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“Cozy games” were going to save us from stress and productivity. They have ended up being true slaves of leisure

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The promise of relaxing and clearing your mind for a few hours is what attracts us of the cozy games: those games that surround us with cute little animals, calm us with a comforting visual palette and give us repetitive and friendly tasks that make us escape from stress. It all seems very bucolic; You inherit a farm, plant flowers, decorate rooms or make dream furniture, with the promise of escaping for a few hours from the daily routine. However, that kind of digital refuge has become the materialization of what you wanted to escape from; in a second Google Calendar full of meetings, in a clone of your 9 to 5 job. And ‘Tiny Bookshop’ reaffirms it to us. Released this summer,’Tiny Bookshop‘ quickly became a hit within the crowded category cozy. The premise is clear: you arrive in a small, charming town with your new traveling bookstore project, which you can decorate with hundreds of possibilities. Through your relationship with the neighbors you manage to sell and recommend a large number of books and, in turn, discover all the secrets of the town. This entire initial point is more than striking for fans of the genre (like yours truly). After more hours than I would like to admit, I realized that I had fallen into the gaming trap again. cozy: dedicate hours and hours at a job. Underneath the adorableness of being able to paint everything in pastel tones or recommend ‘Jane Eyre’ to your clients, in the end you find that you have been searching for objects for a while to increase your sales, check the opening hours for the next day and be on the lookout to replenish the shelves with the right genre. You can call this cozybut I call it emulating another workday; and what’s worse, enjoying it. Recommend all kinds of books at ‘Tiny Bookshop’ At the beginning of the 2010s it became quite fashionable, sponsored by the gurus of Silicon Valleya trend called “gamification of work“Through video game or board game mechanics, missions, points or rewards were added within the daily routine of monotonous work tasks. It is worth asking if the cozy games They have done the opposite path, “trafficking” video games. It is true that, as is often the case with these cozy gamesit’s easy to have fun with them and immerse yourself fully in the story. The interactions are adorable, the characters are cute and they have that air of “afternoon movie” that makes them irresistible; but in the end we cannot ignore the fact that we are replicating tasks that we are supposed to escape from, such as spending hours and hours working. And yes, it all depends on the type of player you are and how you manage the objectives of the game, but the cozy games They rarely have to do with something comfortable or warm. We’ve romanticized even paying a mortgage We are not talking about a specific thing that happens with this new release, completing or performing the daily tasks of this style of games can be the least relaxing thing there is. With the pinnacle of the cozy‘stardew valley‘, the day doesn’t last long between milking the cows, collecting the eggs, making jam and going to the mine to get objects. Furthermore, as if it were real life itself, after all these tasks, you have to put on a good face and interact with your neighbors. Something similar happens with another of the big names in the category such as ‘Animal Crossing‘: you have to give objects to your island companions, cut down trees, plant flowers, fish and be attentive to the day the character who is in charge of buying your collection arrives, in order to get money and pay the mortgage. Yes, a mortgage on a beautiful house, but Tom Nook does not forgive the deadlines. After all this, it would be interesting to check the players’ heart rate when their character goes to sleep after completing all those tasks. Spend the day cutting down trees in ‘Animal Crossing’ By becoming something more mainstream and produce some sales more than substantial Since its rise in the pandemic, there are countless games that adopt the “cozy” to capture the public, even when its dynamics move away from what characterizes the genre. It is worth asking if within this label, the greatest exponents should not be games like ‘Abzu‘ either ‘Unpacking‘, where the “you don’t have to do anything” is strictly followed and the objectives do not have a timer. The contemplative and the mechanical is what is essential in these examples, honoring that part “cozy” of mental refuge with peace, serenity and tasks that are repeated over and over again. In fact, there is even metacriticism within this world. ‘Wanderstop‘, a tea shop simulator created by the visionary mind behind ‘The Stanley Parable‘, Davey Wreden. The game ironizes this fact with a character who invites you to attend to customer requests when it seems right to you, without rushing, because the last thing the protagonist needs is it’s more pressure. It is curious that most games cozy They deal with mental health or anxiety, but some have mechanics in line with this and others offer ones that are radically opposite to the feelings they seek to create in the player. The perversion of language, or the excessive use of a label such as “cozy” to sell more copies ends up producing a very specific reality: something is broken when the first thing that comes to mind when we talk about these comforting games is taking care of a farm or a supermarket, watering parsnips or paying for an extension to your house. Productivity as leisure Beyond the mechanics and quality of each of them, the addiction and fanaticism that they generate for us does nothing more than put ourselves in front of the mirror and expose the reality of our daily life: even with our leisure we want to be productive, … Read more

In 2015, a man found a rock and kept it thinking it had gold. Ten years later he discovered his true value

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Imagine that one day, while searching for precious metals with a metal detector, you come across a strange reddish rock. You immediately think that it may be hiding gold, so you don’t hesitate to take it home. After numerous attempts to pierce it and discover what’s inside, you give up. It is a practically invulnerable rock, at least with everyday tools, such as grinders. This is what we just described This is what happened to David Hole.an Australian who used to explore Maryborough Regional Park with his detecting equipment in search of precious metals. And yes, he found the rock and tried to open it without success. In the end it turned out to be something much more valuable than any precious metal: a celestial body that had probably traveled to our planet from Mars or Jupiter, in other words, a meteorite. The Maryborough Meteorite The cosmic rock was discovered by Hole in 2015, although the man did not know what it was until 2018. Three years after its discovery he decided to take it to the Victoria Museum of his country in search of answers. Geologists Bill Birch and Dermot Henry They immediately suspected that it was a meteorite. And this was actually a surprise since most of the “meteorites” that people bring to the museum are not actually meteorites. The specialists had a peculiar piece measuring 38.5 cm x 14.5 cm x 14.5 cm. The next step was to photograph it and do a thorough analysis that consisted of making a small cut in order to analyze its composition. After analysis, it was confirmed that it was a meteorite with a high percentage of iron, that is, an ordinary H5 chondrite meteorite, which suggests that its formation could have occurred in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The origin of the Maryborough Meteorite, it should be noted, is a hypothesis, as researchers do not know exactly where it came from or when it may have impacted Earth. However, radiocarbon dating indicates that the rock has remained on Earth between 100 and 1,000 yearsalthough it is believed that it could have crossed our atmosphere in a period of time between 1889 and 1951, that is, in a recent period. If we talk about the value of the meteorite compared to gold, it is difficult to establish a comparative framework, but the museum points out that this is much more valuable. They say that finding gold on Australian soil is more common than finding a meteorite of these characteristics. “This is only the 17th meteorite found in Victoria,” they point out, adding that they are important scientific elements that “take us back in time” to study our Solar System. Certainly, meteorites contain valuable information about the formation of elements in the universe and give us a unique opportunity to study them closely to analyze their characteristics and chemical composition. A different type of research, but complementary, to the missions that are driven towards space, such as that of James Webb Space Telescope u the ambitious OSIRIS-REx. Images | Museums Victoria In Xataka | Who or what excavated the ravines on Mars? The answer is even stranger than we always thought In Xataka | There is already speculation even with Martian soil: the largest piece of Mars on Earth has just been sold for 5.3 million dollars

The true size of the microplastics that populate our life, exposed in this disturbing graphic

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We have a gigantic problem with microplastics. These elements seem to permeate everything that surrounds us: From tap water, lettuce either Even in the testicles and in Archaeological elements with centuries behind them. The difficulty in fighting them is that we would have to Put our consumption habits up to deal with this almost invisible enemy. And this graph prepared by Visual Capitalist It allows us to put the size of microplastics in context when comparing them with more everyday elements. In short: small. Talking about microplastics, it really encompasses very diverse particles. The larger ones measure about 5,000 microns, which are five millimeters. They are small, but perfectly identifiable to the naked eye. At the extreme are those who measure a micra, and there the identification is complicated because we are talking about 0.001 millimeters. In the graph (which takes data From agencies such as the EPA, the United States Environmental Protection Agency) we can see an expanded comparison that allows us to put a microplastic of a microphone with a particle of dust, the diameter of a human hair (about 80 microns) or a grain of sand (90 microns). If a hair seems ‘fine’ and is 80 times thicker than one of the smallest microplastics, imagine the size of that particle. The nanoplastic. There is another category: nanoplastic. Here we are talking about those particles that measure less than one micra and that enter a totally different scale. Nanopathic They are the result of the breakage of larger plastics such as food containers, Plastic utensils or any element produced with this material that we use in our day to day. As they break, they become more and smaller pieces that enter the Nanoscale when they measure less than one micra. There they cannot be purchased with more family elements such as a grain of salt, but directly with particles such as the Coronaviruswhich measures between 0.1 and 0.2 microns. Problem. Its dimensions make microplastics be omnipresentbeing the most tiny particles those that are even together with other suspended particles, Like the dust we aspire. The estimate is that an adult can ingest between 39,000 and 52,000 microplastic particles per year only for the diet, but other sources such as that air exposure should be taken into account. And there are more and more studies that alert other sources of microplastics. For example, packages we all use like tuppers. Also those who detach when cutting food into a plastic table are “easy” to identify and even correct with a change in our habits, but there are other microplastics that already They are finding in bottled water. Spain is one of the European countries that More bottled water consumesso throwing accounts seems bleak. Health. For now, more than damage there are worrying indications. Blood microplastics, lungs, placenta, heart, brain and in the aforementioned testicles have been found. There are already associations between these particles and conditions such as conical inflammation, oxidative stress or immunological alterations. It is investigated whether the presence of microplastics in the capillary vessels can increase the risk of heart attack or cardiovascular problems, but something that adds more spicy to the equation is that these nanoplastic could penetrate The biological barriers. As? Crossing cell membranes as a virus would do. And ecosystems. And, obviously, they are particles that are present in virtually any corner. There are agricultural soils, lakes and The oceans. Apart from the conditions similar to the human that could have other organisms, we are what we eat and Animals feed on elements containing microplasticsso those particles then end within us. As we say, there is increasingly a greater concern about the state of microplastics around us, but the big problem is that eliminating them seems especially complicated when, we look where we look, there are microplastics. The positive note? How to change large -scale habits seems complex, there are already those who are investigating Filters to reduce the amount of microplastics That come to us. In addition to much more invasive practices, as filtered with human blood… if you have a money. In Xataka | Japan has found a formula to overcome one of the biggest environmental problems: plastic that falls apart

The true city of the future is not in China, we have it next to the house: Benidorm

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In the province of Alicante between crows of calm waters and white villages such as Altea, that vertical colossus that we all know appears: Benidorm; for many an urban non -non -nonsense; For others, a continuous party on its crowded sea and the streets of English bars just some apples from the beach. I, who am Alicante, know the discussions it causes. We can spend hours regretting your skyline, your infinite blocks or tourist invasion. But, beyond prejudices, Benidorm is moving in an unexpected direction: to become an urban sustainability laboratory, capable of producing its own energy, reusing almost all the water that consumes and serves as a model to other cities that seek to survive the climatic crisis. Short. The BIPV system (photovoltaic integration in buildings) is not new, but the intervention presented by the solar company Earth takes another step. According to your own statementThe company will rehabilitate two residential buildings of 17 plants, Medical Club VI and VII, by integrating 1,200 m² of vertical photovoltaic glass integrated into ventilated facade. Beyond the aesthetic. These facades will act as an energy skin capable of generating about 190,000 kWh per year, which will reduce the energy demand of the houses around 35% and avoid the emission of more than 50 tons of CO₂ per year. “This project shows that energy rehabilitation can go far beyond efficiency: it can transform buildings into active renewable energy generators,” José Carlos Antón saidCEO of Solar Earth. In addition, the ventilated facade system provides thermal and acoustic insulation, reinforcing the comfort of the neighbors. The work has the support of the Ministry of Housing, the Generalitat Valenciana and a financing of 1.9 million euros of the Next Generation EU Plan. A city looking for more. Benidorm has been working on another critical resource for years: The water. In an increasingly frequent drought context in Spain, they place the city among the more efficient in water managementwith uses close to 95% compared to 75% in Spain and the EU and with Reuse for irrigation around 30%. The strategy has been clear: constant infrastructure investment, renewal of obsolete networks, digitalization and control in real time of consumption and leaks. In 2025, the City Council He even presented a regenerated water management plan that will save about 15 % of the drinking water consumed by the city. The first phase is already underway in the Poniente area, where regenerated water will be supplied to more than 6,000 homes. All for a broader strategy. The commitment to solar glass and water reuse is part of a broader strategy of urban sustainability. He Benidorm Plan 360within the tourist sustainability plans at destination, it includes projects such as climatic corridors, sustainable urban drainage systems or the measurement of the water footprint. There are also actions in energy efficiency, such as the renewal of public lighting with LED technology, and sustainable mobility plans. All this has earned Benidorm the recognition of “green pioneer” within the network of smart tourist destinations. A paradigm shift. For years, Benidorm has been a symbol of mass tourism and urban speculation. Under that facade, however, the city has learned to manage its resources as few. He did it with water and now he wants to do it with energy. The true city of the future is not being built in Chinese megalopolis or in the futuristic experiments of the Middle East, but a few kilometers from home, in front of the Mediterranean. And it’s called Benidorm. Image | Freepik and Unspash Xataka | Self -consumption takes another step in China: windows that produce electricity while still being windows

The 1,000 kW chargers of Byd will be a reality in Europe in 2026. Their challenge is to show us their true utility

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It is expected for the second quarter of 2026 with “200-300 stations”, in Byd words. The Chinese company has taken advantage of the Münich IAA Mobility to confirm that next year its expansion of 1 MW chargers (or 1,000 kW) in Europe will begin. Is there any reason for it? 400 kilometers in five minutes. It is the great promise of byd: get a recharge for an electric car to be so or faster than filling the deposit of a combustion vehicle. Those who use their 1 MW chargers and those who do so in Europe from the second quarter of 2026 can be done in China. Because Stella Li, vice president of the company, has taken advantage of her presentation in the last Münich Motor Show To confirm that next year the deployment of what they call will begin Flash charge with a first landing between 200 and 300 recharge points. Denza. This initiative will be focused on the arrival of Devza, one of Byd’s luxury firms. The company already presented us a few months ago Denza z9gtthe first car with which they will arrive in Europe (in our case we tested the plug -in hybrid). A commitment to maximum luxury without giving up sportsmanship. In their presentation, in Byd they did not get wet with the volume they expect to attract nor confirmed the price that could easily exceed the border of the 100,000 euros. In that price range, a new and China company has it really complicated, so the denza launch is understood within a strategy in which it is committed to demonstrating the latest innovations of the brand. Flexibility. Right now, in Europe there is no car capable of loading the famous power of 1,000 kW. And, in fact, Byd herself has barely two models in China that are capable of admitting those 400 kilometers of autonomy in five minutes. The proposal we see there is based on the use of two 500 kW plugs, allowing the loads to be more flexible. With 1,000 kW you can load an advanced electric car but also an electric truck or two cars that, again, have the last market technology. Dead? The big doubt is whether these chargers are born or not dead. In Europe there is no car that can assume these load powers. However, the latest releases of the Mercedes GLC and the BMW IX3 They have shown that manufacturers and public are especially interested in shortening waiting times. The Mercedes can recharge its batteries at 330 kW and the BMW will leave to 400 kW. He Mercedes Cla He also appeared with the incentive of being able to recharge to 320 kW. The most advanced cars are starting to leave behind the border of the 300 kW … but for now there are not many plugs that offer this possibility. In Spain, companies such as Zunder or Repsol already offer 400 kW load points. And Ionity has announced that it begins to display 600 kW loaders. They are powers that, as we see, almost no car can use but its goal is to take advantage in what is to come. Reference. Putting chargers of 1 MW of power that, in addition, become two 500 kW plugs, byd intends to position themselves as a reference firm. At the moment, it is an investment that should not generate a great economic revenue, because they will be oversized for European cars, but it does position the company among the best. In addition, having the cars that can recharge to this power exclusively will serve to make visible the brand. Probably, he will not turn his models into supervants (within the segment, of course) but will add to make himself known among the less interested public in the car market. One more challenge. With everything and although we think of the ultra -grape loaders of ByD as in a long -term investment, the company has the need to attract the public. And that will be achieved only in two ways. The first thing is becoming visible in applications of the mobile phones of the users of the electric car and, second, in the Google browsers for the cars that work with them or that of the rival companies. And, for this, you will have to have a price according to the market. With a completely oversized load power, Byd cannot press above since the client whose cars are left in 300 kW or less will be underutilizing the station. There are more and more chargers of this type that fit more to the real performance of the car and break the market above will not help its deployment. On the contrary, proposing a payment system similar to that of Tesla or opening the hand with their own customers, knowing that the denza cars will not be large supervants, will allow the company to create brand image and generate interest on it. Photos | Byd and Xataka In Xataka | Byd wants to challenge European hybrids with Seal 6 DM-I: promises 105 km electric and up to 1,505 km of total autonomy

He was deported to China after co -founding NASA’s JPL. Now China has made one of his ideas come true: flying wind turbines

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In the mid -twentieth century, the United States made a decision that later A high position of the Navy described as “the most stupid thing that this country has ever done.” Qian Xesenan indisputable genius of aeronautical engineering, co -founder of the prestigious JPL laboratory of NASA, and a key figure in the development of American coheteria, was deported to China in 1955 accused of communist sympathies in full witch hunt. Qian, welcomed as a hero in his homeland, became the father of the space program and the development of Balistic missiles in China. Decades later, a new generation of Chinese engineers, heirs of the scientific ecosystem that helped build, has broken a world record with a technology that pursues an old ambition of Qian Xesen: wind turbines that fly like zepelins to harvest the energy of great altitude winds. A Zepelin anchored to ground to generate electricity On October 10, in the heavens of Jingmen, province of Hubei, a 23 -meter long aerostate with a leadable appearance rose to 500 meters high. It was not a transport or surveillance vehicle, but The S500, a floating wind energy system That, at that altitude, began to generate more than 50 kilowatts of power. With this flight, China not only launched an innovative project, but sprayed two world records that until now He held an American MIT research team: The one with the highest flight altitude for such a turbine (the previous one was 297 meters) and the one with the highest power generated (compared to the previous 30). The concept, developed by the Sawes company In collaboration with the University of Tsinghua and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it is as elegant as complex. The system uses A member of helium filling to raise a wind turbine to altitudes where the wind is much stronger and more constant than on the surface. The electricity that generates is transmitted to a station on land through the same high strength cable that anchors the structure. The advantage of this design is clear: the energy that can be extracted from the wind is proportional to the cube of its speed; already hundreds of meters high, Winds are not only faster, but also more stablesignificantly reducing the intermittency that it lills to the terrestrial wind farms. According to developer calculations, wind resources in the stratosphere on a region like Hami, in Xinjiang, are 40 times higher than those of the surface. Of emergency situations to the generation at network scale The S500 and its successor, the S1000 of 100 kW Proven for the first time in Januarywere developed for emergency rescues, urban security and places of difficult topography. In case of earthquake or flood, the system can be deployed rapidly to provide energy and communications in the disaster area. But Sawes’s ambitions go much further. The company He just finished assembly The following model on its road map: the S1500, designed to operate 1,500 meters of altituderepresents a jumping of the capacity in capacity, with a power of generation of 1 megavatio. It is proof that technology not only looks for niches such as emergency response, but aspires to become a renewable energy source at an electricity scale. To achieve this power, the S1500 integrates a complex system of 12 generators that operate simultaneously inside its central duct. The key for such a powerful system to fly is material engineering: generators are manufactured in carbon fiber To minimize the weight, maintaining the complete structure below a ton. Like his little brother, energy becomes electricity in the airship itself and low to land through an anchor -integrated cable. With this design, Sawes has attracted the support of important investment funds and contracts that already exceed 500 million yuan (about 64 million euros). The company has opened an assembly plant In Yueyang. The story of Qian Xesen is one of the greatest anecdotes about the unforeseen consequences of fear policy. As you tell Los Angeles Timesthe man who interrogated Wernher Von Braun and laid the basis of the JPL was separated and returned to a country that, at that time, had a much lower scientific development. He took care of changing that, and now his heirs are materializing some of his ideas in his native country. Images | Sawes In Xataka | How China became a nuclear and spatial power in the most unexpected way: with a student of the mit expelled by the US

What’s true and what’s myth in the “tricks” to identify it

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It is almost a summer ritual: carefully choose a watermelon in the supermarket, get home, leave it, and the time of feeling the tooth feel the disappointment in our palate. Choosing watermelly is not easy And there is no infallible trick. But some, at least, can increase our probability of success while others, They are rather myths. There are two factors that make the choice of watermelon (and Also of the melon) A sensitive task. One of these factors is in your skin, which maintains its firmness and coloration throughout different stages of maturation. Checking the maturation status of a peach can be easy just by tighten and check the firmness of the fruit. In the case of banana we can do it at first sight only appreciating the color. The other factor is in the same process of maturation of these fruits. Both watermelon and melon are non -heated fruits. This means that these fruits only mature while they are connected to their plant, contrary to what happens with the Healthy fruits (such as banana or peach), which continue to mature even while resting in our fruit trees or refrigerators. As we pointed out, this makes the selection of this fruit a delicate process: if we do not succeed in the supermarket, it will not be enough to wait a few days for the watermelon to reach its ideal maturation. And how can we detect the maturation point of the watermelon? Perhaps the main clue we have when knowing if this fruit has reached its maturation point is The “stain” That is formed at the bottom. The yellowish spots They usually indicate A more ripe fruit, while the most pale and whitish indicates that the fruit was collected before reaching maturity. But this It is not the only clue that we can find in the skin of this fruit. Another indication is in the texture: it is convenient to look for melons with flat and rounded surfaces, avoiding those with visible marks. Although making a brand ourselves is an option. Scratching the skin of the fruit can give us another clue, since if when the brand the outermost layer is peeled easily and showing a somewhat whitish interior, we are more likely to be encountering a mature specimen. The maturation of the watermelon The color and texture of the skin It is not the only indication that we can use when identifying the correct watermelon. He Fruit weight (or your density rather) you can also give us a clue about what we will find after opening it. Sandia, such as melons, contain abundant water (they contain more than 90% water). According to experts, the heaviest watermelons with respect to their volume will be the ones that contain the most water and therefore the most juicy. If we are looking for melons in its maturity point, a factor that we must take into account is the date: the watermelon is a seasonal fruit: according to the seasonal fruits calendar of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, we can find watermelons between the months of May and September, the months being the months between June and August the highest level of commercialization (always including the mentioned months). The organization of consumers and users (OCU) the months between June and August (both included). The existence of discrepancies or difference between months with greater or lesser commercialization is in the fact that many factors can alter the fruit maturation process, especially weather and weather factors. What does this mean? That depending on the place of Fruit origin And depending on rainfall and temperatures throughout the year, watermelons can mature with greater or lesser speed, which will alter their flavor. Knowing this type of detail may be beyond the scope of the average consumer, but it can help refine our test and error method. In Xataka | Goodbye Olivares, hello pistacheros: in Spain the record crops are leaving them a fruit until recently residual Image | Crina-miriam pretu

The true bottleneck of AI is not chips but electricity. And there China has a great asset

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Data centers are Electricity devourers. A single training cluster can spend more light than 100,000 houses. And while we become obsessed with the semiconductor war, the main problem is still there, in silence: electricity. Why is it important. Training the most powerful models require superoring workers 24 hours for whole weeks. It doesn’t matter if you have the best chips in the world if you don’t have electricity to feed them. It is like having a Ferrari with hardly any gasoline. In figures: The context. The United States has an still incontestable domain in AI and controls 75% of world computing capacity. But their companies are being delays with years to connect new data centers to the electricity network. Google, Microsoft and Amazon They have to deal with years of delays to connect new data centers to the electricity network. China, on the other hand, can lift and connect plants in a few months. Unidso’s bottleneck is in the slowness to connect new capacity to the network. Between the lines. American chip restrictions have forced China to be more efficient. He Deepseek earthquake At the beginning of the year it was the best test. China is riding its “National Integrated Computer Network”, connecting public and private data centers. Your “East Data, West Computing” plan “ Build eight big hubs in provinces with cheap renewable energy. It is something similar to what we saw at the time with the cryptocurrency mining. The key: China puts the AI ​​where there is electricity. Yes, but. Coal is still 58% of its mix energetic. Although renewables is expanding at a good pace, its current advantage is based partly on fossil fuels. That questions the sustainability of its strategy. And now what. The AI ​​career will be decided both in power plants and in laboratories. China is building the infrastructure to feed gigantic models. The United States has better chips, But worse electrical infrastructure. AI needs two things: Silicon. Electric muscle China is betting very strong for the second and that could be its winning asset. Outstanding image | ダモ リ in Unspash In Xataka | China’s three master moves to “independent” technologically from the West: raw materials, chips, AI

Patients lead to the operating room photos of their “improved” with AI. Surgeons are in charge of making them come true

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A year ago, an unpublished contest copied The covers of different media: Miss Ia. As one can intuit, the models were created with artificial intelligence and presented impossible bodies: without wrinkles, without pores, without history … the event, promoted by the platform Fanvue World AI Creator AwardsNo only generated a flood of comments, but opened a deep debate: are we willing to accept something of beauty as an ideal that does not even exist? And something further, does the real body begin to be seen as a defective version of the digital render? Unreal expectations. According to The Columbus Dispatchplastic surgeons such as Dr. Jaclyn Tomsic and Dr. Craig Lehrman are observing a worrying phenomenon in their consultations: patients who come with images generated by AI, asking for impossible interventions. “With AI you can make your body as you want,” explained Tomsic, maxillofacial surgeon in Cleveland. For his part, Lehrman, a plastic surgeon at the Wexner Medical Center of the Ohio State University, has reported cases of older patients who carry photos of edited celebrities. “They tell me: ‘Why don’t I look like this?’ Both doctors have recognized that they have had to dedicate more and more time to explain why they cannot replicate what IA promises: biology, bone structure or age cannot be erased with scalpel. Beyond. The expectations created by filters, apps and image generators They are generating Frustration and danger: some people insist on operating again and again, chasing a non -existent ideal. In addition, they have warned of a psychological risk: people who fail to resemble these artificial images can become obsessed, resort to multiple surgeries and face constant frustration. Lehrman has summarized it as follows: “That will take many unhappy people and pursue this imaginary dream.” In fact, this phenomenon goes beyond the surgical: it affects the way we interact with our own image. It is increasingly common for people to ask AI that value their physical appearance Or tell them what to improve on your face. The point is not what the AI ​​can respond, but the fact that your judgment has so much weight on how we can perceive. Fiction made leather. Before, manipulating an image required technical knowledge or tricks of light and makeup. Today, with a free app, anyone can be seen as a supermodel in seconds. The AI ​​not only retouches, but has led it to another level: it can generate faces from scratch. According to Lehrmanthis makes it “increasingly difficult to distinguish the real from the invented.” Given this threat, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons has created a gallery with real photos before and after procedures to combat misinformation. But the battle is unequal: millions of false, stylized and standardized images are generated every day. The Aitana case. This logic is reflected in phenomena such as Aitana LópezSpanish influencer with more than 350 thousand followers on Instagram that does not really exist. In other words, it is a 100% model generated with AI. Its creators They have admitted They sought to create an influencer that “never gets tired, never ages, always smile.” With his success, he has not only obtained real advertising contracts; It has also imposed a new quite problematic aesthetic standard because there are no human limitations. Advances and dilemmas. The “artificial intelligence in plastic surgery: where do we stand?” has reviewed 96 Studies on the use of AI in plastic surgery. Although it has proven useful in diagnoses of dermatological diseases, surgical planning and even prediction of postoperative complications. However, the conclusions have also warned about ethical risks, lack of regulation and algorithmic biases. One of the key problems is that AI models are trained with limited populations data, which can generate racist, class or capacitist results. The bias behind the AI. The algorithms are trained with millions of images that reinforce Eurocentric, thin, cis and young people. As has warned Kenig et al. Quoted in the study, AI can exacerbate inequalities by replicating stereotypes invisible other bodies. This concern has also been pointed out by critical voices within the technological field. For example, author Ruha Benjamin holds that “Algorithmic discrimination does not need hate to function; You only need data from the past ”, in his book Race AFter Technology. For his part, Safiya Noble, in Algorithms of Oppression, has detailed How commercial and racist logic are embedded in search engines and recommendation systems. Technology, far from democratizing beauty, seems to strengthen it even more. The definition of beauty is not so much. As Bell Hooks said: “Representation matters.” However, if now the AI, trained with exclusion patterns, decides what faces we see, what bodies are shown, and which do not, then we are not only attending an aesthetic change, but to a deep reconfiguration of what we consider desirable, possible and human. The issue is not asking: “What is beautiful?”, But what are we willing to obey? Image | Freepik, Xataka Xataka | The cosmetics industry has found a new market: the problem is that they are girls under 10 years

The True Crime are such success that the creators of the least scrupulous have been thrown over the genre, opening a moral debate

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He True Crime It is a genre that, Despite its immense popularityis ethically more in question than ever: controversial like The recent book by José Breton They make the public propose the scope and consequences of the documentaries on real events. That now look at a new border, with the creation of content by the based on real events. Or even beyond: completely inventing crimes. The tremendist. “The husband’s secret gay romance with his stepson ends up in a spooky murder” or “the secret romance of a wife with a neighbor’s teenage daughter ends up in a spooky murder” are some of the titles of True Crime Case Files’ videos. It was a channel missing today in which they were related, normally before static images and generated by artificial intelligence, crimes that could go through real. But intentionally, the author concealed the artificial origin not only of the images, but also of the stories, which he generated through Chatgpt. A subgenre. They soon caught the attention, How has 404 averageof journalists from the real locations mentioned in the videos, who were surprised not to have heard of such striking cases. When it was made public that the content was generated by AI, but this was not mentioned anywhere, YouTube canceled this and other channels of its person responsible for breaking the conditions of the platform (among others, “Children’s Security policies, which prohibit the sexualization of minors”). It is still possible to access the content in audio format, however, Through platforms like Spotify. The cartoon is not enough. The head of True Crime Case Files was an AI programmer who had already dedicated himself to generating small parodies of romantic comedies Hallmark type on YouTube o Fill content on social networks such as Facebook. According to 404 Media, he disproportionately exaggerated the details of the cases so that it was evident that it was invented cases but, as with Facebook and Instagram videos obviously generated by thethere are dozens of people who believe them. Other True Crime with Ia. Of course, the case of True Crime Case Files is not isolated, although perhaps it is the only one who has tried to go through real crimes his stories: Cen Stories It has the same visual style, in the images and in the holders, and a disclaimer which warns of the content generated by AI, although the notice appears only in the description, buried between summaries and hashtags, and not within the video itself. In Tiktok they also abound, always specifying its artificial origins, and in innumerable variants. In Detective Challenge The cases are invented, and in Thruecrimeaimedia real facts are mixed with invented. There are channels in Spanish, such as Based cases And others who not only tell crimes, such as my history, but also introduce morbid cases of historical cases, such as Nero’s castrated lover or make popular cases of cinema and television, such as Freddy Krueger’s cases. A catalog of channels, some closer to moral limits than others, but all taking advantage of AI to generate three or four videos a week that accumulate thousands of visits. More garbage. Although all these cases are covered from a legal point of view, they undoubtedly have traits in common with what is known as’Slop‘, Low quality content generated by AI and that floods social networks. The least thing is that it can be distinguished whether it is artificial material or not but how the platforms themselves favor these contents with the algorithm, since The amount interests more than the quality. What is the use of True Crime. To this are added their own limits of True Crimethat since their origin in novels such as ‘in cold blood’ played with the confusion between reality and fantasy. Crime and suspense films have always been inspiring their stories in real cases, which manipulate according to dramatic interests but without accrediting their origins in reality, which perhaps also has moral gray areas that should explore. Often Documentaries are criticized True Crime for exploiting the trauma of the victims and their families and transform your suffering into a showbut the use of AI adds a new layer. Artificial intelligence feeds on documentation of real and fictitious cases, and proposes an indistinguishable amalgam of reality that can become more harmful: sensationalism twists the facts, and the AI ​​does, but in an even more perverse way. Crime ethics. The ethics that are supposed to a media traditional is blurred in these cases, submerged in a misty area where reality and fantasy are confused, but without attending ethical limits, what is worse? A story manufactured but whose characteristics are identical to a real case, or a True Crime that proves its similarities with reality, but that the hurry and lack of means lead to videos that feed the morbidity of the spectators without the need to respond to legal limits? He True Crime It continues to evolve, and not necessarily towards more reassuring areas. Header | Cen Stories In Xataka | The ‘True Crime’ pending black Spain: the cases that television fiction have not yet dared to play

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