sad

This is the sad story behind La Atalaya de Ciudad Real, the most perverted Franco sanatorium

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Any Carles Porta fans in the room? If you have seen ‘Crims’ or some of his other documentary series, you already know the enormous impact that Catalan true crime has. But Ciudad Real has his own black chronicle. And it is perhaps one of the darkest and most unknown stories of our country. And, therefore, more interesting to unravel. If every city has its cursed hill, on the outskirts of Ciudad Real La Atalaya stands out, with privileged views and a legend that has been feeding itself for decades. We have it all: lady in white, psychophonies and there is something much more prosaic and sadder, which is nothing other than a building that never served its purpose and houses a tragedy that mythology ended up devouring. With tuberculosis tea, not terror. In 1943, the Ciudad Real city council bought those lands. At the request of the Patronage of Tuberculosis Patients, La Atalaya was part of a Franco plan of thirty-five anti-tuberculosis sanatoriums spread throughout Spain. The hill met the condition required by the national competition: sufficient isolation to avoid contagion, but not so much as to make access difficult. In 1954, work began and in February 1955, the first floor was ready, with capacity for three hundred beds. The problem is that medicine moved faster than brick: by the time the building could be opened, antibiotics had already drastically reduced cases of tuberculosis in Spain. Before housing a single patient, the sanatorium was born obsolete. Without job or benefit. Good location and good brick, but it was time to reform. In 1961, ownership of the building passed to the National Psychiatric Trust. The works are even slower and are not completed until 1970. A year later, in 1971, the building finally opens its doors as a regional center for people with mental disabilities. Or that’s how it was defined. And it operated like this for twenty-five years, until its final closure in 1996. From then on it was abandoned. Cobwebs, thefts, noises and a black legend that is gaining strength: rumors of mistreatment of inmates, screams of torture that can still be heard and a three-meter figure walking through the empty hallways. I would like Slender Man or the monster from ‘Backrooms‘ have so much presence. The real tragedy occurred. Easter 1987, early morning of April 20. It’s not a song. That morning, a 33-year-old police officer, Isidro Mejías, unloads his service weapon at a Citroën Visa where a young couple, María del Mar Perales Serrano and Alfredo Lozano Galán, ages 19 and 21, are. He then got into the victims’ own car and shot himself in the temple. What just happened? The Lanza newspaper titled the April 22 cover: “A police officer, alleged perpetrator of the death of two young people in La Atalaya.” The door locks were locked, suggesting the couple saw danger coming and tried to protect themselves by locking themselves inside. According to those close to the agent, married and father of two children, he led a normal life and had no known serious problems; The victims’ family did not know him at all either. Without a motive, the urban legend was later filled with crimes of passion, sects and curses. Today a plaque at the site remembers the young people who died. The lady in the white nightgown. The thing doesn’t end here. Because the ghostly woman, dressed in whitewhose figure proverbially appears on the curve leading to the old sanatorium, has been seen by motorcyclists and drivers for decades. several people interviewed for Misterios Conquenses They assure the same. It is not uncommon to find someone who has seen someone and confirms that yes, this folklore motif is repeated here more than anywhere else. The photos of silhouettes difficult to explain taken by Carlos Torrijos, the lights in the sky recorded by witnesses and collected by TVE in 2004… until Iker Jiménez echoed and turned La Atalaya into the territory of reference of the La Mancha mystery. Where does it come from? The theory says that she was a patient at the children’s psychiatric hospital who jumped out of a window, or that she was a girl kidnapped and murdered on the spot—there is no police record of this kidnapping. It even links to a previous appearance from 1939, weeks before the end of the Civil War, when several witnesses claimed to see a woman in white on successive nights who radiated her own light. Demolition and end of the curse. In 2007, the building was officially condemned; unofficially, to “end evil.” The abandonment left structures in dangerous conditions. But even that didn’t quite work: months after the demolition, the burned body of the doorman of a nearby nightclub was found near the scene. And the legend immediately incorporated it into its story. The pain comes from behind, as always. In the Manchego Studies Notebooks (#49) the prolonged inquisitorial persecution of witchcraft and witchcraft in the current province of Ciudad Real is documented, where cases of torture such as that of María de Lao are identified. Today the hill is a municipal forest park, with hiking trails, a children’s area and picnic areas. The Ciudad Real resident who goes out to play sports and the one who goes up at night looking for the lady’s curve coexist there, without much conflict. Your own video game. Local studio Sonrisilla Games—formed by designer Marta Ruiz (‘Waxipola’) and developer Samuel Sanjuan (‘SamKnight’)—is finishing ‘Stories from the Watchtower – The Witcher‘, a graphic horror adventure set on the hill. The project was born after the developers event Guadalindiein Malaga. And, apparently, it has required a lot of journalistic work from its creators: collection of oral testimonies, comparison of real events and interviews with those who experienced the history of the sanatorium up close. The game will be released in months and will mix the black chronicle of 1987, the myth of the witch of The Watchtower and the popular witchcraft documented in the area. Behind it … Read more

Now influencers created by AI choose to be sad or endearing

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A grandfather who teaches how to choose watermelons. A young man with Down syndrome who laments that no one buys the pots he makes with infinite love. Both are generated by AI, and have managed, using sensitivity, empathetic messages and technology that increasingly imitates reality, to make millions of people believe that they are authentic. And let them buy. Above all, let them buy. The wisdom of the old sensei. Paco del Campo He posted his first video a little over two weeks ago. He already has more than a million followers between Instagram and TikTok. Checkered shirt, knitted vest, home remedies to sleep better, to choose ripe melons or to distinguish normal apples from organically grown ones. And of course, it sells books with home remedies with prices between five and thirteen euros. As detected Delia Rodríguezin the fine print of its website it is recognized that “Paco del Campo” is a commercial name, not a person. I can’t stand it in this city, let’s go to the countryside. Paco del Campo is not the only profile of advice on natural dyes, almost with tone rural-xploitation. Sofia.saludencasa gives holistic remedies and sells a book on the subject. Eduardo.holisticovidapossibly by the same author, gives advice and presents a book with very similar characteristics. The use of AI is obvious as long as the visitor is familiar with the visual tics of generative artificial intelligences, but it is completely normal that they fool most people and that they receive interactions and comments from dozens of people who believe that these experts are real. The hook is no longer beauty. Three years ago we were talking about Aitana López, the virtual model from the Barcelona agency The Clueless: an AI with a declared advertising profiledesigned for brands with a tight budget. Its appeal was the visual appeal of the digital model. Paco belongs to another category: unlike Aitana López, no one warns that he is an AI, and the design opts for normality rather than physical perfection. The consequence is that it deceives much more easily: why would AI, when it can generate absolute beauty, replicate an old man’s face? Very simple: confidence in what is close sells more than physical perfection. Even more perverse. This pattern of trust in profiles that want to dazzle with innocence takes on a more sinister nuance with the case of the now-defunct Martinmimoplants profile, which had more than 14,500 followers and 140,000 likes, but which disappeared from the map when the racket was discovered. It showed a young man with Down syndrome with a handmade pot business, lamenting that it doesn’t work. The fourteen videos posted by the account were artificial, and eleven of them did not carry any warning of AI-generated content. The most viewed video exceeded 600,000 views. Martinmimoplants is not the first to resort to this technique: profiles of needy grandparents selling crafts have been seen, but the detail of Down Syndrome is new. This has generated an immediate response: Down Spain described the strategy as “false charity” and asked not to donate or buy without first checking the reliability of the seller. For its part, FACUA, which had already announced that it would take the case to the authorities, formalized the complaint to the General Directorate of Consumer Affairs on July 8, five days after the VerificaRTVE report that exposed it, for abusive clauses. Majestic profiles. This article documented dozens of TikTok Shop accounts that showed supposed entrepreneurs crying about how bad their craft businesses were doing in order to actually sell products purchased in batches in China. The emotional script is the same as Martinmimoplants, and there is also a certain trait of vulnerability: disability in the Spanish case, and in those that The Verge points out, all African-American creators, that is, the thing takes on a racial point. Social networks are, for the most part, a space for business and it is beginning to be treated as such. For example, there are companies like the startup Doublespeed, financed by Andreessen Horowitz, which offers packages influencers synthetics for between 1,500 and 7,500 dollars, depending on the number of publications. The regulatory response. Article 50 of the European Artificial Intelligence Regulation will require labeling of deepfakes and synthetic content that could be confused with real material from the August 2, 2026. Until then, Paco can continue publishing. For now, be careful with profiles that appeal to what is endearing and natural when the exact opposite abounds in their genesis. Or as the classic said, be careful out there. In Xataka | The problem is not that your favorite influencer sells you the motorcycle. The problem is that maybe it doesn’t even exist.

The physical edition of ‘GTA VI’ will be discless and will come with a code. The sad thing is that it has stopped surprising

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‘GTA VI‘is warming up. After the second trailer shown in the middle of last year, Rockstar has remained almost stony silent. After a new delay that brought the launch to November 19 of this year, the messages have not arrived even with a dropper, but Reservations open this June 25 and they are going to put the marketing machine at full power. This is allowing us to learn about news such as new (and impressive) screenshots, the price of ‘GTA VI’ and, above all, the fear for many users: The physical version of ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ will not include the disc. It is something that is no longer surprising. The physical ‘GTA VI’ Schrödinger Although we are still waiting for the launch of the third trailer for the game, which is estimated to arrive to accompany the opening of the reservation period, Rockstar did not want to be begged and has been advancing some details. To begin with, an avalanche of screenshots that reconfirm that the game is one of the most ambitious of this generation of consoles. Because ‘GTA VI’ is a game that the company has been cooking for years, it is its first title for the current generation of consoles and it is noticeable that the ‘Red Dead Redemption 2‘ for PS5 and Xbox Series X They have allowed them to learn about the machines to get all the juice possible. Visually, ‘GTA VI’ is going to be crazy The more ambitious you are with the visual and technical section and the size of the game itself, the more complicated it is to condense the product on a disc, and with ‘GTA VI’ it is confirmed that will not have a real physical edition. Before we start evaluating, here is what Rockstar has announced: “Players who pre-order the digital versions of Grand Theft Auto VI will be able to begin pre-loading on November 12, to ensure they can play at launch on November 19. The physical version of Grand Theft Auto VI will include a download code inside the box and will be available starting November 12 to allow pre-loading.” That physical games are not physical games is something that, unfortunately, is no longer an exception. The Game Key Card of nintendo switch 2 They go straight: they are not a game in physical format. Games that are a ‘Code in a box’ are not either, even if that code comes in a box, and ‘GTA VI’ will belong to that second group. This, which has been like this for decades in the PC world, was not so widespread in console games (aside from Nintendo Switch, where a few have already appeared), and it seems that ‘GTA VI’ will be so big, or will have so little sense in its physical version 1.0, that it is not worth it to start “printing” discs. And, as a player who loves the physical format because it is not a simple license to use that the companies they can remove you from your account When they consider that you should no longer have what you paid for, the decision that there is no ‘GTA VI’ in physical format is as sad as it is… curious. Curious because reserving makes no sense beyond whether you want that box with the cover, since You won’t be left without a game on launch day because, in essence, this physical version is a digital version. As digital as what you can buy in the Xbox and PlayStation online store. The twist of ending with the second hand In fact, even if ‘GTA VI’ fits on one Blu Ray (or two, there’s no harm in putting it in two, ‘Final Fantasy VII Rebirth‘, ‘Cyberpunk 2077‘ or Rockstar’s own ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ come on two discs), for the company it makes perfect sense that the game is a code and not a Blu-Ray. If everything comes true, and if it turns out as Rockstar hopes, ‘GTA VI’ will be the generational game in the same way they were ‘San Andreas‘ either ‘GTA V‘. It is that game that sells an obscene amount of units and, by ensuring that there is no physical ‘GTA VI’, Rockstar ensures that everyone who wants it has to buy it from them. If I buy the game, I pass it on and leave it to a friend, there are two of us who have played it, but Rockstar has only seen one sale. The same if I sell it to a second-hand store where, to make matters worse, it is the store that takes the profit. If there is no disc, both my friend and I will have to buy the game, and there Rockstar sees two sales. Oh yes, the price of ‘GTA VI’: 80 euros for the normal version, 100 for the ‘Ultimate’. The current evil of games in physical format One of the problems that the current video game industry has is that many releases in physical format are not, really, a physical format. They come in a box, they come with a Blu-Ray, but that 100 GB Blu-Ray only has a few few megabytes of information. What that disk has inside is the code, the key that communicates with the store and that gives you access to download the game. It’s not tied to your account (if you resell it, that other person can download the game again), but you have to play with the disc inserted no matter what and, in x years, when stores or servers close, you will only have a nice paperweight. In short: if I turn on my PS1, my PS2 or my PS3 today, I can play my copy of ‘Final Fantasy VII’ in physical format. When I turn on my PS5 in 20 years, like Microsoft has retired it, the licenses have expired or whatever, I won’t be able to play to ‘Doom The Dark Ages‘ on disk. That is why initiatives such as that of Stop … Read more

In the 19th century they were not particularly sad, but no one smiled in the photos. Although they had reasons for it

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It’s strange to come across a current photo in which no one is smiling. If we see her, we assume that something is happening: either she wants to give a serious image, or something happens that we don’t know about, or the intention is precisely to go against it, not to smile. However, there was a time in which the usual thing was not to do it, not to show the slightest emotion in the photographs. What is the reason for this attitude? Were they so sad in the victorian englandSpain at the beginning of the century and so on? Actually, there is a very simple explanation. The exhibition. We all know that in the early days of photography, that is, between about 1840 and 1880, cameras required people to remain completely still for several seconds, or even, in the most primitive photos, minutes. Maintaining a natural smile for so long was uncomfortable, and fatigue ended up turning a natural smile into a stiff grimace. Furthermore, any movement resulted in a blurry image, which ran the risk of the model appearing in the photo with a blur on his face like a specter from beyond the grave. Hence the much simpler and more accessible custom of remaining with a relaxed gesture. Decent photographs. But there came a time when photographs did not require more than a moment of exposure, and there were still models with long faces. What was it due to? In reality it was not a technical question, but rather a question of how photography was understood. Perhaps with a vision inherited from when a portrait was a canvas that took days to create, required effort for the painter and model, cost money and could not be reproduced, but rather remained a unique piece. For all this, the portrait was clothed with a certain solemnity. It didn’t matter that these new portraits were much simpler and faster to do: They preserved the aura of dignity and special occasion of the oil paintings. Example: the dead. The legendary photos of the deceased or post-mortem photography They are a perfect example to understand how the medium was perceived for a time. They were a surprisingly common practice during the 19th and early 20th centuries and had a very clear purpose: being still a medium that was not widespread, photography was the only opportunity that many families had to preserve a portrait of the deceased, since they had not been able to do it while they were alive (and with the high infant mortality rate of other times, even more so). Furthermore, with this aura of dignity and pomp that the photograph had, it was incorporated into the elaborate mourning process. Victorian. Smile bad. In the 19th century, smiling openly in public or in portraits was often associated with frivolity, lack of seriousness, or even drunkenness. Educated and respectable people maintained a serious composure. If you have ever seen material from the tone period, let’s say, libertineyou will see what contagious smiles. It’s not that in the 19th and early 20th centuries people didn’t know how to smile: it was the circumstance in which photos were taken. That is why photos have been found taken in more familiar settings, at parties with very close relatives or close friends, where some of this rigidity is lost and people smile widely. Smiling badly, part two. And if we started with a reason as prosaic as “it’s easier not to smile than to smile,” we ended up with another equally practical reason: smiles one hundred and fifty years ago were terrible. The dental hygiene It was much worse than today and the dentures were full of holes, at best. When it came to passing on to posterity, it was normal for the models to decide not to show their teeth. Photo of Lia Den in Unsplash In Xataka | A tractor engine and three floors: this is the Victorian steampunk house that is touring the United States

The countries with the greatest oil reserves, exposed in this graphic with a sad protagonist: Venezuela

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Humanity is still tied to oil. Although the rise of renewable energies He pointed to one revolutionrecently we have seen that, when things get ugly and We need energy peaksone has to Pull fossil fuels again. The oil companies themselves who got into the renewable car They unchecked a few months agoand that is why it is interesting to know What countries have that oil. And it is something that is illustrated perfectly in this graph. The rich. Prepared by Visual Capitalist With data from the EIAin it the production is not shown, but the reserves. They are two very different things and will make sense immediately. Before that, Venezuela’s reserves are imposing, with 303,000 million certified barrels. Secondly, Saudi Arabia with 267,000 million and, in third place, an Iran in which oil has been the protagonist in recent weeks due to the confrontation with Israel. A lot of distance from Venezuela we have Canada, Iraq, Eau, Kuwait, Russia, the United States or Libya. And, of these last names, the two American countries are those that are separated in the graph because they are not part of the OPEC. OPEC+ and the monopoly. In 1960, five heavy pesos on that list (Venezuela, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi IRK and Rabia formed the organization of oil export countries, OPEC. Its objective was to coordinate and unify oil policies to maintain stable prices, ensure supply and, above all, protect your interests. Over time other countries were added, forming the well -known OPEC+ (which has its own internal cohesion problems. Together, member countries concentrate about 80% of global oil reserves, but although Venezuela has imposing reserves, its production does not go to par due to political blockages and limitations. At its peak, they produced three million barrels per day. Today they are the twenty -first producing country with 770,000 barrels per day, behind countries with much lower reserves. One of the wells that China is operating China wants to sign up for the list. At the top, the United States, Saudi Russia and Arabia lead the ranking with 8-12 million barrels per day, but although it does not appear in the graph, there is a country that we should take into account: China. Currently, the Asian giant is the Greater World Oil Importerbut in recent years it has increased significantly Its internal production. Thanks to pharaonic works that include some of the deepest wells carried out by humanityin March of this year they got a record of 4.6 million barrels per day. It was the highest point in the history of the country and, although inequality was very high between production and import, apart from continuing excavating they have been made with record reserves in recent years. It is calculated that They tell With more than 1,180 million stored barrels that would shield them, for a while, of any cutting in the supply. The United States, for example, also has a reserve to respond to crises and the sources vary, but the updated figures point to about 400 million barrels. Pure and hard strategy. Beyond the obvious importance of oil on the economy of a producing country, we have the Strategic Facet. As oil continues moving the worldhaving large reservations allows countries to exercise their influence on international politics. As? Coordinating production to influence prices and economyFor example. And we have also seen how oil has been a protagonist agent in armed conflicts. The invasion of Iraq, for example, or the war between Iran and Israel that, without affecting the flow of crude oil, already caused that The market will panic. Images | Visual Capitalist, CNPC In Xataka | The oil market faces a triple coup and IEA is clear why: Iran, Opep+ and electric vehicles

With the first 100% successful launch of Ariane 6, Europe has started leaving the sad well in which I was in which

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Europe already has the two rockets totally operational They put it in a mess: Vega-C and Ariane 6. The European Space Agency (ESA) breathes relieved, but knows that it is not the same to recover autonomous access to space as to compete with Spacex. For that, more investment in private companies will need. The Ariane 6 rocket has flown, now, without mishaps of any kind The rocket for heavy loads ariane 6 of that He has successfully completed his first commercial flight. After numerous delays, the rocket took off in its Ariane 62 configuration (with two lateral propellers and a short cofa) from the always cloudy European space port in the French Guiana. The launch operated by Arianespace was impeccable, both in rocket yield as in live broadcastwhich had four cameras aboard the pitcher. In this second launch, the first commercial and the first totally successful, the Ariane 6 put in Heliosíncrona orbit the spy cso-3 satellite of the armed forces of France. He did 1 hour and 6 minutes after takeoff, 800 km altitude. The CSO-3 satellite has thus joined its precursors CSO-1 and CSO-2, launched in 2018 and 2020 by Soyuz rockets, before the EU forbade collaboration with Russia. The new French recognition network offers optical and infrared images with unprecedented quality for France and its allies. The Ariane 6 rocket, developed by Arianegroup for ESA, is therefore operational. His first launch, held in July 2024 (one year after Ariane 5 flew for the last time) was successful in the takeoff and deployment of several satellites, but failed to exorbitar, leaving two reentry capsules strained in orbit that were part of the mission. A temperature parameter out of the rank caused the rocket software to prevent the third ignition of the Vinci engine of the upper stage. A software update was enough to face the second launch, although it has occurred almost eight months after Ariane 6 debut. Europe begins to recover its sovereignty in space ESA already sees light at the end of the tunnel. The European launch crisis caused by the delays of the Ariane 6 heavy rocket and the incidents of the Vega-C light rocket reduced the number of annual flights to only threethe minimum of 15 years. Strategic missions such as Galileo (European GPS) or Spanish military satellite spainsat ng 1 They had to be thrown by Spacex. By 2025, ESA plans to make 10 space releases, six from Ariane 6 (including the first Ariane 64 with four propellers) and four vega-c. It is far behind the nearly 200 launches scheduled by the United States (mainly, Spacex Starlink missions), but it is a number that is closer to the goal of recovering autonomous access to space, something that becomes special importance with the Europe rearme announced by Ursula von der Leyen. Josef Aschbacher, general director of ESA, said that the United States It allocates five times more public money to the space sector that Europe, which explains the gap in the rhythm of launches and the manufacture of satellites. The question is whether Ariane 6 and Vega-C, which are not reusable rockets, can even compete with Spacex’s falcon. And as Aschbacher knows no, that is tending all kinds of contracts for a new generation of reusable European pitchers, in which companies such as the Spanish PLD Space participate. Image | Arianegroup In Xataka | China and Europe are investing a fortune in their own Starlink: the US advantage is too big to ignore it

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