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Senna has given us back the passion for a Formula 1 that no longer exists. And its sound is key to understanding its success

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March 1, 1981. Brands Hatch, United Kingdom. He had fought for two karting world championships but was still a complete unknown to the general public. Not even in England, where the passion for motorsport is several steps ahead of other European countries, were they aware of what they were seeing. Brazilian with curly hair. The face of a child on the body of a 21-year-old boy. The arrogant look of someone who knows he is superior. And it is superior. That day was fifth at the controls of his Van Diemen. Two weeks were enough for me to get his first victory. With the circuit flooded, Ayrton Senna da Silva asked his team to put as much pressure as possible in their tires. They say that no one on the team believed in that decision but as a pilot who paid to have a guaranteed seat, the mechanics followed orders. The rest is history. The Brazilian driver began to string victories. Six races held that year in the Formula Ford 1600 with four victories. 12 victories out of 19 rounds in which he took the exit. At the end of that same year, Ayrton Senna fulfilled his family commitment and promise to Lilian de Vasconcelos Souza, then girlfriend and then briefly wife of the man considered the most talented Formula 1 driver in history. Senna returned to his country to run the family business. But he had already experienced what it was like to win. He had already experienced what it was like to be the best. And he came back to win it all. They exist, they are somewhere More than 40 years after that Brands Hatch race, Netflix released Senna. “While we were still searching, we recorded a Formula Ford in Sweden, an FF 1600,” The speaker is Gabriel Gutiérrezsound designer of the six-episode series in which the pilot’s life is recreated working with, among other tools, Dolby Atmos. Senna talks about the human side of the driver, his private life and his path to becoming a triple world champion. But if something attracts an amateur, it is the montage of the images, the recreations aboard legendary single-seaters. Recreations that would be nothing without their sound. “I received a call from a post-production supervisor from Brazil, Gabriel Queiroz, who told me about a new project by Vicente Amorim, with whom I had already worked on Holy. From the beginning, we started looking for cars worldwide and how to get models from that era to go out and record them,” explains Gutiérrez about how Senna was built. “The filming was going to be done with replicas of the cars that were custom-built models, fantastic, with enormous precision, but their engines were not Formula 1 racing ones,” Gutiérrez clarifies. Ayrton Senna in the Formula Ford 1600 in 1981 And there begins the challenge: to be able to record the most iconic models driven and against which Ayrton Senna competed throughout the decade of the 80s and early 90s. “Many people told us that we were crazy, that we were never going to achieve it, that those cars were dismantled and that they do not exist.” But boy do they exist. Whoever has ever gone to see a Formula 1 race, there is something that they do not forget: the sound. The current V6 hybrids have nothing to do with the brutal howl of the V10s of the late 90s and early 2000s that Senna himself would not see. What he did have in his hands were cars from a time that will not return. Between his debut in Formula 1 in 1984 and the fateful May 1, 1994 when he lost his life in the Tamburello curve of the Imola circuit (San Marino), the turbo V8 and the naturally aspirated V10 and V12 paraded through Formula 1, the latter with a brutal sound, hoarser than the return of the V10 from 1995 onwards. Pure sounds, without a trace of electrification, that danced inside the cabin to the metallic tapping of the gearbox lever. From stomping on the clutch to downshift, playing with the accelerator to synchronize the revolutions of an engine that was going above 10,000, 11,000, 12,000 rpm. The engine backfired before taking the first chicane at Monza where the Ferraris of Berger and Alboreto watched in shock as Ayrton Senna abandoned the car after Jean-Louis Schlesser crashed and got the only victory they would scratch to the McLarens throughout 1988. The hit of the accelerator at the start and the howl with each gear change before reaching the Parabolica and heading down the finish line. The no less powerful cry of the typhosi in the stands when they saw that they were returning to the top of the podium in Monza when just three laps before they had seen it impossible. They were years of pure driving, of senses. By sight, smell, touch… and hearing. For the protagonists and those who admired them. For those who saw a Brazilian debutant swims between the rails in Monaco in 1984jeopardizing the victory of an already renowned Alain Prost who managed to stop the race before its end, distributing half of the points in a decision that would end up costing him the World Championship at the end of the year in favor of Niki Lauda. Ayrton Senna aboard the Lotus 97T “We were able to record Ayrton Senna’s original Toleman from 1984 and the original Lotus, the 97T model at the Lotus Classic Track in Oxford, which was a fantastic recording. The Toleman was positioned as the new leading car for us, the favorite,” explains Gutiérrez. By then, they had already obtained a good handful of the cars that marked an era. As? Moving through the mist. Senna’s sound designer explains that his first idea was to talk to Frank Cruz, who held that same position in Rush by Ron Howard, a film about the duel between Niki Lauda and James Hunt in the 1976 World Championship. The film … Read more

November has been a black month for consoles. They no longer compete against each other, but against TikTok

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November 2025 is a month that many video game lovers have “celebrated” as the twentieth anniversary of Xbox 360. Pure nostalgiabecause beyond memory, November 2025 will be remembered by Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft as a black month. The reason? It is the worst November for console sales since, precisely, November 2005. In the recent report from Circana we can see a figure very striking: 27%. That is how much spending by American consumers – the largest market for video games – has fallen during November of this year compared to November 2024. Another fact: with 1.6 million consoles sold that month, it is the worst November since 1995, the year of launch of PlayStation. It is relevant because it was released a year ago PS5 Pro and this month of may nintendo switch 2but the high prices of both machines and video games, which have experienced a rise in recent months, have not been able to convince players. Not even on Black Friday. And the key here may not be that thousands of video games are released every month or the price of the console itself. The key may be that the console war has ended and a very different one has begun: the attention war. Console war? War of attention At Xataka we have discussed the topic on more than one occasion. Our ability to focus is broken. in a task due to the enormous amount of stimuli to which we are subjected. Everything competes for our attention. Matt Booty, one of the Xbox heavyweights, said A few months ago Xbox’s competition was not PlayStation. Neither does Nintendo. The competition was TikTok. It was not a mistake, since Satya Nadella, absolute boss of the American company, also stated that “the competition of video games is not other video games, but short format video.” The interesting thing is that it is not an unreasonable statement. To Netflix, especially as a result of the final season of ‘Stranger Things’you are being accusing of producing empty series so that people have them in the background because they assume that they will be consuming short videos on their mobile phones while watching the series. That’s why there are short dialogues and a long opening exposition at the beginning of the season so you can “forget” about having to follow anything else. We are in a moment in which we spend the day unfocused, without being able look at your phone every 15 minutes as a reflex act and where we have to look for strategies so that multitasking and division of attention does not affect us. Matthew Bell, one of the most influential analysts of the video game market, already told it a few months ago in his book ‘The State of Video Gaming 2025‘. In your radiographypointed out how the video game industry no longer competes against itself, but against a tremendously fragmented digital entertainment ecosystem. Our time is finite. If we take away the hours of work, rest, transportation and food, we have little time for the rest. In the United States, there are studies who do not agree on how much time an average user spends on TikTok. The data varies between 58 minutes and 95, but whatever it is, then there is YouTube, Instagram or Facebook. This, in addition, is having cognitive consequences: have less attention span than a fish has. If in 2020 the average human attention span was twelve seconds, now it is eight. A fish pays attention for nine seconds, and you have to pay attention to a video game. And the threat of TikTok? The AI There are those who are catching this situation on the fly and that is why microdramas have appeared. At first, the fever of series with one-minute episodes occurred in Chinabut is climbing. And it is logical that you think: if the competition for consoles is TikTok, who is TikTok’s competition? The answer is also easy: artificial intelligence. Those minutes in which users They use ChatGPT as if it were their psychologista virtual friend or even a coupleare minutes that are not spent on TikTok. It is still something as accessible as opening an app, exactly the same as on TikTok, but perhaps waiting for that response from an AI that is characterized by being tremendously flattering is more comforting for our brain than the umpteenth quick video created with… AI –the slope-. Because they are social networks, video platforms, consoles, artificial intelligence and even the metaverse – someday, if that -, the objective is the same: to keep us glued to the screen. And we cannot attend to everything. In Xataka | An unknown console has overtaken Xbox in sales: it is just the beginning of more ambitious plans

“Free-range” eggs are no longer free-range due to the confinement of the hens. But they continue to pay much more

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Eggs have been in the news in recent weeks for the price increase they have been experiencing for the spread of bird flu. But now it returns to the front line of information as a result of a notice that has launched the OCU which would point out that every time we buy eggs we may be being deceived. The types of eggs. When we go to the supermarket to get a tray of eggs, there are several types available depending on the type of care that the hen that laid them has had. The cheapest are from chickens that are locked in the chicken coop, but then there are ‘free-range’ eggs, which in theory are from hens that do go outside and are code 1. And the same thing happens with eggs marked as ‘organic’, which have a very specific diet. The price of freedom. Choosing one type of egg or another means paying an extra price for these special conditions. And it’s not a few cents, as the OCU itself points outsince the ground egg right now has an average price of €3.25 per dozen. But free-range eggs are priced at €4.13 per dozen, which is an extra 88 cents per dozen. All this for the premise of animal welfare: a chicken that has access to the outdoors and pecks in the field without being in an enclosed coop. Something also justified by the increased cost that this entails. The problem. We must remember that for a few weeks we have been immersed in an avian flu epidemic that affects the chickens that produce these eggs. To try to contain it, the Ministry of Agriculture He ordered all chickens to be locked up starting in November.. But… Has this price difference disappeared? The OCU is what is being complained about: in practice, producers are selling a product under the conditions of a chicken, enclosed as if they were truly free-range eggs. On top of that, logically respecting the price increase that this crisis has caused. European regulations. Is it legal to sell something that is not? It is the question we must ask ourselves when we pay for free-range eggs when in fact they are not. To understand it we must go to EU Delegated Regulation 2023/2465. This European regulation contemplates a kind of “grace period” for producers in cases of force majeure, such as this epidemic. The law allows the designation of “free-range egg” to be maintained for a period of up to 16 weeks, even if the hens have to be confined. The objective of the rule is to protect farmers: to prevent them from losing their certification and market overnight due to a health crisis beyond their control. Lack of transparency. For the OCU, the problem in this case is not the certification that accompanies the egg, but rather the little information that a consumer has who does not know what they are buying. And from their study, after analyzing the seven major brands on the market, none of them report on the labeling of the change in breeding conditions. What is requested. The consumer organization is not asking for the confinement to be lifted, which is necessary to maintain the epidemic, but for information. They argue that there are precedents for rapid adaptation such as when the war in Ukraine began when sunflower oil shortage had to force the industry to change the labeling. All this to make changes to the ingredients in the oil. Paying the same. But the most important thing is that a surplus of almost one euro on average per dozen eggs is being paid for being free-range. When in reality they are the same eggs that are cheaper in supermarkets. This makes us raise the possibility that although the denomination is maintained (although with more information about what is happening), the price will be equated with those of the lower category, since in both situations we have chickens locked up. Images | Jakub Kapusnak In Xataka | In the 1970s, scientists realized that large animals should suffer more from cancer. And that wasn’t the case

Silence is no longer a right, it is a privilege

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Last year I left almost 300 dogs in some AirPods Pro. The only reason I didn’t settle for the regular ones was the noise cancellation. I didn’t buy listening to music better. I bought not to listen. On the subway I see people with 15 euro headphones that must filter as much as a shower curtain. The noise of the carriage, the street musicians, the loud tiktoks of the abnormal next door who wants to make them sound. All that is for those who cannot afford to delete it.. Years ago I worked in the kitchen of a fast food chain. Eight hours of voiceovers, irons hissing, fryers bubbling, customers screaming. Then came my first apartment in Madrid, the one I could afford: I could hear which channel my neighbor was watching with complete clarity. I better not even talk about his occasional pinches. The noise always accompanied me. That noise was a reminder of my place. There was a time when noise was synonymous with power. A roaring V8, the keys of a typewriter, a landline breaking the silence of a living room. Today the noise is no longer impressive. It is imposed. The engines, the construction sites, the garbage trucks, the unscrupulous subway and home neighbors carry it with you. Silence, on the other hand, is what you have to earn. Cities have been divided into acoustic layers. Near airports, apartments are worth less. Next to a highway, rents go down because the windows shake. In neighborhoods with perpetual construction, passing ambulances and glass containers emptying at one in the morning live those who cannot leave. Those who can pay for triple glazing, good insulation, acoustic studies prior to purchase and doors that weigh as much as a car. At airports, VIP lounges are not VIP because they have faster WiFi, but because you don’t have to deal with the noise and hustle and bustle. And on the AVE, the silent wagon It doesn’t cost more money, but there is only one. Silence is what is most scarce. Because we’re not just talking about decibels. We talk about being able to choose. To be objective, my gray-haired neighbor didn’t make that much noise. What was unbearable was the imposition: I couldn’t stop listening to it, even when I really didn’t feel like it. I paid to live there and yet I couldn’t demand silence. With AirPods I bought something else: the ability to decide what enters my world for a while and what doesn’t. That is true modern luxury. Status is no longer displayed with loud cars or jingling clocks. It is exhibited, or rather, hidden, with silence. Live without being interrupted, without vibrationswithout foreign voices passing through walls that are too thin. Being able to close the world whenever you feel like it. My AirPods do not filter noise. They filter reality. And that capacity, today, costs money. In Xataka | There was a day when getting on a plane was beautiful, comfortable and aspirational. Today the majority already hates him Featured image | omid armin

In 1970, the train to my town in Extremadura took 20 minutes longer than it does today. It’s a painful reminder about “high speed”

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For eight days, Cáceres and Badajoz have been linked by train. To be exact, they are united by a train typical of the 21st century and, more specifically, of 2025. Since last December 1the two largest cities in Extremadura are linked by a journey of just 50 minutes. A trip with four frequencies daily that makes the lives of thousands of Extremadurans easier. By the middle of next year, in 2026, the Government says that trains will finally be able to reach 300 km/h. If fulfilled, it will be a milestone for the region and a first step to make that Madrid-Lisbon a reality, of which been talking for more than 20 years. Europe seems to have gotten serious in that sense. The intention is to have a connection between capitals in 2030 and that four years later, the journey will only take a little more than 180 minutes. Three hours that now seem little more than a chimera. Especially if we take into account that the first promise to connect both cities dates back to 2003. So he was aiming for 2010 as a final date to have the high-speed connection ready. Today, from Madrid to Badajoz, the only section that operates at “high speed” is the one that separates Badajoz from Cáceres… and a little further, up to the Monfragüe station and its connection with Plasencia. The problem is that the Plasencia-Badajoz section is only one of the three sections that make up the connection between Madrid and the Portuguese border. Yes, it began to act as an electrified connection of iberian width in December 2023. Now, almost two years later, passengers can move between Cáceres and Badajoz in less than an hour. But traveling between Madrid and Badajoz still requires you to use almost five hours of travel. And it is not something that is going to change in the short term. Because it took us almost the same time to get to Extremadura as it did 50 years ago. 20 minutes Browsing the net and trying to understand how we have evolved, I came across the seventh number of the Renfe guide in which the schedules of all the trains available in Spain between December 1970 and March 1971 are collected. In addition to having a good time diving and finding some curiosities such as that the traveler had a Madrid-Paris available that only required worrying about the change in gauge at the border, I found something that caught my attention. Since I was a child, I move frequently between Madrid and Extremadura. Specifically, a town near the Monfragüe Natural Park, an enclave that is located a few kilometers from Plasencia. As long as I’ve had a car, I’ve always traveled in it, but when I didn’t have a driving license I used to opt for the bus. First because there were more frequencies available. Then because delays and breakdowns became part of normality. A shame because the train trip is much more comfortable than the bus and should be faster. Ought. Because while diving I found a detail that caught my attention. Trains leaving from Madrid and arriving in Extremadura in 1970. Click on the image to see more schedules There it was. Train leaving Madrid at 10:40. Arrival at Palazuelo-Empalme (current Monfragüe station) at 13:41 minutes. 181 minutes to cover the 253 kilometers of the journey. Today, luckily, Renfe offers a faster connection. Specifically, 20 minutes faster. As you can see in the following image, the trains between this Extremaduran station (the first electrified) and Madrid are still more than two and a half hours away to travel just over 250 kilometers. Let us remember that Madrid and Barcelona aspire to be united in less time. Or that in less than 10 years we should see a Madrid-Lisbon in less than three hours. The problem, as we said, is that the connection between Madrid and Extremadura is progressing at an extremely slow pace. The first step has been to electrify the Iberian gauge track between Badajoz and this Extremaduran stop. Now, in addition, it is double, which prevents a failure in one direction from immediately affecting the other and, at least, one of the two from continuing to function. The second and biggest problem is that the connection in its La Mancha section is especially slow. The line is divided as follows: Plasencia-Cáceres-Mérida-Badajoz section Talayuela-Plasencia section Madrid-Oropesa section At the moment, the section between Talayuela and Plasencia (on the Extremadura side) is in the construction phase but as indicated in Levantthe works are still in an initial phase. In fact, of the seven subsections into which it is divided, only two of them have been completed, as collected by Adif. Despite everything, the deadlines should not be extended much longer and the section should be active in 2028. But the most problematic thing is in Castilla-La Mancha. The Madrid-Oropesa section is still in the information project phase. In it, the biggest obstacle is the passage through Toledo. The intention of the Ministry of Transport and the city council is to bring the AVE as close as possible to the municipality, using the current station that is located just two kilometers away in a straight line from the urban area. This forces us to design a new viaduct to solve the passage through the Tagus… and there is the conflict. The Autonomous Community and platforms in defense of the city’s heritage believe that it damages its image and propose an alternative station in an industrial estate further away from the urban area, reducing the visual impact and discarding the need for the viaduct. They show in an exhaustive analysis in Geotrain how one day, if all goes well, in 2030 we will have a connection between Madrid and Badajoz in 151 minutes. That is, in two and a half hours. Until then, it will still be 10 minutes less than it currently takes to the station closest to my town, located long before reaching … Read more

can no longer contain the radiation

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On February 14, 2025, an explosive drone Shahed 136Iranian-made and possibly launched by Russia, pierced the structure of confinement at Chernobyl reactor 4, considered one of the greatest feats of modern engineering and designed to contain radiation from the worst nuclear disaster in history. Shortly after, Europe confirmed an open secret: plugging the “gap” was going to take a long time. The consequence has now arrived: Chernobyl is once again a problem. The impact and deterioration. The structure that was to guarantee a century of nuclear safety at Chernobyl has entered into a critical phase after the drone attack that pierced and burned he New Safe Confinementthe gigantic metal arch installed in 2016 to permanently seal reactor number four and contain any leaks of dust or radioactive gases. The IAEA mission, after examining the state of the exterior coating, has confirmed that the structure has lost its essential function: no longer confines radiation as designed. The post-impact fire, which remained active for weeks When an impermeable internal membrane caught fire, it forced emergency crews to open hundreds of holes in the deck to locate embers, multiplying potential escape routes and further compromising the integrity of a system designed to be airtight for generations. The “good”. That no increases have been recorded in the radiation levels in the surroundings, although the loss of tightness implies that an internal incident, even a minor one, could generate environmental dispersion in a complex where tons of radioactive material remain encapsulated inside the old Soviet sarcophagus, already exhausted in its useful life and never completely sealed. The perforated sarcophagus The fragility of a colossus. The sarcophagus is not just any structure: it is the largest mobile installation ever built, a metal arch as tall as a 30-story building and heavy as a battleship, financed by more than forty countries to allow (finally) the safe dismantling of the reactor destroyed in 1986. Its mission was twofold: contain the toxic legacy of the past and provide a stable environment to remove, piece by piece, the remains of the molten core. But he february attack It opened a fifty-square-foot hole, damaged the main crane, and exposed a deeper problem: repairing a shield of this size and sensitivity is extraordinarily difficult. The urgent thing. The most compromised areas are in areas where radiation prevents working normally, and moving the arch to intervene from the outside entails structural and exposure risks that still have no clear technical solution. IAEA experts insist on the urgent need to control humidityreinforce anti-corrosion programs and plan permanent repairs before progressive deterioration turns the current situation into a cumulative risk. An environmental threat. The impact of the drone, which Ukraine attributes to Russiahas not only left physical consequences on the structure: it has introduced a new vulnerability vector in an area that was already occupied in 2022, when Russian troops crossed the nuclear exclusion during their advance towards kyiv. Since then the enclave has become a symbol of the extent to which war can reopen dangers that Europe believed contained forever. The loss of function of the shield does not imply an immediate disaster, how they emphasize both the IAEA and independent specialists, but it does increase the probability that an internal accident or a future incident will cause the release of radioactive dust towards an exterior that is no longer hermetically isolated. Plus. The absence of leaks detected today does not reduce the severity of a deterioration that, if not corrected, can amplify any problem operational in a facility where dismantling work has been delayed for years precisely because of the war. The balance between technical stability, environmental risk and vulnerability to attacks is thus profoundly altered, in a context in which restoring security will not be quick, cheap or easy. The technical challenge. The recommendations of the IAEA Director General, Rafael Grossi, insist on a complete and urgent restoration that stops the degradation of the shield and recovers its confinement function. However, the intervention it’s complicated: Handling damaged materials in a radioactive environment requires conditions that war does not guarantee, and moving the structure to work on it can generate mechanical stresses and unwanted risks. Thus, Ukrainian authorities and international teams will have to decide how to act on a system designed to be immovable for a hundred years, now weakened by fires, drilling and prolonged exposure. Meanwhile, Europe is witnessing a strong reminder that nuclear infrastructure is not only vulnerable to the passage of time, but also to the dynamics of a conflict that has crossed all possible borders, including that of a disaster that forever marked the memory of the continent. Image | State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine, Picryl In Xataka | A Russian drone has opened one of the largest engineering works. The problem: it was the sarcophagus of Chernobyl reactor 4 In Xataka | Europe built a shield to contain radiation from Chernobyl. A Russian drone drilled into it, and it has been open since then

An era of a lot of free time is coming, because we will no longer have jobs

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Imagine a future where humans no longer have to work because AI does everything for us. It is an idea that has been in the mouths of figures of the stature of Bill Gates and Elon Musk, who believes that “working will be optional”. Now it adds Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel Prize in Physics in 2024and his approach is quite pessimistic. An idyllic future. Depending on who says it and how they say it, the future sounds like a utopia where humans dedicate themselves to living life in a kind of permanent retirement. This is what is distilled from speeches like that of Elon Musk, who is committed to a universal basic income so that only those who want to work can work. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, and Bill Gates are not so forceful in saying that AI will completely free us from work, but they do believe that it will be the definitive boost to the four-day workweek in even three days. Or not so much… Geoffrey Hinton has joined the debate and, as we are accustomed tohis position is much more pessimistic. During a debate with Bernie Sanders at Georgetown UniversityHinton talked about the impact that AI will have on the labor market and his prediction is that AI will make human work obsolete, causing mass unemployment with unprecedented economic and social impact. A different threat. Technology has destroyed many jobs, but for Hinton this technological revolution is different from others because “People who lose their jobs will have no other jobs to go to. If AI becomes as intelligent as people, or more so, any job they can do can be done by AI.” He believes that it will mainly affect office positions, calls “white collar” professionssuch as analysts, customer service positions or junior programmers. Side effect. During the talk, Sanders and Hinton criticized the path that large companies are taking with billion-dollar investments in data centers for AI. “If you’re wondering where these guys are going to get the billions of dollars they’re investing in data centers and chips… one of the main sources of money will be selling AI that will do the work of employees for much less money,” Hinton said. However, he pointed out that this will have a collateral effect: “If the workers do not get paid, there will be no one who will buy your products…they haven’t really thought about the enormous social disruption we will have if there is very high unemployment.” The promise of AGI. For these predictions to be fulfilled, both the most optimistic and the most pessimistic, an AGI is needed (a general artificial intelligence that is as capable as a human being). AI companies have been around for a long time making us believe that the AGI is about to fallbut the promise of imminence seems more related to a need to finance the insane investment than to reality. The most sensible voices, such as Andrej Karpathy, suggest that the AGI will take at least another decade to arrive. Hinton admitted that AI still fails at basic tasksbut warns that we are still in the early stage and “it is improving exponentially.” Although in this case he did not give a date, according to previous statementssees it “quite likely that at some point in the next 20 years AIs will become smarter than us.” The impact of AI on employment. That AI takes our jobs has become one of the great fears of society. At the moment the studies that are being carried out point in different directions, from those that say that It’s barely impactingto those who say that it mainly affects the recent graduates entering the job market. According to the World Economic Forum report92 million jobs are expected to be destroyed by 2030, many of them due to automation facilitated by AI. However, it also foresees the creation of 170 million new jobs, also associated with the arrival of AI. Images | Wikipedia In Xataka | AI and its impact on the labor market: how the perception of its arrival varies by country, explained in a graph

AEMET has released its prediction for winter and confirms the trend that is no longer an anomaly: a winter “without cold”

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Although we can keep in mind that winter does not begin until next December 21, coinciding with the winter solsticefor meteorology now we have started with the station from today. A season in which we could all expect a great spell of polar cold to be at home with a blanket and watching a series on television. But the AEMET has lowered these forecasts taking into account to what we experienced in previous years. Via a post on X The AEMET has welcomed this new winter 2025-2026, but with bad news behind it: it will be much warmer than usual with a high probability. We are not talking about individual “summer” days, but rather a robust statistical signal that covers the entire quarter (December-January-February). What we used to call an anomaly, the data are beginning to call the norm: winter in Spain is fading. Heat map. AEMET’s seasonal prediction It doesn’t leave much room for doubt. According to probabilistic models, the average temperature will be in the warm zone throughout the country. Specifically, for the AEMET the eastern peninsula and the Balearic Islands have a probability of a much warmer winter that exceeds 70%. In the case of the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, this is where the “zero zone” of this warming will be found, with a very pronounced thermal increase with respect to its normal values. In the rest of the peninsula, the probability is around 50%, which continues to be a sign that points to having a winter that is as normal as possible with respect to what we have seen in previous years. The rain. If in terms of temperatures it seems that we are not going to have very good news with a high probability, in terms of precipitation it seems that we must be optimistic. A priori, the models suggest that we will not have an extremely dry winter but nor will it be too wet. And the rainfall seems to be close to the average, although with great variability. Not all months of this winter will rain in the same way, emphasizing especially the second half of winter, that is, the end of January and February, where the models point to the arrival of dynamic phases with fronts and storms. This is something that may fit with studies on the loss of sea ice in the Arctic, which alters atmospheric circulation and may lead to much more “wet or variable” winters in the Iberian Peninsula, breaking the patterns that we saw in our environment. 28 days of “no winter”. To understand why the AEMET is so sure of this forecast, you have to look in the rearview mirror. The most recent reportslike Climate Central, already warned that last winter Spain experienced an average of 28 days with temperatures above the historical average. To do this, experts focus on reducing the days where we have temperatures below zero with a sharp drop in the days where there is frost. Furthermore, cities like Valencia are seeing how urban centers are turning into ovens even in the middle of winter. And it is a serious danger, as the CLIVAR-Spain report warns that this amplification of warming and the alteration of winter variability pose a critical challenge for our ecosystems, which need rest from the winter cold for their biological cycles. Goodbye to the historic cold. What AEMET is telling us with this forecast for 2025-2026 is that the atmosphere in Spain has more and more accumulated energy. Studies by Funcas and analysis by AEMET itself corroborate that the decrease in snow coverage and the increase in warm episodes are not temporary, but in the end they are the reality we face. We are facing a scenario where winters do not disappear, but they do “soften” until they become unrecognizable compared to those of three decades ago. If you have thermal clothing prepared for this year, it is possible that, except for occasional episodes of storms in February, it will stay in the closet. Images | Thomas Holmes Immo Wegmann In Xataka | “Three days of pure cold”: while the world looks at the polar vortex, bad news accumulates for AEMET

Images no longer mean that something was real. Welcome to the era of permanent visual doubt

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There was a time, probably less than a year ago, when you saw a picture on the Internet and simply believed it. You didn’t stop to analyze it, or look for its context. You didn’t think “is it real?”, you simply processed it as information, and moved on. That moment will not return. We no longer talk about deepfakes very hardworking people who deceive some journalist (of that We already warned seven years ago). We are talking about something much more banal and therefore more devastating: Your brother-in-law can create a photo in three seconds of you, completely drunk, at a bachelor party you never went to. Your ex can fabricate a photo of you in a pose you never had. A student can generate a compromising image of his or her teacher during the transition between classes. The question is no longer whether the technology is good enough. It is perfect, we are seeing it with several tools and with the recently launched Nano Banana Pro to the head. In fact, it’s too perfectto. And perhaps for the first time, technical perfection has come before social perfection. Who is capable of seeing the photo on the right and assuming that neither the woman nor the waiter nor the bar actually exist? Let’s go having to learn to do something different from what we have been doing all our lives: learn not to be able to trust our eyes. Our entire epistemology—from court testimony to family photo albums—rests on a simple principle: seeing is a way of knowing. Not perfect, but sufficient: For 300,000 years of human evolution, if you saw a tiger, there was a tiger. For 199 years of photography, if you saw an image of a tiger, someone had been close to a tiger. That chain just broke. And it doesn’t break little by little, with warnings and an adaptation period. It breaks suddenly, on any given Tuesday, when you discover that the viral photo you shared was fake and you ate it without hesitation. Or worse: when you discover that everyone has assumed that the real photo you shared is actually fake. What we are losing is not the ability to distinguish what is real from what is fake. That got complicated a long time ago. What we are losing is something more primary: the possibility of operating under the assumption that the visual is, by default, a reasonable starting point. There’s the catch. for a decade we become obsessed with fake news. We were worried about Russian bots, troll farms or organized disinformation. All that was industrial. It cost a lot of money, left footprints and required coordination. What Nano Banana Pro brings is different. It is artisanal misinformation, common at home. You don’t need an authoritarian government or a budget behind it. You just need a smartphone, whatever it is. We could combat industrial misinformation with fact-checkers and media literacy. How do you combat the fact that each person is now a printing press for alternative realities? How do you verify 10 billion images daily? You can’t. The least obvious consequence is the most devastating: we are going to beg for a lock next to our real photos. If anyone can make any image, only those with verifiable certification will matter. Encrypted metadata, digital chain of custody, institutional authenticity seals. Anything, but something. The photo without a stamp will be suspicious by default. Who is going to offer that certification? Google, Meta, Apple, maybe governments. The only institutions with resources to verify on that scale. We are going to pay them for something that has been free for two centuries: the presumption that what was photographed existed. Because the alternative – a world where no one can be sure of anything – is simply unlivable. But The worst thing is not losing confidence in the images. It is losing confidence in memory. Your brain doesn’t store experiences, it stores reconstructions. And every time you remember something, you reconstruct it with the help of fragments: smells, emotions, images. Photographs have been crutches for memory for decades. They consolidated the rest of the memory. And then there is exhaustion. Every image you see now requires a little evaluation. Is it real? Do I verify it before sharing it? Will I look like a tolili if I send her to the group? Another tab for our internal CPU. Our parents never had to do this cognitive work. We are going to spend the rest of our lives in suspicion mode. Not because they are cynical, but because they are rational. That permanent suspicion has a cost. In attention, in mental energy. Perhaps in a capacity for wonder. In the possibility of seeing something extraordinary and simply believing it. Never again. There is hardly a solution for this: You can’t train an AI to detect AI-generated images perfectly: it’s an infinite arms race. Each detector upgrades the generators. Each generator improves the detectors. Each higher wall is an incentive to lengthen the pole. You can’t educate people to “think critically” on each of the thousands of images it processes per day. We don’t have bandwidth. and nor you can legislate the problem because technology is faster than the law and more accessible than any prohibition. The only thing left is adaptation. Cultural and psychological. Our grandparents trusted what they saw. We trusted what was photographed. Our children are not going to trust anything that does not come certified. Maybe the blockchain It was also invented for this. AND When everything needs verification, nothing can be spontaneous. When every image is suspect, none is memorable. When reality requires constant authentication, we stop inhabiting it naturally. Photography died the day it became indistinguishable from the imagination. We will continue taking photos and we will continue seeing them. But They will no longer do what they did for two centuries: tell us what was real. Welcome to the era of permanent visual doubt. In Xataka | There is a generation … Read more

We thought smoking was no longer fashionable among Gen Z. Until Sabrina Carpenter and Jeremy Allen White arrived

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For decades, the cigarette starred in some of the most iconic images in popular culture. In the imagination of journalism, that reporter from the last century always reappears leaning over his typewriter, surrounded by wisps of smoke while writing an urgent chronicle. In television fiction, that scene evolved into Carrie Bradshaw typing on her Mac with a half-consumed cigarette butt in her New York apartment. And in the cinema, the cigarette was almost a visual code: from the dark seduction of Humphrey Bogart to the melancholic aura that enveloped so many classic characters. Smoke, more than an accessory, functioned as a symbol of charisma, mystery or vulnerability. All of that seemed to be extinguished with the advance of anti-smoking laws. The terraces they cleared themselves of smokeHollywood moderated its use and audiovisual culture stopped associating the cigarette with glamour. The gesture was relegated to a stale past, linked to the strong smell of bars before the ban. But something unexpected has happened: the cigarette has returned. And it has done so hand in hand with the only sector capable of resurrecting what seemed forgotten: celebrities. The visible return of the cigarette to pop culture. The warning signal came from the mecca of cinema. According to a report from the anti-smoking organization Truth Initiativehalf of the movies that debuted last year included cigarettes, cigars or tobacco. In addition, it detected a 110% increase in representations of tobacco in programs aimed at young people between 15 and 24 years old, and a quadrupling in the most viewed series. The figures confirm the obvious: the cigarette has regained prominence. And, to give a couple of examples, it is being observed in music: Sabrina Carpenter appears in the video clip for Manchild smoking and posed for some photographs wearing a corset made from packets of Marlboro Gold. In cinema, films like Saltburn, Materialists or Oppenheimer They have returned tobacco to an almost omnipresent place. Fashion has not been an exception either, during New York Fashion Week, models they smoked on the catwalk as another accessory. And there is still something else, I couldn’t forget about social networks. The Instagram account @cigfluencerscreated in 2021, publishes images of celebrities smoking and has accumulated more than 80,000 followers. The cigarette as a symbol? The most curious thing about this phenomenon is that it is not mass tobacco consumption that is returning, but rather its aesthetics. That nuance is essential to understand what is happening. The point is that the cigarette returns as part of the revival Y2K and aesthetics indie sleaze and heroin chicthat mix of grunge, decadent glamor and soft rebellion that dominated the 2000s and that today inspires fashion, music and social networks. In this framework, the cigarette functions as a retro accessory, a vintage gesture that provokes more visually than addictively. This aesthetic dimension also operates as a narrative tool. In a report for The New York Times point out that the cigarette re-emerges as a symbolic resource on screen: Dakota Johnson smokes in Materialists to underline the emotional emptiness of his character; Jeremy Allen White, in The Bearuses smoke to intensify his melancholy; Sabrina Carpenter holds a makeshift mouthpiece in an ironic tone. According to the medium, the cigarette does not get in the way of the shot: it fills it with aura, drama and texture. And the fundamental question, does it have attraction for young people? There is a component of minimal rebellion. According to the BBCsmoking functions as a gesture of light transgression within a generation accustomed to self-care, permanent surveillance and implicit norms of well-being. The aesthetics brat popularized by Charli XCX It combines hedonism, irony and a touch of nihilism: a perfect territory for the cigarette to recover its provocative role, more suggestive than dangerous. Hence, the great paradox when observing the real behavior of Generation Z. While they watch celebrities smoke on screen, young people consume less and less substances. Already we have explained in Xataka how they are succeeding coffee raves —alcoholic-free daytime parties, where you dance with a cappuccino in hand—, and Tinder registers a boom in dry datingwith one in four young people preferring alcohol-free dating. In other words, cool aesthetics no longer have anything to do with actual habit. Should we worry? The problem appears when cultural trends intersect with health data. The WHO remember that tobacco It kills more than seven million people a year and that there is no safe level of exposure. EPData confirms that its global consumption has fallen from 32.7% in 2000 to 22.3% in 2020, but institutions like the CDC —cited by Wall Street Journal— warn that repeated exposure to tobacco images increases the likelihood that young people will start smoking. In fact, the BBC collected testimonies from American doctors who already observe cases of young people who, after normalizing vaping, have switched to cigarettes because “it gives more credibility” or is “more aesthetic.” Constant exposure to so-called “digital smoke”, pointed out by the Spanish Association Against Cancercan normalize a habit that seemed on the way to disappearing. However, a study carried out by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) showed that Tinder profiles of smokers receive between 29% and 52.7% less matches. Young people do not want to date someone who smokes, but they do want to consume – from a distance – the aesthetics of cigarettes on screens. The contradiction is clear: in the video clip it adds glamour; In real life, it reduces romantic interest. Fad or cultural turn? Perhaps the cigarette has not completely returned: perhaps its ghost, its iconography, its gesture has returned. Aesthetics are back, not addiction. The smoke, not the habit. But while celebrities hold it up as if it were just another jewel in the photo, health organizations remember that tobacco continues to kill half of those who don’t quit. And although on the screen it is pure aesthetics, in real life it is still a tangible risk. The cigarette, that old protagonist of classic cinema, today experiences its … Read more

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