longer

A study reveals that we no longer know how to say “I don’t know”

by

I notice that it is increasingly difficult for us to say “I don’t know.” Maybe it is one of the most honest acts that a person can do and, on the other hand, with the arrival of AI and with all the information at our disposal, it seems that we are losing that habit in conversations. a study He wanted to put some data on the table regarding the subject. And the conclusion reached by a group of researchers from different universities in Paris, Rome and Milan, by bringing together 3,100 participants, has been that having access to an AI, even if it gives wrong answers, pushes people to stop recognizing the limits of their own knowledge. I know everything. Recognizing that we don’t know something is more useful than we think, since it is a mental skill that prevents us from acting guided by false beliefs. The authors of the study they call her “suspension of judgment”, that is, the ability to stop before responding when there is uncertainty. As AI assistants sneak into more and more aspects of our lives, the research, signed by Chiara Marcoccia (École Normale Supérieure of Paris), Walter Quattrociocchi (Sapienza University of Rome) and Valerio Capraro (University of Milan-Bicocca), wanted to verify if the simple presence of these chatbots it alters the moment when we decide that we already know enough to answer. The experiment. To isolate the effect, the team purposely designed questions that were almost impossible for an AI to get right, with very specific visual details from movies, such as the color of the kit in ‘I Want to Be Like Beckham’ or the vehicle a character drives in ‘Like Cat and Mouse’. This is data so specific that it barely appears on the internet, so the model used in the experiment (Step 3.5 Flash) almost always failed. Participants could ask the AI ​​if they wanted, but they also always had the option of leaving the question blank or admitting they didn’t know the answer. Figures. In the group that did not have access to any assistant, 44% of the participants admitted not knowing the answer when appropriate. Among those who could ask AI for help, that percentage plummeted to 3%, according to collect the study. Furthermore, the proportion of correct answers also fell, from 27% to 9%. That is, people answered more questions, but they got much less right. The most striking thing is that, despite making more mistakes, the participants felt more confident, since according to the study, their confidence in the answers went from 30% to 76%, almost double. What if there is money at stake?. The researchers suspected that paying for getting it right (and penalizing for getting it wrong) might correct the problem. It did indeed help, but very little, because with financial incentives, the willingness to admit that they did not know the answer rose from 3% to 8%, and the correct answers went from 9% to 16%. Interestingly, the authors themselves expected the effect of AI to be weakened by money, but their data did not confirm this. And the pull towards trusting the machine turned out to be practically independent of the economic incentive. Boundaries. Capraro, co-author of the study, explained told The Register that people “became much worse” at their performance, being only one-third accurate than the non-AI group, but ended up “twice as confident” in their own answers. For the researcher, this ability to say “I don’t know” represents neither more nor less than “the recognition of the limits of our own knowledge.” On the other hand, Capraro was especially concerned about the effect that this phenomenon can have on children. According to declared In the middle, adults “already have formed critical thinking” before the massive arrival of these tools, but children who grow up using AI from the beginning “run the risk of never developing that basic ability to question an answer.” Cover image | Solen Feyissa and Dylan Gillis In Xataka | Meta warns: “We have been building infrastructure for humans for 20 years, we may have 20 months to rebuild it for agents”

Japan has three red lines on nuclear weapons. One of them no longer seems so untouchable

by

Japan has a relationship with nuclear weapons that no other country can tell firsthand. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not just two names in the history booksbut the origin of a political identity built for decades around the rejection of the bomb. And yet, Japanese security also rests on a reality that is difficult to accept: America’s nuclear umbrella. What begins to move now is not necessarily the decision to cross that threshold, but something earlier and perhaps more delicate: the possibility of discussing whether all its red lines are still absolute. The debate. The intervention that reopened that conversation was carried out by Shinjiro KoizumiJapanese Defense Minister, on a Genron TV program broadcast this weekend. His approach was not that Japan should manufacture nuclear weapons or have its own arsenal, but rather that the country should change the idea that certain security issues cannot even be debated. In his words, for Japan it is a difficult issue to debate, but one of the issues that it cannot avoid touching is, precisely, nuclear issues. Three red lines. This framework has its own name in Japanese politics: the three non-nuclear principles. Japan commits to not possess nuclear weapons, not to manufacture them and not to allow their introduction into Japanese territory. The formula comes from the post-war period and has remained a central reference of its security policy, although the country continues to be protected by the extended deterrence of the United States, which includes its nuclear umbrella. The key difference. The third red line functions as a hinge between two worlds that Japan has tried to keep apart: its non-nuclear identity and its dependence on American deterrence. While the first two bans close the door to a Japanese bomb, the third affects how that protection would operate in a real crisis. That is the ground that is beginning to become debatable. Koizumi’s words. The Defense Minister did not present the nuclear debate as a conclusion, but as a debate that Japan would have to allow itself. His central sentence was direct: “For Japan it is a difficult issue to debate, but one of the issues that it cannot avoid touching is, precisely, nuclear issues.” He also pointed out against a political culture that, in his opinion, turns some security issues into forbidden areas: “We must change this idea that certain things are not even allowed to be debated.” The weight of his words is there: in moving the limit of the debate rather than in setting a new policy yet. The European mirror. Koizumi did not talk about nuclear in the abstract. He did so by looking at Europe, where the Ukrainian war has pushed governments like France and Finland to review assumptions that for years seemed established. In this context, he mentioned Paris, for its commitment to strengthening nuclear deterrence, and Helsinki, which has removed legal barriers to the introduction, transport or possession of nuclear weapons within its integration into NATO, although it does not plan to deploy them in its territory. The strategic race. Koizumi connected that debate to a broader idea: Japan faces not only tougher threats, but a world that decides faster. In the interview he spoke about Europe moving with a speed that Tokyo does not always perceive and put on the table the competition between the United States and Chinain addition to the role of AI in military decision-making. His argument is that a crisis is no longer managed with the political times of before, and that Japanese defense needs to discuss all its margins before those margins narrow. Nuclear, in that reasoning, appears as part of a larger review of national security. The line that moves. Japan has not crossed the nuclear threshold, and with what we have it cannot be said that Koizumi ordered a Japanese bomb. What is relevant is more subtle: one of the three red lines that for decades helped to organize its post-war policy is beginning to appear as a debatable issue. There is the fundamental change: the taboo has not fallen, but it no longer seems to protect all the ground that it protected before. Images | Red Shuheart | Japan Ministry of Defense In Xataka | A Russian family lived isolated in Siberia for more than 40 years. He didn’t know about World War II or the space race.

It took 15 years for computers to improve the productivity of companies. AI may take longer for one reason: sabotage

by

We keep hearing that AI is going to replace employees in their jobs and that this will mean an apocalypse in the labor market. While it is true that a paradigm shift is coming, even the most ominous voices they have toned down their speech by slowing down the real impact about employment. Four decades ago something similar happened with the personal computer. The offices were filled with computers that did the work of various accountants, but the companies’ balance sheets they didn’t notice its benefits nothing for years. Just like collect Fortunea Goldman Sachs economist has just reviewed that history with a magnifying glass and her conclusion is that AI could take even longer than computers to begin to work. demonstrate its benefits. The J-curve of PCs. Elsie Peng, economist at Goldman Sachs, has analyzed What happened after the arrival of the PC in 1981. The data suggests that in the first four years of the implementation of computers, productivity fell a little. Then, that productivity stagnated another four. Only in the eighth year did the first signs of growth in productivity attributable to the use of these new technologies begin to be noticed. Its peak came twelve years after its release. The trend that the implementation of computers in companies registered is known as J curve and, before computers, it was already experienced by other disruptive technologies in the labor market, such as the steam engine and the arrival of electricity. If AI is “the new PC”, that curve would place the first signs of impact around 2030, and its peak performance would not arrive until 2034. It’s not AI, it’s teleworking. From Goldman Sachs They admit that much of the impact of current AI is still not noticeable in official figures. This happens despite the huge investment figures that companies are making in AI systems. In the eighties with the PC it happened exactly the same: Chips and hardware were expensive and applications that brought real value, like the Internet, took years to have a large enough critical mass of users to have an impact on real productivity. In fact, according to the investigations conducted by Stanford expert Nick Bloom, the recent increase in productivity that has been recorded would not respond to the arrival of AI, but to the massive implementation of teleworking after the Covid-19 pandemic. You don’t invest in technology, you invest in processes. According to the data it collects Fortune According to the Goldman Satch report, for every dollar spent on hardware by companies in the 1990s, another dollar and seventy cents was needed for something that is not always taken into account: redesigning how people worked. In other words, it was not enough to fill office tables with computers, but all processes had to be redesigned and staff trained to make the technology have a visible impact. This expense in reorganizing did not take off until a decade after the arrival of the PC to the offices. The companies that changed their way of working won, not those that bought the hardware first. Investment in data centers for AI is growing faster than then. But the expense of reorganizing work with AI it goes slower than in the nineties with PCs. A survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta estimated at about 280 billion dollars in intangible spending linked to AI in 2026. When the employee says no. However, the Goldman Satch analyst highlights a big difference between the implementation scenario of computers and that of AI: computers did not have workers against them. This scenario may still delay that peak productivity expected for 2034. Work reorganization is not done on its own, but depends on the employees. If a large part of the workforce resists, the implementation becomes complicated. A study of Writer and Workplace Intelligence to 2,400 workers found that 29% of employees sabotage in some way your company’s AI strategy. Among young people, the figure rises to 44%. Other survey of WalkMe points in the same direction. 54% of workers consciously avoided using AI tools at least once in the last 30 days. They preferred to do the work themselves. Harvard researchers they have named it. They call it self-disruptive technology. Employees do not reject AI because it fails, but because they feel that threatens your job. The study revealed that at least 30% of generative AI projects will end up abandoned due to this employee rejection. In Xataka | We thought that AI was going to take our position. The reality is that it is making us work more and rest less Image | Unsplash (Flipsnack)

“We no longer trust US hyperscalers.”

by

several weeks ago, The US ordered Anthropic to suspend access to Fable 5. Shortly after the model was available again (although with changes), but this event served something else: to make tangible a threat that Europe had been talking about in the abstract for years. We spoke with Andreas Prins, global director of Sovereign Solutions at SUSE and expert in digital sovereignty, about what this episode reveals about European technological dependence, and why the political response continues to lag behind the problem. The trigger for Fable 5. The suspension of Fable 5 and Mythos, Anthropic’s most powerful models, marked a before and after in terms of digital sovereignty. According to Prins: “The most interesting movement that emerged from this is the awareness on the part of companies. We often talked about sovereignty, digital resilience and independence, but never to the level of a government effectively retiring software (…) people suddenly realized that dependency is real.” Prins, who works for one of the largest open source infrastructure companies, says conversations with companies have changed a lot after this incident. The same managers who once “ran to deploy Gemini, Anthropic, or global vendors like OpenAI” now realize that “I probably don’t need the newest, coolest model; what I need is a model I can control, running on my own premises or in my data center, with open source software I can audit and inspect.” Notice to sailors. However, the temporary suspension of these models did not cause havoc in European companies and institutions for a simple reason: they were very new models and there was no time to integrate them into critical processes. “If this suspension had occurred within three or five months, with companies operating their chatbots, customer service and decision-making engines based on these models. The impact would have been much greater,” warns Prins. In this sense, this event functioned more as “an early warning signal than a real-time crisis.” A question of trust. Trump’s obsession with taking over Greenland At the beginning of the year, relations between the US and Europe deteriorated rapidly. Europe began to realize something uncomfortable: The US was not the reliable partner I thought and that technological dependence could be a weapon of pressure. For Prins it is clear: “It is a question of trust and, if I evaluate digital sovereignty in Europe, the feeling is quite uniform: we no longer trust US providers or hyperscalers, and therefore we want to build our own alternatives.” Digital sovereignty is also a question of resilience, that is, what can happen to your business if software stops working tomorrow or if it stops receiving security patches. “Sovereignty is fundamentally a business risk assessment rather than a purely IT issue. You can take technological risks, as long as you do it consciously,” says Prins. A tangible example. To illustrate how risk perception is changing, Prins tells us the case of a company in the Netherlands that had its main environment in a data center in Frankfurt, managed by a hyperscaler, and also a data center below sea level in the Netherlands. The question was whether to maintain backup infrastructure in the Netherlands, where dam failure could cause flooding and cause serious damage. After a risk analysis, they came to a conclusion: “The risk of flooding from levee failure was lower than the risk of an American hyperscaler pulling the plug on European customers.” Wow, they trust more a structure which in many parts is already approaching a century of life. The current situation. Europe is already taking its first steps towards technological independence. It has been announced European Technological Sovereignty Package and there is also the Cloud and AI Development Actbut we are still in a very incipient phase and it is difficult to imagine a joint response of 27 countries, each with their own interests. Prins admits that “it will be difficult.” SUSE has worked with Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands in drafting recommendations to the EU, and their reading is that the disagreement is not in the objective, but in the execution since each one works with different tools. “To build a strong Europe we should unify these initiatives more and leave aside national particularities, although the market is large enough for several suppliers.” When asked about which countries are doing better, Prins avoids pointing out a single leader and prefers to talk about specializations: “Norway and Finland are taking giant steps in sovereignty applied to the defense industry”, in Germany there are states transforming their infrastructure on a large scale; in Spain, cites projects such as Penpot and the SUSE’s recent alliance with OpenChip. For its part, the United Kingdom “remains closer to the US for obvious reasons.” The importance of open source. Andreas Prins works in an open source company, but defends that its use goes beyond interest, but is a necessity: “to achieve the strictest levels of compliance required by the Cloud Act, the only viable way is to use open source,” he says. The advantages are auditability, forking capability, and exit speed, referring to “the ease of migrating to another system.” He contrasts this with how hyperscalers operate: “they capture customers with low entry costs and complex markets, whose long-term costs and dependencies are often underestimated.” When asked why this type of open initiatives have not caught on in Europe, he points out that “we should not underestimate the power of lobby of the big tech companies” and admits that there is also a visibility problem: “There are excellent open source alternatives in Europe, but they tend to be invisible. “I myself was surprised to see the potential we already have here.” Inaction is the worst scenario. When asked what would happen if Europe does not act in the coming years, Prins draws two scenarios. In the worst case “that geopolitical tensions calm temporarily, we put aside sovereignty ambitions and continue as before.” In the best case scenario (and the one he most trusts): “that figures such as Open Source Liaison … Read more

The highest-grossing superhero movie in history returns to theaters to repeat its success with a longer version

by

In 2019, Marvel re-released ‘Avengers: Endgame’ with unreleased footage to take the title of highest-grossing film in history from ‘Avatar’. The crown lasted a year and a half. In 2026 the maneuver is activated again, this time linked to ‘Avengers: Doomsday’. It is the jewel in the crown of the Marvel team and Disney is not going to stop squeezing it. The return Marvel has confirmed that ‘Avengers: Endgame’ returns to theaters on September 25, 2026 under the title ‘Avengers Endgame Encore’. The new version includes a special introduction, additional scenes and a final scene that, for now, will only be seen in IMAX and Infinity Vision screenings, the premium screen system that Disney presented a few months ago. ‘Endgame’ continues to be the ceiling that Marvel Studios has not touched again, neither at the box office nor in the feeling of collective event that surrounded it, and that spirit is what the studio wants to evoke for ‘Avengers: Doomsday’. What’s new? Joe Russo has confirmed that the scenes filmed for this re-release are set in ‘Doomsday’, and describes them as a fundamental piece to build a bridge to the new film. Marvel already used this re-release formula, almost identical, with ‘Endgame’ itself: in June 2019, just two months after its premiere, the film would return to theaters with seven minutes of extra footage and an explicit objective: to surpass ‘Avatar’ at the box office before the premiere of ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’. That maneuver worked. On July 20, 2019, during the Marvel panel at San Diego Comic-Con, the studio confirmed that ‘Endgame’ had surpassed the $2.789 million accumulated by ‘Avatar’ until then, thus becoming the highest-grossing film in history. The celebration was short-lived: in March 2021, ‘Avatar’ was released again in China and regained the title in a single weekend. Since then, the distance between both films has not stopped growing: today ‘Avengers: Endgame’ accumulates 2,799 million dollars compared to 2,923 million for ‘Avatar’. There is almost 124 million difference, much more than what separated both films in 2019. Fall without Avengers. The collections of the ‘Endgame’ films have suffered a constant decline. Let’s remember some cases: ‘Eternals’ raised 402 million dollars with a budget of between 200 and 250 million. ‘Black Widow’ stood at 379 million, weighed down by its simultaneous premiere on Disney+. ‘Quantumania’ suffered the worst second weekend drop in Marvel Studios history. ‘The Marvels’ closed that streak without achieving the financial success that the studio expected. The real goal of ‘Avengers Endgame Encore’ is no longer to recover a record that today seems unattainable, but to rebuild the feeling of an event that Marvel lost years ago: to remind the public, just before December and the premiere of ‘Doomsday’, why they cared about this story. What is played in December. ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ hits theaters on December 18, 2026, the same day as ‘Dune: Part Three’, a coincidence that already has generated friction for the distribution of IMAX screens. Ticket sales for Infinity Vision screenings of ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ start right now, on July 20. Five days later, at San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel will show the first official trailer for the film. Depending on how both events are received, we will see if Marvel is in a position to bottle again that seemingly unrepeatable lightning bolt that was ‘Endgame’ In Xataka | In just one month in office and with 1,000 layoffs, Disney’s new CEO dismantles the art department that built the MCU

Spain is going to have three heat waves in six weeks. AEMET is clear: it is no longer a wave, it is the climate

by

Spain has just signed its start to the warmest summer in the historical series. There it is nothing. Between June 1 and July 15, the average temperature was 3.3 ºC above normal. In these six weeks, we have suffered two official heat waves, an extreme episode that did not become extreme and, according to AEMETwe are already on the rise of the next wave this Sunday. So much so that the heat begins to be the least of it. The central question of 2026 is simple: if we cross the heat threshold three times in five weeks, isn’t something broken in that threshold? In Xataka "It’s brutal": Meteorologists have taken a look at the heat forecasts for next week and they are not optimistic The third wave does not exist yet. I don’t want to mislead anyone. AEMET has issued an information note (it is not yet a special notice) and this is because, although we know that there will be a generalized thermal rise, the criteria remain extremely strict. Spokesman Rubén del Campo talked about temperatures “extraordinarily high” and maximum temperatures of up to 44 ºC in the southern half. But the duration, extent and strength is yet to be defined. What is clear is that, if it were not, it would be just barely. That’s why what happens next week doesn’t change the general picture. Not only would it be three or four extreme heat episodes in six weeks, but some climatologists such as Jorge Olcina They also add the “Saharan advection at the end of May” and speak of four episodes in eight weeks. With old reference periods, we would probably be in those terms. But how explained José Ángel Núñez and Rubén del Campo On the agency’s official blog, the definition is not touched, precisely, to see things like what we are seeing. That is, what the threshold is doing is clearly showing that everything is changing. According to the agency’s own studybetween 2001 and 2025 Spain registered 91 heat waves compared to 43 in the period 1976-2000, and the days under the wave went from 210 to 510. This summer does not fit the threshold, it is true. But it fits perfectly with the trend. In Xataka Today the heatwave begins and the meteorologists are clear: "They paint coarse for the Mediterranean regions of Spain" And that’s the problem. The ISCIII MoMo system, the statistical model that indicates excess mortality, attributed 3,649 deaths to the heat last summer, the second worst figure of the decade. The problem here, as we pointed out a few days ago, is that in 2026 we will already we have spent half of that excess before the dog days begin (the worst part of summer). Meteorology has shown us that, at any moment, the situation can change suddenly. What remains is to wait, but the feeling that the world is changing faster than our adaptations to it has stopped being a fear and has begun to become something very real. Image | Meteociel In Xataka |Neither London nor the United Kingdom: the NASA map that reveals where the grayest sky in Europe is (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news Spain is going to have three heat waves in six weeks. AEMET is clear: it is no longer a wave, it is the climate was originally published in Xataka by Javier Jimenez .

We no longer want to see “artists” but shows

by

Sphere sells movies and concerts in a way that neither streaming nor traditional theaters can replicate, a unique experience that risked becoming stale. such a Las Vegas extravagancethe place where the space is housed. However, the revenue data for the first quarter of 2026 not only speaks of healthy accounts, but also of the confirmation that live entertainment is mutating irreversibly. The aforementioned. Sphere Entertainment closed the first quarter of its fiscal 2026 year with $386.4 million in revenue, 38% more than what it earned in the previous twelve months. For the second time, the business of also the owner of Madison Square Garden, James Dolan, closes a positive quarter, with an operating profit of 7.2 million dollars compared to the 78.6 million losses (for the company as a whole) a year ago. The segment managed directly by Sphere almost doubled its turnover, up to 266 million dollars (69% more), driven above all by the controversial screening of ‘The Wizard of Oz’. Not everything is great news (first and last time we make the joke): the shares have risen 400% in the last year, but They fell by more than 5% on the same day of the announcement, because investors were comparing the quarter with an even better fourth quarter of 2025. The ups and downs of the stock market aside, what this data reflects is that the business is not stable, but depends on the show calendar. That is why he has already announced the residencies of Metallica (24 concerts from October 2026) or Backstreet Boys (56 nights this summer) well in advance. The magician’s bombshell. In 2025, Google and Sphere announced a collaboration to reconstruct ‘The Wizard of Oz’ from 1939 with artificial intelligence, using Gemini, I Spy and Image models to expand the frame and generate characters that were out of shot in the original film, but that did enter the monstrous screen of the venue. The project cost $100 million, as much as a medium-high budget film, and cut the footage to just over an hour. Between that and the radical visual change, which destroyed the original planning, they intensified the criticism. However, the reduction in duration allowed more passes to be scheduled per day. Tickets cost at least $104 and easily exceeded $200, depending on the seating in the stands. Result: more than two million tickets sold and $260 million in revenue since its premiere almost a year ago now, in August 2025. Dolan has clearly said that the numbers “demonstrate that Sphere’s business model works.” It is still striking that what comes from this success is a version of a classic film that does not resemble the hitherto untouchable original. Cinema, down. Meanwhile, the traditional film business continues without raising its head. In Spain, attendance fell by 8% in 2025, to 65 million viewers, the second consecutive year of decline. In the United States tobarely half of the adults set foot in a room throughout the year, with 769 million tickets sold compared to the record of 1.6 billion in 2002. And yet… premium formats are better than ever. IMAX closed 2025 with record revenue of 410 million dollars (+16%) and a global box office of 1,280 million dollars (+40%), with titles such as ‘Sinners’ or ‘F1’ contributing more than 20% of its debut collection in the United States. The concert industry is not far behind: for example, Live Nation closed 2025 with $25.2 billion in revenue (+9%). And in that part of concerts, Sphere is already among the venues with the most tickets sold on the planet, only behind the South Korean K-Arena Yokohama and the Movistar Arena in Madrid in the third quarter of 2025. The conclusions are clear: the public does not go out in search of generic offers, but rather unrepeatable experiences. Clearly, the ball is in the court of the movie theaters. The icing on the cake: the exterior. Sphere doesn’t live on tickets alone. Its exterior façade, the Exosphere, is the largest LED screen on the planet and works as an advertising medium which bills between 450,000 dollars for one day and 650,000 for a week of campaigning. Evian, for example, signed a multi-year sponsorship as the venue’s official water supplier in April, and analysts estimate that advertising could exceed 10% of the company’s total revenue in the coming years. Meanwhile, the spherical business does not stop: while the city of Las Vegas is falling in the number of visits (in 2025 it received 7.5% fewer visitors than the previous yearthe largest annual drop outside of the pandemic and since records exist, since 1970) Sphere Entertainment is already thinking about new venues. The second headquarters is being negotiated in National Harbor, in the state of Maryland but also very close to Washington DC Of course, we will have to wait: its opening is not scheduled until 2030. Header | Even Better

“Mercadona no longer competes only with Carrefour, it does so with the restaurant on the corner and McDonald’s”

by

If you go to the RAE website and look for the definition of “supermarket” You will see that its academics describe it basically as a store where one goes to fill their basket with food, drinks, cleaning products and other belongings. Then he goes to the checkout, pays what is due and goes home. The same thing that the experience accumulated after years and years of making the purchase tells us. The problem is that both the RAE and our experience are beginning to stay out of date. The supers they are no longer happy with being our food providers. Now they want to be something more: our main reference in food. And that means stopping competing only with each other to do so with hoteliers and even multinational restaurant chains. like McDonald’s or Burger King. Express it clearly Bernardo RodillaRetail Business Director at Wordlpanel by Numerator: “Mercadona no longer competes only with Carrefour, it is also competing with the restaurant on the corner and McDonald’s. In the end everyone fights for the same need and it’s getting closer.” A share of almost 20% Rodilla’s reflection is interesting for several reasons. First, for his knowledge of the sector. Second, because Worldpanel is one of the firms that produces the most statistics on food and retail market shares. Not long ago, in fact, he published a report that slipped a key idea: Mercadona is no longer just the chain with higher market share in its sector, far surpassing rivals such as Carrefour or Lidl, it has also become a heavyweight in global food. Translated into figures, this means hoarding a share of the value of almost 20% in food and beverage consumption. What does that mean? That Mercadona sells as much (or more) food as traditional hospitalityat least in terms of value. According to the Worldpanel reportbars, cafes and terraces accounted for around 11.2% share and independent restaurants 8.6%. However, Mercadona takes 19.7%, quite a distance from others retailssuch as Carrefour (6%) and Lidl (5.1%). The change in the sector ‘photo’ is so clear that Rodilla recognizes that it is forcing analysts to rethink their way of studying the sector. “We propose that we increasingly have to look at market shares in a global total of food. We can no longer differentiate if it is food for eat at home or eat out or for restaurants,” he points out. Everything also indicates that the panorama will continue to change over time, as the prepared food sections of supermarkets continue to expand. Probably the clearest example is left ‘Ready to eat’the cooked food service launched in 2018 by the Juan Roig chain and which basically (as its name indicates) allows the customer to buy already prepared dishes at the supermarket that, in many cases, they can devour right there, without having to leave the store. Although it is less than a decade old, this line of business already has hundreds of millions and look from you to you to chains of fast food. “Everything that is ‘Ready to eat’ is a trend that, not only in Spainbut in many countries, it is having a journey. It gains weight and it makes sense because in the end we want to spend as little time as possible cooking,” reasons Rodilla. As for the future, and despite the fact that, as the Worldpanel expert recalls, when a trend takes hold it is common for others to emerge in the opposite direction, it is expected that services such as Mercadona’s will continue to expand. The phenomenon is not limited to the Valencian chain. There are many other companies, such as Carrefour, Alcampo or Masymaswho are exploring the business niche of prepared meals. In fact, they are beginning to be so popular that a new term has even been coined to designate those supermarkets with food counters and rooms where you can taste them: the ‘merchants’. In Barcelona the ‘traditional’ hoteliers have already started to denounce them so they consider a unfair competition that affects them directly. Its strategy is to offer cheap, appetizing, flexible and fast-consuming menus. They sell food, yes; but above all they sell time savings. The bet is working so well that there are those who believe, including Roig himselfthat supermarkets will end up making kitchens outdated spaces in the home. Why have a vitro if Mercadona or Carrefour already cooks for us? Rodilla has another question: if that happens… Exactly, what role will the supers come to play? He does not believe that we are heading towards the culinary dystopia predicted by Juan Roig, although he does not see it as unreasonable that in the future our way of relating to cooking at home will change. Instead of being just another household chore, cooking would become an activity “playful”. From Mercadona and super regional In any case, precooked foods and the success of ‘Ready to Eat’ are not the only trends that mark the food distribution sector. Internally, there are three other equally clear phenomena: Mercadona’s expansionwhich already has between 25 and 30% market value share, white label success and the endurance of the super regionals. For Rodilla it is a reflection of how our own way of buying and filling the refrigerator has changed. “Not only has Mercadona grown, but all organized distribution has grown in recent years. You see how we bought in 2000 and how we buy now and you see how the supermarket in general or the large supermarkets has grown. Between Mercadona and Lidl in the last 25 years, practically 25 share points have grown,” he points out. At the opposite pole is the branch of the sector that has lost ground: the “lifelong specialists”as fishmongersbutchers or fruit shops. “The Spanish market was very particular and there were many specialists. In recent years we have seen that it has been disappearing and that purchase has been transferred to organized distribution,” Rodilla explains. In the specific case of Mercadona, its ability to move from an autonomous model, … Read more

We have been believing for years that women live longer because of their lifestyle. Science has a much deeper explanation

by

If we take a look at the World Bank’s global statistics, there is an unbreakable pattern that repeats itself in practically every country in the world: Women live longer than men. Conventional wisdom often dismisses this phenomenon with a quick response based on lifestyle or “men take more risks.” And although there is some truth in this, the scientific reality is much more complex. Because? To understand female longevity, We must focus on the DNA that we have in all our cells. Something very basic is that women have two X chromosomes, while men have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. A fundamental difference, because that second X chromosome in women acts as a kind of backup. This means that if a gene on one X chromosome suffers a mutation or is damaged, the female body can turn to the healthy copy on the other chromosome. Men, however, play a single card, since if their only X chromosome has a defect, there is no plan B. In addition, this chromosome is vital because it houses a large number of genes related to the immune system, which gives women a more robust response to infections. It goes further. Genetics is not everything here, but the body has an ace up its sleeve, which are the mitochondria, which are nothing more than the “power plants” of our cells. These organelles are inherited only maternally and, as proposed in 2007sexual differentiation has a direct biological cost for men, translating into lower mitochondrial function and, therefore, greater cellular oxidative stress that accelerates aging. The hormones. Beyond genetics and mitochondria, we must mention sex hormones, which are in very different proportions between sexes. Estrogens, for example, are the main female sex hormones that, in addition to regulating the reproductive cycle, act as a powerful antioxidant shield. Among its effects stands out maintaining the flexibility of blood vessels, reducing “bad” cholesterol and preventing inflammation. This largely explains why the incidence of cardiovascular disease in women is significantly lower before menopause. In the man. On the other side of the coin we have testosterone. Although it is crucial for the development of muscle and bone mass, high levels of this hormone in men are historically associated with increased cardiovascular risk at an early age and long-term depression of the immune system. The evolution. Someone may fall into the idea that this system is something exclusive to humans, but evolutionary biology shows us otherwise. Here, a 2025 study analyzed 1,176 species and the results revealed that in mammals, females live on average 13% longer than males. The reason lies in reproductive strategies and the biological wear and tear derived from male sexual competition, such as fights over territory or mating. However, it was seen that andIn birds, males live 5% longer; since in the avian world, males usually have two identical sex chromosomes (ZZ) and females have different sex chromosomes (ZW). Furthermore, in many bird species, parental care is shared or falls to the male, which reduces their risk behaviors. Human behavior. Of course, biology does not operate in a vacuum and genetic and hormonal factors must be added. the behavioral gap and social. For example, the consumption of toxic substances has a greater prevalence in men, being associated with cancer, cirrhosis or respiratory diseases. But, as we have said before, testosterone is also linked to a greater propensity to take risks, which translates into higher mortality rates from traffic accidents or cases of violence. On the other hand, women suffer from “invulnerability syndrome” which causes them to seek preventive medical services much more frequently. Men tend to postpone visits to the doctor until diseases are in more advanced stages, making treatment difficult. In addition, women tend to build stronger social and emotional support networks, a factor directly linked to greater survival in old age. Images | Age Cymru In Xataka | 5 minutes of sleep, 2 of exercise and half a serving of vegetables: the macro study that supports a great longevity ‘hack’

In the Mediterranean it no longer makes sense to talk about a “tropical night” because almost all of them are.

by

On June 21, the thermometer at Almería airport did not drop below 30.8ºC throughout the night. In fact, at seven in the morning the temperature was exactly the same as it would have been on an August afternoon twenty years ago. It seems like an isolated event (after all, it is the first time that we have encountered a minimum like this in the Mediterranean in June), but it is not. Just a handful of days later, the AEMET experts made it quite clear: it no longer makes much sense to talk about “tropical nights” in the Mediterranean because almost all summer nights already are. That is, almost no drops below 20 degrees. The June heat wave was (quite) exceptional. Not only because the 22nd and 23rd were the warmest June in the country since at least 1950; nor because the average peninsular anomaly was 7.1 ºC. The most striking exceptionality occurred in the early morning: according to the same AEMET24 of its 86 main stations marked the highest minimum in the historical series. That was the symptom. But the problem is another. A problem that has to do with an indicator that jumps so much that it has stopped meaning something just when we need it most. Or, at least, when we are most aware of the lack of it. In 2025, A CSIC research team published a work in Environment International in which he analyzed 178 cities, separating the effect of warm nights from that of warm days. Their conclusions indicate that nocturnal heat is associated with an increase in mortality of up to 3% and that this effect is independent of daytime heat. The mechanism is also dramatically simple: if the early morning does not ease, the body does not recover, sleep is degraded and cardiovascular or respiratory pathologies worsen rapidly. Why should we care? Because southern Europe is among the regions hardest hit by temperature changes. But there is something else: the same CESIC studyexcess mortality due to nocturnal heat in Spain is concentrated in the interior (Granada, 3.56%; Madrid, 3.45%; or Córdoba, 3.44%) while the Mediterranean coast is holding up much better (Barcelona, ​​0.56%; Alicante, 0.55%; or Almería 0.46%). That is, the problem is adaptability to these types of phenomena. Something in which the coast wins because it has been suffering from it (to a lesser extent, but suffering from it) for many years. The future we are going to. AEMET projects to go from the current 22 heat wave days per year to 47 at the end of the century with intermediate emissions. Preparing is no longer an option if we don’t want to. paint the windows of half the country with chalk or white yogurt. Image | Christian Van Der Henst In Xataka | Beyond gazpacho and salmorejo: Spain’s hidden summer dishes that are crying out to become popular

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.