literally

literally, it will bathe its streets in gold

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Architecture and urban planning have flirted many times with extreme materialssymbols of wealth or technical bets at the limitalmost always to send a message of power, modernity or exceptionality. Some came forward and today they are iconsbut others ended up becoming warnings. Dubai has just opposed the list, although it still does not know which of the two. The saying becomes literal. Yes, Dubai has decided to turn into reality one of the most repeated phrases about the city, that of the streets paved with goldannouncing the construction of a road literally made with this precious metal in the future Dubai Gold District. The project, presented at the end of January, deliberately plays with the symbolism of gold as a sign of the economic, cultural and tourist identity of the emirate, although for now it is not clear How far The material will be used in a structural, decorative or symbolic way, a key detail that remains unspecified, and one that is not trivial if we turn to the history of architecture. Bathing cities in “gold”. In Antiquity and the Modern Age, the equivalent of “urban gold” was massive use of noble materials for public spaces. In Rome, imperial avenues and squares paved with imported marbles throughout the Mediterranean, and not out of functional necessity, but to exhibit economic and logistical dominance. In the baroque eralarge urban axes such as those of Paris or Madrid incorporated high quality stone and excessive ornamentation to turn the city into a permanent scene of power. It wasn’t literal gold, of course, but it was deliberate material display. Brasilia pilot plane Technical madness and futuristic city. In the 19th century the fever of “impossible” materials arrived. The Crystal Palacebuilt almost entirely of iron and glass, seemed like a technical madness for its time: gigantic, fragile to look at and completely new in its concept. It worked, but also showed riskssuch as its very high vulnerability to fire, which would end up destroying it decades later. It was a symbolic success and a long-term practical failure. The 20th century is also full of even more ambitious bets. We remain as an example that of Brasiliawhich was conceived as a futuristic city built from scratch, with monumental avenues designed for automobiles and sculptural concrete buildings. The result was impressive from the air, but a chaos for everyday life: enormous distances, total dependence on the car and inhumane spaces. It didn’t collapse, but it did show that grandiosity can clash with actual use. Another example we count recently, with the John Hancock Tower opting for a glass façade. The result It was terrifying. Part of the Neom project And Neom. Of course, few more hyperbolic projects in recent times like Neomthe futuristic city that aims to stay on the plansperhaps so that they can be used in a movie. An example of a project that is too bold and hyperbolic compared to the logistical, economic and practical limits of reality. Gold as an economic identity. Be that as it may, the new Dubai street will be integrated into the reconversion of the historic Deira Gold Soukan area that already concentrates around a thousand merchants specialized in gold and jewelry. The advertisement it is not coincidental: The United Arab Emirates is one of the largest global nodes of physical gold trade, with tens of billions dollars in annual exports, and Dubai has been exploiting that position for years as part of its narrative of prosperity, stability and economic opportunity without direct taxes on wages. Dubai Skyline Architecture as a claim. The “street of gold” fits into a broader strategy, the same one that already we saw in Neom based on creating extreme milestones that ensure global headlines and a constant flow of visitors. Record-breaking skyscrapers, giant Ferris wheels, abyssal pools, artificial islands and air-conditioned streets are part of clear logic: offer experiences that are impossible or difficult to replicate in other places, even when their daily usefulness is secondary to their value as an urban spectacle. Between icon and excess. As we said, this type of project is not without risks. The recent history of architecture in the Middle East demonstrates that excessive ambition can collide with technical, financial or simply practical limits, turning some ideas into reduced versions of what was promised or directly into symbols of overexpectation. The key, as in other extreme urban experiments, will be whether the street of gold It ends up being a functional and durable element or whether it remains a striking gesture designed more to reinforce the Dubai brand than to transform urban life. The message. Beyond the material, the golden way It is a declaration of intentions: Dubai continues to bet on that architecture hyperbolic as a language of power, wealth and uniqueness. It is not just about building, but about telling a story in which the excess is part of the appeal. And as has happened other times in history, it remains to be seen if the bet can become a lasting icon, or another example of how far a city can go when the symbol outweighs urban logic. Image | Ahmed Aldaie via Unsplash, אורי ר.Neom, Norlando Pobre In Xataka | Matalascañas is an example of a major architectural failure: thinking that the beach of your childhood was going to be how you remember it. In Xataka | More than 2,000 people had committed suicide at the Golden Gate. The solution has been as simple as it is shocking for those who throw

In 1978 Christopher Reeve was chosen to play ‘Superman’. He got so beaten up that he literally couldn’t fit into the suit.

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In the mid-seventies, superman He wasn’t just a character: he was DC’s goose that laid the golden eggs and a bet that could make or sink the first great modern superhero blockbuster. Producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind wanted a “serious” and grandiose film, far from the tone camp from the sixties Batmanbut they also knew that any setback would be a historic embarrassment. Too big to fail. In that scenario, DC, suspicious, imposed conditions of the strictest and he monitored the project as if it were a surgical operation, because the underlying problem was not to make a film: it was to make it with a guy in tights and a red cape and get the public to I will look at him with respectnot like a meme. Two years of casting. Thus, the search for superman perfect became the great bottleneck: it began in 1975 and continued until February 1977with hundreds of tests and a growing sense of desperation. There was, as usually happens in any great production, a star wish list that seemed more a festival poster than an audition: Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Burt Reynolds, Charles Bronson, James Caan, or even Nick Nolte. In fact, there were many more, in addition to proposals that today they sound delirious by pure marketing logic, as think of Muhammad Ali or even in people outside of interpretation. It turns out that each option failed for something (if it wasn’t cost, it was age, image, accent or fit in general) and the message was clear: without Superman, there was no movie. The definitive twist. In the midst of that chaos, Christopher Reeve arrived from the New York theater as an answer that did not fit the cliché of the “big name” that the producers were looking for, but did fit the essence of the character. The casting director was pushing his candidacy against the team’s inertia, until he was finally given a real opportunity. When Richard Donner, the film’s director, saw it, the trial was as clear as it is uncomfortable: Reeve had the height, the face and the aura to be Superman… but he was also too young and too thin (“a stick”were the director’s words) to fill a suit that required visible strength, not just presence. Even so, in that test (between nerves, the heat of the spotlight and a still ungainly appearance) something that no one could copy became evident: the potential to make Clark Kent and Superman credible in the same person. The actor before opting for his role in Superman Stop being a “stick”. Reeve got the role with an unspoken demand which was actually an ultimatum: he had to physically become Superman, and do it quickly. The producers even suggested use fake muscles under the suit to “trick” the camera, a typical solution in the cinema of the time, but he refused, because he understood that credibility was not built with filler, but with transformation. The movie needed the body to say “superhero” before the character even spoke, and Reeve assumed that the job was not just to act well, but to look impossible without falling into excess. Darth Vader as trainer. Here comes the anecdote that seems invented by an advertising department: the man inside the Darth Vader suit, David Prowse, also a bodybuilder and instructor, was the one who was in charge of sculpting to Superman. Donner called it like someone activating a emergency plan: “we have a Superman” and we have to build him against the clock. Prowse trained Reeve for weeks with a routine focused on gain mass and functional strengthsolid enough to withstand flight harnesses, exhausting days and the symbolic weight of the character. And in the process a perfect story was born to sell the film: the most intimidating physical villain of the moment molding the definitive hero of the decade. The “obsessive” transformation. The method was so simple as brutal: eat a lot, train thoroughly and not allow yourself to lose weight even for a single day. Reeve put himself on a high-protein diet, with four meals a day, shakes and vitamins, and with an almost paranoid discipline: skipping a meal meant going backwards, and going back was a disaster. The idea he repeated was very clear: the actor’s inner work is useless if the exterior does not support the fantasy, because Superman cannot “seem” weak, even if he is vulnerable on the inside. And the most interesting thing is that that physical strength also changed him. the psychology of paper: The stronger he became, the more natural the character’s calm authority came to him. Too “handsome”. The result was so extremely effective that it became a continuity problem: Reeve continued to gain muscle during filming and there came a point where It was not the same body of the first scenes. The production had to redo shots already filmed because the superman of one day did not fit with the Superman of weeks later, and the suit, designed for a “before”, began to behave like a shell that was too small. The ironic twist is that at first they wanted to put fake muscles under the uniform and, after the transformation, the opposite happened: They were able to remove the additions to the suit because they were no longer needed, and the film was left with what it had always needed from the beginning, a Superman with real muscle, without tricks or cardboard. The myth that remained. Over time, Reeve’s physique has been compared with the hypertrophied standards of today’s superheroes, but at the time it was quite an event: his change from “tall, skinny actor” to muscular icon It was part of Superman’s own story even before of the premiere. The important thing was not to compete with modern mountains of biceps, but to build an exact illusion: that this guy could be the most powerful on the planet and yet the most human when he looked at Lois … Read more

The last secret of anti-drought farming is literally burying sheep’s wool

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The wool we have in our clothes today may be seen as something insignificant, but in the past It was considered “white gold” that supported the economy of many countries around the world. Currently, Australia is one of the giant producers worldwide that has two types of products: fine wool, which sells very expensive, and low quality wool that is left unused. but science has already found a way to take advantage of it in agriculture itself. An underused resource. The scientific literature that has been growing in recent months suggest that this residue is actually an underutilized piece of biological engineering that is able to retain water where no one else can. And this is something that is very interesting for the most desertified lands, such as what happens in Spain, for example. And in those countries that are more arid, such as Australia or in Spainthere are several problems: the lack of water and the speed with which it evaporates from the ground. That is why this is where the “microsponge” function that wool can have comes in. The essays. After seeing that wool has this property to retain water, science began to work on it. It was then that scientists began to apply processed waste wool in agriculture, as pellets or in compressed form. In this way, after placing it on top of the earth, it was seen how the compacted and dry soils were beginning to regenerate. Simply a layer of wool on the soil can reduce surface water loss by up to 35%. This is something really positive, since it has been observed an increase in microbial activity of between 30 and 50%, and also the test crops showed increases in production of between 12% and 18%. A simple idea. Wool acts as an insulating blanket that prevents the sun from incinerating the soil, but it also acts as that hygroscopic sponge that allows water to be provided without it evaporating quickly. There are nuances. If we go down from the enthusiasm of field trials to the coldness of the laboratory, we find something different. A study published in 2022 pointed out that wool waste not only does not damage the microbiota, but rather stimulates it. Unlike other materials that can “steal” nitrogen from the soil to decompose, wool degrades by slowly releasing nutrients. More recently, in a 2025 studyan analysis of the use of wool pellets in lettuce cultivation. The water retention figures here are more conservative, but equally valuable: they documented improvements in soil moisture of between 3% and 25%. Everything always depended on the specific type of soil, being most effective in sandy soils that are most prone to drying out. Why it works. The key to the sponge as a true help for our crops is in its physical and chemical structure. It has been specifically seen that wool can absorb up to twice its weight in water without much problem. This is essential, because when it rains or is watered it will be able to store a lot of moisture and will gradually release it when the environment dries out. But also, we are talking about a slow fertilizer. This is explained because, being composed of keratin, wool is rich in nitrogen and sulfur. In addition, its biodegradation is slow, making it an organic alternative to synthetic fertilizers. Circular economy. Beyond its function in the field, the research frames wool within the need to reduce fossil inputs. Currently, manufacturing nitrogen fertilizers consumes large amounts of natural gas, so using wool as fertilizer can help us meet this large consumption. In addition to all this, the rancher gets rid of waste that previously cost him money to eliminate or took up a lot of space and the farmer obtains a material that protects his soil from erosion and drought. Images | Sam Carter Mike Erskine In Xataka | Extremadura has become master of an unexpected sector: the cultivation of tobacco “made in Spain”

AI literally in our soup

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This CES 2026, which has just closed its doors, has left us with the jump of lego blocks to electronicsa Lenovo laptop with roll-up screena Roborock vacuum cleaner with legs to climb almost 10 centimeters of unevenness or a HP integrated keyboard computer and above all, a reality: we are going to meet with AI everywhere. And it is not always necessary nor does it make much sense. Yeah, what NVIDIA does with DLSS 4.5 It seems like witchcraft but what need is there for a hair clipper with artificial intelligence. Go ahead and say that the CES is a fair not only to glimpse the best technology of the year, but also to know where the industry is heading and for brands to take advantage of innovation. In this sense, at this CES 2026 we have seen devices with AI of all kinds, but we are not very clear that everyone’s concept is going to come together. AI Barmen Tap to go to the post. Instagram AI Barmen They call him an AI waiter but he is little more than a cocktail vending machine with a built-in camera and an AI cape that essentially takes a look at you to verify that: 1. you are of legal age and 2. you are sober enough to have one more drink. The comments of those who have used it show that it is not the most accurate in the world when determining ages. If the answer to both questions is yes, it prepares a series of spirits for you and you can personalize them. According to the brand, it is already used at private parties. The Infinix AI Moduverse modular smartphone There are those who think that the cell phone’s days are numbered (among them, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman or Elon Musk) and the future is wearables with artificial intelligencebut in the meantime It is clear that using AI on mobile is most useful for tasks such as text summaries and notifications, translations or what I personally do most: pass a YouTube video to Gemini and to synthesize it for me. Well, the manufacturer Infinix has decided to mix gadgets with AI and the modular concept to create AI Moduverse, which are essentially different modules such as a vlogging camera, a gimbal, microphone… all taken by the hair when it comes to justifying having the “AI” in the name until we arrive at an accessory for meetings that is something like a recorder with AI– Connects magnetically and generates AI transcriptions on a small rear screen. Luka AI Cube Luka AI Cube education faces the era of ChatGPT and the presence of mobile phones in classrooms and at home we are dealing with melons like at what age to give your child their first device and we know that great CEOs hide screens in the parenting processthis CES 2026 has left us Luka AI Cubean AI toy that does it all… until your son or daughter can talk to a chatbot in the form of chibi of characters like Harry Potter. This device with recreational and learning potential can be hung around the neck and can be used to talk to him, ask him for advice, use the integrated camera to ask him what he sees and thus use it for tasks such as exploring or learning, also for video calls and location. I don’t know if give a boy or girl access to an LLM It’s the best idea. Glyde Smart Hair Clipper Glyde Who else has a hair clipper at home and knows that even a 4″ shave requires a little care and attention. For things like gradients, not just anything works, so Glyde has decided to go one step further with a device that dynamically adjusts cut proximity using AI. The icing on the cake is the mask you have to wear so your cousin can cut your hair properly. And be careful because it has more functions such as a trainer with real-time AI that gives you feedback and the firm does not want to stop there, it is working to incorporate voice controls and hairstyle recommendations. The digital frame Fraimic Fraimic Digital frames are not a novelty at all, in fact, they are already a classic for displaying photographs of your loved ones, memories and even your favorite works of art. Yeah, generating images by AI is very goodbut having a frame with an E-Ink screen, microphone and voice control to describe the image you want the AI ​​to generate for you is still overkill. What of fill your house with cameras, microphones, internet and artificial intelligence (in this case, OpenAI’s GPT Image 1.5) doesn’t seem like the best idea from a privacy point of view. And if you ask me, from practicality, neither. Furthermore, with all the technology it integrates, it cannot be cheap either: from 349 euros with 100 generations of images per year. If you want more, just go to checkout. The worst of all is that the screen looks great and the consumption is so optimized that it lasts for years, so as a digital frame alone it would be a very interesting product. Samsung Bespoke AI Refrigerator Family Hub Samsung has presented its Bespoke AI Family Hub, a family of household appliances equipped with artificial intelligence. Among them, a refrigerator. It shows you a personalized summary of your agenda and activities, monitors your consumption patterns, recommends recipes, and you can open and close the door with your voice. The refrigerator may have won the “CES Innovation Awards 2026” award, but it also appeared among “Worst in Show” according to a group of critics, consumer and privacy advocates (with people from Consumer Reports, Back Market or iFixit). Their verdict on this refrigerator is that “voice controls, constant Internet connection and built-in advertising could make what is normally a simple appliance more prone to breaking, harder to use and more expensive to repair.” In the demos of the fair it was seen … Read more

Europe is months away from registering a demographic milestone that has not occurred since the Black Death: it is literally shrinking

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In June the latest Eurostat data putting the EU median age at 44.7 years (and growing). The reading then seemed more or less clear. Europe’s demographic collapse was bringing it closer to an invisible threshold that was once unthinkable: the Middle Ages. 50 years old. Half a year later, the data has not improved. Historical contraction. Yes, Europe is heading towards a demographic turning point unprecedented since the black plague from the 14th century. After decades of sustained decline in birth rates, the population of the European Union will reach its maximum next year and it will start after a prolonged fallthe first of its kind in centuries. This is not a temporary adjustment, but rather a deep structural change that threatens to redefine the economy, the welfare state and the social balance of the continent. The alarm does not arise only from the total number of inhabitants, but from the aging speed and the thinning of the working-age population, on which the pension, health and care systems built over generations rest. Political panic and a race. counted the Washington Post that, given this panorama, governments of all ideological stripes have entered into a race against time to see if a combination of economic incentives, public policies and cultural messages can reverse (or at least stop) the decline in birth rates. In the Nordic countries, for decades exhibited as a model of conciliation and well-being, commissions of experts have been created to understand why their systems did not prevent the collapse of fertility. In France, the discourse has acquired a almost military tonewith calls for “demographic rearmament” after a drop of 18% in births in just ten years. In the east and south of the continent, especially in countries governed by nationalist forces, the response has been more direct: money, tax advantages and an explicit exaltation of the traditional family as a pillar of the nation. Incentives and results. Italy offers bonuses to working mothers with two or more children. Poland has increased notably the monthly transfers per child and has expanded tax breaks for large families. On paper, these policies seem compelling, even enviable from countries like the United States, where the cost of raising children is systematically cited as the main brake to birth. However, the European experience shows a repeated pattern: even the most ambitious programs barely succeed in slowing the decline, don’t invest it. The problem is not the lack of public effort, but the magnitude of the phenomenon they face. Hungary, the laboratory. No country better embodies the ambitions and limits of this strategy than Hungary. For more than a decade, the government has deployed a support system of a generosity comparable to that of Scandinavia, allocating around 5% of its GDP to family policies, a higher proportion than the United States dedicates to defense. The range of measures it’s wide: leave for grandparents, subsidized mortgages for young married couples, loans of up to $30,000 that become subsidies if the family has three or more children, and lifetime tax exemptions for women with three children, extended to mothers of two children under 40 starting next year. The message is clear: having children is not only desirable, it is a matter of national survival. Initial successes. They remembered in the post that for a time, the data seemed to prove this bet right. Hungary’s fertility rate went from one of the lowest levels in Europe to figures that suggested a sustained recovery. But the relief was short-lived. In recent years, the trend has been reversed and the country has practically returned to the European average. For some demographers, the program did not generate new births, but rather advanced decisions by those who were already planning to have children. Others point out that, although the impact on fertility is limited, the policies have coincided with an increase in marriage, a reduction in child poverty and greater female labor participation. The key question is whether these collateral benefits justify the enormous public spending. State limits. Beyond the checks and exemptions prosecutors, the decision to have children remains deeply personal and increasingly complex. The rise in housing prices, persistent inflation and job insecurity they weigh as much or more than any incentive. Added to this is a factor that is rarely recognized in the political debate: many of the drivers of the decline in birth rates are social advances that no one wants to reverse. Widespread access to contraception, decline in teen pregnancy, and increased education and career opportunities for women have transformed motherhood and fatherhood in a late choice, carefully calculated and, for many, expendable. Modernity as a trap. The fertility drop has spread so widely that many experts interpret it as a consequence inherent to modernity. Parenthood is delayed until one’s thirties, when one has achieved job and economic stability that comes later and later. Social media idealizes a life focused on the individual, travel, and personal freedom. dating apps multiply apparent options, but they make lasting commitment difficult. And a generation raised in small families has less daily contact with babies and children, fueling overly negative perceptions about the sacrifice involved in raising children. A politicized debate. Not everyone considers the population decline to be a tragedy. Some defend assuming it as a gradual transition towards more sustainable societies, questioning apocalyptic visions who talk about “demographic collapse.” In the long term, even in the most pessimistic scenarios, Europe would still have hundreds of millions of inhabitants. But these global figures hide a much more immediate structural problem: the imbalance between workers and retirees. In just a few decades, the ratio of people of working age to each elderly person will increase. will have drastically reducedputting under strain systems designed for a demographic pyramid that no longer exists. The fragility of immigration. For years, immigration has been presented as Europe’s demographic lifeline. However, this option is becomes more uncertain as fertility falls across almost the entire planet. Even countries that until now were large demographic reserves … Read more

60 years ago they had to literally “slice” code into punched cards

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Nowadays, programmers have countless resources when developing their creations. It was even before the revolution of AI and vibe coding. “Click code” is complex, but at least it is relatively comfortable thanks to modern integrated development environments (IDE) that facilitate programming in all types of languages. Not only that: programming is free, and any relatively modest PC can do it, although AI assistants have increased costs. Half a century ago things were very different, and those who dedicated themselves to programming did so with significant obstacles. There were no personal computers, access to mainframes and servers was only for the privileged and there were not even monitors on which to see how you programmed. Everything was much more artisanal and uncomfortable, and punched cards are the legacy of an era that shows that any past time was not always better. Who needs a screen? I explained it in a Foone Twitter threada technology collector and historian who recounted how programmers got by in 1962. To begin with, those programmers had a very different image than the young people who today create giant companies from scratch with flip-flops in their college dorm room or a garage. These programmers tended to be adults who also dressed in a jacket and tie: the ways were different because to access this world one had to work for large companies, the only ones where you could have access to a mainframe of the time. The example that this technological historian gave was that of IBM 7090one of the first computers based on transistors and not on vacuum tubes, like its predecessor, the IBM 709. That was a revolution in power, because the performance of the previous one was multiplied by six and the IBM 7090 managed to execute 100,000 floating point operations per second. But as we said, to program that computer there was no interface like the current one: you did not write while seeing the code on the screen. They were also not multi-user or multi-threaded systems, so only one person could use “all” that power at a time. That made these machines very precious and very expensive assets that IBM actually rented. In 1962 he rented one of these computers for a month It cost $63,500.which with inflation would be equivalent to $421,000 today. If we do a simple division (a month has about 44,000 minutes), each minute of use of that computer would cost about 10 current dollars. In a couple of hours one had spent the same amount that a good PC or laptop costs today, for example. This imposed clear restrictions when using these machines, because time was money in them. That’s where punched cards came into play, which had a capacity of 80 characters each, the maximum size of a line, although curiously the normal thing was to use only the first 72 characters and not go beyond there. The IBM template allowed you to program on paper without going overboard. To punch the cards, a special machine was used, which for example was manufactured by IBM itself and which could be mechanical or, if they were more modern, electromechanical. The idea was simple: the characters that someone typed on that machine were “translated” on the punched card, where perforations were made according to the characters on each line. To program, you didn’t sit down at that electromechanical machine and start typing commands without stopping. Instead the program was written by hand or typed. IBM had prepared templates that made it possible not to get lost and to avoid exceeding the number of characters per line. Wait, it took a while to run your program This meant that a program with all its lines ended up occupying a stack or deck of punched cards on which were all the instructions of the program, which also had to be perfectly ordered in the appropriate sequence. That deck of punched cards was given to the computer operators, who inserted them along with a task control card that told the system how and for how long it had to be executed, for example. Other programs could be in run queue (remember, it was one job at a time, and other programmers also used the same system), so it wasn’t just arriving and executing. This is what a computer program looked like in the 60s. That program could take a long time to complete its execution, so the programmer did not wait for the result to appear, but rather the operator left both the deck and the printed result in a small cubicle where the programmer could then access to pick it up. The problem, of course, is that the program could be wrong, not work or give an unexpected output. In that case, the error had to be detected, the punched card or cards that caused the error corrected, and the program run again. There were striking advances at that time such as being able to convert punched cards into stored programs on magnetic cassette tapessomething that made the reading of those punched cards faster. That was basically the process that programmers followed in their daily lives, who usually used FORTRAN or COBOL in their programs. These machines were used, for example, for the development of projects such as CTSS (Compatible Time-Sharing System), one of the first operating systems that was programmed by the MIT Computing Center. They were also used by NASA for the Mercury and Gemini space missions, and in fact an IBM 7904 was also used to run the flight planning software on the Apollo missionsbecause it had not yet been programmed for the new System/360 that had been acquired for NASA. There were also more curious applications that are still being explored today: in 1962, mathematicians Daniel Shanks and John Wrench were pioneers in using these computers for mathematical calculations and calculated the first 100,000 decimals of π. A year earlier, another mathematician, Alexander Hurwitz, used an IBM 7090 to discover the two largest prime numbers … Read more

James Bond is literally dead. And apparently that’s a problem for his next movie.

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James Bond has not been an easy franchise for years, decades perhaps. The latest incarnation of 007, played by Daniel Craig, took a turn from the classic incarnation of the character, ending in 2021 in ‘No time to die‘ and tragically. Now that Amazon owns the rightsis encountering a considerable obstacle to launching a new installment. He died. The death of James Bond in ‘No Time to Die’, the last incarnation to date of the character, has generated an enormous creative challenge for Amazon MGM Studios, current owners of the rights. For the first time in sixty years, 007 died on screen after a missile attack and poisoning by nanobots. Now Steven Knight, creator of ‘Peaky Blinders’must find a way to continue the franchise while respecting that final death. What seemed like a bold ending has become the biggest obstacle to Bond’s future. Dead end. According to sources close to the production, the franchise’s producers are “pulling out hair“because Bond did not disappear or fake his death, as he has done in other installments. He was literally torn to pieces before the viewer. To Anthony Horowitz, author of three recent Bond novels, It is not difficult to believe in these difficulties: “The last time we saw Bond he was poisoned and torn to pieces. It was a mistake, because Bond is a legend.” Why is it a problem? There are authors who talk about the fact that a death scene as explicit as the one seen in the latest Bond film undermines the legendary nature of the character, who has lived an impossibly long arc of time (he fought in the Second World War, but remains fit today) and has changed his face as his performers rotated. This gives 007 a halo of a mythological hero, in the style of the classics, which clashes head-on with the idea of ​​him dying. Furthermore, it is a decision with an economic ingredient: a reboot It would open the door to continuous and unconnected versions, which would devalue the brand. We must bear this death. Where is the franchise? There is still little known information about this new installment: Denis Villeneuve, director of ‘Dune’, will direct this twenty-sixth Bond adventure, with Knight as screenwriter. In March 2025, Amazon MGM obtained complete creative control of the franchise after an agreement with Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, ending decades of control by the Broccoli family, and the studio aims for a premiere in 2028. Casting is paralyzed until the problem of Bond’s death is resolved, but names like Tom Holland (finally discarded), Jacob Elordi and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (also discarded). Possible solutions. With the franchise in danger, many fans and experts have provided possible solutions. The first is an idea that has always been floating around since it became clear that the character’s longevity was meaningless: “007” and “James Bond” are code names given to the best agent, and when one dies or retires the next one receives the title. Of course, there is the possibility of a complete reset. You can also propose a prequel and set the film, for example, in the sixties, showing Bond’s rise in MI6. EITHER use the already canonical character of Mathildethe daughter that Bond has with Madeleine Swann in ‘No Time to Die’, and changing the character’s gender. In Xataka | These researchers have watched all the James Bond movies to see how exposed to infectious agents a 007 is and the result is nonsense

Funko literally produced more dolls than it could afford. And now it faces the biggest crisis in its history

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It seemed that this moment would never come, but it did: the Funko Pop They are in crisis. In popular culture everything is cycles, and if now it is an inevitable topic in the conversation the “superhero fatigue“, after having lived through years in which it seemed that there was going to be nothing but superheroes in the cinema, now it is the turn of the Funko Pop. All after an overwhelming success, which has turned these dolls cut from the same pattern into inevitable passengers in any conversation about the pop panorama. The data. The company recognized in its last quarterly report that there are “substantial doubts” about its ability to continue operating for the next twelve months. Funko carries $241 million in total debt while maintaining just $39.2 million in cash reserves, a ratio that puts the company on the brink of the financial abyss. In the second quarter of 2025, Funko lost $41 million, and although the third quarter showed an improvement with losses of less than one million, these contrast with the $8.9 million profit in the same period just a year earlier, in 2024. The reasons. Sales fell from 292.8 million to 250.9 million year-on-year, a 14% drop that originated mainly in the US market. In 2023, the company destroyed between 30 and 36 million dollars in excess inventory, literally sending millions of figures to landfills because it was cheaper to eliminate them than to pay for storage. The crisis has multiple culprits: the Trump administration’s trade tariffs have hit toys with the nature of Funko hard: cheap items made abroad. But the fundamental problem is structural: overproduction. Funko has systematically and for years produced more than the market has been able to absorb, believing that demand would be infinite. This has led to the company’s debt growing from 182.8 million at the end of 2024 to the current 241 million, an increase of 32% in less than a year. The signs told us. There were different crises that made it clear that problems could come for Funko Pop. In 2021, the pandemic led to a boom and the company achieved record sales of one billion dollars, an increase of 58% over 2020. But like the entire economy that emerged during the pandemic, it was temporary. The post-pandemic drop (losses in the fourth quarter of 2022 of $47 million) should have served as a warning. Then, in 2023, the massive destruction of inventory confirmed that Funko Pop was generating material beyond its capabilities. 40 different Grogu dollsIf nothing woke us up before, it should have been a warning to sailors. And what about collectors? The company crisis is not just a problem of corporate mirage: it is the collapse of a dangerous aspect of collectingwhich is done by mere accumulation of assets that it is believed that it is going to revalue in the future. We have seen exclusive figures for the San Diego Comic-Con that They were resold for 200 or 500% above their original price (and the same phenomenon repeated at the recent Comic-Con in Malaga). And we have seen sets reach impossible prices (especially mythical isWilly Wonka quele in 2022 which reached $100,000). Now, second-hand sales platforms show Funkos that sold for $200 languish at $10. Even discontinued figures can be found at bargain prices, all due to overproduction, which made the “exclusive” or “limited release” label lose its value. There are those who compare what is happening with the phenomenon of Beanie Babies, highly coveted a couple of decades ago by collectors in the United States, and whose bubble ended up exploding. Plastic mountains. AND eye on environmental impactwhich goes beyond a few (many) collectors with shelves full of products that have lost their value. The aforementioned between 1.4 and 3 million vinyl figures that were sent to landfill They were only the first phase of mass destruction. The material Funkos are made of, PVC, can remain in landfills for centuries because it is not biodegradable. And hundreds of millions of units are produced every year, which in the United States are deposited in landfills perfectly legally (in countries like France, companies were prohibited from destroying unsold non-food merchandise, forcing them to donate or recycle). Header | Photo of Z Graphica in Unsplash

Spain still has dozens of reservoirs that cannot be used because literally no one has laid pipes

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It was inaugurated in 2015, cost 57 million euros and has a capacity for 30 hm3 of water, but the Siles dam in Jaén hasn’t been used for a decade because no one has made the necessary pipelines to irrigate the Sierra del Segura. It is not an isolated case. An example. The Rules dam was inaugurated a little earlier: in 2004. Today, while the province of Granada is at 29% of its capacity, the Vélez de Benaudalla reservoir is close to 70%. The secret is the same: going 20 years without pipes that allow us to use water. These flagrant cases, but there are many more: Alcolea in Huelva, Mularroya in Zaragoza, Castrovido in Burgos… Is there anything more Spanish than making reservoirs and taking years—or decades—to build the pipelines that make them useful? The house on the roof. In a country like Spain, each useless cubic hectometer is not only de facto lost water, it is also a tremendous ecological damage inflicted on river channels for no reason. And, if that were not enough, it is economic nonsense. It makes no sense to mobilize all the resources necessary to launch a reservoir and then leave it forgotten. Above all, because (whether we like it or not) we live in an agricultural giant that needs water security that we cannot guarantee. The opportunity cost of delaying the pipelines necessary to launch these reservoirs impacts the economic and employment development of entire regions. A Spanish problem? To tell the truth, we cannot say that it is a purely Spanish problem either. Portugal, France or Italy have had similar problems. What happens in Spain is that there is an enormous fragmentation of powers that means that, when any problem appears, everything comes to a standstill. In our case, the central State designs and finances the main dams and key sections. However, it is the autonomous communities, the hydrographic confederations or the municipalities that they must run the secondary networks. And in determining what is the main or secondary tranche (and who should pay the bill) most problems arise. But not the only ones. And it is that, as the processes become eternallicenses expire, works are not awarded, litigation drags on, environmental requirements become stricter and solving the problem becomes impossible. In the end, the dams are what is striking (what is politically profitable). The “last mile” (that whole set of pumping stations, pipelines and treatment plants) is much less striking, as crucial as it is. When problems become entrenched, there are no good solutions and administrations prefer to put the issue aside rather than make decisions. The country of a thousand preys. Because yes, it is true: Spain has many damsbut dozens of them remain vats of water without any use. And as much as the causes are clear, it is still striking that not even water crises like those of recent years manage to solve this. Image | Red Zeppelin In Xataka | “In the next ten years, Spain and Latin America are going to suffer (a lot) with water,” Robert Glennon (University of Arizona)

There are foods that literally hijack your brain.

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A potato chip crunches, the salty flavor mixes with the sweetness of the soda, and the brain asks for more. It’s not a coincidence. What seems like a simple craving is actually a programmed reaction: a dopamine rush as powerful as that caused by some drugs. More and more scientists argue that certain foods are hooking us. A new approach? For a long time, obesity and eating disorders were seen as simple matters of will. However, advances in neuroscience are changing that perception. Psychiatrist Claire Wilcox explains thatlittle by little, scientists agree on something surprising: some foods activate the brain almost the same as drugs like nicotine or alcohol. “Eating certain products—cookies, soft drinks, industrial pastries— activates the brain’s reward centersgenerating a feeling of immediate well-being. And the more we repeat that stimulus, the more we need it,” he details. The problem is that, unlike tobacco or alcohol, we cannot stop eating. What happens in our head? addictions They share three brain systems clue: The reward system, which releases dopamine when something gives us pleasure. The stress response system, involved in tolerance and withdrawal. The executive control system, which regulates impulses and helps make rational decisions. When we eat very tasty foods, the brain releases dopamine into the reward network. Learn to associate that flavor with a pleasant sensation and seek to repeat it. Over time, the circuit is “rewired”: more is needed to feel the same effect, and rational control decreases. Wilcox explains it like this: “Over time, damage to areas of executive control becomes more difficult to resist cravings, just as it is with drugs.” The science behind the debate. In recent years, research into food addiction has exploded. An article from Nature Medicinewhich analyzed almost 300 studies in 36 countries, concluded that ultra-processed foods can “hijack” the brain’s reward systems. The result: cravings, loss of control, and persistent consumption, even when there are negative consequences. Neuroscientist Mark S. Gold and psychologist Ashley Gearhardt, from the University of Michigan, they go further: “We don’t get addicted to apples, but to products designed to hit the brain like a drug.” However, medical consensus has not yet arrived. Neither the WHO nor the American Psychiatric Association recognizes food addiction as an official diagnosis. “Eating is a physiological need —remembers teacher Elisa Rodríguez Ortega—and the boundaries between addiction, bulimia or binge eating remain unclear. In the center of the bullseye. For years, sugar was identified as the great villain of the modern diet. Today, studies point to a more complex scenario: it is not just sugar, but the combination of ingredients, textures and additives in ultra-processed foods. which can make them addictive. These products—industrial blends of fats, salt, sugars, and flavor enhancers—are designed to generate immediate pleasure and encourage repeated intake. According to the Nature reviewthis “hyperpalatable” composition activates the reward system more intensely than natural foods, which would explain why it is so difficult to stop after the first bite. For its part, sugar continues to play a key role. Research, cited in JAMA Internal Medicineshow that an excess of added sugars not only increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases, but also alters the dopaminergic response, reinforcing dependence mechanisms. Qero nor we are all equally prone. Psychologist Michelle S. Hunt, a specialist in food addictions, details that there is a combination of genetic, emotional and environmental factors. “Foods rich in carbohydrates, fats or sugars activate the same areas of the brain as drugs or alcohol. Over time, the brain adjusts its receptors and requires higher doses to feel the same well-being,” he points out. Stress, anxiety and early exposure to ultra-processed foods are other triggers: the brain learns from a young age to associate pleasure with highly tasty products. “People who use food to deal with discomfort are the most vulnerable,” Hunt warns. The border with other types of disorders. Distinguishing food addiction from other eating disorders is not an easy task. According to the Eating Disorder Hope portalin both cases similar signs appear: loss of control, guilt, anxiety and, often, social isolation. a study published in Nature observed that people with bulimia or binge eating episodes present similar changes in the areas of the brain that regulate dopamine. That suggests there could be a common neurobiological basis. Dr. Mark S. Gold sums it up clearly: “Obesity and binge eating are not just behavioral problems; they also share brain mechanisms with other addictions.” For this reason, current treatments combine cognitive-behavioral therapy with cessation programs and emotional support. Reeducation with food. Unlike drugs, total abstinence is not possible: we all need to eat. For this reason, current treatments seek to reeducate the emotional relationship with food. Psychiatrist Kim Dennis runs a clinic where it combines models of addiction and eating disorders: patients learn not to restrict calories extremely – to avoid the rebound effect – but to identify the so-called “trigger” foods, those that unleash uncontrollable cravings. In parallel, drugs are also opening new avenues. Dr. Gold highlights the use of medications such as naltrexone and bupropion, or the newer GLP-1 (such as Ozempic or Mounjaro), which interrupt the link between pleasure and consumption, reducing both food intake and the desire for addictive substances. The final question. Although science has not yet settled the debate, the evidence is increasingly clear: some foods not only nourish or make you fat, they also shape the brain and habits in a profound way. Each bite leaves a mark on the pleasure circuits and the way we learn to eat. It is not about demonizing food or denying pleasure, but about accepting that eating today is an act conditioned by factors that go far beyond appetite. In a world where every flavor is optimized for hooking, true willpower may lie in knowing how to stop before the next bite. Image | Unsplash Xataka | When it comes to meat, science knows there’s something better than protein shakes: lean pork

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