harmless

An air conditioner that leaks on the street seems harmless. Until you discover that you can be fined

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Summer has just begun and we are already suffering the first extreme heat wave that has made the air conditioners are working at full capacitywhich implies that they produce more condensation water. many people let that water fall directly into the street Thinking that nothing happens, it’s just water, right? Although it may seem harmless since it is condensation water, pouring liquids onto public roads is listed as an infraction in most municipal ordinances. If you do not have the drain of your air conditioning correctly installed or if you have a bottle on the balcony or window and you let it overflow, you risk being fined. What the ordinances say It depends on each municipality, but in many of them the dumping of liquids of any type is considered an infraction, even if it is clean water. For example, in the Municipal urban cleaning ordinance of Valencia They do not explicitly mention air conditioning, but it is prohibited to “Pouring water, and in particular, watering plants placed outside buildings if as a result of this operation spills and splashes occur on public roads or on their elements.” In Madrid, the Ordinance on Cleaning Public Spaces, Waste Management and Circular Economy classifies as a minor infraction “Pouring water into public spaces from watering plants” and also “Pouring water into public spaces from cleaning terraces of buildings or similar.” There are town councils like Malaga that do explicitly mention air conditioning. In the Ordinance for the cleaning of public spaces and comprehensive waste management They say that “Air conditioning units that face public roads will not be able to discharge water into it.” There are town councils that take it further, such as the town hall of El Puig, in Valencia, which has a specific ordinance on air conditioning devices. In addition to instructions on where and how to install them, one of the rules is that “The collection of water through drainage or any other means that prevents its discharge onto public roads must be planned.” These are just a few examples, but Each town council has its own regulations. Risk of fines According to lawyer Arsenio Martínez on your Instagram profile, fines can range between 90 and 1,000 euros depending on the severity. It also warns that if water causes an accident or damage, the owner of the device will have to bear all the expenses derived from possible injuries and damage caused. The cleaning and waste disposal ordinances that we have consulted do not establish penalties for this specific violation. For example, the city council of Valencia toughened sanctions for dirtying public roads with fines from 750 to 3,000 euros, but they do not mention the discharge of water specifically. Just because there isn’t an explicitly established amount doesn’t mean they can’t fine you: it is still a violation. Of course, in most cases it appears as “mild”, so the amount should not skyrocket, but it depends on each municipality. If you want to avoid scares and your installation allows it, the best and most comfortable thing is for the condensation water pipe to be connected to a downspout. When this is not possible, we usually have a jug or bucket to collect the water. In this case, if you have it on the window or balcony, remember empty it periodically so that it does not overflow and fall onto the sidewalk. Image | Amparo Babiloni, Xataka In Xataka | Europe is discovering what Spain learned the hard way decades ago: extreme heat destroys your infrastructure

Pamplona is being invaded by thousands of white moths. The funny thing is that this is the only harmless part of the problem

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In recent days, there is a specific type of Navarrese videos that do not stop roaming the internet: storms of white moths invading entire houses, covering terraces and “taking” rooms. We are talking about white butterflies about four centimeters long that voraciously seek any point of light. The result is chairs, tables and columns, floors, ceilings and walls completely “upholstered” by them. I said “videos”, yes; but the word I was looking for was “nightmares.” And the funny thing is that this is the only part of the process (of the boxwood moth cycle) that is not really a problem. What is happening? Nothing new is actually happening. As predicted for weeks, the boxwood moth (Cydalima perspectalis) has hatched en masse in the Pamplona region, coinciding with the first heat stroke of the summer. It is not only that, as the local press remembersthese moths have caused problems before. It is that in the 2018-19 season caused a decline in the ‘bojedales’ of Atlantic Navarra which put the entire botanical community in the north of the country on alert. In other words, the new thing is the videos: the problem comes from further away than it seems. I mean, it’s a problem, right? The curious thing is that the moth (about 4 cm wingspanwhite and with nocturnal habits) is not usually so. In its adult phase it does not eat boxwood, It is not stinging, it is not dangerous for people or pets. It is very scandalous and somewhat annoying, but little more. The real problem is caterpillars and, as far as we are talking about moths, the damage has already been done. A sentence that already lasts 20 years. The caterpillars are monophagous. That is, they only eat boxwood; But, in addition, they eat it in a big way: they gnaw the leaves until the nerves are stripped. And it shows: according to the Ministry, after two years of ‘defoliation’ 72% of boxwoods do not resprout. It has been 20 years since the plague arrived in Europe and about 12 that arrived in Spain. However, today (and only in Catalonia) there are already 180,000 hectares affected. A third of everything in Catalonia. And now what? Little now. As I say, moths are annoying, but they are not dangerous. The authorities trust that it will be achieved a natural ecological balance that keeps the boxwood alive. The problem is that the climate works against us: if the heat continues to rise we cannot rule out several generations a year. And that would compromise everything. Image | Denis Chanter In Xataka | We are on the verge of the first heat wave of the year: an anomaly of up to 15 degrees never seen since 1950

We thought that the problem of insomnia was on the mobile screen. Science points to the harmless five o’clock coffee

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There is a ritual that many of us follow without questioning it. We arrived at five in the afternoon with our brains fried, we ordered a coffee—or a tea, or a Coca-Cola—and we continued. It’s the push we need to get through the rest of the day. What almost no one knows is that that five o’clock coffee may be sabotaging your eleven o’clock sleep. What we usually do when we don’t sleep well is point to our cell phone, stress, late dinner, or looping thoughts. We rarely point to the cup. And yet, for doctor Pablo Ferrero, a specialist in sleep medicine, the answer is there: “Caffeine is the number one enemy of good rest.” The chemistry behind the problem. To understand why caffeine is so disruptive, you have to know adenosine. It is a substance that the brain accumulates during waking hours and that, when it reaches a certain level, gives us that feeling of tiredness, that it is time to stop. It is, in a certain sense, the biological alarm of sleep. What caffeine does is to block adenosine receptors: Silences the alarm without disabling actual fatigue. The body continues to accumulate fatigue, but the brain stops perceiving it. The problem is not just that it is difficult to fall asleep. It’s what happens inside while we sleep. A study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that a dose of 400 milligrams of caffeine consumed six hours before bedtime significantly reduced sleep efficiency. Other job in Neuropsychopharmacology was more specific: Consuming caffeine before bed reduces the amount of REM sleep, the phase in which the brain consolidates memories and regulates mood. More in depth. The numbers They are concrete and not very reassuring.: That dose can delay sleep onset by up to 45 minutes and reduce deep sleep—NREM phases 3 and 4—by up to 20%. Taken to everyday practice: if you have a coffee at 5:00 p.m. and go to bed at 11:00 p.m., your deep sleep can go from the usual 120 minutes to just 96. That’s 24 minutes less brain and physical repair. Nightly. But there is something even more disturbing: a scientific review published in the magazine Nutrients concluded that caffeine can reduce deep sleep even when the person sleeps eight hours continuously. That is, it is not enough to add hours. Quality does not always coincide with the perception of having a good rest. You can wake up thinking you’ve had a great night’s sleep while your brain hasn’t gone through the cycles it needed. Time matters. One of the most common mistakes is to think that afternoon coffee “no longer works” because you are used to it. Tolerance reduces the perception of the stimulus, but The half-life of caffeine in the body is between 4 and 9 hours: That means that half of what you drank at three in the afternoon is still active at eleven at night. And the problem is not limited to coffee. Caffeine is also present in some soft drinks, energy drinks, teas and chocolates, something that Ferrero expressly points out as a factor that goes unnoticed. It’s not just the breakfast cup: it’s the entire consumption circuit of the day. The broken clock. Caffeine, however, does not act alone. Ferrero points to another factor that can be even more decisive: schedule disorder. The body works through the circadian rhythman internal biological clock that regulates when we feel sleepy and when we are alert. When schedules constantly change—we go to bed at eleven Monday through Thursday and one o’clock on Fridays and Saturdays, and we get up three hours later on Sunday—that system loses synchronization. science back this up with data: Sleeping at irregular hours can cause insomnia, daytime sleepiness and alter hormone production, metabolism and eating habits, increasing the risk of diseases such as diabetes, obesity and depression. The impact don’t stop feeling tired Since while we sleep, the brain eliminates the beta-amyloid protein, accumulated during wakefulness and directly related to Alzheimer’s and other neurological disorders. Poor sleep is not just a tomorrow’s problem: it is a long-term investment—or debt. The motive is not innocent either. But the mechanism is more precise than is usually explained. The blue light emitted by screens suppresses the production of melatonin, the hormone that signals the brain it’s time to sleep. A study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health warned that this overexposure directly alters the sleep-wake cycle. Just two hours of exposure to bright screens before bed can reduce melatonin levels by 20% or moreand the time to fall asleep can go from 15 minutes to more than an hour. Using a tablet before going to sleep can delay nighttime sleep by up to 96 minutes; that of a smartphone, up to 67. Harvard Medical School noted that “just a few minutes of screen stimulation can delay the release of melatonin by several hours and desynchronize the biological clock.” The problem is that we live in a society with increasingly irregular patterns: high light exposure at night, changing work schedules, screens until the last minute. We are sending our brain signals that it is still daytime when it is no longer daytime. So what works? Ferrero’s answer is not particularly glamorous, but it is supported by evidence. Going to bed and getting up at similar times every day—even on weekends—is the most basic and most ignored advice. Added to this is a dark, quiet and cool bedroom: artificial light and high temperatures send alert signals to the brain that make it difficult to rest. Avoid screens before going to bed—at least 30 minutes—and have a light dinner, without excess fats or spicy food, close to bedtime. For those who do not have insomnia, a short nap may be beneficial; The key is that it does not exceed 25 minutes so as not to disturb your night’s sleep. And in the face of anxiety or thoughts in a loop, Ferrero points out tools with scientific evidence: … Read more

We’ve been sold melatonin as the ultimate harmless sleep supplement. Science does not think the same

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By taking a walk through any pharmacy, supermarket or online store, it is easy to find melatonin as the definitive solution to sleep problems and with the great claim of being something totally natural that our body secretes. Pills, drops, infusions or even gummies are some of the presentations in which we find a product that for many should not be available to everyone and that, in their opinion, It should be regulated like any other medicine. The alarm voice. The scientific community and regulatory bodies They are starting to sound the alarm and the central idea is clear: melatonin is not as harmless as it is often promoted and, according to experts, it should be treated with the same rigor as a medication, and not as a simple vitamin supplement. The labels. One of the biggest problems with melatonin, especially in countries like the United States where it is regulated as a dietary supplement, is the lack of strict control over its production. Here a study published in 2017 put a worrying fact on the table when seeing that there are a great variability between what the labels say and what the bottle actually contains. And when analyzing multiple brands, researchers found products that contained from 83% less melatonin than declared, to an alarming 478% more. And if that were not enough, the study detected the presence of serotonin in several of these supplements, which is a neurotransmitter that is regulated. It’s not something magical. Marketing has positioned melatonin as a universal solution for sleep that can be consumed without almost any type of control or limit. But here the different reviews conclude that its benefits are modest, without having a powerful hypnotic effect, but rather that its real usefulness lies in adjusting specific circadian rhythm disorders such as jet lag, so use should be selective and not routine. Furthermore, it is not without risks. One of the most striking is the incompatibility that taking melatonin may have. with anticoagulant medicationswhich requires medical supervision. This is something that a priori is not known to patients as they do not go to the doctor for a prescription and have melatonin available on a supermarket shelf. The silent danger. The rise of melatonin in gummy form has brought with it very serious collateral damage, since children may see it as a candy, which has led to an increase in visits to the emergency room in the United States due to excessive consumption of melatonin. In Spain, The approach taken is more strict, since drug regulatory agencies evaluate the safety of this substance in the key of medicinealthough you can buy it almost without any type of control when going to any supermarket. The positive part here is that the highest concentrations of melatonin can only be prescribed by a doctor in consultation so that the pharmacy can make a master preparation, considering it as just another medication, which is what is requested internationally. Images | James Yarema Slaapwijsheid.nl In Xataka | Someone has said that melatonin damages the heart. The reality, according to science, is that we can be calm

We believed that eating with our cell phone in our hand was harmless. Science warns that it is “hacking” our satiety

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Today, a fairly everyday scene is to see how, at meal time, in addition to the plate on the table, there is also the illuminated mobile screen is next to it while playing a TikTok video or an Instagram reel. The habit of eating by doing scroll on social networks, reading news or answering messages has become normalized to the point of becoming invisible. However, scientific literature has been warning for years that this disconnection between the plate and the brain has measurable consequences. The hijacking of satiety. The fact of eating while looking at the mobile screen makes us eat much worse, and this is what is known in the literature as mindless eating, which can be translated as “eating unconsciously.” Something that makes a lot of sense because when we are looking at something that interests us, we don’t even realize what we are putting in our mouths, going into automatic mode. And this is very important, because science is quite clear that the fact of feeling full of food is not something that depends only on the gastric process, but also involves our consciousness. In this way, when we eat while paying attention to something else, we damage the episodic memory of food. in the brain there is no adequate record of the textures, flavors or amount of food that has been put in the mouth. As a result of this “food amnesia”, the signals that indicate that the stomach has become full and that one should stop eating more become blurred. This causes us to eat more at that moment, and also, since we do not have a solid memory of having been full, we tend to eat more calories at lunch or snack. The data. This lack of active attention during eating can be extrapolated to specific figures, and something that has been repeated a lot is that cell phone use can increase caloric intake by 30%. Although this is an extreme limit derived from the sum of several disconnection factors, since studies point to somewhat lower figures. a study published in 2019 showed that eating with a mobile phone increases caloric intake by around 15% compared to people who are completely aware of their food. Furthermore, we do not eat more of everything but rather the nutritional profile worsens by tending towards a noticeably higher intake of fats. In the long term, we have a studio published in 2025 by Kyoto University where regular cell phone use during meals was associated with more marked weight gain in adults. But in the case of adolescents, it is associated with a greater consumption of sugary drinks and a higher BMI attributed to multitasking with the mobile phone. That is why it is best to always eat without any type of distraction that diverts attention from the task at hand, because otherwise there are several risks to our own health. Images | drobotdean in Magnific In Xataka | Eating in front of a screen is not a modern mania: it is the new social ritual

‘Louie Louie’ looked like a harmless song. Until the FBI examined her two and a half years in search of obscenities

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It is very possible that there have been numerous songs in the history of pop that have deserved a exhaustive monitoring by the FBI. When rock’n’roll was considered a poison that destabilized youth, The songs abounded qualified by parents and educators as obsceneeven many that today sound harmless. But none reached the extreme of being investigated for two and a half years by an incomprehensible letter … In case the flies. In 1963, ‘Louie Louie’, a modest song performed by The Kingsmen Group and that was a previous version of Richard Berry in 1955 It became one of the greatest successes in the history of pop music. Sold millions of copies, forming such a notorious phenomenon that He caught the attention of FBI himself. The reason? The lyrics were so confusing that it suggested that it could include pernicious hidden messages. And that the original trail of the song came by long. Berry, in fact, had inspired a Cuban bole The title ‘El Loco Cha-Cha’. The lyrics of Berry’s version He talked about A sailor who sails back to Jamaicawhere his girl awaits him. Its simplicity (a single riff throughout the song) made Berry himself value it too much and sold the rights to the Flip Records record. In this way the song would circulate as a repertoire song, with groups like The Wailers versioning it before The Kingsmen. Interestingly, the singer of these, Jack Ely, had only heard the song once previously in a Jukebox And the melody caught badly, with what The Kingsmen song is slightly different from all the abovereceiving a special air, as a counterpoint touched. When his manager saw that the band spent an hour and a half concert playing only that song, he decided that he had to record it urgently. For that same reason, it was decided that they would try to recreate the sound of a live interpretation, hang the micros from the ceiling and with all the instruments sounding at the same time. The recording was full of problems: Ely wore orthodontics and was barely understood. And the instrumentalists did not listen to their voice, so each one goes to their air: hence the famous mistake in the 1:57 minute, when Ely advances to his entrance after the single and the battery filled his mistake with a redouble while the rest of the musicians continue. They believed that it could be correct, but there was no time to record more shots. To positive. The FBI arrives The success, which led the song to sell a million copies in its first year of life, of course, caught the attention of different associations of parents and leagues of decency that they wanted to ban it for its indecent content. Although no one was very clear about what exactly the indecency consisted. Because The singer was not even remotely understood. Although imagination could distinguish a slight Fuck Murmured half -song. The Governor of Indiana ended up prohibiting its dissemination in 1964 for its “obscene content”, which redoubled its attraction for youth. The politician came to say that his ears “buzzed” when he listened to the song, which undoubtedly turned the film into a demonic object. This triggered moral panic and led the song to get the attention of the government. The inquiries They ended up to the FBI: Cryptographers were hired by analyzing each sound And, of course, the singer was interrogated on numerous occasions. Officially, the FBI declared that the song was “incomprehensible at any speed.” But to heal in health, the seal that had edited the song published in the magazine ‘Broadcasting Magazine’, oriented to professionals and the industry, the full lyrics. So that there would be no trace of doubt. But the thing would not be there: a letter from an enraged father because of a letter “so obscene that he could not replicate it” caught the attention of Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. The investigation reopened, interviewed Richard Berry, the Kingsmen (curiously, there was no talk with Ely, who had left the band) and the record staff. Two and a half years later, the FBI concluded that the letter was so cryptic that it did not admit interpretations, and therefore, it was not obscene. In 2005, when ‘Louie Louie’ had become an impeccable monument in rock history, the controversy fled: the superintendent of a University of Michigan prevented the orchestra from playing ‘Louie Louie’ in a local march. There will always be paranoid delusions among high educational positionsIt is seen. Today the song is considered an icon whose influence on current rock is impossible to quantify: 4,000 versions of the theme have been counted and figure without possible discussion, again and again, in the periodic lists of the best songs of all time. Nothing bad to have been forbidden by the FBI.

This Star Wars fans website seems totally harmless. Actually it is part of a CIA network to recruit spies

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In 2010, the Star Wars website – Beyond the Unknown, which was in the Starwarsweb.net domain, was pure Internet fan of the time. Hórrido design for current standards, visual chaos and very biased content towards the point of view of the fans … at the time. That is, perhaps something naive for current criteria. However, after it an operation orchestrated by the CIA was hidden to communicate with its agents. An unusual purpose with the best possible cover. Force communication. The main purpose of StarWarsweb.net, which today directly redirects To the CIA websiteIt was covert communication with informants from other countries. But the Iranian authorities discovered, just over a decade ago, that the website was part of an entire network of CIA sites. The consequence of that discovery was a wave of deaths of informants of the CIA (approximately two dozen) in China in the early 2010s. Espionage network. The fan of security issues Ciro Santilli (Owner of a website that is also pure Feeling of the internet of the twentieth century), began to investigate in the case, among other things, for its interest in Chinese politics and for monitoring the operations of the CIA in countries such as yours, Brazil. He tried to find out what these camouflaged websites were and owned by the American Intelligence Agency, and It was he who reached the fan of Star Wars among othersand whose themes were from tributes to actors such as the American comedian Johnny Carson to meteorology or sports pages. They were in up to 29 different languages ​​and remained active between 2004 and 2013. The IP of the CIA. Santilli discovered which websites belonged to the CIA network, but the journalistic research that uncovered these activities gave rise to An Yahoo News 2018 article. Also, above all, to a 2022 reuters dossier entitled “American spies to use and throw“And that started from the deaths of the agents in Iran to get rid of the story. It is counted in the text, other CIA errors that compromised the coverings were the IP addresses of the siteswhich were sequential. Discovering one was possible to find other websites of the same network. Fans work. This is just an example of the multiple errors made by the CIA in the 885 web pages that made up the network, as he found out Another group of researchers After the Reuters investigation came to light. For example, these spoke of “outdated technology, even for their time”: the communication mechanisms between spies and the CIA were programmed in JavaScript or Flash, which offered very few security guarantees. And a pinch of extortion. However, the most scandalous case of the case is not, obviously, a ugly and outdated ‘Star Wars’ website, but the methods used by the CIA to recruit the spies explained by Reuters: “After an Iranian delivered a request (through the websites), diplomatic officials had instructions to examine whether their work history or their family ties could make them valuable. promising applicant could receive a phone call asking him to return to the consulate to answer more detailed questions. “ From there, the meetings became more and more demanding and “for when Iranian realized that he had given information to an intelligence agent, the involuntary informant had already revealed that they could lead to jail.” In Xataka | The CIA created decades ago the perfect guide to sabotage economies. Today is a lesson for any company

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