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Faced with the dilemma of whether long or short vacations are better to disconnect, science has a very clear answer.

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Spain is not only divided into ‘with and sincebollists‘. If we talk about vacations, there is another dilemma that confronts people and even causes tensions between co-workers: Is it better to enjoy a long break, an impasse of several weeks that allows us to forget about the stress of the office and (hopefully) take a trip to some distant destination, or is it preferable to dose the 30 calendar days of rest that corresponds to us by law to take small getaways? If you ask your colleagues, you will probably find supporters of one or the other, but things change when you consult the experts. They are clear about it. “Long vacation or short vacation?” The question is not ours. It was launched a few days ago by doctor Antelm Pujol in a tweet which already has hundreds of thousands of views and has been shared more than 600 times, which demonstrates, among other things, that the topic generates interest. And it’s quite understandable. As a general rule, those of us who work in Spain have at least 30 calendar days (or 22 working days) of vacation, a limited time that we must manage correctly if we want to get the most out of it. So, what is best to disconnect? Should we take three weeks at a time to go to Cancun or Thailand or should we take several five-day getaways? Click on the image to go to the tweet. A matter of taste, right? More or less. Factors such as family balance, the budget managed by each person or personal tastes come into play in the decision: there are people who love to get away from their office for weeks and others who feel the house collapse after four days of vacation. However, if what we are looking for are scientific answers, things change. A quick Google search arrives to find research and experts who agree on which of the two options is more ‘intelligent’ or, at least, offers a better strategy to obtain the greatest possible rest. What option is that? Do not enjoy all the days of rest at once, but segment them over several months. “Taking more frequent vacations could be a better strategy to maintain well-being,” Pujol shares in his tweet. He doesn’t talk just to talk. In the same post he quotes an academic study published in 2012 in Journal of Happiness Studies in which three psychologists from the Radboud University (Netherlands) examine what impact vacations have on employees’ health and well-being. It is interesting because they focus on aspects such as the duration of trips, the quality of sleep or the organization of activities. And what did they discover? After interviewing a group of workers who went on a trip for an average of 23 days, the experts analyzed how their sense of well-being evolved. And one of the aspects they paid the most attention to was the length of the vacation. Were people happier the more time they spent offline? Did the feeling of relaxation and happiness ‘hit the ceiling’ at any point? Is a long vacation always a better vacation? The answer is no. The health and well-being of study participants increased during the first eight days of vacation, a trend that became especially pronounced between the fourth and eighth days of vacation. From there the evolution was not so clear or positive. “In summary, health and well-being levels improved rapidly over the holiday and peaked on the eighth day,” synthesize psychologists from Radboud University. Did you find out anything else? Yes. They also discovered that throughout the first week of returning to work “levels of health and well-being decreased and resembled baseline levels prior to vacation.” In short, the relaxing effect of the vacation fades after seven days. It may sound demoralizing, but it is an important nuance if what we are looking for is a strategy to get the most out of our 30 days of vacation. If relaxation reaches its peak on the eighth day and its effect on our mental health is lost shortly after returning to the office, isn’t it better to divide them into short breaks? What do the experts say? “Short, frequent vacations have a more positive impact than long, infrequent vacations. The bottom line is that you don’t need a whole month to see significant benefits because longer vacations don’t improve well-being more and they don’t make the benefits last longer,” explains to Men’s Health Marcos Vázquez, disseminator. “Taking seven to ten days off more frequently seems to increase well-being the most.” Does it only matter how much? Not at all. The how also matters (and a lot). It’s not just about whether the vacation lasts more or fewer days. If what we want is to disconnect, relax and increase our sense of mental well-being, we must take other important issues into account. For example, hours of sleep. The Dutch psychologists found that, on average, the subjects in their study slept 7.4 hours at night while on vacation, almost an hour more than what they normally did when they worked (6.7 hours). It is a fundamental detail because the experts confirmed an evident relationship between the duration and quality of sleep and the levels of well-being and health recorded by tourists. Is it the only study on the subject? No. The effects of vacation length they have analyzed them other experts such as Rui Cui, from the Shichuan Universityin China. In 2023 he published other paper in Tourism Review in which he notes an effect similar to that seen by his Dutch colleagues. “The regenerative effects were systematically greater in the group that traveled than in the group that did not. Furthermore, an inverted ‘U’-shaped relationship was observed between the duration of the trip and the regenerative effect of the vacation,” comment the Chinese expert. “A moderate duration had more intense regenerative effects than a duration that was too long or too short.” And before the holidays? In reality, it is … Read more

From 2028 you will not buy the game, just a permit to play it as long as Sony wants

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Sony recently gave us one of the worst news for the video game industry. And the company will stop manufacturing physical disks for all new PlayStation games starting in January 2028. The company justifies as “a natural evolution towards current consumer preferences”, in which the demand for the digital format has prevailed over the physical medium. From that date on, any title you want to purchase will only exist in the PlayStation Store cloud or in digital versions from partner stores. What we have to do now is ask ourselves what this change really means for those who pay for a game. Why does it matter? When you buy a record, that object is yours. You can lend it, resell it, keep it on a shelf for years and it continues to work even if the company responsible goes bankrupt. There are nuances to this, since each company manages the licenses of its content in different ways, but the important thing is that the physical medium has that added value that, in most cases, allows you to own the content. When you buy a digital game, on the other hand, you do not acquire the software, but rather a license to use it subject to a contract that almost no one reads. Steam leaves it in writing in your subscriber agreement, as the content is licensed, not sold. This legal distinction, which is usually a fine print that many of us ignore, becomes the general rule of the PlayStation ecosystem as soon as the disc disappears completely. And yes, we can talk about that today, even buying in physical format, nothing guarantees that all the content is on the disk. Also, in terms of preservation, although a disk can last for many years if well preserved, it is not an eternal medium and can also deteriorate over time. What is at stake here is a company’s total control over what you buy, and that, even minimally, should matter to us. Anti-consumer practices. Companies have a thousand reasons to abandon the physical format, and over the last few years we have seen examples of anti-consumer practices beyond the abandonment of this format. In 2024, Ubisoft shut down the servers of The Crew, a driving game that required permanent connection even to play alone. The title stopped working completely for all its buyers, without any patch that would allow you to continue playing offline. That was the spark that ignited the movement. Stop Killing Gameswhich gathered more than 1.3 million verified signatures to ask the European Union to force publishers to leave their games in a playable state when they withdraw support. This month, the European Commission refused to impose that obligation by lawalleging that the studios’ intellectual property rights outweigh the player’s continued access, although they did commit to promoting a voluntary code of conduct by the end of the year. The fine print is now the norm. That same debate has forced distributors themselves to be more honest about what they sell. In the United States, a California law (the AB 2426) prohibits digital stores from using words like “buy” if they do not offer real ownership of the product. As a consequence, Steam started showing a notice in the payment process that clarifies that you are only acquiring a license for the game, not its ownership. PlayStation Store is not subject to that law outside of California, but the principle is identical. Legal front. In addition to the pulse in Europe, Sony faces in the United Kingdom a class action lawsuit valued at nearly $2.7 billion for alleged abuse of a dominant position in the sale of digital games. In parallel, Ubisoft is already being sued in France and California for the closure of The Crew, accused of making consumers believe that they were purchasing a game permanently when, in practice, their access ended up being temporary. They are different disputes, but they all point to the same question. What legal protection does someone have who has paid 70, 80 or 90 euros for something that can disappear due to the decision of a company? Impotence. There’s no magic solution really, but if you value preservation, there are cases like GOGwho sell installers without DRM that can be downloaded and saved permanently, the closest thing today to real ownership of a video game. But of course, that doesn’t solve the problem of someone buying physical games in the PlayStation ecosystem. It may be that we are doomed to abandon the physical format. But not this way, or at least not having to give up our possession to a company. And the problem is that we have been convinced for all these years that the convenience and comfort of the digital format had to strictly go through a company’s total control over what you buy. Regarding PlayStation, games already published on disc before 2028 will continue to exist in that format, so anyone who values ​​this format still has a year and a half to continue buying. And it is worth remembering that not even the label “physical” guarantees anything anymore. The clearest example we had it a few days ago with GTA VIwhich its physical edition will include only a download code inside the box, without any disc. They are anti-consumer measures. Cover image | Mahtab Mashuq Tonmoy In Xataka | “We have never seen the price of a component rise so much and so quickly”: The thing about Apple, Microsoft and Valve is only the tip of the iceberg

SpaceX has already launched more satellites than all of humanity combined. And it will remain that way for a long time

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SpaceX went public just a few days ago, so that is the main topic of conversation around Elon Musk’s space company. However, in the meantime, he has broken a record that has gone much more unnoticed. As explained In his Twitter account, former space industry executive Christian Keil, SpaceX has already launched more satellites into space than all of humanity combined. Colossal figures. As of June 12, when the publication was made, SpaceX had launched a total of 15,262 satellites. The sum of satellites launched by all agencies, public or private, since the space race began in 1957, is 15,138. The most curious thing is that SpaceX has existed since 2002, so it has done in just over 2 decades the same thing as all humans dedicated to space in 70 years. Advances in rockets. Much of SpaceX’s success is due to the advances made in rocket manufacturing and reuse. Its first successful launch took place in 2008, with Falcon 1. It was coming off 3 failed launches and the company was on the line. A fourth failure could have bankrupted him. However, everything went well and just two years later the company’s first great colossus arrived: Falcon 9. As reported from spaceIn 2025 alone, this rocket has been launched 165 times. Most of the launches have been loaded with satellites for the Starlink constellation, in which Elon Musk hopes to have 40,000 satellites. Unless another company suddenly gets its act together, it doesn’t seem like SpaceX is going to lose the record. More releases. In addition to the Starlink satellites, SpaceX is now very focused on its space race to the Moon and Mars. They are already one of the two main private partners of the Artemis Program, but they do not leave aside their individual dream of traveling to the two most coveted space objectives for human beings. That will mean a lot of launches, but also data centers will do it that Elon Musk wants to launch in his quest to diversify the company and turn it into an artificial intelligence giant. It hopes to eventually place a million data centers in space. The launches would be made with its Starship rocket, which is still in the testing phase, although it must move quickly to comply with the steps agreed with NASA. for Artemis III. Most launches are loaded with satellites Satellites only. We should not confuse the launch of satellites with that of rockets in general. For now, the record broken by SpaceX has been around the launch of satellites. If we consider ships for any purpose, the sum of all humanity has launched more. Sticking to the releases, The Soviet Union alone carried out more than 2,000while SpaceX is behind 682 launches. It is true that SpaceX launches are more concentrated in time, but its record is based on the fact that each rocket is usually loaded with many satellites. Even so, the pace does not stop and Elon Musk has already expressed on occasion his interest in launching more than a thousand Starship ships per year. If that is true, it would soon surpass the Soviet Union and, perhaps, eventually, all of humanity. This satellite thing is just the beginning. Image | SpaceX | US Space Force In Xataka | Elon Musk knows that TSMC is overwhelmed: Terafab is his idea to completely change the global chip industry

Taking too long to change the timing belt is “a death sentence for the engine”

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At this point, it is clear that a car that has all its maintenance in order will end up giving us fewer unpleasant surprises during its useful life. That does not mean that it is not susceptible to failures, but if it is in our power to anticipate its maintenance, the better. And in this aspect there are certain critical elements of our vehicle in which it is preferable not to take risks. One of them is the timing belt, which is perhaps one of the most ignored or postponed parts in car maintenance, and which It can ruin your engine from one day to the next. if not changed to the proper frequency. What exactly does it do? The timing belt is a toothed rubber band that synchronizes the movement of the crankshaft and camshaft, the two main shafts of the engine. Thanks to it, the pistons and valves move in coordination, since the valves open and close at the exact moment when the pistons rise and fall. If that timing fails even slightly, the engine loses efficiency. If it breaks completely, the disaster can be total. Why is its breakage so dangerous? When the belt fails in motion, the motor stops dead without warning. In most modern vehicles, what happens next is that the pistons, which continue to move by inertia, violently collide against the valves. “It is a catastrophic event that can spell the death knell for the engine. The dull sound, followed by the absolute silence of the engine, is the beginning of a mechanical and financial nightmare,” they count from the specialized workshop C3 Care Car Center. When the tragedy ends, we can find bent valves, damaged pistons and, in more serious cases, a cracked cylinder head or a fractured camshaft. And of course, the price multiplies many times when it comes to repairing all that piphostio. Mileage. Most manufacturers set a change interval in kilometers, which depending on the model ranges between 60,000 and 240,000 km. But it is not the only number we should pay attention to, since the time of use also counts. From Rodi Motor they claim If there is no maximum date set in the owner’s manual, the usual recommendation is to check the belt every five years even if the kilometer limit has not been reached. The reason is that the rubber on the belt ages even if the car is stopped, and a dry or cracked belt can end up becoming a time bomb for our car. It will depend on the type of vehicle and car distribution system, but to have a universal reference, Juan José Ebenezer, mechanical expert and content creator, advises change it every 100,000 kilometers or every five years, whichever comes first. If we are already talking about oil-soaked belts from the Stellantis group, Ebenezer points out that “with 60,000 km you are already late”, and that it is normal to change them after 50,000 km. Normally, the workshops will change the complete kit, which includes the belt, pulleys, tension rollers, the water pump and all the hardware for installation. But if you prefer to make sure, it is best to tell them to change the complete kit. When to get ahead. There are specific situations in which experts recommend reducing the change interval between 15 and 25% compared to what is indicated by the manufacturer. Alejandro Pais, managing partner of Pais Automoción and Spanish champion of Group N in 2013 explains that “driving in an urban environment usually accelerates the deterioration of the timing belt. If this is your case, calculate between 20% and 25% earlier than recommended by the manufacturer.” In the end, it is not the same for a vehicle to be constantly exposed to cold starts, slowdowns and constant gear changes from exclusive use in the city, to taking it out more or less frequently on the highway. So if you can afford to change the timing belt in advance, the better. The climate also wears it out. High temperatures are another enemy for the belt. Precisely from Volkswagen Canarias, the brand’s official network on the islands, warn In areas with intense heat and suspended dust such as haze, they recommend advancing the visual inspection, even for engines whose official interval reaches 210,000 km. The same logic applies in areas of extreme cold or high humidity. The Midas chain of workshops also recommends advance the maintenance of this component in vehicles that regularly circulate in extreme climates. Better not to risk it. A preventive change of the distribution kit in Spain ranges between 300 and 1,000 euros depending on the vehicle and the workshop. The repair of an engine damaged by a broken belt can start at 1,000 euros and easily reach 6,000, according to they count from Rodi Motor. In more serious cases, when the damage affects the pistons, cylinder head or camshaft, it is possible that the failure is so serious that the entire engine has to be replaced, and then the cost ends up being exorbitant. So do your car a favor and take care of it. In Xataka | 2,000 million euros and 3,000 stations: BYD’s plan so that charging your electric car takes the same time as stopping for gas

The long waits between seasons of series have doubled in five years. Some platforms have turned it into a strategy

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Some cases of recent successful series in which a more than proven trend is detected: ‘Stranger Things’ took more than three years to launch its fifth season. ‘Separation’, almost the same time for his second. ‘Wednesday’ was not the fastest series either. The pattern is so clear that they have even given it a name. And for once we can’t put all the blame on the pandemic or the writers’ strikes (although they played a role in getting us to this point). The figures. Ten years ago, the average wait between seasons of original series on the main streaming platforms was 10 months. In 2025, this figure reached 21 months, according to a Ampere Analysis report published in May 2026. This analysis covers 1,611 original series on very diverse platforms, such as Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount+ and Peacock. The firm has dubbed the phenomenon “the Stranger Things effect.” It was seen coming. But although the pandemic is not the final cause of this phenomenon, its impact is indisputable in the paradigm shift. The gap between seasons was already growing slowly until the 2020 pandemic he shot her 12 to 16 months in a single year. After that, the data relatively stabilized until the strikes of writers and actors 2023 caused the second big jump: from 17 to 21 months between 2023 and 2024. In 2025 the trend stabilized, for now definitively. But you have to understand the context beyond “the industry was paralyzed by the pandemic.” For example, in 2022 we were at the height of the “streaming war”, and the large platforms published 599 seasons of original series, that is, more material than in the entire period 2015-2019. Granted, the pandemic had devastated more than one economy in the industry, but that volume of production also exhausted human resources, studies and calendars. When the forced shutdowns came, first due to the pandemic and then due to strikes, the bottleneck was inevitable. The counterpart: it works. The point is that contrary to what common sense might dictate, the report detects that the series that returned after more than thirty months of hiatus (that is, two and a half years) registered the highest search activity on the internet in the month of release. For example, ‘Stranger Things’ accumulated a 300% increase in views during the second half of 2025, before the premiere of its final season, with an especially strong rebound from the first season: it was new viewers discovering the series and fans reviewing previous episodes. ‘Wednesday’ and ‘Separación’ almost doubled the average engagement on their platforms. Movies on television. There is a possible reading of this data: the model of the blockbusters cinematographic films has migrated to television. If a highly anticipated movie in a franchise generates expectations months before its release, a highly anticipated season of a series does too, in a way that a routine annual release does not. Which is combined with another reason: sometimes highly complex series (effects, script, post-production, cast, as is the case with the three mentioned) require more time. The case of the second season of ‘Separation’ and its multiple rewrites It is significant. That is to say, just like blockbusters, there are series that require more filming time than average. Because of this, they take longer to see the light, but they also generate more expectation because the public expects the wait to be compensated with more spectacle. The risk. This practice can generate anticipation, yes, but there is a danger for the platforms that Ampere specifies: “Streamers need to balance production deadlines for big titles with a constant flow of content. Long gaps can generate anticipation around star titles, but they can also encourage audiences to cancel subscriptions and return only when their favorite series are back.” It is the phenomenon of churn and returnthat is, canceling a subscription and renewing it when the series returns, something that from the point of view of monthly income, is basically the same as not being subscribed. Generate excessive expectation or ensure a loyal and expectant audience, accustomed to an almost continuous supply of episodes, as is happening, for example, with ‘The Pitt’? Virtue lies in the middle ground, possibly: neither stretching the rope until it breaks nor suffocating the viewer with excess content. Late for that last one, on the other hand. In Xataka | 29 years later, Netflix has become the television it promised to replace. That’s why Wall Street has punished her Ampere analyst Christen Tamisin put it this way in the report: “Streamers need to balance the production timelines of big titles with a constant flow of content. Long gaps can generate anticipation around flagship titles, but they can also encourage audiences to cancel subscriptions and return only when their favorite series are back.” The paradox does not have a simple solution: reducing the wait can mean compromising the quality that, precisely, turns these series into events.

how long it usually takes for your 2026 return and what they can review if it takes them long

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Let’s tell you When are they going to pay you the refund? of Income 2025, which is what we do in 2026 to catch up on the last fiscal year. According to the Income calendarthe period to submit the declaration ends at the end of June, but if you have already done it and you get a refund, it is normal that the Treasury has already paid you. The in-person declaration It started in June, so it is normal that returns are not being made yet. But if you have made the rent online either by phone In the past few months, perhaps you should have received it by now. Therefore, we are going to try to clarify the times for you. How long does the Treasury take to pay? The normal thing is that the Treasury takes a little time to pay you once you present a tax return that you have to return. In fact, it could be a week or two if everything goes well and they haven’t detected anything. However, there are times when Payment may be extended due to additional checks what the tax agency has to do. In these cases, the Treasury has a period of six months since the declarations end on June 30. In other words, returns can be extended until the end of the year. There are some factors that can accelerate the process. For example, submit the declaration as soon as possible, since they are usually processed in order. Also confirm the draft without changes, although you should ALWAYS review it to avoid errors. And if you attach your correct bank details with an account in your name, delays due to verification are also avoided. Why it may take them a while to get your money back If you detect that your return has been returned, but several weeks have passed and the Treasury has not yet made the payment, it may be because They are reviewing some points of the declaration or making some checks on aspects that are not clear. To find out if the delay is due to this, you can check the status of your declaration from the web or from the mobile app. If the status shows that it is under verificationthis means that the delay is effectively due to the fact that they are carefully reviewing the information you have submitted, and that is why the return is being delayed. One thing you should know is that when the Treasury starts to look at something closely, You may receive a request for information. This will be a postal letter that will arrive asking you to provide invoices for deducted expenses, tax certificates, money movement information, or whatever they consider necessary. These are the main reasons why the Treasury may be reviewing your data and sending you a request: Deductions: There are a large number of income deductions through which you can save money on your tax return, from renovating your car to buying a car or spending money on glasses. But there are some that vary depending on the autonomous community, and if you have deducted something in the declaration that does not correspond or something for which you have not provided the necessary information, they will require invoices or more information to verify it. Housing rental. When you rent a home you have income that is not billed as such, so at the beginning of the rental you may be asked for the contract and payment receipts so that the deduction can be applied correctly. It will be verified that everything is as indicated on the papers. Cryptocurrencies. The Tax Agency increasingly checks the movements you can make with cryptocurrencies, and it is very important that you declare them properly in your Income Tax to know the benefits you may have had with them and that the corresponding percentage of Personal Income Tax is applied to you. Debts with the administration: On some occasions, even if the declaration is correct, the return may also be delayed in the event that you have a debt with the Treasury, Social Security, your town hall or even unpaid fines with the DGT. If so, these will be deducted from your deduction. If any of these cases occur, the Tax Agency officials will take extra time to check your data, and will send you a request to ask for additional information if they see it necessary. The Treasury has until December 31, 2026 to make returns, so they may take it easy. In Xataka Basics | Income Guide 2025: calendar, previous steps and how to prepare for the 2026 declaration

The US opened the door to Nvidia’s H200 chip in China. The Chinese army has been waiting for a long time on the other side

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Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, has been forced to “fight” with the US Department of Commerce for months, but he has achieved what he wanted: your company can now deliver some of its Chinese clients its chip to artificial intelligence (AI) H200. As we explain to you On May 14, Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and JD.com are four of the ten Chinese companies that already have access to this powerful GPU. And they have it because the US Department of Commerce, which is the institution that grants or denies export licenses, has authorized at least ten Chinese companies and several distributors, including Lenovo and Foxconn, to acquire the second most powerful AI chip that Nvidia has. This decision has come almost two months after the US Government confirmed which was going to allow the company led by Jensen Huang to deliver its H200 chip to its Chinese customers. However, Nvidia likely won’t have time to savor this victory. Once again, dark clouds are gathering over it that threaten to compromise, once again, its business in China. And, according to Bloombergat least seven Chinese universities linked to the country’s armed forces and defense industry are trying to obtain H200 chips. This disclosure comes from China’s public procurement records, so it is presumably reliable. Remote rental: the avenue that the Department of Commerce still does not know how to close In the US there is a pressure group that opposes the sale of advanced American AI chips in China. Chris McGuire, senior fellow on China and emerging technologies at the Council on Foreign Relations, holds that “any deal that allows Nvidia to sell more chips to China means fewer Nvidia chips for US companies and a smaller US advantage over China in AI.” Besides, McGuire argues that “it is surprising that President Trump continues to allow himself to be convinced to put Nvidia’s interests before those of America.” Chinese entities increasingly resort to renting airtime on servers equipped with restricted Nvidia chips What is happening right now with Chinese universities is the ideal breeding ground to reinforce the theses of this pressure group in the US. Two of the institutions that have expressed interest in H200 chipsBeihang University and Northwest Polytechnic University, are among China’s “Seven Sons of National Defense”, a select group of universities dedicated to supporting the People’s Liberation Army. Both have been included in the blacklist of the US Department of Commerce for their involvement in the advancement of Chinese military capabilities. And public procurement records reveal that the Beihang School of Cyber ​​Science and Technology, which claims to have “national defense characteristics and aerospace advantages,” is attempting to rent the use of Nvidia chips. Northwestern Polytechnic University’s School of Cyberspace Security is also trying to rent access to H200 chips, according to those same records. Chinese entities are increasingly resorting to time of use rental on servers equipped with restricted Nvidia chips as a way to access prohibited hardware without having to import it directly. This is the strategy that the US Government will surely try to dismantle. What is not clear at the moment is how he is going to do it. Image | Nvidia More information | Bloomberg In Xataka | The US remains committed to stopping China. Now it has targeted the second largest Chinese chip manufacturer

The giant jugs of Laos have long baffled science. A “death jar” has solved the riddle

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The heart of Southeast Asia and scattered throughout the mountains of Xieng Khouang province in Laos, rest thousands of monumental stone vessels. Some of these reach three meters in height and weigh several tons, and that is why this place received the name ‘Plain of Jars’. However, this landscape has been a great mystery for all the experts because it is not known who carved them, nor how they moved them nor what they were for. Resolving. Now, a new archaeological study seems to have finally found the key piece of the puzzle, revealing a mortuary tradition much more complex and macabre than previously thought. The discovery of a huge “death jar” has confirmed that these stone colossi were not isolated monuments, but the protagonists of a sophisticated multigenerational funerary ritual. A secret. The key to this puzzle is based precisely on the analysis of a single, gigantic vessel that hid inside no more and no less than the bone remains of at least 37 different people. But the most interesting thing of all is that this “overcrowding” is not the product of a hasty mass grave or a sudden catastrophe, since the study shows that we are dealing with a practice known as secondary burial. How they did it. This practice, the truth is, is very far from our current customs, since instead of burying the deceased directly, the ancient culture that inhabited the area allowed the bodies to decompose first. Once cleaned of meat, the bones were transferred and deposited inside these monumental jars, being a process quite similar to the one that continues with Spanish royalty in the Royal Pantheon of Escorial. But the presence of the remains of so many people in a single jar suggests that these were reopened and reused over several generations, functioning as authentic family or community pantheons. Ritual recycling. This article does not come out of nowhere, but already in 2023 investigations at “site 1” of the plain had found signs of secondary burials around the stones, but this new discovery consolidates the hypothesis that the jars themselves were main containers of this mortuary tradition. The most fascinating thing about this research is the time lag that the dating has revealed since scientists have discovered that the history of the Plain of Jars is made up of overlapping layers. This shows that the human remains analyzed date from between the 9th and 13th centuries, but the gigantic stone jars are, according to geological and archaeological estimates, much older. What does it mean? Basically, the landscape was the subject of a profound “ritual recycling.” The medieval inhabitants of Laos did not carve the jugs; They came across a pre-existing, mysterious and monumental megalithic landscape, and decided to appropriate it for their own funerary rituals. In other words, the site was not built for a single function or at a single moment, but rather had an unusually long lifespan, being resignified by different cultures over the centuries. Images | Wikipedia In Xataka | We still don’t know where Tartessos was, but we do know where we are going to solve the enigma: in Badajoz

If the question is how long do we have to use AI to become lazy, the answer is: a sigh

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Ten minutes. It is the time it takes for AI to have a negative effect on our ability to reason and solve problems, or at least that is what they have concluded in a new study in which they have measured how the use of AI assistants not only improves immediate performance, but also reduces persistence and worsens performance when we do not have access to AI. The study. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, UCLA, and Oxford have published a randomized, controlled experiment that measures the impact of using AI on the ability to solve problems independently. In total, more than 1,200 people participated in three different experiments. The researchers’ conclusion goes in the direction of what we have seen in other previous studies: using AI enhances our productivity, but It has a cognitive cost. The experiment. A first experiment was carried out with 354 participants in which they had to solve twelve simple fractions. Some of the participants had a side panel with an AI assistant (GPT 5) that they could use to solve the operations. The curious thing came when their access to the chatbot was removed and they had to answer three more questions without the help of the AI. The result was that people who had used AI made more mistakes in their answers than the control group. The gray part of the graph was when the AI ​​assistant was retired. Fountain: AI Project Confirming results. The researchers did a second experiment in which they duplicated the participants (667) and did a pretest to measure the level. In addition, they added a “placebo” side panel (without AI) to the control group participants, so that there were no interface differences. The results again showed that people who used AI failed more than the control group. There was a third experiment in which reading comprehension problems were asked with 201 participants and the same thing happened again: when AI was removed, that group performed the worst. The key nuance. There is an important detail of the study and that is that they measured how the participants used AI. 61% used it to give them answers directly, while others used it to give them clues or clarifications. The results of this second group were more similar to those of the control group. On the other hand, those who asked for AI solutions as they were failed much more when it was withdrawn. This suggests what we have said above: the negative effect of AI on our cognition. It depends largely on how we use it. Copying answers without questioning is not the same as using them as support in the cognitive process. The new silly box. The fear that technology makes us stupid is not something that has arisen with AI, it happened with the calculator, it has happened with television, with video games and it is happening with cell phones. Although there are studies that point in that direction, there is no clear evidence that technology damages our cognition. However, it is also true that until now we had not had access to technology to which we could delegate all our thinking. Cover image | Xataka In Xataka | Young programmers no longer know how to program: AI is now causing the same thing that the calculator did half a century ago

‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ is simply a very long advertisement for fashion brands

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Twenty years ago, the click of heels echoing through the offices of runway It was enough to make us tremble and laugh in equal measure. The original 2006 film emerged as a scathing critique, a sharp portrait of a frivolous world ruled by a toxic, hilarious and biting boss. However, two decades later, the industry has decided to betray its own work. The relentless public relations campaign of The Devil Wears Prada 2 suggests that the story’s original satire has been “defanged” and deliberately sanitized. What was once a clever mockery of the fashion industry is today a giant, shameless promotion for luxury brands like Dolce & Gabbana, Balenciaga and Dior. The sequel has been stuck in an uncomfortable limbo, torn between the hypocritical sanitization of its own mythology and the absolute glorification of that amoral universe that, paradoxically, gave it success in the first place. The film as a luxury catalogue. The hype that has surrounded this sequel is unprecedented, transforming the plot into a mere vehicle to sell products and experiences. As the criticism of Le Mondeproduct placements and cameos They are much more elaborate than the script itself; the parade of outfits orchestrated by the wardrobe department matters far more than any narrative thread the film attempts to weave. disney has worked for years to secure partnerships with top-tier brands, with the goal of building the best marketing program ever launched. Executives boast of having created a “fashion collection” where each brand fits perfectly. And the celluloid is the least important thing; the premiere has been conceived like a huge playground for advertisers. We see Starbucks create menus inspired by characters, while giants like Diet Coke, Samsung and Lancôme engulf the narrative of the universe runway. The paroxysm of this bargain sale reaches pharmacy productsstamping the movie logo on Tweezerman brand nail clippers; an ordinariness that the real Miranda Priestly would never have tolerated. When consumption devours fiction. The industry has crossed the Rubicon: brands no longer make a simple product placement In essence, they now demand a “full narrative participation”. The film’s intellectual property has been hijacked as a long-term sales strategy. All this perfectly represents what the philosopher Guy Debord defined in his work The Society of the Spectacle. For Debord, “the spectacle is capital in such a degree of accumulation that it is transformed into an image.” The film is no longer fiction, it is a commercialized social relationship, mediated by images designed to sell. The world we see on screen is purely and exclusively the world of merchandise, confirming that all human and social life has been reduced to simple appearance. The spectator enters the cinema believing he is consuming culture, but becomes a “consumer of illusions”where the merchandise is the only thing that is actually real. Visual coldness: cinema without soul. This commercial colonization requires a corresponding aesthetic, that is, aseptic and prefabricated. Today’s romantic comedies have no soul because They operate under financial profitability algorithms. We’ve lost the real, imperfect characters of the ’90s and ’00s, replaced by mannequins holding cell phones. On a visual level, the screen oozes coldness. Modern films abuse darkness and blur, using shallow depth of field and an excess of digital effects (CGI) that make environments appear a plastic decoration. For the theorist Fredric Jameson, in his essay on postmodernismthis cultural phenomenon reflects a new “lack of depth” (depthlessness) and a “fading of affections” (waning of affect), where the flat surface and the culture of the image or simulacrum replace historical reality and genuine emotion. The film looks dead because, narratively, it is. The nostalgia trap. Where does this model take us? Directly to a “capitalist necromancy”. Hollywood, mired in an alarming creative drought, resurrects dead franchises like cultural zombies, stripping them of their original risk to squeeze the box office. We’re stuck in what Jameson calls “nostalgia mode.” in the magazine The Drum They argue that this extreme dependence of brands toward nostalgia is diluting genuine emotional connections, trapping culture in an amnesiac loop unable to imagine anything new. As he explains Mackenzie Groffcommodified nostalgia is a trap that deceives us into believing that the lost past can be recovered simply through consumption. It is the era of “pastiche”, a term that Fredric Jameson uses to describe the neutral imitation of dead styles or masks of the past. Unlike the original parody, which had a critical and satirical purpose, the pastiche of this sequel is a “blank parody” lacking conviction, condemning us to consume a mirage of our own past through prefabricated pop images. They sell us the illusion of recovering the comfort of the 2000s, but they only give us a purchase receipt. The triumph of ‘fandom’. Despite the obvious lack of soul and visual flatness, the machinery works. The paradox is that the general public continues to buy the illusion. The sequel has achieved an outstanding rating A- in Cinemascore, far surpassing the rating that the original installment obtained from viewers. The premiere sparked a wave of massive digital conversationdemonstrating that talent (Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway) and nostalgia are unmatched organic communication assets that brands know how to capitalize on perfectly. psychology behind this blind success: fan phenomena (the fandom) provide avenues for escapism, emotional regulation, and identity formation. These parasocial connections with fictional worlds and characters are deeply satisfying for an audience seeking refuge from an increasingly uncertain world. The triumph of the two-hour spot. The real tragedy is that the machinery works. The public, anesthetized by the fan phenomenon, continues to flock to theaters, seeking refuge in nostalgia from an uncertain world, and giving outstanding ratings to a product designed in a boardroom. The sequel to The Devil Wears Prada It is the definitive and obscene triumph of our era. We no longer laugh at consumerism; We give in to him. Today we gladly pay for a movie ticket to sit in the dark and binge a 120-minute infomercial. If the film is perceived as empty, it is not due … Read more

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