strange

the strange medieval epidemic that paralyzed Europe for two centuries

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At some point in the late 14th century, Charles VI of France stopped moving. Not because of paralysis or fear of his enemies, but because he was convinced that his body was made of glass, and that any touch could shatter it. It was not an isolated case. Those affected by this collective delusion believed that all or part of their body was made of glass. The phenomenon has its own name in the history of psychiatry: the crystal delirium. And his story says disturbing things about how the sick mind always speaks the language of its time. Charles VI, nicknamed El Loco for whatever he may be Charles VI inherited the French throne in 1380, aged eleven. When he turned twenty, he removed his corrupt uncles from power and restored stability to the kingdom’s finances. The people called him le Bien-Aiméthe Beloved. Twelve years later, his definitive nickname would be different: le Fou, the Fool. In August 1392, during a military campaign towards Brittany, the king (23 years old at the time) was riding through the forest of Le Mans when a page dropped a spear. The metallic roar was enough to trigger a violent crisis: Carlos attacked his own knights and killed four before being subdued. It was the first of dozens of episodes that would accompany him until his death in 1422. Pope Pius II wrote that there were times when Carlos believed he was made of glassand that was why he tried to protect himself in multiple ways to avoid breaking, going so far as to have iron rods sewn into his clothes. Something else happened shortly after the onset of the crystalline delirium. In January 1393, the king and several nobles attended a party disguised as “wild men,” wearing linen suits covered in pitch and branches. An errant spark ignited a costume and the fire spread among the men. Only the king and another companion escaped alive, in an event that inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write his macabre story ‘Hop-Frog’. The event went down in history as the Bal des Ardentsthe Dance of the Burning Men. Whether or not that trauma accelerated his mental deterioration is something that historians still debate. When his crises took hold of him, Carlos became a different man: He could sit still for hours and, if he moved, he did so with extreme caution. This had a tremendous political cost: the monarch instability It weakened the French court and allowed rival factions to vie for power, exacerbating the challenges France faced in the midst of the Hundred Years’ War with England. In 1415 his troops were crushed at Agincourt, and in 1420 he signed the Treaty of Troyes, by which he disinherited his own son. The crystal generation Charles VI was, according to historian Gill Speak probably the first documented case of someone believing their entire body was made of glass. But he was far from the only one. The first medical text that records delirium as a recognizable condition dates from 1561, work of the Dutch doctor Levinus Lemnius. The phenomenon belonged to a broader category called “scholar’s melancholy”, an ailment that mainly affected men of letters and nobles from the 15th to 17th centuries. The documented cases are as extravagant as they are revealing. A man was convinced that his buttocks were made of glass and that sitting down would make them burst, so he avoided leaving the house in case a glazier tried to melt it to turn it into a window. Another traveled to Murano, the Italian island famous for its glass, with the intention of throwing himself into a furnace and being transformed into a glass. Engraving of ‘The Stained Glass Licensed’ A third nobleman (always unemployed people, the core issue of the topic) believed he was a glass vessel and spent the day lying on a bed of straw. His doctor ordered the bed to be set on fire with the door closed: when the nobleman pounded on the door asking for help, the doctor asked why it had not shattered with so much fuss. The cure was brutal but, apparently, effective. Transparent glass was not, in the 15th century, an everyday occurrence. It was in that century when the Venetian glassmaker Angelo Barovier invented the cristalloa clear, colorless glass that was extraordinarily rare and was seen by many as something almost magical. Before this innovation, neuroses were different: men who believed they were made of clay and later, in the 19th century, people who believed they were made of cement. The content of delusions reflects the culture of each moment: glass was a new material and therefore became the object of delusions. Glass, specifically, offered transparency: being made of glass meant being precious and fragile, a form of grandeur and isolation at the same time. Miguel de Cervantes published ‘El licensed Vidriera’, one of his ‘Exemplary Novels’, in 1613. The protagonist, Tomás Rodaja, is a brilliant and poor student who, after ingesting a love potion, is convinced that his body is made of glass due to the delicacy and subtlety of the material, with an admirable and delirious internal logic. It is a clear sign that delirium has its corresponding literature at the time: Robert Burton cataloged the phenomenon in ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ (1621) as a symptom of melancholy, and Descartes, in his ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’ (1641), used the “glass man” as an example of madness to distinguish his own philosophical doubts from the delusions of a sick brain. In Xataka | The Middle Ages have a reputation for being a dark period. Until you discover the names they had for their pets

60 years ago, NASA took a look at the Sahara from space and found a very strange “perfect eye”

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Although we tend to think that the unknown is in space and we focus our exploration on what is outside the Earth, our planet continues to surprise us: from the 50,000 volcanoes hidden in the seabed to shapes and constructions that seem too curious to have appeared out of nowhere… especially when we see them from space. It is the case of Great Dam of Zimbabwe (which by the way, is not a dam). We are not leaving the African continent because there is another scar of land with a shape so precise that it is disconcerting. It can’t be seen from the ground, but as you gain height it can be seen better. However, it is from space where it is best appreciated, as NASA has already photographed. There it is simply shocking: it is the inexplicable eye of the Sahara. It is a kind of giant eye that looks at the sky engraved in the rock of the Sahara, it is actually called Richat structure. As says French astronaut Thomas Pesquetalmost all astronauts have taken a photo of it from space simply because it can’t be missed. The Britannica Encyclopedia assures that World War II pilots used it as a reference point. Tap to go to the post After all, they are almost 50 kilometers in diameter. To get an idea, if we moved it to Madrid, it would cover the entire city and reach surrounding municipalities. However, it is in Mauritania, at the western end of the Sahara. More specifically, it sits on the Adrar plateau, on the northwestern edge of the Taoudenni basin, about 500 meters above sea level and in an inhospitable area. As a curiosity, the closest town is Ouadane, it is about 17 kilometers from the edge of the structure and it is not just any city: it was founded in 1147 by the Idalwa el Hadj Berber tribe and its old part has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. The first time we “discovered” it (that is to say, because it was already there) was in the 1930s and 1940s and the person who studied it in depth at that time was the French geographer Jacques Richard-Molard. Later, astronauts James McDivitt and Ed White, aboard the Gemini IV mission, were the first to photograph it from space in 1965. However, the image that illustrates the cover was taken on July 10, 2020 by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station, during the Expedition 63 mission, with a Nikon D5 camera with a 50 millimeter lens. Richat’s structure from the inside. Clemens Schmillen What is the Richard Structure and how was it formed? From that orbital height the image shows something that would be impossible to capture from the ground: a series of perfect concentric rings, like the waves left by a stone when it falls into water, but petrified in the desert. The tones of that figure range from ocher to bluish gray, from almost pristine white to rusty red. Each color is a different rock and belongs to a different era. Surrounding the structure, a sea of ​​dunes: on the right, longitudinal dunes that stretch in long parallel tongues and on the left, transverse dunes, wider and more arched. The set is truly strange to have formed naturally. POT Because it is not a lake that has dried up over time. It is neither a volcano nor the crater of a meteorite (the hypothesis which was most popular initially). It’s something much slower but just as violent: is the result of millions of years of geological forces working silently beneath the planet’s surface. And although the group as such was formed about 100 million years ago, those rocks are up to 2.5 billion years old. Or in other words, the Eye of the Sahara was forged in the Cretaceous, but the rocks belong to the time when there were no animals, only bacteria and algae. The Richat Structure is a deeply eroded geological anticline dome that was formed by a subsurface igneous intrusion, which deformed the overlying sedimentary rock layers, exposing concentric rings with the oldest rocks in the center. In a simplified way, a bubble of rock that never burst: the magma from inside the Earth pushed up the layers of rock above it and cooled without reaching the surface. The passage of time eroded that bubble as if it were an onion, exposing the rings of each layer. The hardest rocks resisted and formed the relief, the soft ones disappeared. Hence the circles. The most recent studies They confirm that there was also hot water circulating inside the structure, which accelerated and modeled the final shape. In Xataka | A 2.5 billion-year-old geological wonder: Zimbabwe’s Great Dam seen by NASA from space In Xataka | This is the impressive interactive map to see the Earth in 4K live from space and monitor satellites Cover | POT

Something strange happens with recreational bluefin tuna fishing in Spain. And yes, ‘rare’ in this headline means (presumably) ‘fraud’

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In Spain, recreational bluefin tuna fishing has many rules and regulations, but there is something essential that starts from the same name: it is (and should be) ‘recreational’. That is, Spanish rules only allow the capture and release of Thunnus thynnus. And yet, the quota of accidental deaths (about 39.9 tons in 2025) is being exhausted very quickly (It lasted three days that same 2025). That is to say, (according to the available data) almost all the tunas that get hooked at the beginning of the closed season end up dead. Spanish fishermen They are unable to return almost any of them alive.. It’s already bad luck. On the other hand, in the United Kingdom, they return up to 99%. It’s not a fish story. Although it may seem like it, this is not about fish, no. It involves mandatory training, required equipment, handling protocols and, above all, effective control. Although it may not seem like it, this is about how it is possible for two European countries to produce such radically different results. And, above all, it is about how we can solve it. Because it is undeniable that we have a problem. It makes no sense that recreational fishing in Spain has become a race to go fishing first. In the last five years, the longest effective fishing season was seven days in 2021. That is to say, it took the fishermen a week to accidentally kill so many tuna that the fishery was over. In 2022 and 2023 there were five days and In the following years, three. 75% of last year’s accidents, by the way, took place in the Valencian Community. With tougher regulations, this does not happen. It is true, however, that the data is somewhat unfair. While Spain has 1,900 special licenses, the United Kingdom has with barely 81 boats with active permits. That, whether we like it or not, simplifies things. But it’s not just a question of size. It is, above all, a question of why The reason the British system is different is also interesting: until a handful of years ago (about 2017) there was no bluefin tuna in its waters. There was nothing to fish. Since then it has started to come back (as It has happened with many other species) and the authorities were able to create a more guaranteeing system without the pressure of an already consolidated industry. Hence a smaller number of boats, the specific training of skippers and, above all, the boats are obliged to have independent observers and cameras to record what happens inside (at least, with new skippers). So there is no hope? Something is being done and it is good to recognize it: this January it came into force a regulation that tries to digitize the capture record and close the “statistical black hole”. The experts are worse They are not very optimistic either.. They fear that in this context (three days of closure and an implicit mortality that is around 100%), it is clear that recreational pressure is only going to complicate things. And, in the end, the solution will only come when the current system bursts at the seams. It is not an anomaly: we are specialists in it. The good news and the bad news are the same: that this is going to happen soon. Image | Aristos Aristidou | Jordan Whitfield In Xataka | Spain is going to continue fishing for eels until we have no more eels to catch

Someone paid for the bus in England with a strange coin in the 50s. It turned out to be a treasure from Cádiz from 2,000 years ago

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In the 1950s, public transportation in the English city of Leeds functioned as that of any other large citywith tickets costing a few pence and collectors checking the change. One day, someone took out a strange coin to pay his ticket and the person responsible for collecting the ticket immediately noticed that it was not a legal British currency. And instead of throwing it away, he decided to keep it. The story. What this cashier who kept the coin did not know, and what it would take his relative seven decades to discover, is that that bus ticket It had been paid with a relic from more than 2,000 years ago and of Spanish origin. From a wooden box to the museum. The story of this peculiar discovery has recently come to light thanks to Leeds Museums and Galleriesnoting that for about 70 years, the coin was forgotten in a small wooden box. The important thing here is that, after the death of James Edwards, who was the one who collected this bus ticket, the piece passed into the hands of his grandson, Peter Edwards, who is now 77 years old. Intrigued by the ancient and worn appearance of the object, Peter decided to investigate its provenance with the help of experts from the University of Leeds, and this is where it was discovered that it was not a piece of scrap metal, but a bronze coin from the 1st century BC. Where it came from. Analysis of the coin revealed that it was not minted in the United Kingdom, but that its origin was thousands of miles away. Specifically in Gadir, present-day Cádiz, in one of the oldest and most prosperous Phoenician settlements in the West. The design of the coin is a classic of Carthaginian and Phoenician-Punic influence in the Iberian Peninsula, with an obverse that shows the profile of Melqart, a deity of the Phoenicians and recognizable for wearing the mythical skin of the Nemean Lion. On its reverse, the coin shows two tunas, the indisputable symbol of the ancient Cádiz fishing industry, accompanied by inscriptions in the Phoenician alphabet. How he came to England. There are many doubts that arise when we talk about a coin from the 1st century BC that ended up being a payment method at a bus station in England. The main hypothesis used by the researchers is the result of the recent historical context, since it is believed that the coin was found in the Mediterranean region by a British soldier during or just after World War II. After taking it to the United Kingdom as a souvenir or amulet, the piece must have ended up mixed with everyday change. From there, it was exchanged as legal tender until it ended up in the box of a curious person who knew that this coin had something unique. Your new home. After unraveling the mystery, Peter Edwards has decided to donate his grandfather’s piece to the local authorities and today, the Gadir coin is part of the Leeds Discovery Centre, an institution that houses thousands of historical coins. And, although it is not a great treasure, it is undoubtedly an artifact that perfectly shows the migrations of everyday objects thousands of years ago. Images | Leeds Museums and Galleries In Xataka | North Africa was off the map in the Bronze Age. A metallic waste has put it at the center of History

Magnetic maps had been marking something strange under Antarctica for centuries. So we’ve started drilling to find it

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For years, magnetic maps of East Antarctica have shown something strange about the region from Princess Elizabeth Land: a large amplitude linear magnetic anomaly under kilometers of ice that runs along the coast parallel to the margin of the continent. It was something that satellites and planes could detect, but no one knew exactly what rock was producing it until now. Discovering it. If the problem is that this anomaly was under a large amount of ice, a team of researchers within the framework of a Russian-Chinese cooperation He has done the most logical thing to find what was happening: start drilling. What they have found after putting a large drill to work is not only a magnetic rock that gave that peculiar pattern, but it is the geological “scar” of an ancient island arc that collided with the continent almost 1,000 years ago, when the supercontinent was forming. Rodinia. A challenge. The study that includes this discovery focuses mainly on the Rayner tectonic province, an area that is geologically critical because it is considered a “mobile belt.” That is, it is a collision zone where ancient blocks of crust were crushed against each other. The problem with Antarctic geology is that almost everything they are interested in is buried, and in this case the team had to cross 541 meters of ice to be able to reach the rock that interested them. What did they find? What they took from the bottom of Antarctica was not common granite as can occur in other areas, but rather the core recovered is a mafic granulite. Something that is very important, since granulites are metamorphic rocks that have suffered infernal temperatures and pressures. After power analyze this rock So interesting, it was seen that this was what was causing the linear anomalies seen from space. And as we say, it is not a very normal stone, since it is rich in ferromagnetic minerals, capable of altering the magnetic field locally. Investigating Rodinia. Once with the sample in hand, the team applied geochemistry techniques and dating to be able to counterbalance these data with everything that was known in previous research. What was seen is that there was a great violent history behind it, since it was known that the rock was originally born as magma about 970 million years ago. From its birth, that rock was pushed into the depths and “cooked.” The data indicate that it was subjected to temperatures between 650 and 790 ºC and pressures equivalent to depths of 15 to 18 kilometers. In this way, the researchers’ conclusion is that this rock was part of a volcanic arc of islands like those of Japan. But the most interesting thing is that this arc was not originally in Antarctica, but was forcibly “stuck” against the ancient continent during a massive collision that gave rise to the formation of Rodinia. The Indian connection. To understand the magnitude of the find, you have to look beyond Antarctica, as geologists have long suspected that the Rayner Province in Antarctica and the Eastern Ghats Province in India They are twins separated at birth. And the new data reinforces this theory, since the conditions of “high temperature” metamorphism found in this drilling are almost identical to those documented in India. This leads us to conclude that 900 million years ago, the east coast of India and this part of Antarctica were joined, forming a huge mountain range created by the collision of tectonic plates. Images | 66 north In Xataka | In the United States there is an incredible river that does what seems impossible: defy the laws of gravity

The US recorded something strange underground and didn’t know what it was. Now he has just accused China of pressing the nuclear button

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During the Cold War, even at times of greatest nuclear tension, Washington and Moscow maintained an unwritten rule: If a test was done, the world had to find out. The explosions were political signals as much as military experiments, designed to be seen, measured and, of course, feared. Therefore, talking about detonations so small that they barely leave a seismic trace and about tests designed not to be detected, generates great concern. The United States just accused China exactly that. An unprecedented accusation. It happened last Friday, when the United States denounced China for having carried out at least a nuclear test with explosive performance in 2020 and to prepare for other low-power ones, a complaint made in Geneva through by Undersecretary Thomas DiNanno just as the classical arms control framework is collapsing after the New START expiration. According to Washington, Beijing would have resorted to decoupling techniques to dampen seismic signals and hide underground detonations, an accusation of enormous political significance because it breaks the previous ambiguity and indicates for the first time a specific date, the June 22, 2020in the midst of debate over whether the United States should recover the option of testing nuclear weapons again. The diffuse limit. The technical and legal background is key to understanding the controversy, since both China and the United States have signed, but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treatyallowing subcritical testing no self-sustaining nuclear reaction but prohibits any explosion with measurable output. Washington maintains that Beijing would have crossed that line with evidence very low powerdifficult to detect, while the body in charge of verification, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, ensures that its network did not detect no event compatible with a nuclear explosion that day, thus underlining the fragility of a control system that never came into full force. Lop Nur, satellites and silent expansion. It we have counted other times. American suspicions are also supported by satellite images and intelligence analysis that point to intense activity in the historic Lop Nur polygonwith new excavations, tunnels and drilling that could be used for both subcritical tests and higher performance detonations. This movement fits with the rapid expansion of the Chinese arsenal, which would already exceed the 600 nuclear warheads and could reach a thousand before 2030reinforcing the perception in Washington that the real strategic challenge is no longer Moscow but a Beijing with the capacity and will to challenge US military primacy. A new nuclear race scenario. The Washington complaint comes accompanied by a clear political message: without binding limits, transparency or verification mechanisms that include China, the system inherited from the Cold War ceases to serve, and the United States reserves the right to adopt “parallel steps”including the resumption of testing, if it considers that other actors are breaking the rules. Beijing strongly rejects accusations, claims its moratorium and its doctrine of no first use, but the simple verbal clash shows a change of phase, one with the risk that the end of New START and mutual distrust open the door to a new nuclear race in which small, almost invisible explosions can have enormous strategic consequences. Image | CCTV In Xataka | Nuclear fusion is humanity’s great utopia in the short term: China has already set a date for it In Xataka | China is building something that looks like an oil well. It is actually a nuclear bunker with a command center

I have tried the Huawei FreeClip 2, headphones with a still strange shape but surprising comfort

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I’ve been using the Huawei FreeClip 2 for a couple of weeks. I put them on out of work obligation, but since then they have spent more time in my ears than I thought they would. That says quite a bit about these headphones. But, as almost always in life, there are asterisks. Huawei FreeClip 2 technical sheet HUAWEI FREECLIP 2 Earphone dimensions and weight 25.4 × 26.7 × 18.8mm 5.1g per earbud DIMENSIONS AND WEIGHT CHARGING CASE 50.0 × 49.6 × 25.0mm 37.8g sound 10.8mm driver NOISE CANCELLATION ANC Cancellation on calls with 3-microphone systems ‘Crystal-clear calls’ system Open-ear transparency mode microphones 3 Clear Voice battery 60 mAh per earbud 537 mAh in charging case USB-C charging 5V 1.5 A Wireless charging up to 3W Theoretical autonomy Up to 9 hours on a single charge Up to 38 hours with the case charged connectivity Bluetooth 6.0 Dual connection Quick pairing on Huawei with EMUI 10.0 or higher compatibility Android 8.0 or higher / iOS 13 or higher (to use the Huawei Audio Connect app) Standard Bluetooth connection without advanced features if the app is not used design Open-ear headset with C-shaped bridge design (arc that surrounds the ear) Bridge material: silicone + shape memory alloy Resistance IP57 (headphones) and IP54 (case) price 199 euros HUAWEI FreeClip 2 Wireless Bluetooth Headphones, Open Earbuds, All Day Comfort, Open-Ear Adaptive Listening, up to 38h Autonomy, iOS and Android, 42 Month Warranty, Black The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Design with personality and that requires personality The design, officially “C cross-bridge design” and unofficially “two pairs of cherries”they no longer feel like as risky a bet as they did in their first version. That first generation It made me ask a legitimate question.: Who is going to want to wear spheres hanging from a cable over their ear? This is how they will see you with them. Image: Xataka. Two and a half years later, after a wave of imitators of the format, it seems that the market has responded: people do want this. I personally still have my reservations: I don’t go through life hiding, but Yes, I like to go unnoticed, and with these headphones in my ears it is complicated. There is some look from someone who wonders if that is an earphone, a modern hearing aid, a piercing or what. Huawei has reduced the weight to 5.1 grams per earbud. The bridge that connects both parts uses liquid silicone with shape memory. And the tension is just right: they don’t press, they don’t slip. I have bent down to pick things up from the floor, I have run with them and I have spent long periods of time cleaning the house with them in my ears. They usually don’t move. But there is some ‘but’: Sometimes, for some reason (I guess we all have different ears), my left one would slip a little and I would have to adjust it. Are you going to wear a hood? Problem. Will you take off your sweatshirt? Problem. These helmets are not designed to stay there with that type of friction. Running with them is acceptable, but it is clearly not their ideal use, and in fact I did not feel like repeating the play. By the way, these headphones, like those of their first generation, They are exactly the same as each other, there is no left and right model.so it doesn’t matter how you put them on or how you store them in the case. That’s where the sound comes out to your ear. Image: Xataka. Open-ear comfort always sounded like an empty promise until now. These headphones fulfill it because they simply disappear. You really forget you’re wearing them. After hours with them I suddenly realized that they are still there. That’s how well they integrate, that’s how little they bother you. The sound, without any big fuss, it fulfills for the day to day, without further ado. The bass has presence thanks to a drivers 10.8 mm double diaphragm. They do not give the punch of closed headphones, but for an open design it seems acceptable to me. Voices over the phone remain clear, but the treble at high volumes sounds a bit sharp. With the ten-band equalizer you can do something. In short: they deliver, but no one expects miracles in detail and dynamics. The application to customize them and access some advanced features. Image: Xataka. What surprised me the most is controlling sound leakage at moderate volumes. Huawei incorporates a system that emits waves in inverted phase to cancel escaping audio. That is, the noise cancellation system, but towards the outside instead of inward. It works reasonably but not impressively. I listen to something with my wife and, if it is not at high volume, she assures me that she does not hear anything. I pass them on to her and confirm it. If I decide to increase the volume to around 80%, there is an obvious leak. I didn’t try the first FreeClipbut I remember seeing some complaints on this point. The problem has not disappeared but I think it has lessened. The battery is one of its strong points. Lasts up to nine hours of continuous real use. Seven or so most of the time. With the case you can chain charges up to about 38 hours in total. Very good figures for those who travel or spend the day working outside. Fast charging is another detail: ten minutes in the socket gives you three hours of autonomy. A unique appearance. Image: Xataka. The touch controls work on the cable that joins both parts. At first I didn’t understand why a natural gesture produced certain behaviors. Then I failed several attempts because I forgot where that wire was exactly. Afterwards you get used to it, but it is not a perfect system, it is not completely reliable because it requires a lot of precision. Swiping your finger on the … Read more

This console that no one knows about and is full of strange games with motion control has sold more than Xbox

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The toy that no one saw coming ended up becoming the unexpected phenomenon of Black Friday 2025. At the end of November and facing the Christmas campaign, a practically unknown console surpassed Xbox in sales and was positioned as the third best-selling hardware in the country, only behind PlayStation 5 and nintendo switch 2. What is it. Is called Nex Playgrounda motion-controlled gaming console made by a Silicon Valley startup that, until recently, was developing artificial intelligence applications to extract basketball scoring statistics. The product didn’t even appear on the industry’s radars until the data analysis firm Circana revealedafter studying console sales figures in recent weeks, which had accumulated 14% of total hardware sales during the most competitive period of the American commercial year. How it works. Its interior houses an 8-core ARM processor, 64 GB of storage and a wide-angle camera that constitutes the heart of the system. The tracking technology detects 18 points on the human body in real time using artificial intelligence algorithms that They process everything locallywithout sending data to the cloud. Some critics they have praised its design and motion tracking capabilities, but questioned the limited library of games and the subscription pricing scheme under which it operates. How much does it cost. Its entry price is $249, and includes five pre-installed games, such as ‘Fruit Ninja’. He full access to the catalog requires purchasing the Play Pass, at $89 annually or $49 quarterly. Still, the total cost of $338 would still be significantly below traditional consoles. The console deliberately aims at an audience other than the gamer traditional: families with young children looking for physical activity disguised as digital entertainment. The sales curve. PlayStation 5 led the market last Black Friday and surrounding dates, with a 47% market share. Switch 2 scored 24%, relegating Xbox to fourth position with less than 14% remaining, according to official data from Circana Retail Tracking Service. Nex’s sales trajectory draws a curve that defies any algorithmic prediction: in 2022, the company barely shipped 5,000 units of its console. The following year, that figure multiplied by thirty to reach 150,000 units. By 2024, the projection points to 600,000 systems sold. The evolution of Nex. The most radical transformation of Nex, the company behind Nex Playground, was not only technological, but also identity-based. The company was born in 2017, founded by a group of former Apple, Google and Facebook engineers led by David Lee. Its first app, ‘HomeCourt’, from July 2018, featured cutting-edge technology applied to a very specific market: basketball players, amateur or not, who wanted to analyze performance metrics. In July 2019 they signed a shareholding with NBA and they started to grow receive recognition. The pandemic and the closure of gyms revealed a fact that had gone unnoticed: people I downloaded the app to access minigames They were practically hidden. In 2021, Nex launched ‘Active Arcade’, a free app with 13 body movement mini-games, and they got more downloads in their first month than ‘HomeCourt’ in its entire history. In December 2023, they launched this Nex Playground, which physically materialized everything they had learned up to that point, seeking a family audience more than expert athletes. Agreements have been signed with brands such as Bluey, Peppa Pig, Barbie and the Ninja Turtles, and project more than $150 million in sales this year. In Xataka | Microsoft is killing Xbox for Excel

the strange inhabitants of the Antarctic abyss

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In the frozen, forgotten depths of the South Atlantic, an international team of scientists has achieved the unexpected: confirming the existence of thirty completely new marine species for science. Among them, a creature stands out that challenges what we know about life in the deep ocean: a spherical sponge covered in hooks, capable of catching its prey with such forceful efficiency that the team itself baptized it as “death ball”. We don’t know everything. With this type of news, science places our feet in reality, since although we have been populating this planet for many years, there are still things that we do not know. An example are these new species that show us that in the depths of the ocean we have a great mystery for humans and that there is still a way to surprise us with our planet. A predator. Most marine sponges They are considered “peaceful”filter feeding and causing no further harm to anyone. But the Chondrocladia sp. novfound more than three kilometers below the surface near Montagu Island, uses microhooks that act as a kind of “deadly Velcro” on crabs and other invertebrates, which it slowly absorbs. Visually, this is a sponge that is actually quite surprising, since it is white and has appendages ending in small balls. In this way, it managed to gain the attention of specialists who have described it as one of the strangest animals of the entire expedition. This is something that breaks with what a traditional sponge does that we all have in mind, which simply feeds on particles and remains in the water itself. But this new species is committed to feeding on other living beings and on those that are above the food chainas the study researchers point out. Technology has been key. Right now, accessing the seabed is a real challenge for humans. One of the great impediments is the great pressure that exists in that environment that becomes really hostile. But thanks to technological advances it has been achieved. This specific investigation has had a underwater robot named SuBastian and high definition cameras. The result of the expedition was thousands of hours of video and nearly 2,000 specimens among the images that had to be analyzed. But the species were not the most notable part of this research, since new hydrothermal springs, coral gardens with volcanic structures were also discovered, and a juvenile colossal squid was recorded for the first time. ​ Not just sponges. It is a fact that on the seabed there are many species that are truly strange, including the so-called ‘death balls’, but they were not alone in this rarity. Other species that surprised the researchers were the following: Zombie worms (Osedax sp.), capable of feeding exclusively on the bone tissue of whales and large vertebrates. ​ Rare mollusks, bivalves and black corals adapted to hydrothermal and volcanic environments.​ A complicated process. Verifying that these findings are true is not something easy to achieve. In this case, the findings were made this August at the University of Magallanes in Chile where specialists from eight countries applied accelerated identification techniques: from in situ imaging to genetic comparison, in a process that seeks to reduce the years of waiting to catalog new species.​ Images | @TuCpakoa In Xataka | We are clogging the ocean’s carbon toilet and it is something that is only going to cause us problems

They have tried to adapt it three times, but it is so strange that they never managed to achieve it

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As often happens periodically, Stephen King is back in fashion. HBO has released, with notable success, a new prequel, It is in series formatfrom ‘It’. And a couple more adaptations coincide on the big screen, ‘Chuck’s life‘ and ‘The long march‘, with a new version of ‘Pursued‘ around the corner. However, there are some of his works that resist adaptation. ‘The eyes of the dragon’ is one of the most unique cases. What is it about? The fantasy ‘The Eyes of the Dragon’ was published in 1984 and is one of his first exceptions to the pure horror universes that King had been generating since ‘Carrie’: a novel that mixes political intrigue, magic and a fictional universe in line with what he would later do, in a much more sophisticated way, in ‘The dark tower‘. The novel tells the story of the fictional kingdom of Delain, where the throne is marked by the struggle between two brothers, Peter and Thomas, and the dark power of the evil wizard Flagg (there is a connection, in fact, with ‘The Dark Tower’). Why is it special? It is a more accessible and less violent fantasy than his other books, designed for a broader audience and with an adventurous approach that distances itself from the crudeness of other books. It is this same uniqueness that has made it difficult to adapt, since it demands a certain visual finish that is not cheap to achieve. The mixture of classic fantasy elements with psychological suspense and King’s own tension also makes it a work that is difficult to pigeonhole. And we already know how little that is liked in Hollywood. First attempt. The first serious attempt to adapt “The Eyes of the Dragon” was through an animated film. It was going to be produced by the French studio WAMC Entertainment, it was announced in the late 90s to be released around the year 2000. It was a very ambitious project in terms of budget, estimated at around 45 million dollars, something unusual for an animated film that was not strictly children’s at the time. However, despite the initial investment and the enthusiasm of the parties involved, the production encountered multiple technical and financial difficulties that ended it: deadlines were extended, costs skyrocketed and the creative vision began to blur. Ultimately, the studio ended up losing the rights. Second attempt. In 2012 it was the turn of Syfy, the cable channel known for adapting with considerable success works that were considered difficult to bring to the general public, such as ‘Dune’. The idea here was to use the miniseries format that had worked for other Stephen King adaptations such as ‘The Tommyknockers’, ‘The Store’, ‘It’ or ‘Apocalypse’. However, the project did not advance much and neither creative teams nor anything that went beyond the pre-production phase were firmly proposed. Third attempt. And Hulu arrived in 2019. There was some commotion, because the showrunner assigned was going to be Seth Grahame-Smith, who as a writer has had a couple of hits like ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ and ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’, but who as a screenwriter has had a somewhat erratic career: he was assigned to sequels to ‘Gremlins’ or ‘Bitelchús’ a decade ago, and more recently he was the first showrunner from the ‘Green Lantern’ series, but ended up leaving the series. And yes, he produced the recent and successful films that adapted ‘It’ by, precisely, Stephen King. The project was compared in tone to a kind of ‘Game of Thrones’ for young people. In September 2020, however, Hulu announced the cancellation of production. The reasons were not entirely clear publicly, but there was talk of budgetary difficulties, strategic changes to the platform and the impact of COVID. We continue waiting. King is so prolific and his name is so attractive to the public that it is not necessary to squeeze every corner of his bibliography in search of material to adapt: ​​there is plenty. ‘The Eyes of the Dragon’, however, is a relatively strange piece in his work: we may see it adapted if at some point that long-awaited definitive version of ‘The Dark Tower’ is created, since both have multiverses that are easy to connect. Until then, we will continue with the raw and bloody visions of the most commercial King. In Xataka | ‘Blackwater’ is one of the publishing events of the moment: economical, best-selling, addictive and serialized

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