Real

Sylvester Stallone and the phrase that turned a scene into the most dangerous of his career: “Hit me for real”

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For years, in action cinema there was a kind of unwritten rule: the more real a scene seemed, the better it worked on screen, even if that meant taking unusual risks. That limit was unexpectedly tested when, in the middle of filming Rocky IVa seemingly minor decision ended up forcing Sylvester Stallone to leave the set and be transferred urgently to the hospital. “Hit me for real.” Rarely has a phrase said on set had consequences that were as real as they were dangerous, but that is exactly what happened during Rocky IV. Sylvester Stallone, obsessed with making the final fight convey absolute authenticity, made a decision that would mark the filming: he asked his partner to leave the choreography aside and really hit during part of the fight. That order, which had to be translated into dramatic intensity on screen, ended up becoming a physical experiment that crossed a dangerous line between interpretation and reality. He almost doesn’t count it. The result did not take long to arrive. Dolph Lundgren, much larger, stronger and with training in martial arts, executed what was asked of him without restraint. In the middle of that unscripted combat, a direct blow to the chest hit with such force that it compressed Stallone’s heart against his ribcage, causing an injury that doctors compared “to a traffic accident“. The most disturbing thing was that the actor did not notice anything at the moment of impact, but hours later his body began to collapse, dizzy and with symptoms that showed that something was very wrong. From filming to the emergency room. That same night, the situation became critical. Stallone’s blood pressure shot up to extreme levels and his heart began to swell, forcing to transfer him urgently by plane from Canada to a hospital in California. The actor entered directly in the ICUwhere he spent several days surrounded by health personnel, in a surreal scene due to the way it occurred. Stallone himself I would admit with the time that he was very close to dying that day, in an episode that turned a simple creative decision into an extreme experience. ANDThe plane that he did not want to cut. The most surprising thing is that the blow responsible for that entire critical situation was not eliminated of the final assembly. On the contrary, Stallone, faithful to his obsession with the authenticity of the saga he had created, decided to keep in the film the exact moment that took him to the hospital, turning the moment into a key piece of the intensity conveyed by the fight. Paradoxically, a scene that seems spectacular due to its realism and brutality is precisely because, for a few seconds, it stopped being fiction. Return to the ring later. Far from abandoning, Stallone returned to filming after leaving the hospital to finish the production, thus closing a production marked by physical excess and the search for truthfulness at any price. That decision reinforced the myth of Rocky IV as one of the most extreme installments in the saga, but it also left an uncomfortable lesson about the risks of pushing realism too far. Authenticity turned into danger. If you also want, the case of Rocky IV It’s not just a filming anecdote, but a clear example to what extent the film industry has historically played with the limits of security in search of greater impact on screen. What happened that day sums up an idea that is difficult to ignore: sometimes, in the attempt to make a story seem real, there is a risk that it stops being so altogether. Image | United Artists In Xataka | In 1953 Hollywood filmed a blockbuster in front of US nuclear tests. It was the most radioactive movie in history, literally In Xataka | The day a man dared to go further than anyone else: a real fight with Bruce Lee where there were no limits

For decades we believed that extreme nausea during pregnancy was caused by “hormones.” A large study found the real culprit

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The beginning of pregnancy for many is associated with horrible nausea and vomiting that have become almost an inevitable and deeply annoying toll in pregnancy and that many women fear. And the reality is that, for a percentage of these women, nausea becomes a big problem and evolves into a very serious form called hyperemesis gravidarum. What was believed. At first, the most classic reviews They pointed squarely at the ‘hormonal dance’ that pregnant women experience while the placenta is forming. Here the peaks of human chorionic gonadotropin (which is the hormone that pregnancy tests detect), along with estrogens and progesterone, were the main responsible for this discomfort. However, in clinical practice, the exact cause remained uncertain, since it was not understood why some women only felt mild morning sickness and others ended up hospitalized due to the severe dehydration caused by vomiting. And the answer was in the DNA. A great study. Here science has dotted the i’s with an article published in Nature which has analyzed the data of almost 11,000 cases of hyperemesis gravidarum and contrasted it with more than 420,000 women who did not have this problem. The result. He targeted ten genes associated with this severe form of extreme nausea, but among all of them the GDF15 gene emerged as the main culprit. And here the different experts point out that the developing fetus and the placenta produce the hormone GDF15, which is produced from the gene that we mentioned before and sends it directly to the blood, causing this nausea. Although the key is not just how much hormone is produced, but the degree of prior exposure the mother had to this hormone before pregnancy. In this way, women who had low levels of GDF15 before becoming pregnant turn out to be much more sensitive to the sudden surge of this hormone from the fetus, which triggers the most severe symptoms of nausea and vomiting. A discovery with evidence. Despite the forcefulness that accompanies this evidence, the study suggests that the gene GDF15 It is the main cause, but not the only one. The fact that there are other genes involved demonstrates that hyperemesis gravidarum is a multifactorial condition so calling it the “sole cause” would be scientifically inaccurate, but classifying it as the most determining genetic factor is, today, a fact supported by the best peer-reviewed literature. What does it mean? Identifying GDF15 as the main biological switch of this problem is undoubtedly the first step to be able to apply a treatment that can help these future mothers who suffer from significant vomiting during pregnancy, and especially in the first trimester. Although it is true that this does not explain many other symptoms of pregnancy, such as heartburn or that some things begin to feel bad ‘just because’. Although there is still a lot of research ahead to discover them. Images | tirachardz on Freepik In Xataka | We have been sending pregnant women to bed for decades as a precaution. Science has just proven that it is a big mistake

We have found the real kraken. It measured 19 meters and reigned in the seas 100 million years ago

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The kraken has been in the ideology of myths for decades and was imagined as a gigantic sea monster capable of dragging ships to the depths with one of its tentacles. But the truth is that it was something completely mythological until now science suggests that in reality they did exist at some point in the history of our planet. When? If we wanted to see them, we would have to take a time machine and travel to about 100 million years ago, where colossal octopuses dominated the depths of the oceans, competing head-to-head with the large marine reptiles of the time of the dinosaurs. And just like points out the published study in Science This finding not only confirms the existence of these giantsbut forces paleontologists to rewrite what we knew about the food chain of the Cretaceous seas. How do we know? One of the biggest problems paleontologists face when studying cephalopods is that their bodies are soft. And, lacking an internal skeleton, it is extremely rare to find complete fossils of octopuses or squids and so the question here is obligatory: how do we know that this giant existed? The answer is in their jaws. Here the team of researchers did not find fossilized bodies, but rather 27 mandibles known colloquially as beaks and similar to those that parrots have. These were found in sites in Japan and Canada and through advanced digital prospecting techniques and analysis of the wear of these pieces, scientists were able to digitally reconstruct the owners of these lethal hunting tools. The species. The taphonomic analysis of these remains has allowed the identification of two main species: Nanaimoteuthis jeletzkyi and Nanaimoteuthis haggarti. But it is the latter that takes all the attention of science. The point here is that by extrapolating the size of the fossilized jaws and comparing them with the proportions of current cephalopods, experts estimate that N. haggarti It was able to reach a length of between 7 and 19 meters, which would far exceed the giant octopuses that are currently in the Pacific, which rarely exceed five meters. The food chain. Until now, the classic view of Cretaceous marine ecosystems placed large reptiles (such as mosasaurs or plesiosaurs) at the undisputed top of the food pyramid, relegating cephalopods to the role of simply being abundant prey. However, this published study changes the rules of the game. It is now known that these octopuses were not just food, but were great predators. Here the level of wear on their jaws has been key to seeing that they had an aggressive diet and that, therefore, they occupied a place at the top of the oceanic food web. The evolution. If we look back, in the Cambrian period we find the humble Nectocaris pteryxwhich was nothing more than a primitive cephalopod which barely measured a couple of centimeters and which serves as a baseline to understand where these animals come from. From here on, millions of years later, evolution had given these animals a large size and tools to become the “krakens” of the Cretaceous. Images | freepik In Xataka | We have stuffed the Gibraltar monkeys with Doritos. His solution has been to eat dirt as if it were omeprazole

AI is making it increasingly difficult to know what is real and what is not. And child sexual predators are taking note

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The era of artificial intelligence is making everything happen very quickly, very quickly. Companies like Mercadona, Google or Anthropic already point out that the vast majority of your code is written by an AI, Mozilla flowers Mythos and Jensen Huang is excited about the benefits of AI and everything that allows us to create. Among these creations there is everything, such as an enormous amount of child sexual abuse material. Researchers ask for help, and I can tell you that there are things that are not easy to assimilate. In short. This Wednesday, Bloomberg published a report that condenses six months of research in which they focused on the rapid proliferation of child sexual abuse material generated by artificial intelligence. It is not something that is surprising if we take into account the enormous amount of false information that we already have to deal with every day both in text form and in increasingly realistic images and even on videobut there is an important nuance. While in the case of the fake news It is the press and the people who must deal with it with common sense so as not to swallow the hoax, wasting time in the process. In the case of this content generated by AI, it is the police and investigators who must waste their time to rule out that it is true information. And, while they are doing that, they stop investigating cases of child sexual abuse, other types of abuse or disappearances that are real. The figures. They are scary, of course. The report points out that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received more than 1.5 million reports during 2025 that had a general generative intelligence component. Among them, more than 7,000 reports about users generating or possessing child sexual abuse material generated with AI and more than 30,000 cases of people generating this type of content. It’s stupid. On the other hand, the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) evaluated more than 8,000 AI-generated images and videos that very realistically depicted acts of child sexual abuse. There were 3,443 videos compared to the 13 registered in 2024. In total, an increase of 26.385%. The growth is important and the IWF itself pointed out in the report that 65% of this video content generated by AI shows events classified as ‘Category A’, the most serious within this type of material. Cases. Do not think that they are cases of dark websince AI chatbots have been discovered on the open web that host these images and encourage them to be created. What type of content are we talking about? Here comes the delicate part. Bloomberg points out some examples that are part of those thousands of more complex cases that are currently being processed by the authorities and where there is… everything. A man who used the faces of children in his neighborhood to generate content with them having sexual relations with their mothers or grandmothers, another who produced sadistic images of small children and babies, another man accused of altering the image of a prepubescent girl to enlarge her breast and posting the images on Onlyfansa priest who spent years collecting material and then created even more thanks to AI or an army soldier who sexualized images of children he knew with AI. Where do the images of children come from?. Facebook and Instagram. That’s the simple answer. According to Joe O’Barr, one of the researchers who lent a voice to the Bloomberg investigation, “people steal images from Facebook and Instagram, things that parents freely post, and They post them on artificial intelligence platforms”. One pattern that has been discovered is that many create images involving children they know in the real world, thus fulfilling their fantasies. For example, a case of a man who took photos of his partner’s six-year-old daughter, manipulated them with AI and then posted them next to his own naked images on Onlyfans. “The fact that the perpetrator knew the victim made my hair stand on end. It meant that the girl could be in real and imminent danger” – Joe O’Barr What platforms do. Those same platforms on which the images are hosted do not sit idly by. Researchers trust that those same companies will raise the alarm when they find something, but there is a problem: Google, xAI, Meta or OnlyFans are delegating the monitoring task to AI. Numerous cases have been reported of humans who can’t stand flagging that type of content and that is why they either hire in countries like Kenya, or they directly delegate to AI. The problem is the number of false positives that the AI ​​finds and that end up overloading the researchers’ ‘mailbox’. A North Carolina investigator notes that he has seen an 11-fold increase in those ‘tips’ his office receives, and last year alone the volume doubled to 52,000 reports. He points out that any human would say “this is not content to investigate”, but since the AI ​​does not know this, it sends everything: from serious things to investigate to simple insults. Unbearable. “The more cases we have to investigate, the more difficult it is to treat each case individually,” says one of the researchers. Meta itself has recognized that its system is not perfect and adds “some noise” to the researchers’ network. As we said before, it is an enormous amount of material that prevents investigators from doing their work in real cases of minors who are being abused or who are missing. “We are doing this massive job with the same amount of resources we had ten years ago. We can’t take it anymore and we don’t want to miss a real child who is being sexually abused,” an agent tells Bloomberg. Legislators, get your act together. The work of these investigators depends on the Department of Justice and funding that consists of about $30 million for 61 state task forces. They point out that it is a very small figure and, to put … Read more

The country has no real alternative to Telcel

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The sale of Movistar Mexico to the Melisa Acquisition consortium (450 million dollars for an operator with approximately 15% of the market) closes a chapter of more than two decades in which the Spanish operator has invested more than 3,600 million euros to end up competing, in permanent structural inferiority, against a monopoly that has never ceased to be a monopoly. Why is it important. Anyone might think that the departure of Telefónica changes the Mexican telecommunications market, but the reality is that it does not change it much. On the contrary: it confirms it. Mexico has one of the most concentrated mobile markets in the developed world, with Telcel, owned by Carlos Slim, controlling almost 60% of users. No competitor has managed to gain share in a sustained manner so far this century. The strange thing is that Telefónica has taken so long to leave the country, because it has only done so in the context of a total withdrawal in Latin America after years of losses. The backdrop. Telcel inherited the commercial muscle, infrastructure and customer base of Telmex, the former state monopoly privatized in 1990. Since then, Mexican regulators have not been able to balance the market, or have not been willing enough to do so. AT&T has been trying for years with its own network and remains below 16%. In fact is also looking for a way out. Telefónica, which In 2019 it had to return its spectrum and relying on AT&T’s infrastructure to survive, it already operated in practice as a kind of “premium MVNO”: with its own brand, but without its own network and without room to grow. Between the lines. The buyer says a lot. Melisa Acquisition is not a typical telecommunications operator: it is the sum of Oxio (technological platform for virtual operators with barely 350,000 clients) and an investment fund. They are not there to build network infrastructure or to dispute Telcel’s quota. They simply arrive to manage what is there: an inherited customer base, an asset-light model, and the hope that Oxio’s technology will allow some more margin to be squeezed out of an operation that Telefónica no longer wanted to maintain. In figures. The ARPU (average income per user) tells in numbers the trap in which Telefónica operated in Mexico: 64.7 pesos per month per customer, less than half that of AT&T (141.1) and less than a third that Telcel (176). It is no longer that Movistar had few clients, it is that each client was worth little in terms of billing and profitability. A model like this does not allow for investment in the network, in spectrum or in the future. The sale is not an elegant strategic retreat: it is the logical conclusion of years competing in the cheapest segment of an already cheap market. Yes, but. The sale will generate heavy accounting losses for Telefónica, something inevitable given the historical outlay, but it fits perfectly into its strategy. In less than a year and a half, the telecom chaired by Marc Murtra has undone practically all of its positions in Latin America: Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Ecuador, Colombia… and now Mexico. Only Brazil remains, the only market in the region where Telefónica has enough scale to truly compete and which has become one of its growth enginesif not the main one. Main loser? The Mexican user. With Telefónica jibarized, the Mexican market is even more unprotected in the face of Telcel. Effective competition in price, coverage and quality of service now depends almost exclusively on AT&T, which has also not demonstrated the ability to challenge Slim’s dominance and, as we have already said, look for a way out for a long time. Mexico doesn’t just lose one operator: it loses one of the few that at least had incentives to try. In Xataka | Mexico has an ambitious plan to be the tenth economy in the world and that involves technology: semiconductors Featured image | david carballar

Mexico’s real problem is that it is warming three times faster than a century ago

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Mexico is experiencing the first major consolidated heat episode of 2026 and there is more than 22 entities affected on the Pacific slope and the southeast. That’s highs of up to 45 degrees in a country that is warming up to three times faster than the last century. And, despite everything, no one seems too worried. Why would they be? Mexico closed 2025 with reservoirs at 72% and by April 15 only 12.3% of the territory is affected by drought. You only have to go to 2024 to find a spring with 76% of the country in a critical situation: no matter how much the heat is getting earlier, it is logical that no one takes it very seriously. Especially if we take into account that experts do not agree on the nature of the event. Once it has been ruled out that, technically, it is a ‘heat wave’; The National Weather Service says we talk about a ‘color wave’ and services like Meteored doubt whether that can even be talked about. The great Mexican mess. While the thermometers of Sinaloa, Durango, Nayarit, Guerrero, Michoacan, Chiapas and, occasionally, Jalisco will be placed above of 40 degrees; the rain will reach the eastern half of the country: It is a clear example that the asymmetry in how climate change affects Mexico means that the country begins to live in several seasons at the same time. And that is the central issue: Mexico is warming rapidly and that means innumerable problems. Heating up rapidly? According to the UNAM Climate Change Research Programbefore 2012 the warming rate per century was 1.9 degrees. Now that rate has catapulted to 3.5. This means that projections speak of 1.95 degrees only for 2026, while the average is 1.5. And El Niño is knocking on the doors. Therefore, the fact that there is water in the swamps does not solve anything: it simply makes us trust. But let’s talk about the problems. Because, although we do not usually emphasize it, heat has a direct impact on public health. Only in 2024 306 people died from heat stroke in Mexico. The fact that the heat is ahead is not good news. Above all, because as we already know, the hot Mexican season produces peak values ​​between April and May. In this way, it is reasonable to think that all this heat is nothing more than part of what is coming. Image | BenBaso | Xataka In Xataka | We are living in the hottest years on Earth and the consequences will be so severe that not even our grandchildren will see the end.

Millions to protect a war frigate. A Bluetooth tracker worth a few euros has been enough to follow her in real time

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Protecting a warship costs a fortune. We are talking about sensors, protocols, personnel, weapons and a security chain designed to minimize any unnecessary exposure. That is why what has happened with the Zr.Ms. Evertsena frigate of the Netherlands Navy integrated into the battle group of the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. According to Omroep Gelderlandtheir position could be tracked in real time for hours with something much more mundane and cheaper: a simple Bluetooth tracker sent via military mail. The story does not begin with a technological gap or with a particularly complex maneuver, but with something much more earthly: a postcard. That was what the aforementioned medium used to introduce the tracker into Evertsen through the military mail service. The sources do not specify what device was used, beyond describing it as a low-cost tracker. It is easy to think of a Apple AirTagbut there is no indication that it was that specific model and the market offers many similar alternatives. How a minor failure left a frigate exposed The case gains another dimension when you look at what Evertsen’s mission was at that time. According to the source, the frigate was part of the group that escorted the Charles de Gaulle and its function was to help protect the aircraft carrier of possible air or missile threats. This task makes its location especially sensitive data within an ongoing military mission. In other words, it was not just about knowing where a ship was, but about being able to keep track of a relevant piece within a real operation. The really delicate thing about this episode is not only that a tracker managed to enter the military postal circuit, but what that suggests about certain procedures that continue to operate with a logic from other times. According to the media itself based on official videos from the ministry, the packages did go through X-rays, but the envelopes did not follow the same control. That combination opened enough of a gap to compromise the discretion of the deployment. We are not facing a spectacular failure, but rather an apparently minor vulnerability, but sufficient to allow the ship to be monitored. Once the initial filter was passed, the case stopped being a hypothesis and became a real follow-up. According to the reconstruction published by the Dutch media, the tracker signal made it possible to follow a path that went from Netherlands to Cretewith steps through Den Helder and Eindhoven airport before reaching the port of Heraklion. There, in addition, images from a camera fit that clue and showed the Evertsen moored at the dock. On March 27, once out of port, the frigate continued broadcasting its position for about 24 more hours: first it skirted the Cretan coast and then headed east, until the device stopped giving a signal near Cyprus. The official reaction came after publication and was, at least in part, corrective. The Dutch Ministry of Defense made changes following this incident and stopped allowing battery-powered greeting cards to be sent to Evertsen, as well as announcing a broader review of military mail guidelines. At the same time, the department held that the tracker was located while the correspondence on board was being sorted, once the frigate had already left the port. And although he admitted that the ship could be followed at sea, he assured that this did not constitute an operational risk. There is a quite obvious reading in closing this story. The frigate was still part of a military mission, protected within a much larger device, and yet a low-cost domestic object managed to open a tracking window for hours. Not because it replaced the big threats, but because it slipped through a minor seam that no one had fully adjusted. That’s what makes this episode especially revealing: remember that, in 2026, security doesn’t just depend on large systems. Images | Ein Dahmer | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | France was moving its aircraft carrier without revealing its location. Until a runner on board uploaded an activity to Strava

We have been terrified of superbugs for decades. The real silent danger is “superfungi”

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When we talk about the antibiotic resistancemany people are already aware of the great problem that not having medications against superbacteria poses for public health, since today there are many antibiotics that have no effect on bacteria. But the WHO launch an alert very important to expand our field of vision also to the “super mushrooms“. Growing danger. If there is a protagonist in this new threat, it is Candida auris, precisely because, unlike other fungi that have been with us for centuries, this one has recently emerged as a global public health problem by causing serious infections, especially in people who are admitted to hospitals or nursing homes, who already have other associated diseases. A genomic macro-study in which the Carlos III Health Institute has participated analyzing more than 300 isolates from patients in 19 countries, has drawn the map of the evolution of this multi-resistant fungus. And the reality we face is that it is capable of spreading rapidly among fragile patients, and worst of all, it is very resistant to the anti-fungal drugs that we use on a daily basis. It is very complete. As experts point out, the enormous expansion of C. Auris is not only focused on the ability to evade the first-line antifungals that we have, but also on its ability to form biofilms on hospital surfaces or medical devices. This causes an object used by several patients to become ‘infected’ and spread the infection among them. It was suddenly. The reality is that today there are many fungi from the Candida family that coexist with us by being on our skin naturally, and without causing problems. The trigger comes when our defenses fall because we are sick, immunosuppressed due to a transplant or naturally because we are older. And this is where this fungus goes from being a being that lives with us ‘in peace’ to completely invading us and causing disease. The culprit. Paradoxically, our efforts to kill bacteria have part of the blamesince here the experts point to a structural problem of abuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics that “sweeps away” the natural bacterial flora of our body. In this way, if bacteria that colonize our digestive system are destroyed, for example, it creates free ‘holes’ that can be used by fungi without control. Added to this is a serious pharmacological problem, since right now we do not have many medications to fight fungi. And the problem is that its structure is quite similar to the surfaces of our own cells as it contains cholesterol in many cases. This means that drugs that destroy the fungus without producing a toxic effect on the patient are not very abundant. There is more. Although we focus on C. auris, there are other threats in this same kingdom, such as Scedosporium prolificansa multiresistant fungus that, through unique evasion mechanisms, causes very high mortality rates in immunosuppressed patients. The solution. Right now, science indicates that we cannot address the crisis of superfungi and superbacteria with patches, but rather we must create a unitary strategy that encompasses human, animal and ecosystem health. And right now the massive use of fungicides in agriculture causes the fungi in the environment to resist our medications that we use in the most serious patients. Images | Adrian Lange In Xataka | Faced with the need to look for weapons against superbacteria, science has opted to send viruses into space

‘Idiocracy’ was supposed to be a satire of a stupider future. The fear is that it is becoming real

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This week, Flamenca Stone shared a video on Bluesky with the comment “this is literally an ‘Idiocracy’ plot.” It is not the first time it has happened nor will it be the last. The 2006 film that went unnoticed in its day (more than sought after, to avoid lawsuits from the many brands that were satirized) has been generating that same recognizable chill for years, like a kind of perverse version of The Simpsons: You watch a satire and you don’t know if you are watching a documentary ahead of its time. 20 years of predictions. It took Mike Judge three years to get ‘Idiocracy’ released. When it did, it grossed just $495,000 in its first weekend. Fox did not organize press screenings, and did not even invest in trailers for television: it was too acidic and uncomfortable. The director of ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ and ‘Silicon Valley’ had constructed a satire about an America in the year 2505 where idiots had reproduced so much among themselves that the population was essentially composed of brainless people. A perfectly normal young man from the present wakes up at that time (yes, it’s the plot of ‘Futurama’, then recently canceled) and is celebrated as practically a genius. Idiocracy Today. Time has put it in its place and despite going unnoticed at its premiere, its edition in domestic formats first and its passage through streaming later (now you have it on Movistar Plus+) has given it a certain cult status. Let’s review some of the questions that were raised as part of an absolutely exaggerated satire (as shown by the fact that Judge decided to set it in no less than the 26th century) but that seem chillingly close in the current context. EITHER as the director himself said“I am no prophet. I was wrong for 490 years.” The spark of life. Let’s start, without going any further, with the use of soft drinks as irrigation water. In the future, the sports drink Brawndo has replaced water, which has caused crops to not grow for decades. “Brawndo has what plants need. It has electrolytes.” They tell the protagonist when he is surprised by the absence of water. Of course, no one knows what the hell an electrolyte is. Meanwhile, the reality: Trump thinks soda cures cancer because they kill the grass and therefore, possibly also kill the cancer cells. If you ask me, much crazier than ‘Idiocracy’, although the truth is that it is documented that more and more people They opt for sports or energy drinks when before they drank water. All brands. In the movie, the Costco chain has its law school. The country’s only telecommunications operator is called AOL-TimeWarner-Taco Bell-US Government, and the stripes on the flag are logos. Is especially significant (by visionary in pre-streaming times) the scene of the television screen: the program occupies a box in the center of the screen, surrounded by advertising everywhere. YouTube or any video streaming website looks similar. As for the presence of brands in public institutions or sponsorships of public spaces, it stopped being a dystopian issue a long time ago, eh, Madrid residents? Recognizable president. Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, former wrestler and president of the United States in 2505, enters Congress on a motorcycle, with an electric guitar, shooting into the air. His management capacity is zero and his charisma is overwhelming for a country of idiots. Actor Terry Crews He admitted feeling a chill when he started watching Trump rallies in 2016. Co-writer Etan Cohen he wrote on Twitter that same year who couldn’t believe the film had been turned into a documentary. In 2024, Hulk Hogan appeared at the Republican National Convention with a speech straight out of a wrestling promo. The similarities continue to this day, but we are left with Espinof’s reflection about the film: the logic of entertainment has completely colonized the political debate. Stop thinking by convention. The deterioration of language in ‘Idiocracy’ is part of society: words are replaced by pictograms and reasoning processes are diluted. Nobody remembers how to reason without a screen in front of you. In 2025, an MIT study warned that artificial intelligence tools can accelerate cognitive decline by mechanizing routine tasks and leaving only exception handling to the user. McGill University Research they point in the same direction with GPS and spatial memory: the more you use it, the less you remember how to navigate without it. Intelligence dies. In his analysis of an increasingly anti-intellectual society, Jot Down described how this increasingly established current no longer presents itself as ignorance but as overinformation: the illusion that accessing infinite data for short periods of twenty seconds is equivalent to learning. We live it continually: the algorithm rewards short formats, the echo chamber of social networks amplifies what you already believe with slogans. That “No to critical thinking” is the backbone of all of ‘Idiocracy’ and is the true subtext of the film. Nobody is perfect. ‘Idiocracy’ was wrong, of course, in its initial approach: the disaster began when the rich stopped having children and then the lower classes without basic education began to reproduce. An idea with dangerously eugenic overtones that fortunately the rest of the film does not affect and that has been completely overwhelmed by a non-negotiable reality: if the current world has shown us anything, it is that the billionaires around us are not, precisely, the sharpest pencils in the case. In Xataka | If the question is whether AI is already as good as human intelligence, the answer is: solve this puzzle

Long before Real Madrid, the Roman Empire had already invented VIP boxes. And they ended in disaster

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In the first century, the emperor Nero ordered that some shows will include giant awnings to protect the most privileged attendees from the sun, while the rest of the public endured the heat in the upper stands. That seemingly trivial difference reflected the extent to which the experience of attending an event was already marked for money and status long before modern stadiums existed. Show business in Ancient Rome. Long before modern stadiums like the Bernabéu turned sport into a crazy revenue machine, the Roman Empire had already understood the economic potential of gathering crowds and charging for access. At that time, amphitheaters were not only leisure spaces, but political and commercial tools where prestige and money mixed openly. In fact, businessmen like Atilio They saw the games as a direct opportunity for profit, betting on filling venues at all costs and maximizing every available seat. In that context, the logic of squeezing capacity (with privileged areas for the elites and crowded stands for the rest) not only existed, but was central part of the model. Raised to make quick money. In this context, it is born the Fidenae project with a clear idea: build a lot, quickly and cheaply to start earning money as soon as possible. Attilius, a freedman with entrepreneurial ambition, decided to build a huge wooden amphitheater on the outskirts of Rome, reducing costs in the most critical elements. The structure was supported on unstable ground and was assembled with poor joints, while more seats than planned were added to increase revenue. The result was a building that appeared grand from the outside, but was actually designed more to maximize profits. that to ensure safety of those who were going to occupy it. Spectacle turned into tragedy. What happened? That the inauguration attracted tens of thousands of people who came with the expectation of witnessing gladiatorial combats after a period in which these spectacles had been rather rare. That amphitheater was filled to the limitthere was no room for a pin, with the public distributed by social classes and areas, replicating a hierarchy that also had its economic reflection. Thus, in a matter of seconds, what seemed like a festive day he happened to enter sadly in the Guinness Book of a total sporting catastrophe when the structure began to give way and collapsed simultaneously inwards and outwards. It was not just an accident, since the magnitude of the collapse trapped both those who were inside and those who were trapped. were in the surroundingsleaving a balance of victims that, according to sources, ranged between tens of thousands of dead and injured. The worst sports disaster in history. From then until now, because of its scalethe collapse or collapse of Fidenae was not only a local tragedy, but the biggest sports disaster that has ever been documented, surpassing even many modern episodes in number of victims. The figures, although imprecise at the time, point to a catastrophe comparable to major battles in terms of human losses (they were counted about 50,000 deadsome lost their lives instantly, while others were buried under the rubble), something totally exceptional for an entertainment event. The speed of the collapse, the absence of evacuation measures and the fragility of the construction made any reaction impossible, turning the amphitheater into a mousetrap, a death trap in a matter of seconds. What should have been a profitable business ended up being the most extreme example of how the search for profit can multiply risk to catastrophic limits. From greed to the first rules. There is no doubt, the impact of that disaster shook the Roman Empire and forced an institutional reaction that marked a before and after in the construction regulation. The Senate persecuted the person responsible, Attilius, and sent him into exile, but, more importantly, established rules that They demanded economic solvency to those who wanted to organize shows and forced them to build on safe land. Those measures can be considered one of the first attempts to regulate structural safety in public spaces, born directly from a tragedy caused by negligence. Ultimately, the episode left a lesson that is still very valid: when business prevails over security, the show not only cannot be guaranteed, it can end up becoming in his own catastrophe. Image | Wikimedia C. In Xataka | In 1995, South Korea suffered one of the great architectural disasters of the century. The culprit: the air conditioning In Xataka | If you’re hot at home, remember that Disney made an auditorium with a huge mistake: turning a neighborhood into an unbearable oven

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