man

the richest man in Germany and owner of Lidl

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The name “Dieter Schwarz” may not sound familiar to you right away, but if we talk about Lidl, things change. Well, Dieter Schwarz is the head of the family emporium of Lidl and Kaufland. And it is normal that neither the name nor the face is familiar to you, because the “German Juan Roig” He is extremely jealous of his privacy in a globalized and permanently connected world like the one we live in thanks to big tech like Google, Meta or Amazon. Precisely at that table is where the group wants to sit. Schwarz Digitsits technological side responsible until now for the IT of the almost 15,000 supermarkets that the chain has around the world. As synthesize Bernd Wagner, their sales manager: “If you don’t sit at the table, you end up being part of the menu.” From the supermarket to the cloud. It seems like a huge leap because in fact it is, but the Schwarz have been making their first steps for years. In 2018 they began developing their own internal cloud (called Stackit) to manage the critical infrastructure of its supermarkets independently. In 2021 they acquired the Israeli cybersecurity company XM Cyber ​​for about $700 million. In 2023 the group announced the creation of Schwarz Digits combining the cloud, cybersecurity and e-commerce and at that time they already had 7,500 people on staff. Originally this infrastructure was designed for internal use, but the next step has been to open it to external clients. A specific type of client: who seeks digital sovereignty. Companies and public institutions that want to process their data exclusively in Europe, with high standards of data protection and legal control. And now has important clientssuch as the government of the Netherlands, some German ministries, the KPN telecom or the Dutch Central Bank. Why is it important. This step forward comes at a time when Europe is missing the boat on artificial intelligence and the United States, the official supplier of the old continent, is converting its most valuable asset (the most advanced AI models) into export technology subject to controls, such as we have already seen with Claude Mythos. In fact, the CEO of Mistral has already warned that Europe only has two years to catch up if it does not want to be a vassal. In short, Europe has to put the turbo in models, but also chips and infrastructure such as data centers. And it’s in it. The institutional plan is ambitious and considers private collaboration as essential, but the fact that it is one of the largest retailers in Europe and not a newly arrived startup provides a plus: own capital on a large scale and without depending on external investors, as Stackit herself emphasizes by presenting itself as a company “without external shareholder interests, without changes in ownership.” Context. Currently, three American companies hold 70% of the European cloud infrastructure market, according to Synergy datacompared to a paltry 15% from European suppliers. In short: the market that Stackit is targeting is succulent and its room for growth is enormous. And your work in the old continent and the country that has historically been the engine of Europe, more than welcome: in the words of the German Minister of DigitalizationKarsten Wildberger: “Germany needs processing capacity if it wants to compete in the first division in artificial intelligence.” In detail. Today Stackit manages several data centers in Germany and Austria and has relevant alliances: it hosts models from the German AI firm Aleph Alpha (where the Schwarz group has invested) and has a system called AuditGPT that uses Deutsche Bahn. Additionally, Google Workspace has been hosted since 2024 in data centers operated by Schwarz. Its most visible upcoming project is the Lübbenau data center, built on a former lignite thermal power plant. With 11 billion euros of investment and a first phase planned for the end of 2027, it is designed to work with renewable energy and will have the capacity to house 100,000 GPUs. Yes, but. Although the vision and business and industrial capacity of the Schwarz Group is beyond doubt, the big bet of the richest man in Germany is a complicated adventure because it has hyperscalers such as Google, Amazon or Microsoft in front of it, which implies economic muscle at another level, decades of advantage in software and technological experience that the German company does not yet have. Furthermore, American big tech companies are not willing to give up ground on the old continent: in November 2025 Google announced a €5.5 billion investment in Germany, including a new data center in Dietzenbach. And although digital sovereignty is a very strong claim, Stackit still depends on open source technologies and partners like CrowdStrike or Aleph Alpha for its catalog of services, so it is more aspirational than a reality. In Xataka | Who can do more, Google or seven small Dutch companies together? Europe is on the verge of discovering it In Xataka | To become technologically “independent” from the US, the European Union already has a plan: four desperate measures Cover | Xataka with Magnific

What is an “old man” today?

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In South Korea, December 2024 marked more than just the turn of the year. 2025 came accompanied by news that, although expected, is still relevant: after decades with a birth rate in the red, its society was officially declared “super aged”, a label that reveals that a fifth of the population (20%) has passed the age of 65. In fact, the latest data already places that demographic group in 21%which is equivalent to almost 11 million people. With such data on the table, in Seoul it sounds increasingly louder a question: What is an old man? At what age is that status achieved? “At what age is ‘elderly’?” The question may seem somewhat naive (even inconsequential), but that is the headline with which in 2024 Korea Timesone of the largest English-language newspapers published in South Korea, led an extensive report about the new reality and the demographic challenges facing the country: “How old is ‘elderly?’” At what age can a person be considered “elderly”? What does it mean to be “elderly”? And above all… in a nation that has been dragging on for years serious problem birth rate, aged, in which life expectancy is growing and two out of ten people are already over 65 years old… Would it be advisable to redefine the parameters? Is it Seoul’s turn to rethink what an “old man” is? What does the data say? That the label of “super-aged” society that South Korea won in 2024 hides a more multifaceted and challenging reality. At the end of 2025, 21.21% of the country’s inhabitants were 65 years old or older. That translates into 10.8 million people of a total of 51.1 and (above all) 580,000 more than a year before. The worrying thing is that everything indicates that this percentage will continue to grow and by 2050 more than 40% of the population will be “older.” This increasing weight of sexagenarians, septuagenarians and octogenarians in the registry is explained by several factors. Especially two. The first is the demographic crisis that has been dragging down the country for a long time. Although its latest data is hopefulwith two consecutive years with positive birth indicatorsit is still early to talk about a solid change in trend. Furthermore, 24 months does not solve the decades that the country has been losing babies. And the second factor? It is the increase in life expectancy. The Statista tables show that babies born today in South Korea will live on average between 81 and 87 years, depending on whether they are boys or girls. In 1980, none of these indicators reached 70 years and projections show that in 2100 both will exceed 90. They are just that, projections, but they are eloquent. Why is it a problem? Because these figures reflect much more than a simple demographic curiosity. An aging country, with more and more retired seniors and fewer young people of working age, leads to a series of challenges to which Spain is not foreign. Neither does Seoul. This imbalance directly affects the basic pension system enjoyed by those over 65 years of age in the country and opens a debate that goes beyond how to maintain its financial architecture. “There are young people who earn less than the elderly who receive basic pensions. Taxing them to finance the pensions of the elderly inevitably raises equity problems,” recognize Professor Kim Woo-chang Korea Times. “The system must be gradually reformed to limit payments to seniors living below the poverty line.” What is the country risking? Lee Joong-keun explained it clearly in October 2024, during an event held at the Korean Chamber of Commerce in Seoul: “The number of senior citizens is now 10 million, but will increase to 20 million in 2050. Excluding the 10 million minors, the remaining two million (of working age) will have to support the elderly.” The reflection is interesting for its content, but above all for who raises it. Lee Joong-keun is an octogenarian and spoke as president of the Korean Senior Citizens Association, an entity that has even put a proposal on the table: progressively raising the age from which people can access social benefits for the elderly from 65 to 75 years. “To keep the number of senior citizens at around 12 million, I propose to the Government the idea of ​​increasing the (legal old age) age by one year every decade,” Jonng-keun advocated. Other similar debates have arisen in the country, such as raise the threshold for retirement or review from when the population can access the metro for free, raising the minimum from 65 to 70 years. Is it a new idea? No. The seniors’ association is not the only one that has addressed the issue. Arrives a review to the korean pressor even internationalto verify that in the country there are several open debates, all connected to each other: Is it necessary to redefine the age from which a person is considered “old” in a “super-aged” society? Are you out of date? the reference of 65 years included in the welfare law of 1981 and which serves as a reference in the country? If so… Where to place the new age? ¿In the 70 yearsAs some people propose? Better in the 75? Is that the first step to extending the retirement age? Should the pension system be reformed? Should the rest of the country follow the example of some South Korean government organizations that have begun to selectively raise the retirement age to 65? Are they just proposals? Not at all. The Seoul Metropolitan Government has announced that it plans to raise the minimum age to access free public transportation, placing it at 70 years old. They have done something similar in Daegu, which since 2024 has been increasing progressively that barrier, raising it one year every 12 months. Recent Gallup Korea polls show that 59% of people believes that the criterion for considering an elderly person should be raised to 70 years. In 2015, 46% were in … Read more

“My urine spills everywhere.” How a viral phrase has changed the life of the man with the smallest penis in the world

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In 2014, a team of South African surgeons achieved the first penis transplant with history success. That intervention marked a before and after in the reconstructive medicine and recalled the extent to which problems related to this organ can affect much more than a patient’s sexual life. The viral that changed the conversation. “My urine spills everywhere.” That was the descriptive phrase with which Michael Phillips has ended up getting thousands of people to stop seeing his case as a simple Internet curiosity and begin to understand the medical problem behind a micropenis. In fact, what seemed like another statement destined to go viral hid a much deeper reality. less striking: that of the difficulties in doing something as everyday as urinating, a practically impossible sex life and a profound psychological impact. The challenge that went around the world. I counted the weekend Guardian that Phillips rose to fame after publicly challenge anyone to prove that he didn’t have “the smallest penis in the world.” That provocation quickly attracted the attention of media outlets around the world and generated an enormous debate on social networks. However, Phillips always insisted that his goal was not to gain notoriety, far from it, but to make visible an extremely rare medical condition and the consequences it has for those who suffer from it. Behind the size there was a medical problem. Because Phillips’ diagnosis does not respond to a subjective perception, but to a micropenis clinically diagnosed as such. As explainedeven when erect his member barely reaches 0.97 centimeters in length, very much below the medical threshold used to define this condition. That situation, accountaffects such basic aspects as going to the bathroom to urinate or having penetrative sexual relations, two problems that marked a good part of his adult life. The surprise. Be that as it may, the public exhibition has ended up causing an effect that not even he himself expected. After launching a financing campaign collectively to finance an intervention aimed at partially improving their quality of life, donations began to multiply. “I never thought anyone would care to help,” Phillips acknowledged.which ended up raising nearly $13,000 thanks to more than 250 people and confessed to feeling “really grateful and surprised” by the support received. Virality changing destiny. The impact was so great that even a well-known Beverly Hills plastic surgeon publicly offered to operate on him. for free. Finally, Phillips decided to undergo the intervention at a center closer to his home, where he hopes to increase the thickness of his penis to alleviate, at least in part, the functional problems derived from his condition. The procedure will not resolve all your limitations, but it does aim to improve everyday aspects that affect your quality of life. From stigma to vindication. The case has also brought to light the stigma surrounding to the micropenis. Phillips has acknowledged that his diagnosis practically ended his love life and that he even had to prove to a British television program that he really suffered from this condition before being interviewed. He has also endured ridicule and doubts about the veracity of his story, although he has turned that exhibition in a tool to demand that the micropenis stop being treated as a simple reason for jokes or ridicule. It started with morbidity, it ended with health. If you also want, the story of the American Michael Phillips went viral because it revolved around a striking figure and a diagnosis that was almost impossible to verify. However, the story itself ended up moving towards another terrain much more relevant. Curiously, the phrases that they generated more impact They were not those related to size, but those that described how a medical condition could turn such normal actions as going to the bathroom or having an intimate relationship into a daily problem. And it was precisely those confessions that ended up changing his life. Image | YouTube, Wikimedia In Xataka | Science has been measuring whether size matters for years. A study with 3D simulation has the most complete answer In Xataka | Millions of men wake up every morning with an erection. This is excellent news for them.

Centuries ago someone thought it was a good idea to paint over a Rembrandt painting. The question is why the devil erased a man with a turban

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The fact that he has been dead for more than three and a half centuries does not prevent him from Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijnone of the great geniuses of baroque painting, continue to surprise historians. And in the most unexpected ways. In 2014, one of his youthful works appeared by surprise at an auction held in Cologne. Now, with your attribution already confirmedthe experts in charge of cleaning the canvas have had another surprise: under a subsequent layer of paint they have discovered a man with dark skin, a black beard and a large turban. It was once painted by Rembrandt himself, but someone decided to retouch the figure to turn it into a venerable old man with a white, wrinkled face, gray beard, and a traditional Dutch cap. The question is obvious: Why? Isn’t that a Rembrandt? The painting Let the children come to me It was probably painted around 1627, when Rembrandt was 21 years old. However, it did not rise to fame until almost 400 years later, well into the 21st century. To be more precise, we must go back to May 2014, when the canvas was included in an auction held in Cologne with a fuzzy business card. Its owners presented it as a piece of the “Dutch school” dating back to the mid-17th century and sold it for 1.5 million euros. It was a good pinch, but it ended in pocket change when some time later it was confirmed that in reality that anonymous 125 x 109 cm canvas (with frame) was neither more nor less than a work from Rembrandt’s youth. Recently Sotheby’s he put it up for auction again with an estimated value of between 9.3 and 14 million of euros. The work before the restoration, with the added modifications. And the (other) surprise arrived. Such a record would have been enough to give the painting a prominent place in Rembrandt’s legacy. Recently, however, Sotheby’s revealed that the canvas hid another secret. What we have seen so far was not exactly what the Leiden artist painted, but rather a version adulterated by a hand less skilled with brushes, a contemporary artist by Rembrandt. There are those who even have a name: Claes Cornelisz Moeyaert. Given that experts believe that the Dutch painter left the work “partially unfinished”, working hard on the upper part of the painting and sketching the lower part, it is understandable that someone would want to finish it. The intriguing thing is that in doing so that anonymous hand did not simply follow Rembrandt’s design. In addition to finishing the canvas, he repainted it, erasing, adding and modifying it to taste. We know this because in recent years technicians have studied the work with X-rays and have dedicated themselves to carefully eliminating overlapping layers. Does things change that much? Yes. It comes with taking a look at the photos that were released on the day of the painting and those disclosed by Sotheby’s following the last auction to prove it. The motif of the painting is the same: the biblical scene, collected in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Lucasin which Jesus uttered his famous phrase: “Let the children come to me.” If we look closely, however, differences can be seen between its status in 2014 and 2026. The elimination of the repaintings changes the color, has made some figures emerge and eliminated others. A boy in the foreground who was wearing an ocher suit now looks how Rebrandt must have seen him, with his back bare. However the most powerful alteration It is another: we now know that one of the central figures in the scene was a dark-skinned man with a turban who the artist who retouched the work completely modified, turning him into a venerable old man. For some unknown reason, the original exotic turban ended up becoming a red Dutch hat and the black beard became a long, gray beard. The work already restored and as presented by Sotheby’s. More than a detail. That detail has attracted attention of media from half the planet. And it’s normal. There are those who believe that if Rembrandt initially opted for a man with a turban, surely Muslim, it was not for an aesthetic reason. He wanted to capture what he saw in part in his own country in the 17th century, a multicultural environment, marked by religious rivalries, the coming and going of thousands of refugees and the social tensions that this generated in the streets. As remember historian Andrew Graham-Dixon, “in 1627, when Rembrandt began the painting, Leiden was going through a humanitarian crisis.” “The Thirty Years’ War was at its peak and hundreds of thousands of people arrived as refugees in the Dutch Republic,” he adds. It is estimated that in 1626 alone approximately 10,000 refugees arrived in Leiden. …and more than paint. Was that context transferred to Rembrandt’s canvas? Did you want to capture the spirit of what you saw on the streets of your city, the position that in your opinion should be maintained towards refugees arriving from other places? “It depicted a mass scene of Christ welcoming children and families. It was very controversial at the time. There were people in Leiden who did not want to receive them,” Graham-Dixon abounds. “What we gather is that Rembrandt was on the side of humanitarian aid. So I think this is more than just a painting. It’s a statement of his moral stance.” The truth is that in the work we see a crowd in which religion is represented. Jewish and Christian. “It looks familiar”. The figure wearing a turban is not the only surprise. Experts have identified in it a self-portrait of Rembrandt himself, who represented himself at the top, as a young man who appears to be looking at the scene perched on a pillar, although in reality he is looking at us. “His physiognomy is familiar to us thanks to the numerous painted self-portraits, drawings and engravings that he made over … Read more

“I have chosen automobiles as a symbol of extreme freedom for man”

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“The upper classes dedicate their leisure time to sports or activities that often involve bizarre risks. (…) The upper classes of the liberal order, among whom there are no bricklayers, love any leisure activity that involves challenging time, one of the capitals they have in abundance. And one of the ways to challenge time is speed. In turn, speed (which has nothing to do with haste) is synonymous with status“. Raquel Peláez in I want and I can’t: a story of the posh people of Spain. Enzo Ferrari was born in the 19th century. Yes, in the death throes of the century, but still in the 19th century. It was 1898 and less than a decade remained for the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti collected in The Figaro he Futurist Manifesto. This most likely explains much of Enzo Ferrari’s life. Il Commendatore He was born in Modena and a year before a handful of artists subscribed to the aforementioned text he was able to see his first car race. It was 1908, I was ten years old. In the next eight years he would lose his brother and his father and would join the ranks of the army in the Great War. In those days, Enzo Ferrari had already done his first jobs as a mechanic and tried to get his skills taken into account to fix military vehicles although he was unsuccessful in the attempt. Upon his return to a destroyed Italy, he headed to Turin with the dream of joining Fiat, where he was rejected. Despite everything, it didn’t take him long to find a place as a mechanic and with the money he saved he bought an Alfa Romeo and modified it to fulfill one of his dreams: competing. He was then part of the staff of CMN (Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali) where he was promoted to racing driver, which was a springboard to Alfa Romeo, for whom he competed until the early 1930s. Only the birth of his son Dino removed him from competition and put him in charge of managing the company’s competition department. Enzo Ferrari in his years as a driver A running escape Those years, as we said, coincided with futurism and all kinds of avant-garde movements. The West had entered a wild race that was betting on speed, on the development of faster and more capable machinery. The races multiplied. In 1924 the 24 Hours of Le Mans and in 1927 the Mille Miglia. Fascist culture carried this search for technical perfection and the cult of movement to its maximum expression, to the point that in Germany the Rekordwoche were born, races on huge highways with closed traffic to show who was faster. In those first Autobhan, Mercedes even proposed reach a top speed of 750 km/h with your Mercedes T-80. The crazy race for speed attracted, of course, the wealthiest classes. Thorstein Veblen already in his Leisure class theory of 1899 puts on the table that the wealthy need to prove that they have money. That is, it is not enough to have it, you have to show it to the world. Much of that demonstration was done by showing that one had free time. The worker, he worked. The rich man had free time and enjoyed it. And in those early years of the 20th century it became fashionable to demonstrate it by driving cars at full speed. It is no coincidence that the aforementioned Mille Miglia was an endurance race open to traffic. That love of speed was doubly attractive because it triggered the risk and the sensation of going beyond the limits that humans had had until then. Man moved faster than ever, speed records on the ground or in flight were constantly being broken. The Second World War only accelerated everything. The States put all their resources to overcome the rival with more capable vehicles. Without a doubt, without the advances of those days, the technical demonstrations that arrived in the 50s cannot be understood. In between, The Scuderiathe racing team created by Enzo Ferrari when he took over the competitive side of Alfa Romeo, broke ties with his mother at the beginning of the race. His work was therefore suspended but he recovered it very soon and Already in 1947 it appeared in a minor race as its own team separate from the clover mark. The following year, The Ferrari 166 Inter was launched as the company’s first road car.. It was also the first of the historic 12-cylinder Ferraris. “I have chosen automobiles as a symbol of extreme freedom for man”Enzo Ferrari would say in some words recorded by Vincenzo Borgomeo in The myth of the Rossa as stated in the Italian encyclopedia Trecanni. That phrase perfectly sums up what the Ferrari brand became over time. The Maranello company occupied its own space between aristocrats and the nouveau riche who wanted to drive faster than anyone else. Pure muscle that exploded in the 1950s with the development of some of the fastest cars in the world. Risk, speed and the supposed search for freedom coincide in the death of Alfonso Antonio Vicente Eduardo Ángel Blas Francisco de Borja Cabeza de Vaca y Leighton, Spanish pilot better known as Alfonso de Portago and (as you can imagine) Marquis of Portago, who would lose his life on Italian roads aboard a Ferrari that burst a tire while traveling at 250 km/h. His accident was, in fact, the death of the Mille Miglia, which would not be run again in the wild conditions of the time, at full speed dodging cars in open traffic. The Spanish was the living image of playboy that Enzo Ferrari could have in mind when he sold his cars. He drove for the company in five Formula 1 grands prix and had moved to the endurance team when he took the wheel of the Ferrari 335 Sa beast for the time with V12 engine and the ability to reach 300 km/h top speed. … Read more

A millionaire went to bed one day being the richest man in the world the next day he was bankrupt… twice

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History is full of names that they lose their fortunes for an achievement of bad decisionsbut also of others who lost their assets due to a stroke of bad luck. The story of Nelson Bunker Hunt is one of the latter, who not only lost his fortune once due to a stroke of bad luck: he lost it twiceand neither time was the fault entirely his. The name of this millionaire is barely known today, but between the late 70s and early 80s, he was synonymous with enormous wealth: the richest man on the planet, owner of oil wells in the Libyan desert and such a large portion of the world silver market that he managed to twist the arm of Wall Street. A coup colonel and a bad Thursday in 1980 reminded him that no fortune, no matter how enormous, is safe from history. From Arkansas to the Libyan desert after the black gold Nelson was born in 1926 in El Dorado, Arkansas. His father, H. L. Huntwas already an oil magnate with fifteen children from three different women. Nelson wanted to match him, at least in terms of wealth, so he went looking for oil outside of Texas. His first attempts in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan They were a total failure. But the third time’s the charm and in 1961 he tried his luck in Libya. A stroke of luck led the young entrepreneur to obtain Concession 65, a huge area of ​​32,400 square kilometers of desert land to exploit the Sarir sitewhich still today continues to be the largest oil field of the country. That made him a multimillionaire almost overnight. As and how did he count the BBCfor more than a decade, Sarir generated billions of dollars for Hunt’s company. Muammar al-Gaddafi It all ended in 1973, when a colonel named Muammar al-Gaddafi took power and nationalized all its oil wells without prior notice. Over time, that same site served to amass the dictator’s personal fortune, which some researchers even valued at more than 200,000 million of dollars. However, Hunt lost the goose that laid the golden (black) eggs of his oil empire due to a coup d’état, and bad luck, that he did not see coming. Silver as an unexpected refuge Far from giving up, Hunt He reinvested what was left of his fortune on ranches, in breeding thoroughbred horses and in new oil businesses. Together with his brothers Herbert and Lamar, he began buying silver in the mid-seventies, as strategy to protect your fortune against inflation. What started as an investment in a safe haven soon became an obsession. By 1979 the Hunts controlled about a third of all the money deprived of the planet. The price of silver went from trading at six dollars an ounce to exceeding $49.45 thanks to the position of power over the silver market exercised by the Hunt brothers. Which implied that his fortune was also growing in the same proportion. The Hunt brothers’ control of the silver market reached levels that even Tiffany’s published an advertisement in it New York Times accusing them of artificially make any silver object more expensivefrom baby spoons to photo reels. “We find it unacceptable for anyone to hoard billions, yes, billions, of dollars in silver and therefore drive up the price so high that others have to pay artificially high prices for items made of silver,” the article read. According what was published for the BBCthe silver magnate reportedly told Time magazine in January 1980 that “silver seemed safer than oil concessions abroad. And precious metals were a good hedge against paper money.” Anyone has a bad Thursday Thursday, March 27, 1980 would be a day that would be burned into Hunt’s head. His arrived second major financial disaster. That day, known as Silver Thursdaythe price of silver plummeted below $11 in a matter of hours. The Hunts’ silver position, valued shortly before at more than $4.5 billion, was transformed into a debt of $1.7 billion, as detailed Britannica. A group of New York banks had to set up an emergency line of credit to prevent the Hunt bankruptcy from dragging down half of Wall Street with them. Years of trials later, the Futures Trading Commission fined them each $10 million and a lifetime ban to operate with raw materials. In 1988, Nelson Bunker Hunt officially declared bankruptcy. His assets, then valued at just 150 million, were completely liquidated to pay debts and back taxes. He had to sell up to his 580 purebred horses. When asked by Congress about his fortune, he replied with dark humor: “a billion dollars is not what it used to be.” He spent his last years in a modest house in Dallas, and died in 2014 in a residence, at 88 years old. His brother Herbert had better luck: sold his assets in Montana for $1.5 billion in 2012 and died in 2024 with a assets of 4.7 billion dollars, according to Forbes. Nelson, on the other hand, went down in history as the man who He was the richest on the planet and ended up with nothing… twice. In Xataka | In the 19th century, a US millionaire set out to invade countries on his own: he founded two republics of which he was president Image | Hall of FameUnsplash (Mohamed Fsili, Scottsdale Mint, Colton Sturgeon), Flikr (Esther Vargas)

The “ice man” has been frozen for 5,300 years. There is still life inside

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In 1991, two German hikers they found each other with a corpse in the Alps, more specifically in the Ötztal Alps. At first they thought it would be a recent body, but nothing could be further from the truth: Ötzi, who takes his name from the place where he was found, died around 3255 BC. C. at approximately forty-six years of age due to hemorrhage caused by an arrow lodged in his left shoulder. Ötzi withstood the test of time thanks to glacial ice, becoming the oldest known natural human mummy in Europe. For science, the “iceman” has historically been a magnificent biological and archaeological record of the late Neolithic/Copper Age, bridging the gap, like someone who finds a painting in a cave. But a recent study It makes science look at it with different eyes: they have found life in Ötzi because the iceman is also an ecosystem. There is life within Ötzi. The Eurac Research research team has found yeast strains that could have been dormant for millennia, some of which are still metabolically active as they are especially adapted to the cold: Glaciozyma, Goffeauzyma, Mrakia and Phenoliferia. That is, living organisms have survived inside a human body for more than five thousand years. They also found anaerobic intestinal bacteria such as Romboutsia hominis, Clostridium moniliforme and Ruminococcus bromii, which when the Iceman was alive helped him digest elements of his diet at that time. Why is it important. The relevance of this discovery is enormous for both biology and archaeology, with implications that also point to space exploration: Biologically it is a real milestone: it is a before and after in what we know and can expect from microorganisms and their resistance. If microbes survive 5,300 years in alpine ice, they could potentially survive in similar inhospitable environments outside of Earth, such as the Moon’s south pole. And this has direct consequences for the search for extraterrestrial life. From an archaeological point of view, if a mummy contains microbial life inside, we must rethink how similar samples and other archaeological remains are preserved, stored and studied so as not to lose or degrade that valuable information. What the finding says about health before antibiotics. Some gut bacteria found in Ötzi are still present in modern humans, but others have disappeared from modern Western populations. Being able to compare your microbiome with ours allows you to have a photo of what the microbiota was like before antibiotics, ultra-processed foods and industrial agriculture and apply it to medicine. As already science has proventhe loss of this ancestral microbial diversity is associated with diseases such as Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis. In fact, Ötzi’s microbiome constitutes a good basis for designing more effective probiotics or improving fecal microbiota transplant therapies. How have they done it. Ötzi is available for visits at the South Tyrolean Archeology Museum in Bolzano, Italy, where he is kept in a cold room at -6°C and 99% relative humidity. After more than 30 years of studies, science has paradoxically introduced modern microbes into your body, so was essential use multiple samples and methods to differentiate which microorganisms were already present during Ötzi’s life and which colonized him later. From there, they combined genomic sequencing with laboratory culture and comparison with global databases, which for example allowed them to determine that the Methylobacterium and Sphingomonas bacteria found on the surface were introduced by modern humans, while Staphylococcus belonged to Ötzi’s original microbiome. Yes, but. The main limitation of the study is precisely contamination: handling a mummy exposes it to potential contamination by modern bacteria and fungi, which complicates the faithful reconstruction of its original microbial composition. On the other hand, the fact that a yeast shows activity in the laboratory does not prove that it has been active continuously for 5,300 years, since it could have been reactivated when the experimental conditions changed. To clear up doubts, more independent studies with other glacier mummies are necessary. In Xataka | In the 14th century, the “Little Ice Age” caught Europe completely off guard: this is how they managed to withstand the cold In Xataka | Getting up at 3:52 AM, putting your face in ice, rubbing a banana: the male “morning routine” taken to the extreme Cover | Museum of South Tyrol Archaeology, Eurac Research, Marion Lafogler and Andrea De Giovanni

“Do not try to become a man of success, but rather a man of value”

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In the history of humanity (and it is not short) few people have achieved a recognition levelprestige and admiration comparable to that of Albert Einstein. His last name has in fact become a universal synonym for brilliance. When someone stands out for his intellect we call him “Einstein”, just as we refer to sharp minds as “sherlocks” or the more attractive people like “Apolos”. However, despite this universal fame, the German physicist had a very clear vision about what a man should pursue in his life if he wants to feel fulfilled. For him the secret of happiness is not so much in “success”, money and applause as in becoming a person of value. Going back to 1955 The world said goodbye to Albert Einstein on April 18, 1955, when an aneurysm ended his life in Princeton, USA. He was just 76 years old, a Nobel Prize in Physics and unanimous recognition for having revolutionized our understanding of the universe with his theories. Shortly before he died, chance would have it that Einstein received a visit at his home in New Jersey from a peculiar group of people interested in chatting with him about something quite different from the theories of relativity or the curvature of light. What his guests wanted to talk about was meaning of life. The delegation in question was made up William Hermannspoet and personal friend of Einstein; the editor of Life MagazineWilliam Miller, and the latter’s son, ‘Pat’, a young man who was beginning his university studies at Harvard. As I would later explain in the article As Miller wrote about that meeting, Pat was an admirer of the German physicist and a science enthusiast, but for some time he had been “stuck in a kind of philosophical nihilism” that threatened to ruin his career. “He wondered what was the point of human effort if the universe was dying,” Miller says in his chronicle, published in May 1955. The goal of the editor life It seems that it was not so much about getting explosive statements from Einstein for a report (in fact, Miller himself recognize that were planted in your house without warning) as offering some “inspiration” to your son. The idea must not have displeased Einstein, who spent the next few minutes chatting with the group about issues as diverse as science, religion or politics, although the conversation gradually drifted towards philosophy. —Does experience give us the truth? —asked Pat Einstein. —It is a difficult question —acknowledged the Nobel Prize winner—. You are always seeing things without being sure if you really see them. Truth is a verbal concept that cannot be subjected to mathematical proof. As the debate delved into epistemological questions, Miller took the opportunity to slide what he considered “the philosophical dilemma” that his son was struggling with: “He doesn’t find any reason to strive to achieve something.” —Doesn’t the question of the undulation of light awaken your curiosity? —Einstein replied. – Well yes. “I guess so,” Pat justified. —Then don’t stop thinking about the reasons for what you do, about why you ask what you ask. The important thing is never stop asking questions. Curiosity has its own reason for being. One cannot help but be amazed when contemplating the mysteries of eternity, of life, the wonderful structure of reality. It is enough to try to understand a little of that mystery every day. Never lose your holy curiosity. At that point, Einstein gave Pat one of his lessons more valuable. —Do not try to become a successful man, but rather a a man of value. Nowadays, those who get more out of life than they contribute are considered successful; but a man of value gives more than he receives. Before saying goodbye, the physicist gave Pat one last piece of advice: — Don’t stop marveling. Although Einstein left profound reflections throughout his life, that invitation to prioritize “value” over “success” has become one of his maxims. most popular. Perhaps the greatest of all. AND it makes sense. Science has already warned of the risks What the search for other people’s approval has for our health (both emotional and physical) or how important issues such as socialization either generosity. Images | Wikipedia Via | Pure People In Xataka | François de La Rochefoucauld, philosopher: “We are never as happy or as unhappy as we believe”

A man paid $23 for a PC case at an auction. He discovered inside a 24-core CPU and an RTX 3080 Ti

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Online auctions are full of unexpected opportunities, but few stories surprise as much as this one. Imagine entering a local second-hand platform with the idea of ​​​​getting a simple computer case. You’re not looking for anything spectacular, just a large chassis for future projectssomething functional and cheap. You place a low, almost token bid, and expect nothing more than a basic item wrapped in cardboard. However, when you pick it up, something doesn’t add up: it weighs more than expected, it sounds different, and what seemed like a routine purchase becomes the beginning of an anecdote that sweeps Reddit. The story broke through Redditwhere the buyer posted the find on r/pcmasterrace. According to images published by “LlamadeusGame”, the box was not empty nor did it contain old parts, but rather a complete high-end computer. In its photos you can see a TRX40 AORUS Pro WiFi motherboard with an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X 24-core processor, accompanied by 256 GB of RAM and a graphics card NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. Although the interior shows accumulated dust, the screenshot shared by the user indicates that the system works and recognizes all hardware. When a cheap bid turns into treasure The details of the operation are available on the Capital City Online Auctions website, where the lot is still published. It is number 123 and describes a box Fractal Design Define 7 XLpriced at $317.99. The final bid was $23.50 plus commission, according to the official listing. The images associated with the advertisement only showed the box inside a cardboard and a catalog photo, without giving any clues as to its real contents. The contrast between the price paid and the real value of the components is striking. According to AMD and NVIDIA launch prices, only the Ryzen Threadripper 3960X processor It was originally sold for $1,399.while the RTX 3080 Ti It exceeded $1,100 at its release in 2022. Even with current depreciation, the complete set can fetch thousands of dollars on the secondhand market, especially because of the large amount of RAM. The Capital City Online Auctions ad included clear warnings: all items were sold “as-is,” with no warranty or return option. He also insisted in what bids had to be based on the written description and not in the images, which could be archival. Pickup was in-person only, with no delivery option, and the site’s rules state that any dispute must be resolved through arbitration in Ohio. The case raises an interesting question: how far does a buyer’s liability go in such a situation? The user paid what the bid indicated and picked up the item according to the rules, so they have not broken any auction rules. However, some commenters on Reddit wonder if they should have notified the company to correct what appears to be a cataloging error. Capital City Online Auctions’ policy makes it clear that sales are final, but the ethical debate remains open: take advantage of luck or return the find? Buying this PC case remembers that in online auctions there is always a component of risk and surprise. In this case, the buyer obtained high-level equipment for the price of a chassis part. Beyond the stroke of luck, the story underscores the importance of reading the fine print and reviewing lots before any move. Images | LlamadeusGame (Reddit) | Capital City Online Auctions In Xataka | Corning succeeded by manufacturing the “armored” glass in our phones. Now it has become Nvidia’s whim In Xataka | Nvidia’s superpower is not having money, it is making everyone work for it: Foxconn is the latest to join A version of this article was published in September 2025

In 2026 there are still people throwing messages in a bottle into the sea. A man keeps finding them in the Caribbean

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To give us an idea, more than half a century ago, in 1959, Guinness launched 150,000 bottles to the Atlantic to celebrate its bicentennial. Many decades later, in the era of networks and algorithms, some continue to appear on beaches in places as different as the Caribbean, Canada or the Arctic. People keep sending the messages. History remembered her the New Yorker a few days ago. In the era of WhatsApp, TikTok and instant messages, there are people who continue doing something that seems straight out of a 19th century novel: writing a few lines, putting them in a bottle and throw them into the ocean waiting for someone, somewhere in the world, to find them. The surprising thing is that much more happens than it seems. Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer estimates that millions of bottled messages have been thrown into the sea since the mid-20th century, and some continue to wash up decades later on remote beaches. What’s more, in the Caribbean, a man named Clint Buffington He has been obsessed with finding them for almost twenty years. What started as a coincidence ended up becoming a kind of emotional archeology of the ocean: messages written by strangers, couples who broke up, improvised memorials, jokes, goodbyes and small capsules of humanity carried by impossible sea currents. The bottle hunter. Buffington lives in Utah, far from the sea, but spends much of his life studying ocean mapstides and currents to locate beaches where floating objects may end up accumulating. Walk for miles in brutal heat in the Bahamas or Turks and Caico Islands searching for something extremely unlikely: a bottle with a message still readable. Of course, most of the time he finds nothing. Or worse– Find trash, empty bottles or papers destroyed by salt water. But every now and then something extraordinary appears. Ha recovered sent messages from freighters, love letters, confessions written under the influence of alcohol, vacation memories and even tributes to lost pregnancies. For man, each bottle is a kind of human trail floating between continents. He does not look for material treasures, “I look for stories,” explained in the report. Internet before the Internet. Part of the fascination is that the bottles function as a kind of very slow, analog version of modern social networks. A stranger writes something for someone they don’t know, throws it into the void and waits for a response. The difference is that here the algorithm is ocean currents. For example, a Japanese woman found a bottle sent years before by a french sailor and ended up reconstructing his identity thanks to an absurd human chain that involved tourists, hairdressers and neighbors in different parts of the world. Another bottle thrown from an American lighthouse during the pandemic appeared six years later in the Bahamas, after probably traveling thousands of kilometers across the Atlantic. The ocean thus becomes a kind of chaotic postal network where any object can disappear forever or reappear in the most unlikely place on the planet. The sea as an emotional archive. I remembered the NY The most striking thing is that many of these messages do not contain practical information or real requests for help. They are simply deeply human impulses: to leave a fingerprinttalk to someone unknown, demonstrate that one existed at a specific time. Some authors write philosophical reflections, others leave money, cigarettes or small objects inside the bottle. There are messages written by sailors crossing straits out of superstition, bored tourists, lonely people or couples in crisis. There are even real marriage stories emerged thanks to a bottle found on another coast decades ago. For Buffington, that’s the true meaning of it all: the human need to connect with someone, even if it’s in the most unlikely way imaginable. The ocean continues delivering messages. If you like, the story also has something melancholic. Many bottle hunters They believe that the phenomenon is disappearing because cell phones and social networks have destroyed some of the patience and romanticism necessary for this type of slow communication. However, the bottles keep appearing. Some were launched a few years ago, others have been traveling between currents, storms and reefs for decades. Buffington even has found remains of that distant campaign Guinness promotional from 1959 that still surfaces on remote beaches. The ocean preserves these objects like erratic time capsules, battered by sun and salt for years. And every time someone find a bottle intact and manages to read what is inside, something strangely powerful happens: two people separated by thousands of kilometers and several years away manage to connect thanks to an ocean current and a piece of glass floating in the Atlantic. Image | Snapwire In Xataka | 45 years ago we sent a “message in a bottle” to space in the Pioneer probes, today they are making a replica that you can buy In Xataka | We already know how thirsty artificial intelligence is: a 100-word email consumes a bottle of water

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