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They no longer trust their own debt

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Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley are looking for ways to protect themselves from the debt they have extended to build AI data centers, according to Ed Zitron’s latest report in which he makes a notable criticism of the boom of AI and the stock market in which debt and complacent analysis are inflating an unsustainable bubble, according to their analysis. Both banks are contemplating “synthetic risk transfers.” It is a mechanism that allows the credit exposure of loans to be sold to other investors while keeping the loans on their books. Deutsche Bank even is considering betting short against actions related to AI. Why is it important. These movements clearly show a certain distrust in the economic viability of the infrastructure they are financing. Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and MUFG have participated in the world’s largest data center financing transactions, including various loans to CoreWeave and the stargate projectsbut now they are looking to reduce their exposure to those same assets. The figures. At least $178.5 billion in data center financing was closed in the United States alone in 2025, almost triple the amount in 2024. CoreWeave, one of the largest operators, carries $25 billion in debt on estimated revenues of $5.35 billion, losing hundreds of millions each quarter. The context. AI data centers are powered by a circular financing model: They sign contracts with their clients before having the physical infrastructure. They use these contracts as collateral to obtain bank debt. They buy NVIDIA GPUs and build facilities that take between one and three years to be operational. Only then do they start generating monthly income. If construction is delayed or the client cannot pay, the loan is up in the air. Between the lines. The banks that have fueled the bubble are now covering their backs. Yes, but. Banks argue that these hedges are normal risk management practices. The problem is that they are hedging themselves against loans that they themselves structured and approved, many of them to clients whose ability to pay is, at the very least, uncertain. CoreWeave has offered OpenAI net 360 payment terms (one year from invoice to settle), depending on your loan agreement. If OpenAI, which needs to raise $100 billion to continue operating, decides not to pay, CoreWeave automatically defaults on its credit obligations. And CoreWeave is probably the best-funded operator in the IT industry. neoclouds. The money trail. NVIDIA announced in October that would guarantee $860 million in lease obligations from a partner in exchange for warrantswith 470 million deposited in a guarantee account. CoreWeave’s third-quarter balance sheet includes a “non-current restricted cash” item of $477.5 million. NVIDIA also signed a 6.3 billion contract with CoreWeave to buy the capacity that CoreWeave fails to sell until 2032. Go deeper. The banks that are hedging their bets are the same ones that have funded most of the global AI infrastructure. They are not selling the risk of any loan, but the risk of data centers that may never turn on, or that if they do, will serve customers who burn billions without generating profits. When the financiers of boom show signs of having stopped believing in boomit is worth paying attention. In Xataka | We have reached a point where not even the CEOs of Google or Microsoft deny that we have an AI bubble Featured image | İsmail Enes Ayhan

Neuroscience explains why the brain takes much longer to mature than we thought

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The idea we have about adolescence right now it ends at 25 years old, this being the age at which supposedly the brain has just been ‘cooked’ forever to give way to a functional adult. But the reality is very different as the new studies point out, since we would continue to mature the brain until at least 32 years old. Where did the current idea come from? To understand why scientists pointed to 25 years as the age at which brain maturity ends, we must go back to studies of the past. Specifically to Resonance studies from the 90s and early 2000s like the classic Nitin Gogtay who mapped brain development and discovered that the cortex matures from “back to front.” This means that the sensory and motor areas are consolidated soon, but the prefrontal cortex which is in charge of executive functions, impulse control and planning is last in line. The problem is that many of those studies stopped following the subjects when you reach 20 or 21 years oldsince seeing that the curve continued to rise, it was assumed that the “peak” of maturity would arrive shortly after, around the mid-20s. But we had no idea what happened after this. Just assumptions. A new frontier. In order to solve this ‘blindness’ of neuroscience used the analysis of more than 4,000 brains using connectivity neuroimaging techniques at the University of Cambridge. What they saw was clearly five ‘epochs’ or milestones in brain wiring throughout life. Different turning points. And as if our life were a game, in the brain we have like five different screens that begin at a specific age that acts as a turning point. These ages are: 9, 32, 66 and 83 years. What interests us in this case is the period between 9 and 32 years, since the brain is characterized by a continuous increase in the efficiency and integration of neural networks. It is what the authors describe as an ‘extended adolescence’. It’s not that at 30 you think the same as a 15-year-old, but that the architecture of connections has not yet reached its final ‘adult’ form. Something that occurs at age 32 and remains stable until age 66, when brain activity begins to decline. To understand it better. Researchers wanted to use a simile to illustrate this new paradigm. To do this, they ask us to think of our brain as the union of several “functional neighborhoods” that specialize in specific tasks such as vision, language or logic. All of these are integrated with each other through different highways that are high-speed connections. Well then, between 20 and 32 years old The brain is balancing these two processes, so that the connections between different areas of the brain are well connected and organized. And it is precisely this typical pattern of the adult network, where the brain is capable of integrating complex information fluidly, which does not appear until after the age of thirty. Teenager at 30? This is where the important nuance comes in. Just because the brain continues to mature structurally does not mean that we should redefine adolescence in legal or clinical terms. All this because maturation is a gradient, not a switch of ‘now I’m a teenager and now I’m not’. To understand this, you have to know that the different elements of the brain and executive functions have a very different development curve. In this way, saying that the brain matures at 32 is a simplification that is as useful (or as erroneous) as saying that it matures at 25. What science really tells us is that there is no sudden development “blackout”; We remain biologically plastic and dynamic much longer than we thought. An opportunity for habits. This prolonged maturation is good news for all of us, since if the brain continues to actively ‘wire’ itself throughout our 20s, it means that structural plasticity is especially dynamic at this stage. In this way, science is quite clear: aerobic exercise, learning new languages ​​or facing cognitively demanding tasks during this “third decade” of life helps to improve the volume and organization of the brain’s white matter. On the contrary, factors such as chronic stress can affect the integrity of those connections. In short, a brain at 28 years old is not a finished product, but rather a work in progress that is finishing paving its best highways. The next time someone tells you that you should have your life figured out now because “you’re an adult,” you can tell them that, according to the University of Cambridge, your brain still has a couple of years of baking left. Images | Hal Gatewood Robina Weermeijer In Xataka | From 27 to 36 years old the brain reaches its peak concentration. And from there, bad news

In Spain, couples no longer have children, they have pets. So they are spending millions of euros on gifts for them

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Recently the Royal Canine Society of Spain made an experiment curious. He asked pet owners about their Christmas plans and found that the vast majority, 85% of the dog owners surveyed, planned to buy some “detail” for their furry companions, gifts on which they planned to spend an average of 35 euros. Not only that. Good part of the people with whom the institution spoke (56%) recognizes that on occasion he has spent more money on details for his dogs and cats than for family and friends. It may seem anecdotal, but these figures tell us a lot about an expanding business that is already moving billions of euros: that of pets. Pets and Christmas gifts. Studies are just that, studies, with their strengths and weaknesses, but they help us better understand some trends. Hence the survey posted last week by the Canine Society is so interesting: 85% of those interviewed plan to buy “some detail” for their pets this Christmas, spending on average about 35 euros per head. “More and more people understand Christmas as a time to share with family… also with them,” slide the organization, which estimates that above all, toys, special snacks, beds and blankets will be purchased. Is this something so strange? No. And for two reasonsmostly. The first is that in Spanish homes it is increasingly easier to find pets than children. The second is that we think less and less about spending hundreds or even thousands of euros on our four-legged companions. It comes with taking a look at the data from the sector or even from the INE to verify it. Right now the statistical institute has 1.8 million children under four years of age registered in Spain. If we talk about pets, however, the REIAC, the Spanish Network for the Identification of Companion Animals, had around 10.2 million dogs and 967,000 cats registered in 2023. There are many, but the data falls short when compared to those managed by other institutions, such as the Statista portalor ANFAC, the Spanish association of feed manufacturers. The latest report from the employers’ association concludes that in Spain there are around 20 million petsamong which dogs (6.96 million), fish (five million), cats (4.93 million) and birds (3.23 million) stand out. A growing business. These data are interesting because they do not only tell us about the love of Spaniards to surround themselves with pets. Together they form the basis of a business that is rapidly expanding: the care of pets. He latest report of Anfaac in fact shows a growing industry, which in 2024 had a turnover 2,053 million5% more than in 2023. Spending on cat food alone skyrocketed in one year about 12%which raised the total turnover of that business niche to more than 900 million. One figure: 175,000 million. “A household with a dog or cat spends, on average, between 160 and 220 euros per year on their food, to which we must add everything related to their care and health,” they clarify to elDiario from the NIQ consulting firm. Their estimates suggest that in Spain pet food already represents a business worth more than 2.2 billion euros, a figure that rises to around 175 billion euros if we value the market internationally. Is there more data? Yes. Another clue is given to us the last barometer of petparent published by Aedpac, the Spanish Association of industry and commerce in the pet sector. Their report shows that if all the money we invest in pets is taken into account, including food, veterinarians, insurance, hairdressers, hygiene items or toys, on average a dog owner spends 1,908 euros per year. In the case of cats it is around 1,728. “It is a growing market. We have not yet reached a bubble or saturation point because it is a solid reality, not a two-day whim,” explained recently to the newspaper Five Days Ignasi Solana, general secretary of Aedpac. The sector saw “an uptick” during the pandemic, but the growth of the pet care business appears to go beyond COVID. Redirecting the business. So much so that there are already toy stores and hair salons that have redirected their businesses to focus on pet care. Even some traditional manufacturer of traditional nougat has been launched this year for the first time to the lucrative (and above all growing) pet food sector. and the experience not seem to be doing badly altogether. “In our vision of petfood “We are talking about a business that represents more than 1,600 million and has been growing by close to 30% in recent years,” comments to elDiario Pauline Worbe, from the firm Worldpanel by Numerator, who remembers that in Spanish homes there are now more pets than children. “We are talking about a sector with promising prospects.” Beyond Spain. The phenomenon is not (far from it) exclusive to Spain. In fact, it is already being felt in such powerful markets. like chinesesupporting a billion-dollar market that expects to grow strongly over the coming years. In 2023 Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that the pet industry was already around 320 billion dollars globally and would reach around 500 billion by 2030. An understandable figure if you take into account that its analysts estimate that in a few years the pet food business will grow by 52%. Images | Xan Griffin (Unsplash) and Matt Nelson (Unsplash) In Xataka | Spain is filling up with buildings with pets. The Horizontal Property Law clarifies what to do when they cause nuisance

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

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