garbage

where the hell to put a garbage can

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Madrid has discovered that there is something even more delicate than the ‘tazo’ of garbage: where the hell to install a garbage canton. The Consistory takes years planning one of these facilities in Montecarmelo, a residential area in the north of the city, but has encountered radical (and belligerent) opposition from its neighbors. The problem is not so much the complex itself but what dimensions it will have, what functions it will perform and how it will affect the daily life of the neighborhood. The controversy is served. What has happened? May Montecarmelo has declared war to the garbage canton that the Madrid City Council wants to install there. That is indisputable. What is more difficult is to gauge the scope of the project. For the Consistory it is about a “small” installationwhich will include changing rooms, offices and a small warehouse for machinery. Nothing else. Things change if we ask the residents of the area. They talk more about a “megacanton” of around 10,000 square meters that will turn the life of the neighborhood upside down. Is it something new? No. The issue has been on the table for several years now. In fact it can go back at least until 2023when the residents of Montecarmelo already took to the streets to show their rejection of the canton. At that time (election year) the work they came to a standstill both in Montecarmelo and in other districts of the capital in which new cantons were proposed, but the project was never ruled out. He was not spared from controversy either. The neighbors have brought your claims to Brussels (the European Parliament has agreed to investigate) and a few days ago some 8,000 people took to the streets, called by the No To Canton Platformto show his rejection. Why is it so controversial? Because the neighbors are convinced that the canton will be a “industrial installation” incompatible with the daily life of an urbanized area. Residents warn that the “megacantón” (10,000 m2) will be located between homes and three schools and that it will have a negative impact on the daily life of the neighborhood. Specifically, they warn of the dangers posed by the handling of solvents and the storage of flammable products, the bad odors, the noise that the facilities will cause and the movement of trucks that will be generated. According to your calculationsthe canton will add a flow of 117 vehicles (80 of them trucks) to an area already overwhelmed during school hours. What are they based on? The group assures that their fears have been confirmed by the environmental memory published at the end of last year, a document that, they insist, shows that it will be “a heavy industrial installation.” “The document contradicts more than two years of official political discourse,” censorship the Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid (Fravm). The entity warns that, beyond its “extraordinary dimensions”, the project will integrate an urgent cleaning service (Selur) in the “heart” of a residential neighborhood, between homes, schools and “destroying” a green area. Would it cause so much inconvenience? “The report describes machinery and processes typical of a large-scale mechanical workshop. It mentions truck lifts, hydraulic presses, welding equipment, electronic diagnosis, parts washing, oil changes and other dangerous and polluting liquids… Nothing to do with what the mayor and (the delegate of Urban Planning, Environment and Mobility Borja) Carabante say,” warn from the neighborhood group. What’s more, the document recognizes that the canton could generate up to 106.5 dB, well above the recommended (and permitted) limits in inhabited areas. This is what Fravm maintains, who compare it with the noise of a plane taking off. What does the City Council say? It considerably reduces the impact that the complex will have. And they defend their necessity. So claimed it a few days ago Borja Carabante, who insisted on talking about a “small canton” of garbage. “The neighbors told us to reduce the installation to a minimum, we have done so by only installing changing rooms, some small administrative offices and a small warehouse for them to have the carts,” says the municipal leader who recognizes that, although 10,000 m2 have been fenced, that will not be the final size of the canton. “It will certainly have less than half that area.” What is the problem then? “The neighbors have gone further because it is no longer that they just want a canton with changing rooms and a small warehouse, it is that they no longer want the canton not only in the neighborhood, practically in the district,” Carabante assures. “We cannot assume that because we are building 15 cantons throughout the city without in any of them we have had the controversies, the complaints, the claims that we are having in Montecarmelo.” Is it so controversial? That the Montecarmelo project has generated so much controversy is explained by several factors, beyond the surface (and scope) of the infrastructure. To begin with, the controversy goes back years. Furthermore, it does not occur in just any neighborhood. Montecarmelo is located in the district of Fuencarral-El Pardo, an important fishing ground of PP votes in 2023, which has given even more interest to protests aimed at a popular Government. The issue has not taken long to become politicized, with pronouncements of the different municipal parties and institutions such as the Ombudsman. As if the above were not enough, the residents of Montercarmelo have not hesitated to use all the resources at their disposal to stop the project. And that happens both by going out into the streets, organizing mass demonstrationssuch as taking their case to the courts or the European Parliament, which has committed to investigate the canton project. Among the residents there is also no shortage of those who relate the project to the Madrid Nuevo Norte residential development. Images | FRAVM 1 and 2 In Xataka | In the midst of the housing crisis, more and more people do something in Madrid: donate their house … Read more

Japan’s madness with garbage reaches the point that, in some areas, they separate it into 45 different categories. And, despite everything, it recycles half as much as Spain

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At the end of the 90s, the thousand or so residents of Kamikatsu (a small town in the Japanese prefecture of Tokushima) became a question that would change them forever: “Why do we generate so much waste?” The response led them to be the first Japanese municipality to declare themselves ‘zero waste’, to sell garbage cans and to ask their neighbors to separate their waste into 45 different categories. Waste that they carry themselves to the local clean point. One sees this and can only ask one question: have these Japanese gone crazy? And the answer is neither “yes” nor “no”: it is both at the same time. Why are we talking about this? As often happens lately, everything starts with a video. A tiktoker who resides in Japan (@nuriape_) has shown how what apparently is “jack, knight and king” works: the garbage system. And the truth is that it is curious: each building has its own waste area. The one in the video is quite broad and, as he explains, super strict. In addition, much of the processing is done by neighbors: things like cleaning the bottles and depositing them in places other than the caps or leaving the cardboard perfectly folded are part of the process. The collection, it seems, is daily. Now that the new waste rates have returned to waste management to the public debate in our country, the question is… is the Japanese system, in addition to being striking, effective? How does the Japanese waste system work? Since ’97, Japanese laws require separating glass, PET and cardboard. However, over time, the situation has become more and more complex. And, today, the collection categories range from nine in the “less advanced” municipalities to 45 in many areas of the country. And no, it is not optional: if you do not separate the garbage correctly, it will not be collected and that’s it. A garbage collection machine. As a result of these almost three decades of social pedagogy, the country of the rising sun is a well-oiled machine in terms of citizen separation and collection logistics. The problem is, well, it doesn’t help much either. Because collecting is not recycling. And Japan is the best example: its actual recycling rate is surprisingly low. While Spain (with an infinitely less obsessive system) recycles around 39%, Japan is around 20%. It is not that in our country we are here to “shoot rockets”: According to EU plans, we should be around 55% since last year. However, there is something we are doing better than Japan just as there are things we are doing worse. No overflowing containers. That’s perhaps what works best in Japan. Faced with the unequal Spanish management (because they depend on municipalities and councils), the Japanese system prioritizes segmented daily collection, precise calendars and logistical inflexibility. In addition, they also incorporate things that work in the rest of Europe and Spanish legislation contemplates, but almost no one implements: payment per garbage bag. Something that encourages waste reduction and inherently improves the system’s capacity. On the other hand, Spain does interesting things (whether they work better or worse): the main thing perhaps is that the system extends responsibility to producers. What we have in common. While Japan has a hyperdependence on incineration (75% of its garbage ends up burned), Spain has a hyperdependence on landfills (50% ends up buried), we both share a problem with single-use plastics. It is true that Japan is much more worrying (it is the world’s second largest producer of plastic packaging waste per capita), but we both have to think about the matter. Image | Jonas Gerlach In Xataka | We have been thinking for decades that plastic recycling was worth something. Maybe we were wrong

“We will not flood our ecosystem with soulless AI garbage.” We already know what Asha Sharma wants to do as CEO of Microsoft Gaming

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Friday night has been busy in the gaming world with a movement that, more than a change of cards, represents a paradigm shift in Microsoft’s video game division: the end of the Spencer era and the resignation of Sarah Bond as president of Xbox. Phil Spencer has left the company after almost 40 years, 12 of which he has been leading the gaming area. The new CEO of Microsoft Gaming is Asha Sharma. Who is Asha Sharma. The 36-year-old Indian-American’s CV includes Instacart, where she was director of operations for three years, until she left the firm for Microsoft in 2024. She previously served as vice president of product and engineering at Meta, leading, among other things, the company’s messaging apps. And more than a decade ago he worked in the marketing area of ​​Microsoft. Another leadership profile. Spencer’s leadership was almost evangelical: his era was characterized by rebuilding the brand after the discreet launch of the Xbox One in 2013expansion through acquisitions such as that of Activision Blizzard for 69,000 million dollars and its total commitment to Game Pass. However, Xbox has still not won the console war and its studios have been chaining cancellations and closures in recent times. Sharma’s career is meteoric, but she lacks a track record within the video game industry: she is neither a designer nor a dev, she is an operations and technology executive who comes from leading enterprise AI teams at Microsoft. The new Sharma aims more at operational efficiency, AI and platform ubiquity. Asha Sharma’s roadmap with Xbox. Sharma has already published its first statement where it establishes three axes: Great video games. His message is reassuring for fans: there will be iconic franchises, a commitment to creativity and innovation, and complete trust in Matt Booty. The return of Xbox. You want to put the console back in. center, something that with Spencer had been blurred. Of course, without giving up PC, mobile phones and cloud gaming. The future of gaming and AI. Sharma promises not to flood his ecosystem with artless garbage: “Games are and always will be art, created by humans and with the most innovative technology we offer.” Surprising from someone who comes precisely from there. In summary it would be: AI yes, but with a head. Unknowns and challenges. Its first message is promising but vague and leaves many key questions in an area where finding balance is complicated. If Microsoft, which is the largest player in the sector by capitalization, puts someone without gaming DNA on the front line, it sends a signal of where the business is going that points to platforms, subscriptions, generative AI, platforms… the question is whether that is compatible with making great games. On the other hand, Sharma mentions that games are “art made by humans” but also that AI will “evolve and influence.” We will have to see what the conciliation is like. In addition, neither she nor Booty have clarified What will happen to the studies that Microsoft has closed. Finally, the Xbox Everywhere model invites you to play on any device and makes more sense than ever, so there is no doubt to wonder about the future of consoles as devices. In Xataka | Video games have grown a lot this year. But the money goes to China, Roblox and the owners of mobile platforms In Xataka | Windows was the kingdom of gaming for decades: Microsoft knows that something has gone wrong, and promises these changes Cover | Microsoft

They have become human garbage cans

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Japan has spent decades elevating cleanliness to an almost competitive. It is not trivial, since even organize official championships garbage collection on the street, where teams compete to see who leaves the most impeccable environment. In a country where there are initiatives that turn civility into sport, the relationship with waste is not a minor detail, but a profound expression of how public space and individual responsibility are understood. And yet, the arrival of hordes of tourists has revealed a paradox. A clean country without trash cans. Yes, Japan has been surprising the world for decades with a paradox that baffles anyone who visits it for the first time: impeccable streets, sparkling stations and, at the same time, almost no garbage can in sight. This absence is not a system failure, but a direct consequence of a culture who avoids eating while walking, prioritizes taking waste home and individually assumes the responsibility of not littering public spaces. For local people, buy something in a konbini or in a vending machine already implies having a mental plan to manage the packaging, a routine so internalized that it makes trash cans on the street unnecessary. Garbage cans, but human. The problem appears when this cultural ecosystem collides with mass tourism. With dozens of million visitors a yearJapan has been filled with travelers who eat on the go, buy viral drinks and “Instagrammable” snacks and, when they finish, discover that there is nowhere to throw anything away. The result is an image as absurd as it is revealing: hordes of tourists turned into human trash canswalking kilometers with glasses, wrappers and bottles in their pockets, backpacks or improvised bags. The official surveys they confirm it: For visitors, the lack of trash cans is already the main logistical problem of the trip, above the language or the crowds. Local rules, foreign habits. The friction is not only due to the physical absence of cubes, but to a profound difference in habits. In Japan, eating while walking is frowned upon and, in some cities, it is outright prohibited. “Takeaway” food is effectively taken home or to work. Tourists, on the other hand, consume on the street and expect to find an infrastructure similar to that of their countries of origin. When there is not one, the system suffers: scarce trash cans that overflow, waste abandoned in discreet corners and a growing tension between traditional Japanese courtesy and the reality of tourism that does not always know how (or can) adapt. Safety, costs and trauma. Added to this equation is a less visible but decisive factor: security. After the sarin gas attack in the Aum Shinrikyo sect in the Tokyo subway in 1995, many trash cans were removed for fear that they were used to hide explosives, a logic that also explains why the few that exist usually have transparent bags. Added to this are the maintenance costs and strict municipal regulations on public space. The result has been an urban landscape deliberately devoid of cubeseven when the social context that supported it has changed radically. Cities that are beginning to give way. In any case, it counted the wall street journal in a report that the continued pressure of tourism is forcing some cities to rethink dogma. In especially saturated places, such as central Tokyo neighborhoods or busy historic parks, calls have begun to appear. “smart” binssometimes with messages in English, sensors or compaction systems. Other initiatives border on the surreal, especially for the “foreigner” without any context, such as students who they walk with garbage cans behind their backs to collect waste in exchange for donations or advertising. That said, these are more of creative patches to a deeper culture clash: Japan hasn’t really changed its idea of ​​cleanliness, but the world has arrived en masse and without warning, and now millions of visitors travel around the country carrying their garbage on them, discovering that in the most tidy place on the planet… the bucket is them. Image | PexelsCorpse Reviver In Xataka | Sushi was a sleeping giant of the fast food industry: in the US it has already begun to eat hamburgers In Xataka | Japan has been mired in a demographic debacle for years. Now it suffers a new crisis: that of coming of age

we are creating a 250 million ton mountain of garbage

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The energy transition is happening at an unprecedented speed. According to the latest report from the IEA-PVPSIn 2024 alone, 601 GW of solar power was installed in the world, reaching a cumulative total of 2.2 TW. However, this success hides an environmental paradox. As researcher Rabia Charef warns At The Conversation, we are installing the future on a mountain of potential garbage that, by design, is an “industrial strength sandwich” almost impossible to separate. The “sandwich” design: a durability trap. For a panel to withstand hail, snow and wind for 30 years, it is built by stacking layers of glass, silicon and polymers sealed with adhesives so powerful that they become a single unit. As Charef explainsthis virtue is also its condemnation, since at the end of its useful life the separation of materials is so expensive that most end up in the landfill. It is not a minor problem. Already in 2016, IRENA reports They warned that by 2050 solar waste could total 250 million tons, which would represent 10% of all electronic waste on the planet. China and the “poison” of overproduction. The clock on this crisis has sped up due to geopolitics. China dominates 90% of global capacity of solar cells and in this desire to lead the sector, the Asian giant manufactured 588 GW last year, doubling global demand. This flood of cheap panels has sunk prices and caused million-dollar losses, but also has created a perverse incentive: It is so cheap to buy a new panel that repairing an old one does not seem profitable. Analyst Bo Zhengyuan explains that that “animal spirit” that made the Chinese industry triumph is now suffocating it, filling the world with equipment that will die in two decades without an exit plan. The laboratory of saturation. For its part, another problem that is committed is forgetting the fundamentals, as happens in Spain. The country broke records last summer by generating more than 10,500 GWh per month of sun and wind, but the system cannot hold up. Spain already waste 7% of its clean energy due to lack of networks and storage. “The mistake was not putting up panels, but forgetting about the networks,” quotes an executive in the Financial Times. This lack of investment has plunged the value of solar parks by 30% in just one year, forcing “liquidation sales” (fire sales). If the companies that run these plants go bankrupt or lose profitability, who will take care of the millions of panels when they stop working? The limit of current recycling: shredding is not recovering. Today, recycling is disappointing. As The Conversation denouncesmost plants simply shred the panels to recover low-value aluminum and glass. In the process, the true treasure is lost: high-purity silver, copper and silicon. Silver, although it only represents 0.14% of the weight of the panel, represents 40% of its material value. When crushed, this metal is pulverized and mixed with impurities, making it unrecoverable. According to sourceswe are throwing away an estimated economic value of $15 billion by 2050. Although there are sprouts of hope. Despite the panorama, technology is trying to catch up with the problem: Silver Recovery: Researchers from the University of Camerino (Italy) have developed a hydrometallurgy technique that recovers 99% of pure silver without using harsh chemicals. The milestone of the 100% recycled panel: The Chinese giant Trina Solar has achieved create the first fully recycled crystalline silicon panel. Although its efficiency (20.7%) is somewhat lower than that of a new one (25%), it demonstrates that circularity is possible and that the performance of recycled material is already fully competitive compared to current industry standards. Cutting-edge plants in Spain and the US: While in the United States the company SolarCycle seeks to recover 99% of photovoltaic materials; in Spain, the CERFO project in Teruel positions itself as a European pioneer in the recovery of silicon, a component historically difficult to recycle. Repair before recycling: “Revamping”. Before the panel reaches the recycling plant, there is a more sustainable option: the revamping. A study by the University of Castilla-La Mancha shows that renewing Specific components of a solar plant can maximize production and profitability without the need for total dismantling. In Japan, the startup Girasol Energy has achieved restore the oldest solar system in the country (from 1994), aiming for it to operate for 50 years by using Big Data to identify faults piece by piece without replacing the entire equipment. Digital passports and modular design. The definitive solution could come from regulation. The European Union will implement the Digital Product Passport (DPP) starting in 2027. As the EU source explainsthis document will allow you to know the origin, materials and disassembly instructions for each panel. This passport, along with the “digital twins” mentioned in The Conversationwill allow technicians to monitor performance in real time and know exactly how to separate the “sandwich” of materials without destroying them. Faced with the solar paradox. Solar energy is essential to stop global warming, but it cannot be “clean” if its end is dirty. The industry now faces its biggest test: redesigning the panels not only so that they catch the sun, but so that, when their last sunset comes, they don’t leave behind a legacy of glass and plastic that future generations cannot manage. Image | freepik Xataka | All the solar panel technologies that exist and which ones are most efficient, in a graph that goes from 1975 to today

Nepal imposed a $4,000 bail on tourists to clean Everest. Now you have more garbage and a problem

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If we talk about remote, isolated and inaccessible regions, few places reach the level of Everest. The highest mountain of the planet (at least if we take sea level as a reference) is not within everyone’s reach. Crowning it requires years of preparation, acclimatization and in-depth knowledge of mountaineering, in addition to spending a few tens of thousands of dollars in tickets, equipment, fees and Sherpas. Despite that, despite all its rigors, Everest has become a monster touristified full of tons and tons of garbage. In Nepal they just checked that this problem, that of the accumulation of waste in the mountains, cannot be solved even with the threat of paying thousands of dollars. Hence, the Government is already considering tougher measures. What has happened? That Nepal has realized that the threat of sanctions is not enough to prevent Everest from becoming a gigantic landfill frozen. More than a decade ago, its authorities adopted a measure with which they intended to clean the mountain: each climber who wanted to ascend to the roof of the world must first deposit $4,000, a kind of deposit that would only be recovered if he returned from his expedition with eight kilos of waste. The objective was clear: for the mountaineers to collect their garbage. If they did, they got their $4,000 back. If not, they lost the deposit. The idea looked good on paper, but it has turned out to be a fiasco. Over the past few years, mountaineers have returned from their climbs with backpacks full of debris to unlock their bails, but that hasn’t improved Everest. On the contrary. Why’s that? Very simple. Because (paraphrasing the Spanish proverb) ‘the law is made, the trap is made’. Tourists who have set out to conquer Everest have spent the last few years returning with rubbish to claim a refund of their money, but what at first sounds so positive has actually meant a problem for the mountains. The reason? The origin of these wastes. Climbers collect waste, true, but in lower altitude camps. Things change if we talk about the highest bases, where loading and eliminating waste is more difficult, expensive and even dangerous. Hence, the waste problem continues to be worrying and has even worsened in the most sensitive areas: the camps located closer to the summit. “From the highest bases people tend to return only with oxygen bottles,” explains to the BBC Tshering Sherpa, executive director of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee. “Other items like tents, cans and boxes of packaged food and beverages are left there, mostly abandoned. That’s why we see so much trash piling up.” What has been the result? A fiasco. The Sherpas themselves recognize that the pollution problem has worsened in the camps closest to the summit. After all… Why descend loaded with garbage from the top of the mountain if 8 kg can then be collected in the lower camps? As if that were not enough, managing the $4,000 deposits has resulted in more paperwork for Nepalese officials. Although the problem of dirt has not been solved, the majority of mountaineers recover their deposits, which translates into an “administrative burden” for the nation. Does it work that badly? In the country there are those who speak directly of a “defective norm” that fails in several key points. The main one, surveillance. “From the checkpoint above the Khumbu Icefall there is no supervision over what the climbers do,” comments Sherpa. Hence, it is not a problem for tourists to leave their garbage at the top of the mountain and then cover the quota with waste from lower camps. There is also another important handicap. The rule requires climbers to return with 8 kg of waste, but there are studies that warn that a climber produces much more waste during his stay on the mountain, at least if the weeks of acclimatization are taken into account. To be precise, we are talking about 12 kg. Is the problem that serious? Yes. The figures speak for themselves. Estimates may vary from one study to another, but they generally show that after years of tourism, Everest has become a large landfill in which dozens of tons of waste accumulate. And that includes everything from packaging, store remains, ropes… and even kilos and kilos of feces. It is not at all surprising if you take into account the great popularity that the mountain has been gaining over the last few decades. Although the expeditions are not affordable for everyone (some estimate that they cost between 40,000 and 60,000 dollars) every year hundreds of climbers land on Everest. The Telepragh esteem that around 600 mountaineers try to climb the mountain every year, which represents a huge flow of climbers who arrive accompanied by equipment and Sherpas. There are many, but the figure falls short when compared to the activity that was recorded in the area before the pandemic. Statista calculates For example, in 2023, 656 successful promotions were recorded, a figure that exceeded 800 before the health crisis. And now what? After assuming that their previous bailout plan “did not show tangible results,” the Nepalese authorities want to toughen their conditions to tackle the pollution problem. They have a new plan on the table that includes a cleaning fee that It would be around $4,000.although with an important nuance: in this case would not be refundable. The idea is that this flow of thousands of dollars will serve to finance the conservation of the mountain. “With the new plan we will deploy qualified rangers paid for by the cleaning fee collected from climbers,” comments Himal Gautamfrom the Department of Tourism. If the measure goes ahead, it will join others that in recent years have sought to improve the preservation of Everest, such as the increase in rates administrative or even the norm which since 2024 requires mountaineers to carry bags to collect their excrement. Images | Akunamatata (Flickr), Mari Partyka (Unsplash) In Xataka | When a storm hit Everest, a … Read more

The visual garbage of AI is so omnipresent that it is already unleashing a counter-aesthetic current: neo-brutalism

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The Internet is being flooded with images and designs that seem to be cut from the same mold: identical fonts, predictable gradients, aesthetics polished to the point of nausea. This phenomenon is difficult to describe and limit due to its infinite variants and omnipresence, but it has a name: “AI slop“. By this we refer to digital content generated with artificial intelligence, from images to web design itself, and where quantity takes precedence over any hint of originality or meaning beyond the effectiveness of the mass production chain. But what is AI Slop. The expression gained traction in 2024 thanks to British programmer Simon Willisonalthough it had previously circulated in communities such as 4chan and Hacker News. The concept indicates a root problem: When AI models are trained with the most common patterns on the internet, they replicate a generic and forgettable aesthetic ad nauseam. It’s what experts call “distributional convergence”: everything seems designed by the same depersonalized algorithm. And the anti-AI slop? Faced with this invasion of algorithmic uniformity, a visual counterculture emerges that celebrates precisely what AI avoids: the clumsiness, the unevenness, the marks of the human creative process. The anti-AI slop is not an aesthetic whim, but a declaration of principles that rescues imperfection and turns it into a differential value and a trait of delicious humanity. Some critics celebrate it as a kind of digital neo-brutalism, referring to the famous unadorned concrete architecture of the 1950s. This neo-brutalism is characterized by taking digital nudity to the extreme: sites built with basic HTML and minimal CSS, where the code is displayed without artifice. The fonts are not the elegant paid fonts, but the system ones installed by default: Arial, Times New Roman, Courier. The photographs appear unretouched, with their digital noises and compression artifacts clearly visible. Asymmetrical compositions, in short, that break any notion of classical balance. Like children. This leads us to a style perhaps opposite to cold brutalism, but also contrary to IA Slop: the aesthetic of a childish hasty sketch. Deliberately unbalanced proportions, freehand illustrations, elements that overflow the margins. Lindsay Marsh, a designer specializing in visual trends, points out that These visible “errors” act as signatures of authenticity: They are proof that behind the screen there are human fingers, not processors without humanity. The people of Phantom Watchers formulates it in a similar way: “It’s our way of saying ‘a human was here.’” Any notable example? The recent redesign of the oldest magazine The Face It is full of imperfections. Hell, it even looks like they programmed it in HTML. What features does it have? Like IA Slop itself, this opposition mutates in countless ways: disproportionately large fonts that challenge traditional visual hierarchy, website scaffolding exposed in an exhibitionist manner (even leaving the code visible), and color combinations limited to one or two colors on uniform black or white backgrounds, sometimes imitating the texture of analog montage. The templates are twisted on purpose, breaking with the obsessive symmetry that dominates more formal styles, and which are easier to imitate by those AIs that propose to set up a web store in just a few minutes and with a couple of prompts. But… why? The guiding principles of this rejection movement are clear: imperfections as a form of rejection of digital makeup, functionality without disguises, frontal rejection of prefabricated templates. “We don’t need decoration, we need design that just works,” summarized the people from the U1CORE design team when analyzing one of the many tentacles of this anti-AI Slop: the brutalist minimalismwhich is the label under which this new design trend is also categorized We have philosophy. And China, no less. Some evoke the aesthetics of another architectural and decorative trend: Japanese wabi-sabiwho finds the ephemeral and the defective beautiful. Cracks in walls and objects, time-worn textures, organic asymmetry… everything that algorithmic perfection rejects, anti-AI slop highlights. Many designers have named it “post-AI visual fatigue“the feeling that has given rise to all this: a collective exhaustion in the face of designs as polished as they are sterile and devoid of personality. Who said punk? For some of us, those of us who are old dogs, this philosophy reminds us of the guidelines of the first punk, the one who created fanzines with headlines made with letters cut out of magazines. Then ethics became aesthetics, and everything was militancy of photocopying and album covers as if they were kidnapping notes; But along the way, there was also opposition to a giant. To serious media, with gray designs and content without stridency. Punk stood up to the establishment with filth and “do it yourself”. It sounds very familiar to us: AI is the new mainstream, and many are going hardcore mode. Header | Kris Shakar In Xataka | Young people have decided to stop posting (so much) on Facebook and Instagram. “AI-generated garbage” has free rein

China needs garbage to burn and it needs it so badly that people are digging it up to sell it to incinerators.

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Until a few years, China was the dumping ground of the world. Voluntarily. Since the 1980s, garbage imports have helped China supply raw materials for its industry. Today, the situation has changed and China continues to have a very intense relationship with waste management. But a very different one. What they have left over now is not garbage, but incinerators to burn it. And that has caused old landfills to begin to be unearthed. Many plants of the country They are burning garbage from 20 years ago today. The great Chinese love affair with garbage. In 2016, China imported 7,350,000 tons of plastic and Hong Kong another 2,850,000. In total, they imported almost 70% of all the plastic waste moved around the world that year. That’s not counting paper, scrap or textiles. China was, for more than two decades, the world’s dumping ground. And it wasn’t an accident. In the 1980s, faced with the shortage of certain raw materials, the Chinese Government decided to start importing certain especially useful waste (plastic, paper, mineral slag or textile waste). “The most notorious case was probably the importation of electronic waste that was dismantled and reprocessed in terrible environmental conditions,” Erik Baark explained to us. Everything has an end. However, by the late 2010s, the Chinese situation had changed. In those years alone, the total volume of urban solid waste generated in the Asian giant increased from 158 million tons to more than 249 million. Suddenly, the Government understood that it was running out of space. So he took several measures. And what did he do? On the one hand, got serious about environmental regulations. In the summer of 2017, more than 800 companies were prosecuted for not complying with recycling standards. And, a few months later, authorities arrested more than 259 people for the illegal importation of 303,000 tons of garbage. But it wasn’t enough. And they prohibited imports. That was what affected us the most: the 2017-2018 decision plunged to the international garbage market (and especially to Western recycling systems) in a crisis from which we have not yet emerged. However, it was not the only thing they did. As Baark explains“the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) explicitly supported the incineration of municipal solid waste, with the aim of increasing the proportion of waste treated by incineration from 20% to 35% at the national level.” However, China does not know how to do anything by halves. In less than five years, incineration power plants experienced a real boom (from 428 in 2019 to 1010 in 2023). The goal for 2025 — a daily incineration capacity of 800,000 tons — had already been exceeded in 2022. And shortly after, this energy production system came to “process” 80% of the country’s waste. Today they have literally run out of trash. As I said, in recent months, Chinese and international media have reported on waste incinerators for energy recovery in large cities that operate at low capacity due to a lack of raw materials. It is the story of how the impressive operational capacity of the Beijing government goes too far, yes. But the consequences are very curious: because the plants continue looking for waste to burn. In fact, to the extent that plants compete with each other: the price of garbage is rising. And that seems to be causing in many areas of the country “old” garbage is being dug up. A present that is ending. But no one is aware that this is something temporary. If Chinese waste continues to grow so little by little (10% in recent years), the incineration model is going to enter a crisis. First, for the most obvious thing, of course: it is not sustainable. but also because It is still an emergency resource and not a rational waste management policy. The most interesting thing for us is that this more than predictable crisis It will also change our world. Image | 烧不酥在上海 老的 In Xataka | The European waste industry has been lying to us for years: in 2018 everything blew up and we still haven’t recovered

If the question is whether you have to pay garbage tax for a parking space in Madrid, the answer is: good luck with the Cadastre

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April 8, 2022. The Government publishes in the BOE Law 7/2022, on waste and contaminated soils for a circular economy. Behind this name hides a small bomb that has been exploding, little by little, in each municipality. In Madrid, that detonation has come this year. Beyond the calculation, there are thousands of car parks that are now wondering: do I have to pay the new garbage fee? Where do we come from? My colleague Carlos Prego explained it a few days ago in Xataka. Madrid has recalculated its garbage rate, making reference to the famous Law mentioned above with a calculation that the OCU has come to define as “original and unfair”. The point is that controversy has arisen because Madrid City Council said “eliminate” this rate in 2015, alleging that they removed the tax burden from the citizen. The 2022 Law obliges municipalities with more than 5,000 inhabitants to begin collecting it, following European guidelines. To calculate that rate, The City Council has taken into account the cadastral value of the apartments or the tonnage of garbage that is collected in each neighborhood. That is, those who live in a neighborhood where more garbage is generated will pay more… and that directly affects neighborhoods with great tourist activity (hotels, tourist apartments…), commercial or very densely populated. a truce. The criticism has been so virulent on the part of the oppositionof the neighbors and of the associations of consumers who the City Council has partially rectified. They assure that now it will be taken into account the number of registered in each household looking ahead to next year. But what happens where no one lives? Yes, where, for example, there is a parked car because we are talking about a garage. And the garbage rate also affects the owners of a parking space… At least, apart from them. and a battle. Because although the neighbors seem to have received a truce with the new calculation in the garbage rate, which, yes, the City Council continues to defend that it will have little impact on obvious changes for neighborsthe new open front is what happens to the parking lots. And the door had been opened for a neighbor to have to pay a garbage fee for his home and another garbage fee for his parking lot. Despite the fact that, obviously, the garbage generated by a parking space is minimal or non-existent. Little more than general cleaning if we talk about a community parking lot. However, the rate taxes the provision of the service of collection, transportation and treatment of urban waste, in the words of the College of Administrators. That is, the same person (house and garage) could be charged for a single garbage collection. Who pays then? Those who will pay. Those owners of parking spaces whose parking lot is registered in the Cadastre as a “parking-industrial-use warehouse”, in the words of a circular sent by the Madrid College of Administrators to the Property Administrators of the Capital. What does this mean? They clarify it from the Cadastre which, upon consultation with one of these administrators, have confirmed that they are those independent garages that cannot be accessed from a home or from the common areas of a building. That is, those in which garbage is collected individually. Those who will not pay. Those owners of a parking space whose parking is registered in the Cadastre as “residential use”. Or, in a simplified way by this last entity, which are accessed from a home or from common areas with another building. In that case, they may be communities of different owners (garage and building) but if access is from the same common areas, the former will not pay the garbage fee. What does the City Council say? That they adhere to the type of land use specified in the Cadastre and, therefore, that it is the latter that specifies who should or should not pay the garbage rate. The only solution given in this case by the College of Property Administrators of Madrid is for the community to present a declaration of cadastral alteration to specify that the land use is residential and does not correspond to industrial use. The other alternative is to present a written due to discrepancies with the description of cadastral use. Photo | Kertis Stick and Madrid City Council In Xataka | The best horror movie of this winter has been released. And the protagonists are the owners of a home in Spain

The garbage rate has become the big hot potato of Spanish politics. In reality there is little unexpected

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They call him the rubbish and, whether you like it more or less, what is undeniable is that the word sums up well the surprise that thousands of Spanish households have encountered when reviewing their accounts: suddenly their town councils have started charging them sums more than considerable for garbage collection or have skyrocketed their rates (in some cases going from 67 to 126 euros), which even it is already felt in the CPI. In reality there is little unexpected, if you take into account that it is something that can be seen coming (at least) from 2022. What there is behind it is debate… and doubts. What has happened? That Spain has seen how garbage became a huge political hot potato. And rightly so, if we take into account that thousands of homes spread throughout the country have found that the bill their city council passes them to finance waste collection has been shot. In some cities a new rate. The rise has been so forceful that it is already reflected clearly in the IPC and in some municipalities has provoked heated protests. The best example was left on Monday Cangas (Pontevedra), where a thousand residents gathered in front of the City Hall to protest against what has already been called (there and in the rest of the country) rubbish. The neighborhood anger escalated to such a level in the municipality that the councilors had no choice but to leave escorted by the police. But why is the rate more expensive? By the BOE. To understand it you have to go back to Law 7/2022 . Among other issues, the rule establishes that the town councils of Spain must provide themselves with “a tax or property benefit of a non-tax public nature, specific, differentiated and non-deficit that allows the implementation of a payment system per generation and that reflects the real cost, direct or indirect, of the collection, transport and treatment operations.” The wording is somewhat confusing, but at least it leaves two ideas clear. First, municipalities have to charge a specific bill focused on garbage. Second, the ‘polluter pays’ maxim must prevail, with a rate that covers “the real, direct and indirect cost” of the collection service. It is not a minor nuance if we take into account that in many municipalities the service was deficient and it was compensated via taxes. The Commonwealth of O Morrazo, for example (the one that suffered Monday’s protests) handles a report that reveals that its service suffered a deficit of about two million of euros. Why is it news now? Because the Law 7/2022 included another indication: it gave the town councils a maximum of three years to comply with this requirement, a period that ended at beginning of april. Since then, the municipalities with more than 5,000 inhabitants They are obliged to conform to the norm. Some, like Barcelona, they have been for years preparing the ground to soften the blow; but others have waited until almost the end. The majority of councils have in fact chosen to drag their feet and some have not yet adjusted, as is the case in Malaga either Balearics. Where the change has been noticeable is in Madrid. There the impact has been especially notable because in 2015 the then mayor (Ana Botella) decided “eliminate” the garbage rate for the sake of “less fiscal pressure on the citizen’s pocket.” After years with the amount included within the IBIresidents of the capital have encountered a Waste Management Fee that, according to the calculations published by the Consistory itself in October, will have an average cost of 141 euros for homes and 310 for commercial properties. Does it affect the pockets that much? The best way to answer that question is to use the INE. Its latest calculations on the CPI, corresponding to the month of September, show a year-on-year increase of 30.3% in garbage collection, the largest (by far) in a historical series dating back to 2008. The data far exceeds the general index (3%) and has in fact influenced its upward trend. It is an important nuance because, although the deadline set in the 2022 law has already ended, its guidelines have not been applied in all cities of the country. When that happens, it is not unreasonable to think that that 30.3% will be even higher. Why so much controversy? If he rubbish has raised such a political stir, it is not only because of the cost it entails for residents and businesses. The debate has revolved around more formal but equally important questions: Who is ultimately responsible for the increases? Is it the city councils with the formulas they apply when calculating it, is it the Government for promoting the 2022 standard or is it Brussels, through the community directives that cites the law itself? Some town councils, such as Alcobendashas already released statements to inform its neighbors that the new “mandatory” garbage receipts apply. The truth is that months before the deadline set by law expired, in October, the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) already demanded the Government to review a law that, in his opinion, is “complicated to understand and apply” and ignores municipal autonomy. Specifically, they asked the Sánchez Government for “a much clearer and more concise regulation that avoids the discretion of each local entity” and at the same time guarantees the objectives set by Brussels. Is that important? Yes. And for several reasons. The first because one of the topics that is raising the most debate about the rubbish They are the differences between cities and the risks that this implies. “It can be applied depending on the address, the number of people residing in the home, the cadastral value… There are many possibilities and without a guide we can end up with more than 8,000 different garbage rates, which will surely generate resources and even different criteria in the courts until the Supreme Court unifies doctrine,” explained already last December ABC the Association … Read more

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