problem

Alibaba’s Qwen AI model is the new crown jewel. The only problem is that they don’t make money from it.

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Jack Ma he returned like a prodigal son to the international scene in February of last year. He did so at an event with the president of China, Xi Jinping, and that represented an important support for the technological leader. Since then his company, Alibaba, has not stopped flooding us with its open AI models, Qwen, but that strategy is having the same lights and shadows as its competitors. Devastates downloads. Alibaba launched its Qwen family of models in 2023 and released them with open weights almost immediately. That made them a perfect alternative to be able to use them locally and to also be able to tune them in all types of scenarios. In January 2026, Qwen was already the open AI model most downloaded in the world with close to a million daily downloads according to data from Hugging Face. By the end of 2025, Qwen was already the most downloaded open weight model in the world by far. Source: AI Base. But popularity does not equal income. In the first quarter of 2026, Alibaba indicated that it had obtained revenue of $1.3 billion related to AI, just 4% of its total revenue. The figure is very short, especially if we take into account that Alibaba plan to invest $55 billion in AI infrastructure by the end of 2027. Investors want profits now. Company shares have fallen 37% on the Hong Kong stock market this year: investors are clearly concerned about the lack of return on this bet on AI, something that we have also been seeing for some time in the US market. Internal divisions. The pressure to turn these open models into a business seems to be dividing Qwen’s own team. In March its chief engineer, Lin Junyang, announced his departure from the companyand he was followed by several key engineers amidst internal disagreements on how to monetize the model. The company has already started move token in the field of proprietary models: in April already released three of them in a few days. War with the US and Anthropic. Meanwhile, the company also faces external pressures. The Pentagon has included it on a blacklist of companies that Washington says support the Chinese military, something Alibaba denies. Additionally, Anthropic recently sent a letter to US senators accusing Alibaba of try to copy their technology using 24,000 fraudulent accounts. Alibaba has declined to comment on the matter. Alibaba has the same problem as OpenAI. Richard Lin, vice president of the company Datastrato, has been involved in the panorama of open AI models in China for some time, and his message reminds us of a palpable reality not only for that market, but for all startups and AI companies: “At the moment there are no AI companies with a sustainable business model. It is not a healthy industry.” The message is as true as it is forceful, but all AI companies would surely respond with what Zuckerberg said: “Losing a couple hundred billion dollars would be a bummer, but that’s better than being left behind in the race for superintelligence.” The funny thing is that they are both (probably) right. Image | qwen In Xataka | China’s open AIs aren’t “beating” ChatGPT, they’re doing something more important: catapulting their industry

In its final stretch of having a Formula 1 circuit, Madrid has encountered a problem: sheep

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January 2024, Madrid confirms that it will have a Formula 1 circuit after years of chasing him. Without a permanent circuit that can host the event, the FIA ​​and Madrid political leaders welcome the proposal that the streets of a PAU north of Madrid and the IFEMA facilities They lay the foundations of the show. It is a movement, that of using a city as an attraction but not passing through any of its emblematic places, that the organization of Formula 1 has been practicing for some time. A sport that has been filled with semi-urban and insubstantial circuits, very far from the concept of Monaco. The problem is that the only thing that keeps Monaco on the calendar is tradition and glamour. The streets of the principality have become too small for cars much larger than decades ago and the spectacle on the track already seems to be the least of it. The solution has been to bring these circuits to spaces such as outskirts of Miami or Madrid. The problem is that people live there. Yes, there are people who are not always willing to have their streets transformed into a circuit, taking up assembly and disassembly work for weeks and having to suffer the noise of cars passing at 300 km/h a few meters from their portals. “They are selling my health to make money”said one of those affected by the Stop F1 Madrid platform. And the neighborhoods have their own dynamics and spaces that were there long before Formula 1 arrived there. For example: the sheep. Year and a half of notices Although it may not seem like it, the roads, paths and roads of Spain are the result of a planning designed centuries ago but live for the daily use of them. Sometimes, like roads, they have been used to structure our country. In other cases, although invisible to the untrained eye, they live for a handful of the most unexpected users. Every year, at the end of October, Thousands of sheep continue to pass through Madrid’s Gran Vía. Although it may have some folklore for those less familiar with the countryside, it is still part of the path for those who practice migration. Because yes, no matter how few they may be, there are those who keep transhumance alive. One of those historical paths that contemplate the passage of animals is the Vereda de los Leñeros, one of the livestock routes that pass through Madrid. These steps, points out the Community of Madrid itselfdefine the spaces intended primarily for the transit of livestock and which in the case of trails have a width of 20 meters. When the modification that IFEMA had to make to host the event was put on the table, environmentalists and neighbors confirmed that they were diverting the livestock route but, according to Antonio Giraldo, Spokesperson for Urban Planning, Environment and Mobility of the PSOE in the Madrid City Council, it was falling into illegality. “Either they ventilate a livestock trail (illegal) or reduce the surface of municipal green areas (illegal). But you cannot do both at the same time,” Giraldo then pointed out because according to their calculations, there was no space in the neighborhood to divert the livestock route without falling into one of these two assumptions. It has been a year and a half since the controversy began. The first voices that warned of the problem came in February 2025. In July 2026, weeks before the cars compete in the north of Madrid, those responsible for the region have presented the modification with a publication in the Official Gazette of the Community of Madrid: raise the livestock route to save the Formula 1 circuit in style. They explain in The Country that the Vereda de Leñeros has existed since the 19th century and that its original route passes through IFEMA, which has been trying to move it to the margins of the complex for years. However, it has not been until now coinciding with Formula 1 that the modification project has been presented. For the opposition, it represents a clear example that private interests are altering “land with very high protection that could derail the project.” Since then, the tug of war between the opposition and the Madrid City Council has been constant. Also the criticism from neighbors who have found in this supposed illegality the possibility of preventing the event from going ahead. However, everything seems decided for the livestock route to be modified. The City Council’s plan involves dusting off a preliminary project that proposed building an eco-bridge to save the M-11 and join the Vereda de los Leñeros with that of Valdecarros, which were separated when this road was built. That is, the plan goes through carry animals over a 12-lane stretch. A decision that the opposition, neighborhood groups and environmentalists continue to criticize. From the Madrid Ecologist Platform they point out that: “The livestock trails are public domain assets owned by the Community of Madrid, they cannot overlap with another public domain such as a green area (referring to the park through which the new path is intended to pass)”, in words collected by elDiario.es. The environmental group explains that the sections should be transferred by IFEMA since they were the ones that completely closed the passage of the road with their facilities and are the promoters of the event and that it cannot be the Madrid City Council that gives up land in a green area to give way to said modification. And from Liberum Natura they already announce that they will argue against the project (Justice already admitted another allegation of his in May) because they consider that if it is given free rein it could be used by other municipalities in the future so that the livestock trails are raised above green areas and thus they can continue gaining ground for private businesses such as building apartments… or a Formula 1 circuit. Photo | Madring and Sam Carter In … Read more

Apple has a plan for its memory problem. The only problem is that it goes through a company on the US blacklist, according to FT

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The perfect storm hits the memory market and shakes consumer electronics like we have rarely seen. This stretch of the year has become a bad time to update your computerbuy a console or even expand the RAM of a gaming desktop with a new module. The effects They also reach storage units and other components that until not so long ago seemed more or less predictable. Looking back, that problem with graphics cards during the rise of cryptocurrency mining It begins to seem, for many users, almost small next to what we are seeing now. For months, some large manufacturers have tried to buy time with a tool that the user does not see: inventory. Lenovo is a good example. According to statements by its financial director, Winston Cheng, collected by Bloomberg TV and later cited by various mediathe company even had stocks of memory and other critical components around 50% higher than usual to cushion the blow of shortages and price increases. This type of mattress helps to resist better than others, but it also has a limit when the market continues to tighten. Memory has become a problem for Apple, prices and geopolitics And that’s where Apple comes in. We are not talking about a small company trapped by a specific increase in costsbut one of the companies with the most negotiating power in the entire technology industry. Its supply chain has been operating with extraordinary precision for years, supported by huge agreements, global suppliers and a purchasing power that few can match. Precisely for this reason it is so significant that, according to Financial TimesApple would also be looking new ways to relieve memory pressure. The path that has come to light is especially delicate. According to the British business newspaper, Apple is pressuring the Trump Administration to obtain authorization, or at least a favorable signal, that allows it to buy memory chips from CXMT, a Chinese manufacturer singled out by the Pentagon for his alleged links with the People’s Liberation Army. The media adds that the company approached the Department of Commerce more than a month ago and has also sought support in other parts of Washington. The goal would be to alleviate the financial pressure caused by the rising cost of memory. If you’ve been following Apple for a while, you probably already know: these types of moves are almost never made public. The company does not usually explain its internal purchasing operations, much less its conversations with suppliers or administrations. Financial Times attributes the information to six people familiar with the mattera relevant basis to take it seriously, but we are not facing official confirmation from Apple, the White House or the Department of Commerce. To understand the dimension of the movement, CXMT must be well located. We are not talking about a brand of consumer RAM that the user chooses in a store, but about ChangXin Memory Technologiesa Chinese DRAM manufacturer founded in 2016. The company presents itself as a supplier of chips for mobile phones, PCs, tablets, servers and other equipment, memory that can then end up integrated into finished products. In the case of Apple, therefore, the debate is not about a visible brand, but about who supplies a particularly sensitive internal part. The search for alternatives does not come out of nowhere. It’s no secret that the memory industry is highly concentrated on Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix, the DRAM suppliers that Apple relies on for its devices. When the market is balanced, that dependence can be managed with contracts, volume and planning. When prices rise sharply, however, each additional supplier counts. CXMT appears there as a possible way to add capacity. The memory industry is highly concentrated in Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix. As we have seen, what is behind it is not just an isolated increase in prices, but a change of priorities. The AI ​​craze has put advanced memory at the center of the data center business, especially HBM, needed to power high-performance servers and accelerators. That demand has contributed to a prolonged shortage of traditional memory for consumer electronics. That is why the problem is felt in very different products: not because they all use the same memory, but because they compete, directly or indirectly, for a limited industrial capacity. At Apple, that pressure has ended up reaching the showcase. The company raised the prices of MacBooks and iPads by around 20% and attributed the movement to some “unsustainable” memory prices. The same medium maintains that the decision had an immediate stock market impact: $263 billion less in capitalization, Apple’s second largest daily drop. It is advisable to read these figures together, because they tell something broader than a specific increase: when memory triggers, even a company used to protecting its margins begins to transfer tension to the final product. The expression “blacklist” helps to understand the seriousness of the matter, but it can lead to a conclusion that is too quick. CXMT is on the Pentagon’s 1260H list for its alleged links with the People’s Liberation Army, a very sensitive label in the midst of the technological rivalry between the US and China. However, according to the Financial Times, that designation does not automatically prevent Apple from purchasing chips from CXMT or YMTC. The issue is what would happen if the US hardens its position later. The British economic newspaper says that the Department of Commerce had already included CXMT in a package of Chinese companies candidates to enter the Entity List, a much more restrictive trade listbut that the White House asked to wait for negotiations with Beijing. That background explains why the company would want a political signal before moving. It is not enough for a door to be open today if tomorrow it can be closed with Apple inside. John Moolenaar, Republican chairman of the House China committee, told the same newspaper that partnering with a Chinese military company would be “a serious mistake.” He also argued that helping the “Chinese … Read more

“The problem is not drinking coffee, it is needing five cups to be functional”

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It is the first action of the morning for millions of people, the starter of offices, the companion of night shifts and the fuel of exam times. For a long time, coffee has been at the center of the nutritional debate, often demonized for its stimulating effects, but now this is something that is slowly changing. The problem. Just like pointed out Recently, the psychologist María Ros, the real elephant in the room is not the substance itself, since the problem it’s not drinking coffee“it takes five cups to be functional”. In this way, when we cross the line between enjoyment and absolute dependence on keeping our eyes open, the focus must move away from the coffee maker and onto our lifestyle. The consumption barrier. To understand when coffee becomes a problem, you must first establish what is safe consumption. The main international health agencies are quite unanimous on the matter, since, for example, the EFSA established at the time a clear opinion that today serves as a standard: for healthy adults (not pregnant), consumption of up to 400 milligrams of caffeine per day does not pose safety problems for our health. To put it in perspective, an espresso is around 60-80 mg, and a cup of filter coffee can be closer to 100-150 mg. That is, we are talking about a margin of about three or four cups a day. In the case of the US regulator, matches with these figures, and points out that unwanted effects begin to emerge the moment this threshold is exceeded. The positive side. Beyond not being dangerous, the latest evidence point because regular consumption of 3 to 4 cups a day could be more beneficial than harmful. This fits into different articles that associate moderate consumption with lower mortality and a reduced risk of developing various pathologies. Even at a cardiovascular levelan area where coffee has always generated suspicion, current medical literature emphasizes that in regular consumers the effects on blood pressure are transitory and reversible. The danger of coffee. We speak at these levels when it stops being something pleasurable and becomes an urgent need to combat mental exhaustion. This way, if a person needs to binge cup after cup simply to avoid experiencing crippling drowsiness or to be able to stay focused on their work, coffee is acting as a painkiller for an underlying problem that needs to be addressed. We must remember that caffeine works by blocking adenosine receptors in the brain, the neurotransmitter that makes us feel tired. It doesn’t eliminate tiredness, it simply puts a “bandage” on the brain’s sensors, so using large amounts of caffeine to compensate for chronically insufficient rest creates a perfect storm. The experts. Institutions like the Mayo Clinic warn of the cascading effects of this excess by pointing out that tolerance is capable of developing, causing more and more caffeine to be needed for the desired effect. The problem is that overconsumption quickly leads to anxiety, nervousness, headaches, palpitations, tachycardia and digestive problems such as worsening gastroesophageal reflux. Furthermore, a vicious circle is created, since if you drink a lot of coffee to perform because you have slept poorly, that excess of circulating caffeine will prolong sleep disturbances the next night, feeding back stress and insomnia. Images | Taylor Franz In Xataka | Coffee doesn’t just wake you up: science now suggests that it also improves your mood (even decaffeinated)

We believed that loneliness was just an emotional problem. Science points out that it is a risk factor for dozens of diseases.

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Loneliness is undoubtedly a scourge that is integrated into our society and that on many occasions goes unnoticed, especially affecting older people who are practically confined to being at home and with little social contact. And although this is something that a priori can remain in the psychological fieldthe reality is that loneliness emerges as a major public health threat as it is related to very serious diseases. A big risk. When we talk about risk factors in the field of medicine, we immediately think about nutrition or lack of exercise that are related to very serious diseases. But loneliness must also be added to this entire list, since numerous studies have found a direct association with cardiovascular, neurological and metabolic pathologies, although unraveling the exact cause continues to be one of the great challenges of current medical literature. The problem. In 2023, the United States Surgeon General public a devastating report pointing out that we were facing an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation.” And it was not a mere poetic metaphor, since the WHO has been warning that social disconnection not only affects us emotionally, but also alters our body to the point of increasing the risk of heart disease, stroke, depression, dementia and premature death. A measurable impact. When we talk about disease risk, cardiovascular health is the first to suffer. Here, a scientific statement from the American Heart Association, published in it Journal of the American Heart Associationconcluded bluntly that loneliness and social isolation are independent risk factors for poorer heart and brain health. And the percentages are not anecdotal, since a meta-analysis pointed out that loneliness or social isolation is associated with a 29% increase in the risk of suffering from coronary heart disease and a 32% increase in the risk of stroke. It goes further. A massive analysis led by the Autonomous University of Madrid in 2026, after following more than 400,000 peopleconfirmed a strong association between isolation and multimorbidity, highlighting that physical social isolation is a relevant risk factor even if the person does not subjectively perceive that loneliness. The case of dementia. Among dementias, the most important disease is undoubtedly Alzheimer’s and the data are clear in pointing out that unwanted loneliness is an important risk factor for all dementias. Among the reasons that exist, the Alzheimer Center of Barcelona points out in a recent note as follows: “The relationship between isolation and cognitive decline is supported by research showing how a lack of social interaction impoverishes vocabulary, reduces cognitive flexibility, and accelerates brain decline.” Here the advice given to be less likely to suffer from this disease when you reach a risk age is to participate in group activities, take advantage of technology to maintain contact or create a social routine. In mental health. In addition to the organic section, if we move on to mental illnesses, the fact that there is no adequate social support network also leads to an increase in the probability of illnesses as important as depression or even the schizophrenia. Many causes can influence here, such as genetic factors, but in the end a cluster of situations can generate the final trigger for the disease. The great nuance. The question we must ask ourselves here is the following: do we get sick because of the biological impact of disconnection, or because loneliness is accompanied by other conditions? And here the science suggests that isolated people tend to do less physical activity, have poorer diets and have a greater propensity for smoking or alcoholism. Factors that can trigger a whole battery of serious diseases. Even with these factors in the equation, loneliness demonstrates surprising predictive strength. For example, recent research in patients with diabetes revealed that loneliness was associated with a greater probability of suffering from coronary heart disease, even outweighing several classic risk factors. Images | Anthony Tran In Xataka | Generation Z is both the most connected and the loneliest in history. And there is nothing casual about it

The University of Córdoba has found a pesticide in the eggs of up to 14 different wild birds. The only problem is that it has been banned since the 70s.

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One has the intuitive idea that within each egg lies the promise of a story that is just beginning. But it’s a lie. Nature is amazing and elusive and blind and cruel: many eggs, in fact, never even hatch; They end up lost in the countryside or as food for scavengers. For this reason, one day, a group of researchers from the University of Córdoba They decided to collect them and analyze them as what they are: capsules that summarize the chemical memory of the place where they were placed. They collected eggs from bearded vultures, red kites, gray teals and many other species. And inside found everything: from veterinary drugs to heavy metals to all types of pesticides, pesticides and fungicides. Among them were traces of DDT, the organochlorine that we banned in agriculture in the 70s (and could no longer be used as an insecticide in 1994). Curiously, this is not the most worrying thing. What does an egg hide? An egg, as I said, is a photograph of the environment. What accumulates in each bird’s body turns out to be a fairly accurate reflection of what it eats, what it drinks, and where it spends its day. The entire trophic chain is hidden inside each egg. Therefore, when we approach them as the UCO has donewe are not talking about bird problems… we are looking at the chemistry of an entire territory in which we are also. And what have we seen? The most striking thing is not, in fact, DDT (or DDE, its main derivative). Although it is curious that there is a pesticide banned decades ago floating around the environment, it is almost expected: it is what toxicology predicts and why it was ultimately banned. The most interesting thing about the UCO’s work is that it allows us to see, at a single glance, the reality of the pollution with which our mountain coexists. The AGR-125 Veterinary Toxicology group and the Center for Analysis and Diagnosis of Wildlife of Andalusia they used the eggs as ‘non-invasive matrices’ and their data are a canvas that covers many compounds, many birds and a lot of time. There we have found, along with the remains of DDT, commonly used pesticides and fungicides, persistent exposure to endocrine disruptors, heavy metals (such as lead, mercury and cadmium) and, in two bearded vulture eggs, veterinary drugs. And now what? Little, really. The history of DDT shows how difficult it is to work with these realities. As I said, it was banned in agriculture in the 70s, but it remained as an insecticide until 94 and, in fact, It continued to be manufactured (a derivative) in Monzón until 2008. The world of pesticides is a rabbit hole from which rural society never emerges unscathed. Besides, as the authors point outthe concentrations they have found are low. This means that, although we are concerned about the long-term effects, it is very difficult to take extra measures to control the exposure of these birds to these compounds. Luckily, as I also said, this work opens a new door for us to understand what is happening in the countryside and in the mountains. And that, believe me, is already a lot. Image | Kishan Upadhyay In Xataka | We have a problem with pesticides in agriculture. And a bigger one with the panic they generate

Jaén was the largest producer of lead in the world. Decades later, he wants to repeat the game with rare earths, but he has a problem: reality

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Somewhere between Linares and La Carolina there is a rusty derrick: the iron skeleton of what was, at the end of the 19th century, the largest producer of lead in the world. It is, obviously, the past, but in recent years many are completely obsessed with it being also the future. We have the latest example of this about 80 kilometers north of that derrick. There, in Aldeaquemada, an Australian company has just extracted a drill core and to announce that it is “a high quality area”. The question that hovers over Jaén these months is not whether there are minerals under its feet. We all know that. The question is whether all this dance of prospecting that we are seeing is something real or is it simply the expression of the desire of a province that continues to associate its ‘golden age’ with mining. What is happening? The last episode, as I say, stars Osmond Resources. In the SOR-08 survey has cut more ore than expected north of the province. We are talking about a project that covers 756 mining units between Aldeaquemada and Santiesteban del Puerto and search “titanium, zirconium, hafnium and rare earths” trapped in quartzites that hundreds of millions of years ago were beach sand. The ad has a trick, yes. What they have announced is a confirmation ‘during’ drilling. Laboratory analyzes (those that count) will take weeks. But, in reality, that is not what interests us. It is enough to do a small search on the internet to confirm that Jaén entire is being drilled with passion and enthusiasm for months now. And where does all that enthusiasm come from? In principle, three relatively independent engines. The first is geopolitical: in 2024, the European Union pressed the accelerator on ‘mineral sovereignty’ and approved a regulation on critical raw materials. The idea was to ensure that the extraction, processing and recycling of strategic raw materials carried out in Europe cover respectively 10%, 40% and 25% of EU demand. A project like Orión, oriented towards rare earths, is typical of something that in Europe (and in Madrid) sounds like glory. The thing about Madridor it is rhetorical. Just a couple of months ago, the Government approved a raw materials plan of 414 million euros which includes the largest mining prospecting campaign in Spain in more than half a century. Sierra Morena is expressly cited in it. Sara Aagesen he came to say that “with all certainty” rare earths will appear in the country. And then there’s the bag… That is the third engine. Companies like Osmond Resources live off the deposits, yes; but above all they live off the news cycle. After all, its market capitalization depends more on the ‘media battle’ than on the final results. In a field as complex as mining, failure is almost a given. And why is it important? Because behind all this noise there are a lot of small, aging towns those who are sold a new future. The mayor of Aldeaquemada It didn’t take long to celebrate Osmond’s results as a way to “generate jobs and wealth.” But the reality is that the Most exploration projects never produce. The energy transition has served as an alibi to look underground again, but the sector has changed so much that for the vast majority of actors, expectations are beginning to be more useful than reality. And that, in Empty Spain, is an existential problem. Image | Shane Mclendon In Xataka | Where there was lead before, now there will be rare earths: Jaén revives its mining past for the energy transition

“Cyclical” productivity sounds great as a way to organize work according to the rule. The problem is that it’s a bluff

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Patricia Gosálvez told that for some time now talks about how to organize the work agenda according to the phase of the menstrual cycle have been the order of the day. There are different approaches and different discourses, but the general idea is the same: “do social tasks when you are ovulating and reserve planning and solitude tasks for your period days.” We knew that ‘cyclical productivity’ swept TikTokWhat we didn’t realize was that he was already proselytizing among the management class throughout the country. And we shouldn’t be surprised. A priori, the idea sounds like empowerment and militant feminism. The question, however, is whether it makes any sense. But… what exactly are we talking about? In general terms, we can see it as a work adaptation of something that has been talked about for quite some time: the cycle syncing. A self-care practice in which things like diet, exercise routines, or lifestyle habits are adjusted to match the hormonal fluctuations of the menstrual cycle. Applied to the workplace, the month is divided into four phases and tasks are distributed: planning is reserved for bleeding, during the follicular phase work is brought forward, ovulation are “ideal days to negotiate, ask for a raise and everything that needs power and security” and the luteal phase is fantastic for detailed work. It sounds good, but it’s a bluff. Especially since the model assumes a hormonal cycle that most women don’t really have. In general, cycle syncing is right that there is an infradian hormonal cycle (that is, with a period longer than one day), but it jumps to the idea that it is a closed scheme that is easy to program without a break in continuity. In fact, there are two large systematic reviews on this sort of thing that do not support the ideas of cyclical productivity. According to the latest meta-analysis from 2025there is no robust evidence that cognitive performance (neither attention, nor memory, nor executive function, nor spatial ability) changes over the cycle. On the other hand, the most robust studies of physical performance also find that the cycle effect is “trivial”. This does not mean that menstruation does not have an impact very significant in the lives of women and that pain in many cases is a huge problem. It doesn’t even mean that PMS doesn’t exist. What this means is that the hormonal cycle does not seem to serve to schedule tasks with that level of detail in the general population. But it does have a problem. And behind the façade of ’empowerment’, the truth is that there is a very problematic message that “women’s competence fluctuates with hormones.” It is something that reinforces stereotypes and, as we have seen, is a lie. As the endocrinologist Carme Valls said to Gosálvezis an idea that “makes women too biological, too animal.” And he does it without contributing too much. Above all, because as Valls continues, in a normal cycle the variability is minimal: “40% of women hardly feel anything.” That is to say, although from an individual point of view knowing the cycle is very useful, from a population point of view it introduces noise. The problem is not the initial intuition, nor the idea that talking about the rule is good. The problem is the promise of productivity associated with it. A promise that, as we see, in general terms has no relationship with reality. Image | Annika Gordon In Xataka | Period pain in adolescence is not “normal”: massive study links it to increased risk of chronic pain in adulthood

Pamplona is being invaded by thousands of white moths. The funny thing is that this is the only harmless part of the problem

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In recent days, there is a specific type of Navarrese videos that do not stop roaming the internet: storms of white moths invading entire houses, covering terraces and “taking” rooms. We are talking about white butterflies about four centimeters long that voraciously seek any point of light. The result is chairs, tables and columns, floors, ceilings and walls completely “upholstered” by them. I said “videos”, yes; but the word I was looking for was “nightmares.” And the funny thing is that this is the only part of the process (of the boxwood moth cycle) that is not really a problem. What is happening? Nothing new is actually happening. As predicted for weeks, the boxwood moth (Cydalima perspectalis) has hatched en masse in the Pamplona region, coinciding with the first heat stroke of the summer. It is not only that, as the local press remembersthese moths have caused problems before. It is that in the 2018-19 season caused a decline in the ‘bojedales’ of Atlantic Navarra which put the entire botanical community in the north of the country on alert. In other words, the new thing is the videos: the problem comes from further away than it seems. I mean, it’s a problem, right? The curious thing is that the moth (about 4 cm wingspanwhite and with nocturnal habits) is not usually so. In its adult phase it does not eat boxwood, It is not stinging, it is not dangerous for people or pets. It is very scandalous and somewhat annoying, but little more. The real problem is caterpillars and, as far as we are talking about moths, the damage has already been done. A sentence that already lasts 20 years. The caterpillars are monophagous. That is, they only eat boxwood; But, in addition, they eat it in a big way: they gnaw the leaves until the nerves are stripped. And it shows: according to the Ministry, after two years of ‘defoliation’ 72% of boxwoods do not resprout. It has been 20 years since the plague arrived in Europe and about 12 that arrived in Spain. However, today (and only in Catalonia) there are already 180,000 hectares affected. A third of everything in Catalonia. And now what? Little now. As I say, moths are annoying, but they are not dangerous. The authorities trust that it will be achieved a natural ecological balance that keeps the boxwood alive. The problem is that the climate works against us: if the heat continues to rise we cannot rule out several generations a year. And that would compromise everything. Image | Denis Chanter In Xataka | We are on the verge of the first heat wave of the year: an anomaly of up to 15 degrees never seen since 1950

The problem is not that there is AI on TikTok. It’s already more than half of what you see as soon as you enter.

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Since we have models of image generation and videos with AI so cutting edge, we have begun to get used to seeing all types of content generated by artificial intelligence on social networks. It’s no longer just that we eat the occasional deepfake, it’s that much of the entertainment content that appears in our feed has been generated by AI. An analysis of more than 10,000 videos reveals that TikTok, the most susceptible to what we know as ‘AI slop‘, shows this type of content at a rate three times higher than that of YouTube, and that children’s content is the most affected. The problem has a name. As we have mentioned before, It’s called AI slop, and it’s Pretty cheesy, mass-produced content with artificial intelligence tools with the sole objective of accumulating views. In this content it is very common for us to see cartoon characters in absurd situations, videos that aim to give us educational lessons, or voices generated by AI over images that are deformed, among many others. There is now data that measures the presence of this type of content on TikTok, with a rather uncomfortable precision. What the study says. Kapwing, a San Francisco-based video editing company, has analyzed 10,742 videos spread across 20 TikTok categories and placed special emphasis on the first 500 videos that the platform showed to newly created accounts. 294 of those 500 videos, that is, 59%, were classified as AI slop. The study states that the methodology was manual and without automation, and the data collected corresponds to May 2026. Kapwing defines this type of content as videos with obvious use of AI-generated images, or low-quality compilations with clearly artificial scripts and voice-overs. In perspective. That rate is almost triple what Kapwing recorded on YouTube when performing the same test with a new account. On the Google-owned video platform, 21% of the first 500 videos in the Shorts feed were AI slops. YouTube has also taken more aggressive measures, last January canceling 16 channels with a combined 35 million subscribers for violating its artificially generated content policy. On TikTok, on the other hand, the phenomenon seems to have established itself as the natural state of the algorithm before the user even begins to personalize their experience by scrolling. Children, the most exposed. The category with the highest slop density on the entire platform is children’s content, with 57.4% of videos classified as AI-generated garbage. Within the #CartoonKids hashtag, 97 out of every 100 videos analyzed were artificial. Furthermore, as the study points out, in #babysong and #cartoons, the proportion was around 83%. In #forkids, 79%. In this content it is very common to see characters from well-known series getting into situations that make no sense, lessons to be learned that make mistakes, or animations that mutate in a strange way. Exposure to AI from an early age. The Next Web medium share the words of Dr. Dana Suskind, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Chicago, who describes the phenomenon as “AI disinformation for young children on an industrial scale.” “Each experience builds a million new neural connections. Without meaning to, you will be wiring the brain incorrectly,” he warned. The risk is not limited to meaningless content, since the categories of science, education, health and history also register high rates of slop, between 33% and 35%, according to the study. The algorithm amplifies the problem. According to Kapwing’s own study, when a new account shows interest in AI content, the algorithm interprets that signal and ends up showing more. TikTok’s personalization mechanism, designed to fine-tune the feed based on user behavior, turns the initial slop into a starting point that feeds back. As well as points out The study, by the time the platform activated a control in November 2025 that allows users to increase or reduce the amount of AI-generated content in their feed, had already labeled 1.3 billion videos as AIGC (AI-generated content). What TikTok has done. In addition to feed control, the platform has allocated two million dollars to an educational fund to develop content on literacy and AI. But the study’s numbers suggest that these measures have not significantly curbed the volume of slop reaching new users. Furthermore, having an inexhaustible source of content, such as that generated by AI, contributes to the retention of the platform, so it is understandable that the platform does not have much interest in passing the broom. Cover image | Kenneth Schipper and ROBIN WORRALL In Xataka | Commodore conquered millions of users with the C64 in the 80s. It wants to repeat its success with a very rare smartphone

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