hostile

The emoji is now the only safe passage so that a “voucher” does not seem hostile on WhatsApp

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At some point, without anyone deciding, It is no longer acceptable to send a dry message in a WhatsApp group. “Ok” became hostile, “okay” became sharp and a simple “understood” was almost a declaration of someone seeking war. So we learned to quilt: To put the “👍” after the “ok”. The “😊” after a request. The “hahaha” before an opinion that could upset. Not because we felt laughter, approval or tenderness. But because the message without emoji is the message that must be interpreted. And in a culture like Spain, interpreting is dangerous. The emoji has become mandatory emotional punctuation. It doesn’t convey what you feel, but yespoint out what you don’t want the other to suspect. The “😂” rarely means that you found something funny. It means: this is a joke, don’t take it the wrong way, I’m not being rude, I’m still being nice. It is a safe conduct. A social insurance policy. Same with the “hahaha.” No one laughs when writing it, it’s just a tone marker, a way of saying: relax, this isn’t serious, we’re still friends. The more jots, the more eager the attempt to smooth out. “Ha” is dry. “Haha” is minimally polite. “Hahaha” is cordial. “Hahahaha” is nervous. “HAHAHAHA” is desperate. We have built a parallel language to avoid the conflict that never comes. Because there is almost never real conflict. Only the fear that there is. And that fear has inflated every message until it becomes a dance of false preventive emotions. The result is a hollowed-out language. When everything has emoji, none of them mean anything. When everything ends in “hahaha”, the laughter disappears. When all messages are warm, warmth becomes background noise. But we can’t stop. Because the first one to stop putting the “😊” will be the edge. The weird one. The one who “always answers dryly.” In the whatsapp groups Spaniards, cordiality is mandatory. And what is obligatory, by definition, is not cordial. It’s a perfect trap: To show that you are not hostile, you have to overact kindness. And when everyone overreacts, it is no longer possible to distinguish who is really nice from who is simply following the protocol. The emoji, which was born to add emotion to the text, has ended up anesthetizing it. Perhaps the clearest symptom is the “❀”. A heart. The symbol of love, of deep affection. Today we sent it to confirm that we received a PDF. We use it to close a conversation without having to actually respond. It has become what “sincerely” was to the letters of yesteryear: a closing formula that means absolutely nothing. As the impersonal ‘Merry Christmas’ that any company sends you by email. In a few years, someone will study the WhatsApp groups of this era and believe that we lived in a society of overflowing affection. Emojis everywhere. Constant laughter. Hearts all the time. You won’t know it was the opposite. That we inflated words precisely because we no longer trusted them. That we filled the messages with emotion because we had stopped feeling it. And that “hahaha”, in the end, was our way of saying: I don’t know what to tell you, but I’m still here. Ha ha ha. Featured image | Xataka with Mockuuups Studio In Xataka | AI is transforming the relationship we have with our own ideas: we no longer create, we just “edit” ourselves

One of the most hostile places on the planet is, ironically, our best “air conditioning” against the greenhouse effect

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We knew that the Southern Ocean It is, in essence, the thermal lung of the Earth that is essential to regulate the temperature of the entire planet. But what we didn’t know exactly was how it managed to process such an amount of energy. Now, science has revealed that storms play a leading role that may be key to facing the global warming. Its usefulness. To put ourselves in context we must know that the Southern Ocean It has the ability to absorb more than 75% of excess heat that is generated by the emissions of greenhouse gases that humans themselves produce. This is something that makes it a true heat sink, potentially becoming the most important in the entire world. In this way, if we remove this Ocean from the equation of current life, the temperature of the atmosphere today would be much higher. A blind spot. The climate models that we use on a daily basis have it, since when trying to predict how water heats up, the calculations did not quite fit with what was happening in reality. Clearly, some type of element was missing here that we did not fully locate. But this has come to an end, thanks to the team led by Marcel du Plessis and Sebastiaan Swart who They have found the missing piece of the puzzle: ocean mixing driven by summer storms. A phenomenon that literally allows the ocean to ‘swallow’ atmospheric heat. How is it possible? The mechanism that this ocean follows is as violent as it is efficient. During the southern summer, the sun heats the surface layer of the ocean, and if the water remains stagnant, then the heat will remain on the surface stored in the water, making it easier for it to return to the atmosphere or accelerate the melting of ice. The correct thing to do in this case would be to literally bury it in the depths. And this is where storms come in, where the intense winds and extreme waves that are produced act like a giant mixer. In this way, the energy of the storm agitates the water, pushing heat from the surface into much deeper layers. Towards the depth. In this way, storms help the surface of the ocean cool, which gives it the ability to continue absorbing heat from the air in a more efficient way. And where does all this energy go? Well literally, When you go down to the deep sea you are ‘trapped’ there for decadesslowing down immediate atmospheric warming. Although we must keep our eyes on what will happen in the future. How it has been measured. This is a practically obligatory question when we talk about the deep sea, which are truly hostile places for anyone. That is why our best ally has been marine robotics. Instead of relying on satellites that have difficulty seeing through clouds or measuring depth accurately, this technology transferred to underwater gliders and autonomous buoys are capable of measuring temperature and salinity in real time. All this while a storm is passing over them, causing the phenomenon that has now been studied. In this way, this technology has given us the ability to monitor the ocean “from within” during events that are impossible to study on ships. We care (a lot). This discovery can be compared to that of a coin with two sides. On the one hand, we already have confirmation that the Southern Ocean is a very powerful ally in the fight against climate change. But on the other hand, we have a very disturbing question: what will happen if storm patterns change due to climate change itself? If the storms move or lose intensity in this area, we could lose this “sponge” of heat that is slowing climate change. The consequences would be quite clear: a large increase in the temperature of the atmosphere that would be felt throughout the planet. Images | jean wimmerlin Chris LeBoutillier In Xataka | We have known for 25 years that we were going to exceed 1.5 degrees of temperature increase and we have not cared

Paramount launches hostile takeover bid to acquire Warner

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The punch on the table that Netflix gave last Friday announcing its purchase of Warner Bros. left the film industry shaking. The action was so aggressive that we spent the weekend wondering whether the regulatory systems would allow a purchase that brought Netflix very close to a monopoly. What was not so predictable was that Paramount, another of the actors involved in the bidding in recent weeks, would launch a hostile takeover to try to take over Warner even more aggressively. What point are we at? Netflix surprised on Friday with the announcement of the purchase of Warner Bros. for a value of 72,000 million dollars. Only seventy-two hours later Paramount counterattacked by launching an even more ambitious takeover bid, valued at $108.4 billion. The maneuver consists of appealing directly to Warner shareholders by bypassing the board of directors, giving rise to one of the most aggressive corporate confrontations that the entertainment industry has seen in years, and which some describe as “a bidding war worthy of Succession“. What is at stake. Paramount’s strategy seeks to snatch Netflix’s control of one of the most emblematic studies of cinema history, owner of franchises such as DC superheroes, Harry Potter, Looney Tunes, the entire HBO television history, including ‘Game of Thrones’, and a film and historical archive of incalculable value. The offer from David Ellison, CEO of Paramount, aims to $30 per share in cashsurpassing the $27.75 offered by Netflix. Three months of offers. Monday’s hostile bid does not come out of nowhere, but rather as the culmination of three months of efforts by Paramount. David Ellison began his pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery in September, when he presented a first proposal of $19 per share that was quickly rejected by the board of directors chaired by David Zaslav. Far from being discouraged, the CEO of Paramount progressively escalated its offers: $22 on September 30, $23.50 on October 19, and $26.50 on December 1. In total, Paramount submitted six formal proposals in just twelve weeks, all of them rejected or ignored by Warner. The breaking point came when Ellison raised his offer to $30 per share on December 4, a proposal that according to his own statements never received a response. “I sent a text message to Zaslav telling him that the $30 was not our final offer,” Ellison revealed.suggesting he was willing to bid even higher. Flawed process. During a conference call with investors on Monday, Paramount executives publicly accused Warner of “not meaningfully engaging” with any of their proposals, denouncing what they considered a “flawed” auction process that favored Netflix from the beginning. Faced with this systematic blockade, Ellison has ended up opting for the most confrontational route: appealing directly to shareholders, bypassing the board that had repeatedly rejected his offers. How they differ. The two proposals on the table to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery differ in their structure and scope. That of Netflix contemplates the acquisition of the Warner Bros. film studios and the HBO Max streaming platform, leaving out the entire cable television business, which includes assets such as CNN, TNT and TBS. These traditional chains are expected to split in the third quarter of 2026. Since then, the estimated time to close the operation ranges between 12 and 18 months. By contrast, Paramount’s proposal takes an entirely different approach: $30 per share, all in cash. Ellison, for his part, wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery outright. Paramount argues that this comprehensive approach provides $18 billion in immediate liquidity for shareholders more than Netflix’s mixed structure ($23.25 in cash and $4.50 in Netflix shares). Paramount promises to close the transaction in 12 months, shortening the timeline. Other takeover bids. The current battle between Paramount and Netflix over Warner Bros. Discovery is not an isolated phenomenon. There are precedents in February 2004, when Comcast launched $54 billion hostile takeover bid about The Walt Disney Company. Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast, detected an opportunity in the midst of the internal crisis that Disney was going through under the leadership of Michael Eisner, whose management had generated growing discontent. Comcast wanted to take control of ESPN. The operation did not work because the Disney board closed ranks so as not to lose its independence. It was precisely Disney and Comcast who found themselves in a wild bidding war to take over 21st Century Fox in 2018. What started as an initial offer from Disney of $52.4 billion in stock escalated quickly: Comcast counterattacked with $65 billion all in cash. Disney raised its offer to 71.3 billion and Comcast ended up abandoning the bid. Both precedents illustrate recurring patterns: detecting weaknesses in rival companies, escalating offers and using political connections to influence regulatory processes, as we will see below. The political factor. What distinguishes this operation from any precedent in Hollywood history is the geopolitical dimension and the direct connection to the White House. Regulatory documents filed Monday with the SEC reveal a financing structure that has generated controversy: the Paramount offer is supported by Affinity Partnersthe private investment firm that directed by Jared Kushnerson-in-law of President Donald Trump. Three Middle Eastern sovereign funds participate alongside Kushner: the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, the sovereign fund of Abu Dhabi and the Qatar Investment Authority. These investors were not mentioned in Paramount’s initial press release, being relegated to mandatory regulatory filings. According to official documents, all of these partners have agreed to expressly renounce any corporate governance rights, including the possibility of appointing directors or influencing strategic decisions. This resignation is not accidental: seeks to avoid the gaze of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the government body that examines foreign investments for reasons of national security. Enter Kushner. Kushner’s presence complicates everything. Since leaving the White House after Trump’s first term, Affinity Partners has raised approximately $3 billion, including a $2 billion direct investment from the Saudi fund. Kushner cultivated an especially close relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during his time as a presidential … Read more

The Internet has become such a hostile place that there are people making drastic decisions: go back to MySpace

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In a thread on Reddit’s r/Millenials subreddit, a user named Blue_Bi0hazard counted that had signed up for SpaceHeya curious MySpace clone, and I was happy about two things. The first, due to the personalization that this new social network offered. “I can’t stand today’s social media,” he explained. “There is hardly any personalization, everything is gray and simplified. Remember how MySpace or Tumblr was: there you really felt that your profile represented you.” Second, because of how the algorithm has taken over everything: at SpaceHey, he explains, “your feed is chronological, rather than what Facebook or Twitter think you should see, plus the damn ads.” These criticisms are not new, and for some time they have caused a unique Internet revolution. Small communities are returning to using clones of myspace as SpaceHeyor of GeoCitiesas NeoCitiesand although their scope is limited, they are the symptom of something very worrying. Beyond nostalgia Behind these seemingly nostalgic gestures, something deeper is drawn. Not only the desire to return to a retro design, but to raise a kind of digital demand. A “I want to have my corner again” in a sea of ​​feeds that no longer belong to us and over which we have no control. The return to MySpace, or rather, to something that evokes it—like SpaceHey—is actually a critical and rebellious act. It is a gesture that says “I am tired of the current Internet turning me into a consumer rather than a user, that everything I do is subject to the algorithm, the subscription and the ads.” And that’s when that return to those rehashes of the past takes on that other meaning. That of a more or less silent protest. Twenty-five years ago, opening the browser was like doing digital zapping and extremely garish. Amateur blogs were interspersed with local forums, profiles with flashing GIFs, view counters (view counters!), and pages that didn’t open on their own, but also had music on autoplay. It was the internet of the 2000s. GeoCities, LiveJournal, ICQ, Friendster, Blogger and MySpace conquered users and they did so with hardly any algorithms. Was a more hippie internetmessy and unpredictable but full of personality. The profiles were their own spaces, not showcases optimized for clicking. Now we remember that time fondly and smile when we realize that the Internet was full of defects. Loading times were much longer, handling HTML was almost a craft, and mixtures of fonts and designs often resulted in strident and garish web pages. However, they also had virtues. They let you make mistakes without charging you for it. They let you be weird without having to ask permission. Nobody (or almost nobody) had to sell anything, and nobody yet knew that they would end up selling you (or your data). It was the internet as a workshop, not as a gallery or showcase. but then standardization arrived. With Facebook, YouTube, Google or later Instagram and TikTok, we were promised order, efficiency and global connection. The Internet went from being its own territory to a service platform in which profiles became uniform, timelines identical, and rules impersonal. The “enshittification” of the internet This is how we have reached the digital fatigue that many experience today. 20 tabs are opened and the same ads, the same formats and the same giants appear. The Internet is no longer so much a “site” as a “medium” in which we only consume, and what we do more than explore and navigate is end up being victims of doomscrolling. This is where the concept comes into play. “enshittification” (“shitification”, in a loose translation) coined by writer Cory Doctorow. This neologism, as recently explained in an interview with Voxdescribes the drift of many online platforms, although it is applicable to all types of companies: “At first they are great for the end users. Then they find ways to retain those users (switching costs, network effects, contracts, DRM) and once the users are trapped, the company makes the product worse to get more value. They then use that surplus to attract business customers (advertisers, sellers, creators), they trap them and start making the product worse for the business side as well. In the end, everyone gets trapped and the platform becomes a pile of garbage. You can see this in places so like Google, Facebook, Uber and Amazon. In other words: what started out promising becomes mediocre, predictable and profit-oriented, not user-oriented. Shitification clearly manifests itself on today’s internet in various ways. It does this with mandatory subscriptions, with algorithms that decide what you see, with constant advertisements and with data that no longer seems to be yours, but rather turns you into simple merchandise. Before, you opened a blog to publish what you wanted. Now the objective seems to be to gain clicks or provoke engagement. All of this has caused users to become target audiences, consumers and even simple data. It seems that there is no more time to browseand we only have it to consume what the algorithms offer us. On Reddit someone asked if others were nostalgic for the internet of the 2000s and the comments were conclusive. The first of them, in fact, made it clear: “nothing seems genuine anymore.” Reviving MySpace That’s where platforms like SpaceHey, which appeared in 2020 and it is totally inspired by MySpace. Its creator, a young German named Anton Röhm and nicknamed “An” on the platform, is in fact the contact that by default is added to your “friends” on the platform, as on MySpace you added that of its creator, Tom Anderson. Long live the wild and original internet. Like a good clone, the similarities between SpaceHey and MySpace go much further. In SpaceHey, personalization shines, and that aesthetic of early 2000 It is evident in strident and shocking designs. The social network — which has around two million users — does not intend to compete with Facebook or Instagram, but it allows its users to recover part of that feeling of freedom and control … Read more

Andalusia has become hostile land for avocado. So an unexpected region is taking over: Galicia

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In Spain, avocado has ceased to be an exotic food to become the new king of the shopping basket. Its demand grows without stopping: only in 2023, tropical fruits became the most consumed in the country, surpassing even the citrus of life. But while the surface dedicated to avocado cultivation in Spain is already 24,000 hectares –With Andalusia at the head-, the south begins to resent. Missing water. There are plenty of extreme temperatures. And the producers look for alternatives in the north and there Galicia enters. A new tropical map. The image of an avocado is not associated, precisely, the wet green of the peninsular northwest. But data and real experiences begin to tell another story. Because in Galicia the avocado not only grows: it is standing strongly. As he collects A report from the voice of Galiciain the province of Pontevedra there were already at least seven hectares cultivated in 2022, and everything indicates that this figure has been doubled since then. “It is a very interesting production that is already being introduced into many Galician cooperatives,” says Higinio MougĂĄn, director of Agaca, the Galician Association of Agrifood Cooperatives. Attracted by high market prices – and for a demand that does not stop growing – Galician farmers such as those of the Horsal Cooperative are already betting on this crop. However, they do it cautiously since not everything is as easy as planting and waiting to collect. But is it land of avocados? In theory, yes. Galicia presents a soft climate, without prolonged frost and with generous rainfall. Characteristics that, like The CSIC Iñaki Hormaza researcher ensures For the Galician medium, “they look more like the climate originally from avocado than that of some areas of Andalusia.” Which does not mean that there are no risks. Temperatures of more than 35Âș in summer, strong coastal winds, floodable floors or the possibility of unexpected frosts remain limiting factors. “It is not a crop to launch without prior study,” says Pablo Porto, coach of Vivaz Plant, a company that has developed plantations at Baixo Miño. The terrain must have good drainage, be protected from the wind and have deep and aerated soils. And that without talking about the productivity challenges – less than 1% of the flowers bear fruit – or post -harvest, which alerts the damage for forced collection on temporary days. There is evidence that it works. 300 kilometers east, in Asturias, The story of Ángel Sordo and his centenary avocado In PorrĂșa it is almost legend. Planted in 1906, this tree is still standing more than a century later and is considered the oldest in Europe. “Its cup reaches 30 meters in diameter,” a living emblem of what could be a new agricultural border. Inspired by this legacy, entrepreneurs such as AndrĂ©s Ibarra founded Aguacastur to explore the potential of avocado in the Cantabrian. His discovery was revealing: thousands of scattered trees, some with up to four flowers per year. And no, the cold did not kill them. Thanks to environmental humidity, even -5Âș temperatures did not cause severe damage. “It is a matter of time that the cultivation of avocados in the north becomes a reality,” said Ibarra. A change that accelerates as the South loses viability. A northern axarchy. As my partner explainedthe comparison is not accidental. The Malaga Axarchy has been the avocado mecca in Spain for decades. But droughts, overexploitation of the vineyuela aquifer and heat waves are changing the script. Is the north – with its water, its temperate climate and its lower urban pressure – the future of tropical fruit in Spain? It would not be the first time. Galicia was the land of Olivos in the past and nobody knows well why it ceased to be. And now, what? The interest is there. Plantations grow. Cooperatives are organized. But the Galician avocado path – like that of every crop that ventures in new lands – will not be free of obstacles. Green gold has arrived in Galicia. And this time, it seems that it has come to stay. Image | Unspash and Unspash Xataka | Very few countries in the world are dedicated to the industrial production of avocados. Now an unexpected one has joined: Japan

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