simpler

No drones, no snipers. Wild boar hunters in Barcelona have a simpler natural remedy: a homemade recipe

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In 2022, a wild boar broke in on a terrace in Cadaqués and took several bags of food in front of dozens of tourists who recorded it with their cell phones while the animal walked between tables as if it had been living there for years. For many residents it was the definitive confirmation that wild boars were no longer occasionally entering the cities: they were beginning to behave like any other inhabitant. Barcelona and the impossible war. It we count a few days ago. Barcelona has been trying for years to contain the expansion of wild boars with health campaigns, population controls, forest surveillance and increasingly sophisticated protocols. However, the animals they keep moving forward street by street from Collserola to the urban heart of the city. The last episode has been especially symbolic: a specimen appeared calmly rummaging through garbage containers on Casanova Street, crossing the street for the first time. psychological frontier of the Gran Via and approaching the Raval. The image perfectly summarizes the underlying problem. While administrations and technicians deploy complex devices to control African swine fever and empty entire forest areas, wild boars continue to enter Barcelona attracted by something much more basic: easy food, accumulated garbage and urban waste converted into a permanent night buffet. The city as a new wild ecosystem. He Eixample case It reflects the extent to which the wild boar has stopped behaving like a strictly forest animal. Neighbors in the area had been reporting saturated containers for weeks, leftover food scattered on the street and a constant accumulation of dirt that attracted rats and other pests. The wild boar simply ended up occupying the last step of that urban food chain. The paradox is that, despite the thousands of copies captured and slaughtered around Collserola to contain swine feverthe city continues to offer exactly what these animals need to lose their fear of the human environment: easy access to food and the absence of predators. The result is a species increasingly accustomed to traffic, lights and densely populated neighborhoods, capable of crossing half of Barcelona during the early hours of the morning with absolute normality. The real secret remains the smell. The most striking thing is that, while Barcelona deploys health protocols, forest controls and institutional campaigns, many hunters have been using methods for years. much more rudimentary to attract wild boars. He viral success of homemade recipes based on anise, fermented corn, sugary soft drinks or sweet mixtures demonstrates the extent to which the animal’s behavior continues to be guided by extremely simple impulses. The strong smell of anise sprayed on cereal or the acidic aroma of fermentation act like a magnet for wild boars, which quickly locate any easy caloric source. This logic also explains what is happening in Barcelona: in the end, technology matters less than the ability to control access to organic waste. the city can deploy surveillance, sanitary sacrifices and mobility restrictions, but as long as there are points where garbage overflows and waste accumulates, it will continue to offer exactly the same stimulus as those improvised feedlots used in the mountains. Fauna altering a big city. I counted the weekend The World that the expansion of the problem is already beginning to have consequences that go far beyond neighborhood coexistence. The outbreak of African swine fever detected in Catalan wild boars has forced sanitary restrictions to be activated that have even ended up affecting the filming of large international productions. the movie The Last Druidstarring Russell Crowe, had to paralyze part of its production in Sant Cugat due to the limitations imposed in forest areas near the health outbreak. The episode illustrates the extent to which wild boar overpopulation has ceased to be a strictly environmental or agricultural problem and has become in a phenomenon with economic, urban and logistical impact. What began as the occasional presence of animals in the limits of Collserola is even beginning to interfere with industrial and cultural activities linked to the territory. Increasingly difficult coexistence. The big problem for Barcelona is that everything indicates that this situation It’s not temporary. Wild boars adapt extremely quickly to urban environments because they find constant food, less hunting pressure and relatively safe refuges in parks, open fields and peripheral green areas. At the same time, cities generate enormous amounts of accessible waste every night. The combination is explosive: animals increasingly trusting entering neighborhoods densely populated while administrations try to balance health control, animal welfare and citizen security. And there appears the great irony of the entire story. After massive campaigns, forestry devices and complex protocols, the battle against wild boars continues to revolve around something very ancient and elemental: the smell of food. Image | x In Xataka | The technological war that we see in Ukraine has an unexpected replica in Barcelona: this time the enemy is thousands of wild boars In Xataka | Lead has its days numbered in hunting. The problem is that no one really knows how to replace it.

Before Spielberg’s shark arrived, a movie spread panic in Spain with something simpler: staying locked up

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When Antonio Mercero and José Luis Garci traveled to New York in the early 70s, they were climbing the Statue of Liberty when they both decided that José Luis López Vázquez had to star in his next project. Years later, that intuition would end up giving rise to one of the most traumatic images on Spanish television. The real terror is not sharks. Years before Hollywood popularized everyday fear with movies like Jawsa Spanish production of just 35 minutes achieved something even stranger: making thousands of people afraid to enter a telephone booth. The idea was absurdly simple. A man comes in to knock and discovers he can’t get out. Nothing else. But Antonio Mercero immediately understood that there was something deeply disturbing there. It wasn’t just the physical claustrophobia of being trapped inside a glass box. It was the anguish of feeling watched, ignored and finally abandoned throughout the world while everything continues to function normally around. The cabin turned an everyday and seemingly innocent object into one of the most disturbing images on Spanish television. A simple gag. The most fascinating thing is that the film began almost like a joke. Antonio Mercero, José Luis Garci and Horacio Valcárcel initially imagined a comical situation about a man unable to get out of a telephone booth. But Mercero he became obsessed with that image. For years he kept thinking about it until he found the key that transformed the story into something completely different: the protagonist I should never escape. That’s where the real terror appeared. The cabin went from being an absurd sketch to a existential nightmare. Mercero himself understood that the film had to change tone without the viewer realizing it, starting out as an almost friendly comedy of manners and ending up becoming a terrifying descent into something irrational and macabre. In fact, that gender twist continues to be one of the most revolutionary things about the work today. Kafkaesque Madrid. Much of the strength of The Cabin comes from how you use spaces completely normal to make them oppressive. The inner courtyard of Chamberí where the first part takes place functions as a small social laboratory: neighbors watching from balconies, onlookers laughing, police incapable of helping and pedestrians transforming the suffering of others into an improvised spectacle. Mercero obsessively took care of visual details to increase tension. For example, the cabin was painted red because the color generated more nervousnessand was built slightly narrower to enhance the feeling of suffocation by José Luis López Vázquez. The protagonist appeared dressed in dark clothing, “like a fly trapped in a honeycomb,” according to explained the director himself. And then there was the final trip through the peripheral Madrid of the 70s, passing through tunnels, open fields and industrial structures until arriving at the Aldeadávila hydroelectric plant, converted into a kind of mechanical underworld full of corpses trapped in other cabins. Mercero and López during filming López Vázquez and fear. Mercero needed an actor capable of sustaining practically the entire film without dialogue. The story depended on the body expression, the eyes and how the protagonist’s face evolved from initial shame to absolute despair. That’s where José Luis López Vázquez appears, who immediately understood how special the project was and got completely involved in it. The actor even asked roll chronologically to emotionally construct the deterioration of the character. during filming endured extreme heat inside the cabin and physically dangerous scenes suspended over enormous heights while the structure was transported by cranes. All of this was reflected on the screen and it is one of the reasons why the film works, because the viewer physically feel the fear of the character. López Vázquez manages to convey the humiliation of becoming a public spectacle and the horror of understanding that no one is going to save you. Paranoia in Spain. The impact was so great that it bordered on collective psychosis. What’s more, the day after the broadcast, José Luis Garci counted that he saw several people holding the door of the booths with their feet while they called to avoid being locked out. The anecdote was repeated in many Spanish cities. The paranoia reached such a point that Telefónica itself even hired López Vázquez to star in ads intended to reassure the population and convince them that the cabins were safe. The phenomenon is very reminiscent of what Spielberg would achieve two years later with shark: turning something everyday into a permanent source of anxiety. The difference is that Mercero achieved it with something even more banal. There was no need for a monster hidden underwater. A door that didn’t open was enough. More than a horror movie. Part of the greatness of The Cabin is that it continues allowing interpretations more than half a century later. Some saw a review direct to Francoismto the lack of freedom and the feeling of confinement in Spanish society at the time. Others found a reflection on human lack of communication, collective indifference or even death. Mercero always downplayed those readings and said that he was simply interested in telling the story of a trapped man. Be that as it may, that is probably where its strength lies. The movie never fully explains anything. It works like an open parable where each viewer projects their own fears. Maybe that’s why it continues to be so uncomfortable today. Because phone booths disappeared years ago, but the feeling of feeling trapped while the rest of the world watches without doing anything is still completely recognizable. Image | x In Xataka | “Hit me for real”: the story behind Sylvester Stallone and one of the most dangerous scenes in film history In Xataka | The day a man dared to go further than anyone else: a real fight with Bruce Lee where there were no limits

we read increasingly simpler books and it is affecting us

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A study of hundreds of bestsellers from recent years reveals that the sentences of the most popular books have shrunk by almost a third since the 1930s. What was once a paragraph is today a sentence. What was once a phrase is today a tweet. And the effects, according to several researchers and as it could not be otherwise, extend far beyond the literature. Shorter sentences. If you leaf through a hit from the 1930s, it is normal to find sentences of twenty words, sometimes more, with subordinate clauses, with clauses, with ideas that branch out. According to an analysis by The Economist elaborated on hundreds of New York Times bestsellersthe average sentence length of the most popular books has fallen by almost a third since that decade. ‘Harper’s Magazine’ estimates the average per sentence of a bestseller of that time at 22 words; Today it’s around 12. The article gives an example among many others: ‘Modern Painters’ by John Ruskin, number one in sales in its day: its first sentence is a whopping 153 words. Let’s remind Gen-Z that I couldn’t start ‘Wuthering Heights’‘ because of the subtlety of its grammar. Fewer readers. The shortening of sentences occurs while reading declines in almost all indicators. A study from the University of Florida and University College London Based on the activity diaries of more than 236,000 Americans over two decades, it quantifies the decline: the share of adults who read for pleasure daily fell from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023, a reduction of more than 40%. A “sustained and constant” decline of around 3% annually. In United Kingdom the data points in the same direction: 40% of Britons did not read a single book in 2024. The average Briton read three in the entire year. What is striking about the American study is that polarization is also advancing. Those who continue reading spend a little more time than before, 83 to 97 minutes on average per day. The phenomenon is not that everyone reads a little less, but that a minority reads a lot more while the majority has stopped reading completely. Mobile phone as the usual suspect. The most immediate explanation points to smartphones. It is not incorrect, but it is insufficient. ‘The Economist’ recalls that a Benedictine monk from the 4th century already described in his texts how the afternoon sun, the heaviness of lunch and the drowsiness of siesta time made it impossible to keep the book open. The problem of reading concentration predates algorithms and dopamine. What has changed in the modern age is the willingness to read. The crux of the matter. Professor Jonathan Bate, Professor of English Literature at Oxford, warns that losing the ability to read complex prose can also mean losing the ability to “develop complex ideas that allow you to see nuances and hold two contradictory thoughts at the same time.” The Economist uses data on public discourse to reinforce this thesis. An analysis of almost 250 years of US presidential inaugural addresses, applying the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, shows a clear trajectory: George Washington’s speech scored 28.7 points (graduate level); Donald Trump’s, 9.4 (high school). Reading is good. science has been documenting for a long time the cognitive benefits of sustained reading: improved reasoning, concentration, empathy and even reduced risk of mortality with just 30 minutes a day. But those benefits require reading, not planning to read. Reading has historically functioned as one of the few mechanisms of social mobility that does not require elite schools or family capital. Just a book and the desire to open it. The problem that the current data raises (from bestsellers with 10-word sentences to 40% of Britons without reading a book in a year) is that this desire does not have much firm territory on which to settle. Header | Photo of Thought Catalog in Unsplash In Xataka | In Tokyo there is a bookstore with only one book in the catalog. It has been open for ten years and works

The US invaded Venezuela with perfidy. A letter suggests that there is something simpler and more primitive with Greenland: vendetta

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The greenland crisis has ceased to be a diplomatic scuffle and has become an open pulse between Washington and its allies, and that means an accelerated deterioration of trust within NATO. While Denmark has sent more troops to the islanda letter points to an idea that was not in the pools: that the germ of everything comes from a question of revenge. The Atlantic Rift. The positions at the moment are clear: Trump insists that the United States must “acquire” a strategic island rich in minerals, while Denmark and Greenland repeat that not for sale and they warn of a climate in which the threat of force is no longer taboo. For its part, Europe is beginning to speak not only of political indignation but of economic responses and security, because what seemed like a campaign eccentricity is becoming a structural crisis regarding sovereignty, alliances and credibility. Meanwhile, Russia observe with popcorn and from the sidelines how the Western bloc is fracturing from the inside. From perfidy to vendetta. The most disturbing element is not only the objective, but the real motive that Trump has hinted at: if in other recent scenarios Washington was able to resort to perfidy (the engineering of deception, the calculated movement, the operation that is disguised as something else) here something simpler, cruel and primitive appears, the vendetta. We don’t say it, Trump himself has linked his determination not to have received the Nobel Peace Prize in a letter to the Norwegian minister, as if a symbolic humiliation was enough to break the mental brakes and justify him no longer feeling obliged to “think purely about peace.” That emotional turn turns everything in unpredictable: It would no longer be a cold dispute over the Arctic, but a personal reckoning elevated to doctrine, an explosive mix of wounded narcissism and state power that degrades any rational alibi and leaves its allies without stable ground on which to negotiate. The economic threat and the language of blackmail. The escalation takes shape in a pressure scheme that sounds more like an ultimatum than diplomacy between partners: as we counted yesterdayTrump threatens 10% tariffs on Denmark and several European countries, with the promise to raise them to 25% if there is no agreement. Not only that. In parallel, he reserves the “no comment” when asked about the use of forcea silence that functions as a threat in itself, because it allows each gesture to be interpreted as preparatory. Europe, for its part, is beginning to speak of countermeasures and activate pressure instruments commercial, making it clear that he understands the movement as political extortion. In other words, sovereignty becomes a currency, and the economy becomes the mechanism to bend the will of an ally. Nuuk The gesture that turned everything on. counted the financial times A revealing story this morning. Apparently, the spark that lit everything is almost ridiculous because of the size of figures: the dispatch of a British soldier, two Finns and small Danish, French and German detachments arriving for an exercise conceived as a sign of commitment to Arctic security and solidarity with Copenhagen. The European message intended to be reassuringas if to say that the region is not neglected and that the allies take the northern flank seriously, but Trump interpreted as a challenge responding with commercial retaliationas if this symbolic presence were an anti-American provocation. There appeared a central problem of the crisis: what for some is a defensive gesture, for the White House becomes an affront that would confirm its story that Europe stands up to it. The island is militarized. Faced with this aggressive reading, Denmark has upped the ante on the ground with a more visible and politically charged reinforcement. sending more soldiers of combat and the head of the Army himself to Greenland. They add to the approximately 200 troops already deployed between Nuuk and Kangerlussuaq in the framework by Arctic Endurancewhich is also accelerated and intensified precisely by the Trump’s verbal escalationas if the exercise went from routine to warning. In parallel, the images of soldiers patrolling the center of Nuuk and the presence of a Danish warship patrolling the coast They project the feeling that the island has entered a new phase, where normality is militarized without the need for shots. NORAD moves pieces. The TWZ analysts They also emphasized another movement that occurs at the same time. NORAD advertisement sending troops and aircraft to Greenland to support “long-planned” and “routine” activities, stressing that they are not linked to the current crisis. The timing may be real, but the political effect is inseparable from context: In the midst of escalation, any American movement on the island seems like a message, and any explanation sounds like a textbook formula. The “security argument.” As the weeks passed, in addition, the Trump’s strategic pretext It is beginning to sound increasingly hollow, because Europe is trying to cover the same need (reinforcing the Arctic) and yet American pressure does not relax. In fact, for many observersthe European shipment uncovers the real reason, because if the problem was that Greenland was exposed to Russia or China, then a greater allied presence should be the solution, not the trigger. Chagos as ammunition. The Guardian had a few hours ago another way: Trump has reinforced his vision of the world using the case of the Chagos Islands as a moral example in reverse, calling of “great stupidity” for the United Kingdom to cede sovereignty to Mauritius even if it maintains the island of Diego García leased 99 years for the joint base. In his story, that act shows weaknessand that weakness is what China and Russia “only understand” as opportunity, so Greenland “must” be acquired for national security reasons. The logic is simplistic: neither law nor history rules, but force, and what is given by agreement is interpreted as a kind of shameful concession, even if it is an arrangement to sustain a military installation. Meanwhile, in Greenland. dSince the beginning of the crisis, … Read more

Ukrainian troops need something much simpler and more urgent than Tomahawks missiles: cheap cars

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The month of October began with a trip from Ukraine to the United States and a very specific goal: Tomahawks. The request was as simple as it was dangerous: kyiv requested Washington’s long-range missile to counter Moscow’s attacks. The problem was that this implied crossing a red line that could raise the Russian war escalation. In the end there will be no Tomahawksat least for now, and the truth is that the Ukrainian army has other priorities right now. The visible and the decisive. He told in an extensive report the kyiv Independent that, in Western public debate, the war is projected around long range missileslegislative packages and iconic systemsbut at the level where the war decides the pace (the axes of infiltration, fine logistics and human replenishment) Ukraine is losing because of elementary things. Namely: cars that last only two weeks, drones that are lost faster than they are replaced, and units that are emptied of men before they are emptied of ammunition. In that tactical layer, the tomahawk It does not resolve that a company that must simultaneously transport personnel, food and ammunition has only one vehicle and must choose what to sacrifice each day. The priority: cars. The anecdote of the recruit Ihor in the middle summarized The pattern: three consecutive FPVs against the same vehicle until it is immobilized. The average life of a car in the front is about a monthsometimes two weeks, and each destruction not only takes away mobility but also room for maneuver: without redundancy, each rotation forces us to stretch positions and that exhausts men faster than the ammunition itself. That’s why what they ask they are carsas cheap as possible, but that work. Hence the heavy armor are not a solution (They become priority targets and are less agile than, for example, an old car that accelerates and disappears). In short, what is needed is not weight but number to absorb losses without collapsing the logistics cycle. Drones and sensors. Ukraine uses the order of 9,000 drones a daywith a devastating impact at low cost, but also loses at an industrial rate by electronic warfare and operational consumption. Without enough reconnaissance drones, the “line of sight” contracts to five kilometers and they are left blind to disrupting Russian flows. Some units have a surplus, but others lack the basics: the deficit is not only volume but of distributionand the structural deficiency is not being absorbed by the State but by decreasing donations and the pockets of the troops. Without spare part. The biggest deficiency is, of course, human: hardened brigades that are not refilled, rotations that do not rotate, training centers without means that even train with stones instead of real grenades. Mobilization is politically taboo. The national media recalled that 30% of those mobilized He is not fit and part of the rest are returns from absentees. Thus, even when there is a drone and platform, the pilot is missing. Russia, on the other hand, replenishes its human mass every month. Ukraine stretches the same bodies more weeks under greater drone saturation, and structural fatigue is cumulative and irreversible. System fails. If you also want, the photograph does not describe an army without technology but rather a system with “holes” in its redundancy layer: where there should be five vehicles there is oneand where there should be ten drones per section there is one too, and where there should be a wave of trained reserves arrives a tiny fraction. Plus: where the same men should be relieved every certain cycle, they are kept for months due to lack of substitutes. That is the plane where continuity is resolved: without those cars that are requested, without density of eyes in the air and without competent human replenishment, each meter becomes more expensive than each missile. Trivial lack. It ended media report emphasizing an idea. It is not that the Tomahawk don’t matter (they matter for the purposes of depth and possible future negotiation), is that its strategic effect is diluted if the lower network that supports the line is detached due to cheap shortcomings. Victory today is less like who introduces a miraculous system first than who can continue to move people, food, ammunition and sensors until the last kilometer without breaking the human machine that executes it. Therefore, for those in the trenches, the priority is not the long-range missile that will appear on the front page of all the media, but rather the unglamorous resources that keep alive the ability to continue fighting the next day. Starting with a car that simply works. Image | Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Pexels In Xataka | Russia’s biggest threat in Ukraine is not a drone or a missile. It is a film agency with 30 secret floors In Xataka | There is something more disturbing than “a Chernobyl”: it is a flying Chernobyl, it is in the hands of Russia and it is already testing it

Statistics tell us that we read more than before. The problem is that books are much simpler than a few years ago

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It is not the same to read much than reading well, just as not all books are the same. Some of these conclusions can be taken from a series of recently published statistics and that analyze reading habits both in the United States and Spain. Interestingly, trends in Spain seem to contradict those of the rest of the world, but … is positive news? Global descent. Antonio Ortiz told In his Newsletter ‘Causes and Azares’ that there has been a global decrease in the Reading habits. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US, the time dedicated to reading for pleasure fell 23 minutes in 2003 to 15 minutes in 2018, 40%, and the trend continued to reduce up to only 16% of the population that reads daily in 2023, as explained by the New York Times in Spanish. In the United Kingdom, the National Literacy Trust He found that in 2023 only 47% of adolescents said they regularly read for enjoyment, lowering 60% in 2005. The Iberian contrast. In Spain the data are more positive: the 2024 reading habits of the Ministry of Culture of Spain It indicates that 65.5% of readers do so by leisure, which represents the highest percentage in historical series. And 70.3% read books in general. In addition, for age stripes, 14 to 24 years represents the greatest readers (82.1%), while the indices fall in over 55 years, indicating that a habit of reading in young people who will give a more reader adult population is being found. Does that perspective make sense, are hopeful data for reading in Spain? Reasons to doubt. These data can be inflated by social bias: when responding to surveys, people tend to overreport Activities considered “educated” how to readand surpassed those perceived as “banal”, such as watching television and spending time with the mobile. And why do we doubt? Because the social prestige of reading is still in force (as reflected The controversy with María Pombo), and recent measurements, such as Eurobarometer 2025They talk that Spain is one of the European countries where more people link reading with being “more cultured and intelligent”, which probably explains some inflation in the answers. Shorter phrases, simpler readings. For example, as Ortiz also points out, ‘The Economist’ has detected that the vocabulary and grammatical structure of the Best-Sellers They have been simplified between the thirties and today: The phrases are 30% shorter due to the least amount of subordinate sentences. And there are more: academic investigations such as the COH-Metrix Project of the University of Memphis have measured that the average readability of the current best-seller equals the level High School Junior (16-17 years), while in the sixties and seventies it was closer to the initial university level (COH-Metrix). On the school level, data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that the active vocabulary of written adolescents has been reduced compared to decades ago. And, finally, essays like ‘Reader, eat home’ Maryanne Wolf warns how fragmented reading in digital media impoverishes the capacity for deep reading. We presume more than we read. If we combine these data with others, which tell us that the UNESCO esteem that only 5% of the population read a book per month or that 40.3% of Spaniards declares never read or almost nevera constant figure in the last decade, we find a certainly contradictory situation. We like to presume that we read, but they are perhaps fattened by our own perception. And in addition, they are readings of a complexity much lower than that of a few decades ago. With readers like that, who needs María Pombo. Header | Clay Banks in Unspash In Xataka | Alatriste’s new book revalidates a throne that remains empty: Pérez-Reverte has created our most popular franchise

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