thinks

The flying experience has changed. Airbus thinks it can take it much further with a double bed, bathroom and bar

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For years, flying has been an experience increasingly split in two. While the economy class has been adjusting space and services, the highest part of the plane has become the terrain where airlines and manufacturers try to mark distances with increasingly exclusive proposals. What we have seen now fits squarely into that logic: Airbus has taken advantage of the Aircraft Interiors Expo 2026 to show how far you think you can stretch that idea in your A350-1000the model with which he wants to take first class to an even more ambitious level. The European manufacturer has set the direction of its cabins for the coming years quite clearly. In the center there is a “Master Suite” for two passengers, located between the two corridors at the front and designed as the most exclusive space of the entire complex. According to Airbus, there would be access to its own bathroom, a changing area, a bar and a double bed. A series of elements and comforts of a much higher level. Of course, it is important not to lose sight of the important nuance: we are not facing an already closed cabin for an airline, but rather a concept whose development has just started. How Airbus wants to remake the A350-1000 first class To make room for this new first class, Airbus has not limited itself to drawing a larger suite within the already existing space. What it proposes is a deeper reorganization of the area located between doors 1 and 2, making the most of that part of the plane to dedicate more surface area for higher category passengers. According to the company, elements that previously took up space in the main cabin, such as sinks or storage areas, would move to a new central module placed just behind door 1, in front of the cockpit door. Access to the crew rest area would also be moved there, with the idea of ​​reducing inconvenience and gaining privacy. That Airbus has chosen this model to develop the idea does not seem coincidental. We are talking about the largest member of the A350 family, a version that, according to the company itself, is seven meters longer than the -900 variant and can accommodate up to 40 more passengers. In its commercial sheet, Airbus presents it as its reference model in the large fuselage market and ensures that it offers 40% more surface area for premium category seats. Added to this is another argument that fits well with this proposal: high ceilings, a spacious cabin and interior proportions with which the manufacturer believes it can further reinforce the feeling of space. Behind all this there is also a fairly clear commercial reading. Airbus maintains that it already there are 10 clients that have chosen first class cabins for their A350s and adds that around five airlines are currently in the customization phase, so they could study incorporating parts of this concept. So everything seems to indicate that the calendar is moving in the long term: Airbus places the possible entry into service of the first elements around 2030. What Airbus wanted to do here goes beyond showing a striking suite or a conceptual fair image. It also lets us see where the company believes the most exclusive part of the cabin can evolve, with more space, more privacy and an even more differentiated service offering. Still, between that vision and a plane operating passengers there is quite a way to go. For now we are dealing with an idea in development, but an idea that helps understand how Airbus wants to strengthen its more premium proposal in the coming years. Images | Airbus In Xataka | Commercial aviation is based on very old aircraft. The Iran war is going to make it even worse

Europe thinks that it is the one who wants to become independent from US technology companies. It’s actually the other way around.

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We are going to have to make a dictionary when we talk about artificial intelligence. Yes generative artificial intelligence, general artificial intelligence, AI agents and Google has its Personal Intelligence. This service has been available for a few months in the United States and is now expanding to the rest of the world for users of the company’s suite. To all? Well no, not everyone, and Google leaves out the entire European economic area, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. What does this do. First of all, Gemini Personal Intelligence is like an ‘entity’ that has an eye on all the Google applications that we use with our account. It is a connection between the entire ecosystem which has access to all the information from YouTube, Maps, Calendar, Drive, Gmail, Docs or Photos. The idea is that they know everything about you to help you with day-to-day requests. Google itself gives an example: Since I connected my apps through Personal Intelligence, my daily life has become easier. For example, two weeks ago we needed new tires for our 2019 Honda minivan. While waiting at the store, I realized I didn’t know the size of the tires, so I asked Gemini. Nowadays, any chatbot can find these tire specifications, but Gemini went further. He suggested two options: one for daily driving and one for all-weather conditions, with references to our family road trips to Oklahoma that I found on Google Photos. Then, he neatly extracted the ratings and prices of each one. When I got to the counter, they asked me for my license plate. Instead of looking for it or losing my spot in line to get back to the parking lot, I asked Gemini. It extracted the seven-digit number from an image in Photos and also helped me identify the specific model of the truck by searching Gmail. Just like that, we had everything ready. Everyone can appreciate how useful this is, of course. Because, furthermore, it is not free: you need to be on an AI Pro or Ultra payment plan. Europe, you are excluded, beautiful. But if you think that life can be solved for you like the person in the example and you live in Europe, you should know that you cannot access it. Google has made it very clear that the feature is not available in the European Union, the United Kingdom and Switzerland due to the strict privacy regulations that are found within the General Data Protection Regulation. It is one more service that does not reach European users due to these stricter privacy conditions and, in addition, they have not detailed any deadline so that we Europeans know more or less when it will be available in the region. If you read us from a Latin American country and you are interested in this software, good news, is available. Privacy. Regarding privacy, being something that we should take very seriously, it is curious how in the age of AI that privacy is eroded because the models have more and more data. We give a lot to this software and we don’t really know who’s watchingand Google wanted comment What is the privacy approach of your Personal Intelligence. According to the company, we can link and unlink applications from the ecosystem according to our preferences, but once we connect Photos, for example, you will have access to everything. They say that the photos in the gallery will not be used to train the model (here it is extremely sensitive because we each have personal photos on our mobile) and they take “measures to filter or hide personal data from the conversation.” They point out that “we do not train our systems to learn your license plate number, but to understand that, when you ask for it, we can find it.” Regarding health, a sensitive topic that is topical due to what El Salvador has done, they assure that “Gemini tries to avoid making proactive assumptions about sensitive data such as your health, although it will analyze that data if you ask it.” ¿Pressure? In any case, and what Google’s Personal Intelligence has to offer draws more or less attention, it is evident that carrying out a global launch of this magnitude without waiting to ‘sort the papers’ to launch it in Europe is also a declaration of intent. Europe is at a time when it is seeking its military sovereignty, aerospace and technologicalareas in which depends largely on the United States. We are building our infrastructure and systems, and not launching something like this in Europe is one more way of putting pressure on the organizations that, very actively, sand have positioned about the treatment of our data by these large companies. Image | Google (edited) In Xataka | Sometimes erotic AIs are AIs. And sometimes, they are a man from Kenya who charges two dollars an hour

If anyone thinks that gambling is a modern vice, we just found a game of chance that is more than 12,000 years old

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We are so used to locating the origins of gambling in the civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean (in the Babylonian temples, on the Roman gaming tables) that it is difficult to imagine another scenario. But a study published this month in the magazine ‘American Antiquity‘ changes everything: the oldest known dice do not come from the Old World, but from the western plains of North America, and are at least 12,000 years old. They date back to nothing less than the Pleistocene. Old dice. With his study, archaeologist Robert J. Madden has shown that Native Americans made and used dice at least 12,000 years ago, during the last centuries of the Ice Age. That makes them the oldest known games of chance, more than 6,000 years ahead of the earliest documented dice in Europe. What was believed? Mainstream history placed the origin of dice in the complex societies of the Near East and Eastern Europe, approximately 5,500 years ago. Madden’s findings they relocate that starting point to another continent and to another completely different type of society: groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers of the western Great Plains of North America. Neither palaces, nor cities, nor written culture: games of chance in Pleistocene camps. What are these dice like? Prehistoric Native American dice do not look like the cubes we know. They are known as binary lots: flat, two-sided pieces, made of bone or wood, designed to be thrown on a surface. The result depended on how many marked faces were left face up; Players counted points with small rods and whoever reached an agreed upon number first won. More like a coin toss than the six possible outcomes on a die, but just as useful for generating random outcomes. Why was there confusion? The problem was classification. When archaeologists found pieces of this type, they simply labeled them as “game pieces.” There was no systematic criterion to identify them as given. madden corrected that way of seeing it developing a morphological test based on a catalog that the ethnographer Stewart Culin published in 1907, ‘Games of the North American Indians’, where he documented 293 historical sets of indigenous dice from more than 130 towns. With that framework applied to the published archaeological record from across the continent, he identified more than 600 additional dice. Where were they? The oldest dice come from three sites in the Folsom culture: Agate Basin (Wyoming), Lindenmeier (Colorado) and Blackwater Draw (New Mexico). It is believed that these pieces They are between 12,800 and 12,200 years old. Lindenmeier, north of Fort Collins, has 14 different artifacts that meet the criteria, leading some archaeologists to speculate that it was a large seasonal congregation site for dispersed groups. The density of material found there points to something more than a temporary camp. What is most striking is the continuity. These objects appear in deposits from all major periods of North American prehistory, without detectable interruption from the late Pleistocene until after European contact. A 12,000-year-old tradition that still works: Madden himself found tutorials on YouTube where native groups explain how to play versions of the same games from two millennia ago. How to play. Possibly, these dice were used in games that we can connect with what we tell about the patollithe Mesoamerican board game of the Mayans and Aztecs: that was also a game of chance with a deep ritual dimension, found in the archaeological works of the Mayan Train. The social and religious function of the game seems to have been constant in very different pre-Columbian cultures. Madden describes these games as “social technologies of integration”: neutral spaces, governed by shared rules, where groups with little or no prior contact could interact, exchange goods and information, and build alliances. The religious dimension is equally documented. Numerous native oral traditions describe dice as a sacred activity: the gods themselves participate, and in some cosmologies the creation of human beings is the result of a cosmic game. Image | Robert J. Madden

The brain asks for ultra-processed foods when it has nothing to do and science thinks it knows why

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There is a fairly classic scene in the lives of many people: not being hungry but wandering around the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, looking and closing it. Minutes later, this operation is repeated. The final result? End up eating something we probably didn’t needwhich is what can be popularly known as ‘gluttony’, but nutrition science has a more precise term: emotional eating. Investigation. Reference researchers in Spain such as Dolores Corella and Jordi Salas-Salvadó from CIBERobn, have focused on how factors more than calorieslike emotions or genetics, determine our weight. And the conclusion is quite clear: boredom is as real a metabolic risk factor as sugar. The boring brain. When we get boredthe brain detects a stimulation deficit that it tries to compensate with the fastest route to pleasure. And this is where the ultra-processed darlings come in. In this case, science indicates that these foods not only nourish us poorly, but activates dopaminergic reward circuitsin a very similar way to how certain addictive substances do. In this case, we have, first of all, a stimulus that is boredom that causes our mood to drop. Here the brain looks for a quick peak of dopamine and an apple is usually not enough, but rather it looks for fats and refined sugars, since their consumption causes a peak of pleasure followed by a sudden drop. Something that promotes excessive consumption and therefore favors gaining weight. The danger of getting bored. Not having things to do during the day or even at night, the truth is that it can be the ideal seed for consuming more calories than necessary. And above all, boredom tends to attack more strongly at the end of the day, when obligations end and this is where “boredom eating” collides head-on with chrononutrition. Researcher Marta Garaulet has shown that the moment in which we eat is critical, since snacking out of boredom after 9:00 p.m. is metabolically disastrous, especially in Spain. Why Spain. We Spaniards have a much worse time eating for boredom beyond 9 at night due to a genetic load in half of the population related to the MTNR1B gene. In this case, whoever has this gene and eats late, the consequences are quite clear: the body secretes less insulin and tolerates the glucose that we are introducing less well. The result here is that what is eaten due to nocturnal boredom it makes you fatter and more inflammatory than if you eat during the day, due to the desynchronization of circadian rhythms and the enzymes necessary to process food. How to counter it. If boredom is the trigger for this situation and ultra-processed foods are the gasoline, the solution to break this vicious circle is in PREDIMED studies. In this case, they pointed out that increasing fiber intake through fruits, vegetables and legumes improves glucose regulation. Something that enhances the reduction of glucose drops that can encourage the brain to eat some sugar urgently. In addition to this, the PREDIMED study confirms that the Mediterranean diet Supplemented with extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) or nuts, it reduces anxiety about eating. Unlike ultra-processed foods, which leave you wanting more, a handful of nuts activates long-lasting satiety mechanisms that prevent us from falling into eating a muffin or chocolate ice cream during the night. Routine vs. chaos. Since intermittent fasting lacks solid long-term evidence, experts like Salas-Salvadó suggest focusing on marked routines: bringing forward dinner to extend your overnight fast naturally. Having a fixed schedule reduces moments of “down time” where hunger attacks due to boredom. With all this, what has been achieved is that the brain does not adapt to situations with high levels of dopamine, such as a time of large, very copious late-night dinners. That is why the strategy is not about prohibiting, but about understanding that when you open the refrigerator at eleven at night without hunger, it is not the stomach that speaks but the brain looking for the entertainment it needs. Images | Toby Towfiqu barbhuiya In Xataka | Scientists have found the key to obesity in a protein: mice that do not gain weight even if they consume a fatty diet

The technology industry has been searching for the “next smartphone” for a decade. Now he thinks he found it with AI

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In the last decade, wearables have become intrinsically associated with health care and sports. And although in 2025 we can make the same association, there are a growing number of companies and devices that have committed themselves to turning them around to turn wearables into vehicles for AI. The leaders of some of the main big tech companies already They have glimpsed the end of the mobile and between the options (in practice, still very green) these wearables with AI appear, which today are more of a complement. In search of the new iPhone. In any case, the industry has been looking for mass hardware after the smartphone for almost two decades. The glasses seem to start by advantage, but the initiatives are many and very varied. In any case, it is no longer just about becoming the winning format, it is about materializing a device that covers needs yet to be defined and where the smartphone has set a very high ceiling. In fact, smartwatches have not come close to overshadowing it. AI glasses have an advantage. Of course, they are the best positioned. In the past CES 2025 we saw ‘smart’ glasses (although that semantics typical of the era of the failed Google Glass has already been banished in favor of the surname ‘with AI’) even in the soup with the promise of immersive and hands-free experiences, but Meta is the one who has landed and sold its product best. Makes perfect sense: Mark Zuckerberg himself has stated who believes that glasses are the ideal format for AI. And for Meta, AI is his new Multiverse. After all, as we have seen, glasses are a discreet and convenient way towards multimodality: visual, through their lenses; and oral, with its integrated microphones and speakers. But it doesn’t matter if we talk about Meta’s glasses or those of Googlethe new glasses smart They no longer look like a hulk, they are designed to be worn all day and their purpose is to interact with AI. Pendants, pins and everything else. Other gadgets that accompany you throughout the day for constant listening come into this mixed bag: from the Bee AI bracelet to the LimitLess pendants or Friend passing through the ring Stream Ring or the difficult to describe Plaud NotePin: it looks like the capsule of Xiaomi bracelets and as such, it can be worn on the wrist, on the neck and even as a tacky pin. These initiatives have not gone unnoticed by the large companies, which have made a move by opening their portfolio: Bee AI bought Amazon in summer and LimitLess did the same Goal just a few weeks ago. old acquaintances. AI is also being integrated into existing devices: Samsung and Google have put Gemini on their WearOS watches, Garmin has a premium subscription to analysis with AI for its watches, Fitbit is testing an AI trainerthe same thing that Apple does with its Watch or the AI translation on AirPods. Even the rings Oura they have their advisor with AI. Every breath you take…We mentioned above that AI glasses were born to be worn all day, something that can be extrapolated to the bulk of the devices that we have been listing. For AI assistants to work well and offer something extra on the mobile, they need to know a lot about the user and there is no better way to do this than on a wearable that is with you 24/7. Disturbing but true. In this field there are unknowns such as what format will be successful and whether it will be as successful or more successful than the smartphone (even if it is buried), but there are two unquestionable facts: that there is a war to have hegemonic AI among big tech and that the industry has seen wearables as the ideal vehicle to implement it. In Xataka | Pendants, bracelets and “buttons” on the forehead: new AI wearables listen to you (and record) all day In Xataka | The voice recorders seemed dead. AI and new hardware are making them irresistible again Cover | Javier Lacort and Applesfera

Exynos had been the ugly duckling of chips for years. BMW thinks the opposite.

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When choosing a high-end Samsung, the dilemma between betting on the Exynos version or the Qualcomm version has always been clear. In fact, until just a generation ago Samsung reserved its chips Exynos for the “non-Ultra” models, and provided its flagship with Snapdragon Elite on duty. Its chip division has been in crisis for almost a yearbut the latest leaks point to the comeback being close. Meanwhile, the company has a plan to revitalize the income of this business area: bet on the automotive industry. bmw. According to Korean sourcesBMW has chosen the Samsung Exynos Auto V720 to give life to a very important vehicle for the German brand: the next iX3. It will be the first electric car to use this platform. One of the current wars in the automotive sector is precisely to lead in infotainment systems, and there the processor plays a fundamental role. The Exynos Auto V720. This processor will be manufactured in a five nanometer process, and its announcement will be imminent according to the source. It is not the first time that BMW has opted for the Korean company, since flagship vehicles such as those of the Series 7 of the company have been betting on platforms such as the Exynos Auto V920 since 2023. Why is it important. Samsung’s Samsung LSI (Large Scale Integration) division is responsible for the design and development of chips and solutions for semiconductors. It is not only responsible for manufacturing Exynos processors, but also ISOCELL image sensors or the 5G modems themselves. Without a detailed shock plan, the data on the table tells us of estimated losses of 1 trillion won in 2024, a result that was partly due to the inability to integrate the processor Exynos 2500 in the Galaxy S25 series. Beyond smartphones, a crucial division for Samsung, fully entering the automotive world is an important step to clean up its accounts. In fact, Samsung’s move goes beyond simply supplying the Exynos Auto. Recently, Harman (Samsung subsidiary) agreed to purchase ZF Friedrichshafen’s ADAS unit to reinforce its presence in advanced assistance systems (cameras, radars, critical computing, etc.). Interior of the BMW 7 Series The software war. The current war in the automotive world is not about the engine, It’s in the software and the screens. It’s getting to that pointthat manufacturers such as Volkswagen have come to declare that “they are not phones, they are cars”, as an argument to reintroduce the haptic buttons that their customers missed so much. The European Union itself has had to take action on the matter, and the new Euro NCAP will be valued very positively the return of physical buttons. Despite this, screens are here to stay. Image | bmw

The plan has always been to destroy the International Space Station in 2030. Someone thinks we can do something else

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The International Space Station this that falls. It has been orbiting the Earth since 1998 and was completed in 2011. The plan was to retire it in 2024, but the accounts did not work out and, in 2021, the NASA administrator set a definitive date: 2030. The question is whether it will last that long because a few months ago we already said that members of NASA expressed concern about the accumulation of problems technicians who were accelerating the decline of a seriously aging facility. air leaks, cracks in different modulesabsence of spare parts for critical systems and lack of budget to propose a solution It would be assumed that the Different agencies have been putting patches on for years. NASA has already commissioned SpaceX the development of a ship that would tow it to the space graveyard of the Pacific, but… is there no other solution for the 450-ton, $150 billion station? The answer is yes. At least, that’s what Greg Vialle, founder of a startup called Lunexus Space that is committed to recycling the International Space Station, thinks. Turning the International Space Station into a mine In the middle of last year, NASA had clear that he Point Nemoa remote location in the Pacific, 2,700 kilometers from the nearest pile of dirt, would be the station’s cemetery. There was only one thing I could avoid the dismantling: that ROSCOSMOS, the Russian space agency, refused to abandon the ship. Russia soon changed its mind by commenting that its cosmonauts were passing more time repairing equipment than conducting experiments. Come on, no matter how much they wanted to “annoy” NASA at a geopolitically unstable point, it didn’t work out for them. Everything was aimed at the disappearance of the current ISS, but there are those who have something to say. Lunexus Space is a startup focused on the development of industrial infrastructure in low orbit that reuse structures and space junk to facilitate the construction of goods directly in the lower atmosphere. The goal is to develop a kind of circular economy in low orbit by taking advantage of the tons of material already in space, eliminating the need to re-launch them from Earth. In Space Newsthe CEO of the company has developed an article in which he explains his plan to “avoid wasteful expenses.” Vialle affirms that the ISS has 430 tons of high-quality aluminum, titanium and other materials valuable for future space missions. He estimates the value of the material at $1.5 billion, which would be lost to the ocean floor if NASA’s plan goes ahead. And it also points out the almost 1 billion that NASA will spend on the vehicle that tows the station to its resting point. “It is a fiscally irresponsible plan that loses a strategic resource and a golden opportunity.” What he proposes is “a common sense alternative”: converting old infrastructure into raw materials for new construction. Their calculations highlight that launching a kilogram of material into space costs $3,500, but if they take materials from the ISS, the costs would drop entirely. And, faced with the 1,000 million dollars of the plan to sink it, Vialle suggests that Its recycling process could be carried out for about 300 million dollars to which an equivalent government loan would have to be added to launch the necessary infrastructure, appealing to significant savings for taxpayers while preserving valuable resources. American leadership, of course “How can we wait prospect, mine, refine and transport in deep space if we cannot extract the many tons of cataloged and space-grade materials that are already beginning to manage low Earth orbit?” Vialle appeals. But of course, there is a B side to this plan: Strengthen America’s Space Leadership. By receiving the ISS, the CEO believes that the seeds of “a new industry in space led by the United States will be sown, ensuring our economic and strategic leadership over competitors like China.” China too He has been planning his own station for years. And he compares the move to American manufacturing policy to prepare for the Second World War, japanese strategy in the 1970s that established the country as a technological miracle or Taiwan’s position with TSMC and chip manufacturing. His idea is for the United States to invest in resource management technologies in space, something that is taking its first steps and that, if it reaches a solid program, will make “the nation dominate the future of commerce and defense in orbit.” It is evident that Vialle has known what sticks to play in a moment as sensitive as the current one and, although in his letter he urges Congress to influence NASA’s decision to ‘deorbit’ the International Space Station, the space agency has already detailed that, after a session to evaluate the possibility of reusing the main components of the station, they did not receive any proposals of interest from the industry. On the other hand, the European Space Agency already pointed out that recycling in orbit was “a real challenge” and it was not clear whether the resources used to capture and process waste in space would be profitable. Either way, time is of the essence. We will see what happens with the ‘Recycle the ISS’ movement, but there are four years left and, as more and more voices point out, something must be decided because the installation is on its last legs. In Xataka | Decathlon has just made its way beyond sport: it will reach space with a prototype spacesuit for the ESA

The memory of young people is deteriorating at a record pace. Science thinks it knows why

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The memory problems among youth are beginning to be worrying. This is what a new study scientist published in the magazine Neurology and that tries to answer why this happens and above all the reasons that exist for our youth to begin to be in decline in regards to to your memory. The surprise. What can logically be expected is that with the passage of time and accompanying aging, memory problems begin to appear that anticipate dementia. But in the United States, after analyzing millions of people, they have seen that the population most affected by this ‘mental fog’ is precisely the youth. And the result in this case is very important: self-reported cognitive problems among young adults aged 18 to 39 have almost doubled in the last decade. But it is something that we are not understanding. The study. To reach this conclusion, a total of 4.5 million people who responded to the national survey of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) from the CDC and collected between 2013 and 2023. In this way, there was a truly large sample of people to analyze, although limited only to the United States. The results in this case were quite clear: the prevalence of adults reporting a cognitive disability increased from 5.3% in 2013 to 7.4% in 2024. But what was truly interesting came when separating the results by demographics: In young people aged 18 to 39, the rate skyrocketed from 5.1% in 2013 to 9.7% in 2023. This group is, in fact, the driver of the overall increase in the entire population. In those over 70 years of age we saw a decrease in prevalence from 7.3% to 6.6%, when logic tells us that it should increase. Other factors. In order to know the reason for this increase, other factors behind the respondents had to be traced as well. In this case it aimed at the income level: Have low income with less than 35,000 dollars a year left us with a prevalence that increased from 8.8% to 12.6% With high incomes (>$75,000) the rate was much lower, although it also dropped from 1.8% to 3.9%. But the same thing happens with the educational level, where young people who did not even have high school went from 11.1% to 14.3% while those with university degrees increased from 2.1% to 3.6%. And even in order to obtain much more information, they wanted to analyze the prevalence according to the race of young people, where it could also be seen, for example, that Asian adults are the ones who reported the least cognitive problems. Specifically, the data is the following: American Indians/Alaska Natives: continue to have the highest prevalence, rising from 7.5% to 11.2%. Hispanic adults: saw a significant increase from 6.8% to 9.9%. Black adults: The rate rose from 7.3% to 8.2%. White adults: increased from 4.5% to 6.3%. Asian adults: Consistently maintained the lowest rates, going from 3.9% to 4.8%. What is happening? With all the data in hand, it is logical to think about what is happening so that young people increasingly have more cognitive problems. And for researchers there is not only one valid answer, but there are several that are being proposed. The first of them is that there is greater awareness about this problem, and that is why there are more people who raise their hands when presenting it and have no doubts when it comes to seeking help. But there are also other factors such as economic stressors or work problems that seem to be contributing to these trends. All this without forgetting that the greater presence of digital tools may have meant that our memory is not as trained. But all the social and economic factors we face today can also mark an important milestone when it comes to the real burden on our minds. This ‘overload’ can condition the appearance of these highly relevant cognitive symptoms. Images | Eliott Reyna Milad Fakurian In Xataka | Finding a job had always been a good way to escape poverty: in Spain it is no longer true

We have been thinking for years that, after the midlife crisis, old age is synonymous with happiness. This researcher thinks it’s a hoax

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We are happy during adolescence and late youth, but as the years go by we become increasingly sadder, more unhappy, more miserable. At some point, in our late 40s to early 50s, we hit rock bottom. And once there everything tends to improve. “It’s statistics,” we said. What we did not suspect was that the statistics could be ‘trick’. Happiness is U-shaped. “Happiness is a slippery slope until we hit the bottom at some undetermined point in middle age. From there, it climbs back to the levels of youth.” That’s what I said a 2008 study than by Blanchflower and Oswald with data from more than half a million people. Over the following years ( here an example from 2017), studied in some detail how firm this U-shaped trend was; Everything seemed to indicate that this was the case. Until Fabian Kratz and Josef Brüdel from the Ludwig Maximalian University of Munich they realized of a small – possible – problem. Wonkblog A fundamental problem. What if happiness steadily decreases with age and what we see in the aggregate graphs is just a statistical effect? Kratz has been studying for years happiness and, as explained in New Scientistis increasingly convinced that the U simply does not exist. Reviewing the scientific literature, the authors found studies that justify a “stability“in happiness throughout the years; a”increase” or progressive descent; a inverted U; a U normal; and a curve like of waves (promotions, relegations). The problem is “that all studies on age and happiness have incurred biases that have distorted their results.” The other form of happiness. By correcting them, Fabian Kratz and Josef Brüdel came to the conclusion that it is true that happiness shows some stability around the last 50, but it does not rise at any time. Kratz and Brüderl (2021) But why? It is important to keep in mind that this work is essentially methodological. But Kratz’s central idea is that previous studies they didn’t realize that “after a certain age, happiness seems to increase only because unhappy people have already died.” The least happy people they tend to die before, which would cause an overrepresentation of the happiest at older ages (literally, as said our colleague Andrés Mohorte, pure survivor bias). According to this theory, “that old popular story” through which retirement would open a window towards a fuller and more satisfying life is just that, a story: a lie. Or, perhaps, a strategy. Because, in short, “there is a lot of evidence about how humans experience a bassoon psychological in middle age” (Blanchflower and Oswald, 2007; Steptoe, Deaton and Stone, 2015; Graham and Pettinato, 2002), but there is very little about the relationship between that downturn – that unhappiness – and quality of life. As we said quite a few years ago“we’re about to see what happens to the millennials when they become unhappy” and maybe that is behind a part generational battles. But facing the future with the certainty that things are going to improve is not the same as facing the future with the certainty that things are going to get worse. The science of happiness has never been so depressing. Image | Garloncio In Xataka | If the question is “where is the secret to happiness,” an expert believes it is hidden in these 15 statements

Walking cats with belt is in fashion. We have asked an expert in feline behavior and is clear about what he thinks

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If you have Instagram or Tiktok and you like cats, I bet an arm to which videos have come out of Cats that leave the house tied with strap and harness. Some even go on a trip around the world, explore forests, jump, run and They even swimas if they were dogs. How is it possible? Is it advisable to walk the cat? To solve these and other doubts we have spoken with Paula VanascoFeline therapist and president of the association Rescues Borges Blanques. The phenomenon of adventurous cats It began to popularize in the 2010 on Instagram. One of the first was Vladimirthat traveled with its owners in a motorhome Throughout the United States. Also Skattya Maine Coon who was traveling on a sailboat with its owner, who was completely deaf and leaned on the cat to know when ships approached or sent him messages. A search on Tiktok returns to hundreds of results. “Cat harness”, “Adventure Cat”, “Cat Leash Training” … Today, any of these searches in Tiktok or Instagram returns us hundreds of results. Walking to the cat is fashionablebut it is not easy. If not, many of the reels that appear to us would not be tutorials and advice to accustom the cat. And if there is something that has tried to know is that, unlike dogs, cats They don’t like anything to atten. Understanding the nature of cats Paula is part of the team of Feline therapy And in your day to day Treat cats with behavioral problemssome of them caused precisely by these walks. Its positioning is clear: it is not a good idea to put a belt to a cat. “Cats are hypersensitive animals. For them a harness is stressful, so when you put it on the first time, many are thrown to the ground.” In addition, he adds that “to make it safe, it has to go very tight, which still makes it more annoying for the animal.” You have to understand that the nature of cats differs a lot from the dog. They are territorial animals and They feel safe within their territoryit doesn’t matter if that territory is the countryside or a flat in the city. When they leave their comfort zone, they always do it very little by little: “The cat needs to explore the territory at its rhythm, not that you take it wherever you want.” Instead, walking to a dog is more natural because its nature is to move in herd. They are social animals And security is provided by your pack, so when we walk them they feel safe. Image: Amparo Babyloni, Xataka Surely you have seen cats rubbing against the corners of furniture or other objects. It is the way they have of Create a safe space. When they explore, cats are rubbing at different points where They leave pheromones that serve as olfactory references. “This is how they explore the territory feeling safe. If there is any scare they go back, then they leave again … and so on until they have it controlled.” “When we get the cat out of its territory, it adopts a prey behavior. If there is a strong noise you will try to run and if you are tied, you can’t do it.” Nor should we forget that, although cats are predators of small animals, they are also prey to other larger ones. “When we get the cat out of its territory, it adopts a prey behavior. If there is a strong noise you will try to run and if you are tied, you can’t do it,” says Paula. It is not that the cats we see in the Instagram videos are all stressed, Some enjoy those outings, But according to Paula “they are the exception. They are cats that have learned that their environment is that and also have a very balanced character.” Using them since childhood is key because “cats do not develop fear until they have 5 or 6 months,” but insists that this is not a guarantee that it will enjoy it and should never be forced. What we don’t see on Instagram If it is outside its territory and scares, The cat instinct is running and getting safebut what happens if we have it tied? Two things can happen: “Let the harness escape or attack you.” In This video You can see perfectly how the cat tries to flee and when not getting it, he ends up biting its owner. Is what is known as redirected aggressivenessan episode in which the cat has a very violent response, in this case for a clear cause: try to flee and not be able to. If the cat tries to flee being tied, two things can happen: “That the harness escapes or that attacks you” The other scenario is to get rid of the harness and run away (the most common, because we already know that Cats are liquid). Being in a environment“It has no visual or olfactory references and there are not a few cases of cats that end up being lost.” If it is also in the city, the risk that a car is hit or attack a dog is very high. There are people who opt for Take the cat inside a backpack type carrier and walk it in this way. Here it is much more difficult for the cat to flee, but Paula does not recommend it either: “I had a case of a cat that took him inside a backpack. The cat did not show the stress at the time, but when he got home he became aggressive. They were very frustrated to be locked up.” Another problem is that many people who get their cats abroad do not know how to understand The language of cats. “That a cat is still does not mean that it is calm.” In other words, it is not necessary to go crazy like that of the video so that it is assuming stress. Cats … Read more

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