make matters worse, the American distributor broke agreements due to delays in the delivery of the material and Colomo lost a trial in Hollywood that left him without international rights. The director finished in debt with 50 million of the old pesetas and, according to would count Years later, he only kept “a Renault 5.” The experience was so traumatic that he thought he was going to have a heart attack. In fact, to survive financially he wrote almost as an emergency The joyful lifewhose subsequent success allowed him to pay off the debts accumulated by that medieval space madness. From disaster to cult movie. For decades, The Dragon Knight was remembered as one of the big hits of Spanish cinema. But over time something began to happen that has been repeated in many other celluloid productions: many people began to see it with fascination. Its impossible mix of genres, its naive tone, its disproportionate ambitions and the chaos that each scene gives off transformed it into a unique rarity. Festivals like CutreCon They claimed it as a cult work and the film ended being restored in 4K forty years after its premiere. The definitive turn came when Colomo remembered a conversation in Sitges with Quentin Tarantino. The American director, always obsessed with strange and failed films, immediately recognized Star Knight (his international title) even before Colomo himself remembered what it was called in English. It turned out that that martian medieval that almost ruined half the world ended up surviving in the most improbable way: converted into a delirious relic of a moment in which Spanish cinema believed, … Read more

The trial against Sam Altman seemed like a duel between two millionaires. It has ended up uncovering the ins and outs of OpenAI

by

Three weeks of testimonies, 78 messages between Sam Altman and Mira Murati during the night they were going to kill him as CEOemails where Greg Brockman wrote in his personal diary how nice it would be to “earn billions” and Satya Nadella describing the OpenAI board as ““amateur city”. This Thursday the final arguments of the Musk vs. Altman trial were held in a federal court in Oakland. The lawsuit asked for 150,000 million in damages and the dismissal of Altman. What has been left for the public has not so much to do with the verdict. Why is it important. OpenAI is, despite its name, one of the most secretive companies in Silicon Valley. Its internal functioning, until now, was known through highly selected profiles in The New Yorker or specific leaks. The trial has forced the company to publish emails, text messages, personal diaries and depositions that depict an organization very different from the one that sells its official communication. A company plagued by power struggles, mutual suspicions between founders and a board that in 2023 could not explain why it fired its own CEO. behind the scenes. The most illuminating episode occurred not on the stand, but in a chain of late-night messages between Altman and Murati during “The Blip“, the weekend of November 2023 in which the board removed the CEO. At 2:30 a.m. Monday morning, Altman was asking his then-CTO if things were going well or badly. “This is going in a very bad direction. Sam, this is very serious,” Murati responded. Minutes later, Altman offered to leave to avoid lawsuits. Murati replied that the council already had a replacement: “uncle random of Twitch”, in reference to Emmett Shear. That same day, Murati signed the first of the letters from employees asking for Altman’s return. The contrast. What Murati’s deposition leaked is that she herself had fed the board with complaints about Altman before the firing. Helen Toner, a former councillor, testified that Murati and co-founder Ilya Sutskever had conveyed to the council a pattern of behavior about Altman’s honesty. Sutskever wrote a 52-page memorandum. On the stand, Sutskever himself confirmed writing to the board that Altman “demonstrates a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his executives, and pitting them against each other.” Murati, in his deposition, maintained his criticisms but framed them as “purely managerial.” Go deeper. The term that the Microsoft leadership used to describe what they saw in those days was said by Satya Nadella from the stand: ‘amateur city. The CEO of Microsoft, the main investor in OpenAI with more than 13 billion contributed, said that he never received a concrete explanation of why Altman was fired. “I was very concerned that employees would leave en masse,” he said. Nadella offered Altman a position at Microsoft with an open invitation to the entire OpenAI team. Altman admitted at trial that he was on the verge of accepting: “I would have made a lot of money and had a much easier life at Microsoft.” He ended up coming back to OpenAI with some new advice. The outgoing board’s accusation was that Altman “had not been consistently candid” with them. The money trail. The trial has also exposed Altman’s web of personal interests in companies that do business with OpenAI. While under interrogation, Altman acknowledged stakes worth more than $2 billion in companies such as Helion Energy, Cerebras –just went public–, Reddit or Stripe. His third of Helion (from which he has just left as president) is valued at 1,650 million. OpenAI has signed a framework agreement with Helion for future energy supplies. Forbes has recalculated his assets at more than 4,000 million after these revelations. Brockman, who according to Musk “did not invest a cent”, now appears with a stake valued at 30 billion. Yes, but. None of this changes the legal background. The jury must decide on two specific civil claims: breach of fiduciary trust and unjust enrichment. Musk’s lawyer, Steven Molo, has tried to turn this into a trial about Altman’s credibility. In his closing arguments he put an unflattering photo of the CEO on screen and asked the jury to imagine a bridge over a ravine “built on Sam Altman’s version of the truth.” And now what. OpenAI has been preparing for a long time an IPO that could value it at close to a billion dollars. Musk, meanwhile, flew to China with Trump despite the judicial warning that he could be called to testify again. Regardless of the ruling, the reputational damage has already been done. The narrative that OpenAI has tried to project for years (that of being an idealistic laboratory guided by the mission of benefiting humanity) now coexists with another version documented in a judicial process: that of a company where the co-founder sends messages to the CEO at two in the morning to tell him that it is finished and a few hours later she signs the letter asking for her return. A company where the president wrote in his diary that “it would be nice to earn billions.” And where the reference investor, seeing the chaos from the outside, called ‘amateur city to its governing bodies. The jury’s verdict will come next week. What can no longer be archived are the documents. In Xataka | There is a thing called “Ornn price index”, it is out of control and it is bad news for everyone Featured image | Xataka

The Solar Impulse made the dream of the solar airplane a reality. Now it has ended up destroyed after an accident

by

There was a time when the Solar Impulse 2 It seemed like it came from a simple question: how far can a plane go if we leave out conventional fuel. The answer was not a commercial product, but an experimental aircraft powered by solar energy and batteries that ended up flying around the world. That is why the news has a special charge. That plane that symbolized a different way of imagining aviation has ended crashed in the Gulf of Mexico during an autonomous test. The coup came on May 4. According to Aviation Safety Networkthe Solar Impulse 2 was conducting an autonomous test flight when it lost power and ended up crashing into the water. The least bitter part of the news is that there were no injuries or deaths, something important because the plane was already flying without a crew in this new stage. The most symbolic part is another: the device that for years turned a technological promise into something visible has been reduced to the remains of an accident. Behind the project was Bertrand Piccarda figure marked by a family tradition of explorers: his grandfather Auguste Piccard was a pioneer of the depths and his father, Jacques Piccardarrived at the Mariana Trench. In 2003 started to imagine a solar aircraft capable of going around the world to draw attention to the “sustainable energy“First came Solar Impulse 1, with its initial flight in 2009and then the final jump. The plane that converted the sun into flight energy What is striking is that this ambition was not based on a gigantic machine in the traditional sense. The Solar Impulse 2 had a huge wingspanabout 71 meters, higher than that of a Boeing 747, but it weighed around 2.3 tons thanks to its carbon fiber structure. The energy came from 17,248 photovoltaic cells distributed throughout the plane, with a maximum power of 66 kW to drive four electric motors and charge four lithium-ion batteries. The moment that made it more than a technological oddity came in 2016. That year, the Solar Impulse 2 completed the first trip around the world of a fixed-wing plane powered entirely by solar energy, a journey that It lasted for more than 15 months. Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, co-founder of the foundation, alternated at the controls during the tour. It was not a demonstration of speed, of course: the plane was moving between 31 and 62 miles per hour, slowing down during the night sections. After that feat, the story changed tone. In 2019, the Solar Impulse Foundation announced the sale of the plane to Skydweller Aero for an undisclosed amount. The Spanish-American company did not view the project from exactly the same place as its creators: its interest was in exploring the potential of the aircraft as a surveillance and communications platform, a very different destination from the original message of energy awareness. With Skydweller the technical transformation of the device also began. After incorporating numerous modifications, the plane completed in Spain his first autonomous flight in 2023and the following year it carried out its first completely unmanned operation at Stennis International Airport, near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. The company’s stated goal was to develop a fleet of solar aircraft capable of non-stop flights at certain latitudes, between Miami and Rio de Janeiro. The ambition was evident: almost continuous operations for military and commercial contracts, at a much lower cost than satellite-based options. A huge promise that has ended underwater. Images | Solar Impulse (1, 2, 3, 4) In Xataka | While we all look at Iran, something is moving in the Arctic Circle: Russia is sending bombers with missiles

The day a small dispute over the Tab key ended up revealing the big difference between IBM and Microsoft

by

There are companies that have lived so long that their story is no longer told only through big launches, acquisitions or business battles. It is also told in small details, in those seemingly minor scenes that, seen over time, end up explaining an era better than many official statements. Microsoft and IBM belong to that category. Their paths crossed when the personal computer It was still defining many of its rules, and some of those discussions, even the most minute ones, revealed something deeper than a technical difference. The scene has been recovered Raymond Chena veteran Microsoft engineer who has been linked to the evolution of Windows for more than three decades and who for years has gathered in The Old New Thing some of the most curious stories of the Windows and Microsoft ecosystem. Chen does not present the episode as his own experience, but as the memory of a colleague who was assigned to the IBM offices in Boca Raton, Florida, during the collaboration between both companies in OS/2. OS/2 was much more than just another name lost in software history. IBM and Microsoft presented it in 1987 as an operating system designed for the IBM PS/2 line and intended to take the PC beyond the limitations of DOS, with a more modern base and ambitions typical of computing that was beginning to look further afield. The collaboration came from a joint development agreement signed in 1985when the project was not yet called OS/2. In that context, any interface decision could have more weight than it seems today, because many conventions of the modern PC were still being established. Two very similar and also very different companies The problem is that that collaboration brought together two companies at very different times in their lives. Microsoft was still a young company, very attached to software and a more direct way of working, while IBM arrived with decades of history, a huge structure and the weight of a much more established corporate culture. Chen sums it up like a clash of perceptions: from Microsoft, IBM was seen as trapped in a meaningless bureaucracy, and from IBM, Microsoft was seen as undisciplined hackers. Its own nuance is important: there was probably something right in both readings. The specific anecdote begins in Boca Raton, where a colleague of Chen’s worked assigned to the IBM offices. At some point a discussion arose about which key should be used to move from one field to another within the dialog boxes. The Microsoft engineer made a decision that is almost invisible to us today because of how assumed it is: use Tab for that function. IBM was not convinced by the choice and asked that the matter will be escalated to the person responsible from that engineer in Redmond, a reaction that already hinted at the extent to which the discrepancy went beyond the key itself. In Redmond, the petition was not understood as an issue that deserved to be raised much higher. The engineer’s manager responded with a very clear idea: if Microsoft had sent someone to Boca Raton, it was so that they could resolve decisions like that there. Translated into a more institutional tone, the message that came back to IBM was that Microsoft supported the choice of the Tab key. IBM’s reaction was just the opposite. Instead of shutting down the discussion, the company elevated her up its own chain of command to a vice president, several levels above those who were programming. IBM had not only elevated the discussion, it also wanted a response to the same hierarchical height. If its vice president was against using Tab, Microsoft had to find someone equivalent to argue the opposite. Chen’s colleague then responded with a wonderful phrase, translated here into Spanish: “Bill Gates’ mother is not interested in the Tab key“It was a pretty nice way of saying that it wasn’t worth going up the corporate elevator anymore. It wasn’t necessary to go to the heights of Microsoft to decide how to move from one field to another in a dialog box. The phrase worked, at least according to Chen’s account: apparently, after that response, the discussion ended and Tab remained the key chosen to advance between fields. The detail is funny because today almost no one stops to think about it: we simply press Tab and wait for the cursor to jump to the next available space. But there was a time when that convention was not so closed. And what we see in this story is just that: a small interface decision turned into a clash between custom, hierarchy and technical criteria. The exact date, however, does not appear in Chen’s account. We know that the episode belongs to the years of collaboration between Microsoft and IBM around OS/2, whose joint development agreement dates back to 1985 and whose Public arrival occurred in 1987. This allows us to limit the context, but not to set the day or year of the discussion by Tab. There are many decisions behind the products and services we use every day. Some are huge and visible, but others fly under the radar: a key, a gesture, an interface convention that we learn once and repeat for years without wondering where it came from. Surely many have a story behind them, although most never transcend and others would not be particularly interesting. From time to time, however, an anecdote like this appears and allows us to peek into something we almost never see: how things are handled within the companies that build the technology we use. Images | Kaatvrtg (Wikimedia Commons) | In Xataka | In 1993 Microsoft created Encarta to revolutionize knowledge. Twenty years later it would be devastated by a tsunami

This soprano learned ventriloquism in confinement. He ended up performing in Las Vegas without using dolls

by

When ventriloquist Señor Wences became one of the most famous Spaniards on American television with his appearances on the legendary ‘Ed Sullivan Show’, ventriloquism was an art form typical of a variety show. The most unexpected heir to her talent is Celia Muñoz, who not only continues the tradition of talking dolls, but is connecting ventriloquism with opera thanks to her experience as a lyric soprano. And it’s taking Las Vegas by storm. Wences, the teacher. The Spanish ventriloquism tradition is unusually powerful for a country our size. We have the very media-savvy José Luis Moreno (nephew of Mr. Wences himself) and the legendary Mari Carmen and her dolls, yes, but also legends today unjustly half-forgotten like Paco Sanz or Herta Frankel and her dog Marilyn. None achieved as much international significance as Mr. Wences. This man from Salamanca emigrated in 1934 to South America and from there to New York, where his appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, on Broadway and on the music circuit music hall They made him one of the best-known Spaniards to Americans. His technique was minimalist to the point of absurdity: his character Johnny was his clenched fist with lipstick and a blonde wig; and his Peter was a stuffed head in a box. Wences died in New York in 1999, aged 103. For decades, no other Spanish ventriloquist had managed to penetrate the American circuit with that reach. Until today. A soprano with a foreign voice. Celia Muñoz had no relationship with ventriloquism until 2020. Trained as a lyrical singer at the Madrid Conservatory and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, she had worked on international operatic projects in Finland, Berlin, Avignon or New York. There, watching ‘America’s Got Talent’ discovered two ventriloquists spectacular: Darci Lynnewinner in 2017, and Terry Fatorwinner in 2007. He became interested in the discipline and, dedicating himself to the subject almost obsessively, he received training from Gary Owen, Darci Lynne’s own coach. To succeed. The result of this accelerated learning could be seen in 2021. In the semifinals of ‘Got Talent Spain’, Muñoz sang opera with her mouth closed in a ventriloquism number without a dummy that won the Unanimous Golden Pass from the jury, and in the grand final she won, becoming the first ventriloquist to win the format in Spain. Muñoz herself planted her victory in that historical lineage, mentioning historical figures such as Paco Sanz and Señor Wences. The international leap. In season 17 of America’s Got Talent, in 2022, Muñoz finished in third place, was beaten by Sofia Vergara and reached the final, where she performed one of her most famous numbers, combining magic and ventriloquism to recreate the spirit of soprano Maria Callas, earning a unanimous ovation from the jury. Thus he made it clear what his indisputable strong point was: the absence of dolls. On ‘AGT Superstars Live’, the permanent show at the Luxor in Las Vegas that brings together the show’s best performances, she was introduced as “the ventriloquist without dummies, making everything around her talk.” Its most notable technical peculiarity is, in addition to projecting different voices onto everyday objects such as a telephone, a radio or a glass of water, doing so while performing actions that seem incompatible with speech, such as eating, drinking or brushing one’s teeth. To Las Vegas. In December 2022, Muñoz joined the cast America’s Got Talent Presents Superstars Live at the Luxor Theater in Las Vegas, where the greats of American variety entertainment have performed for decades. For a year he headlined the show, performing five nights a week. The similarity with Señor Wences’ trajectory is notable, although Muñoz has done it much faster thanks to the immediate popularity of the Internet: in just three years and starting from scratch in the profession: the virality of a semifinal in a talent show can generate more audiences than years on the road. Next up: symphonic ventriloquism. If the American stage consolidated his career, one of the latest projects he has developed points to something more ambitious in artistic terms. Symphonic Ventriloquism with Celia Muñoz It is a show “where classical music and visual comedy meet the art of ventriloquism”, according to the description of the Gran Canaria Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom it premiered last November 2025. Here the orchestra becomes a narrative thread for a story in which different characters and voices emerge, all articulated by Muñoz without opening his mouth. It is not very clear what the future of ventriloquism is, especially with artists like Celia Muñoz opening paths like this. What is clear is that the wooden doll is definitely no longer essential. In Xataka | For years, I have followed a daily practice to improve my memory, attention and public speaking: doing magic

The incredible story of the tallest building on the planet that ended up becoming the largest swimming pool in the Soviet Union

by

During the coldest winters of the Soviet Union, there was a place in Moscow where thousands of people they continued bathing outdoors while huge clouds of steam completely covered the landscape. In fact, from some points in the city the silhouettes of the swimmers could barely be distinguished among the artificial fog. For many foreign visitors, that scene seemed more like something out of a science fiction movie than in the center of a Soviet capital. I don’t remember spaces that have given so much, literally. The cathedral that Stalin erased from the map. Yes, for decades, one of the strangest places in Moscow was that huge smoking circle where thousands of people swam under the snow without thinking much about what had existed there before. The fascinating thing is that that place had first been the largest orthodox cathedral of Russia, then the land chosen to build the tallest building on the planet and finally the outdoor pool bigger. Today, on that same site, it rises again a gigantic cathedral golden Few stories explain so well how architecture can become an ideological battle permanent between empires, revolutions and erased memories. The monument that celebrated the defeat of Napoleon. The story began after Napoleon Bonaparte’s withdrawal from Russia in 1812, when Tsar Alexander I promised to raise a huge cathedral in honor of Christ the Savior as thanks for the survival of the Russian empire. The project went through decades of delays, design changes and ideological disputes until it became a gigantic cathedral orthodox partially inspired by Hagia Sophia of Constantinople. Its construction took more than forty years and the final result completely dominated Moscow skyline with huge golden domes visible from the Kremlin. The building represented the union between religion, monarchy and Russian imperial power at a time when the country was trying to project itself as a great European power. The ancient Cathedral of Christ the Savior Stalin wanted to erase the old Russia and build something greater. After the Revolution of 1917the Bolsheviks began a fierce campaign against religion because they considered that the new Soviet society couldn’t share space with symbols of the old imperial order. Churches were closed, confiscated or reused as warehouses, cinemas or homes, but the Cathedral of Christ the Savior It was too visible to survive. In 1931, by direct order of Joseph Stalin, the building was demolished with explosives to make way for to the most delirious project of Soviet architecture: Palace of Soviets. The plan was to build a 415 meter colossus crowned by a gigantic statue of Lenin about one hundred meters high, a building so enormous that it would have surpassed any existing skyscraper on the planet. The objective was not only architectural. Stalin wanted to physically demonstrate that Soviet communism had forever replaced the old, religious, tsarist Russia. This is how the Palace of the Soviets would have looked The tallest building on the planet never came into existence. The architect Boris Iofan He spent years obsessed with that monumental project, designing enormous auditoriums, stepped terraces and spaces designed to glorify the Soviet State and its leaders. It was excavated a gigantic crater next to the Moscova River, the foundation work and part of the metal structure began got upbut reality ended up destroying the Soviet propaganda dream. The terrain was difficult, water continually flooded the area and the German invasion of 1941 definitively paralyzed the works. Much of the steel accumulated for the building ended up reused in fortifications and bridges during the war. What should have been the greatest architectural symbol of world communism ended up becoming a huge muddy hole in the middle of Moscow. Then something even more surreal happened. Instead of resuming the project after the war, the Soviet regime made a completely unexpected decision: transform that immense circular foundation into a gigantic public swimming pool. This is how the Moskva swimming pool was born, inaugurated in 1960 under Nikita Khrushchev. The place became the outdoor pool bigger of the Soviet Union and possibly the world, with 130 meters in diameter and capacity for thousands of people. The water remained heated even in winter, creating huge clouds of steam over the center of Moscow as citizens swam surrounded by snow and sub-zero temperatures. For entire generations of Soviet people, that space stopped being a religious or political symbol and became simply an everyday place where they could learn to swim, meet with friends or escape the cold. The most famous swimming pool in Moscow and its legends. The gigantic circular pond acquired over time a almost mythological fame. The dense columns of vapor made visibility difficult in winter and began to circulate rumors about accidents, drownings and alleged “suicide cults” linked to the ancient sacred ground where the destroyed cathedral had stood. There were also stories about humidity and corrosion that the complex caused in nearby buildings and nearby museums. Still, millions of people used the pool for decades and for many Moscow residents that place ended up forming an inseparable part of their personal memories, even if they knew that they were literally swimming over the ruins of one of the most important temples of imperial Russia. The Cathedral of Christ the Savior restored on what was the largest pool The fall of the USSR changed everything again. With the Soviet collapse, Russia began to recover religious symbols and nationals who had been persecuted for decades. Maintaining the gigantic pool turned economically unsustainable due to the enormous cost of heating and electricity, while a movement grew that demanded the reconstruction of the original cathedral. In 1994 the pool was emptied and demolishedand soon after began an accelerated reconstruction financed by donations and institutional support. He new temple was built in just a few years and consecrated in 2000 as a almost exact replica of the building destroyed by Stalin. For many Russians, that reconstruction symbolized the return of religion and Russian historical identity after the Soviet period; For others, it … Read more

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.