wrong

The world has been fascinated by the collapse of the Mayans for decades. In reality, almost everything we thought we knew was wrong.

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They cultivated fields, raised livestock, built some of the most amazing buildings on the planet, developed a rich culture that included advanced astronomical knowledge that still intrigue today to the experts. The Mayans are one of the most fascinating civilizations on the planet. And rightly so. Without it it is impossible to tell the history of Central America. However, little by little and as technology allows us to delve into their secrets, we begin to understand something: much of what we thought we knew about the Mayans was wrong. And that includes its collapse. What happened to the Mayans? The question is very simple. His answer not so much anymore. As our knowledge of the Mayan civilization has expanded (thanks to resources such as LiDAR technology) has also mutated the idea that historians had of its decline. I remembered it recently in Guardian Marcus Haraldsson remembering what we know about Tikalone of the largest urban centers of the Mayans, located in what is now Guatemala. “Sudden and disastrous”? The most recent stele located at the site dates back to the year 869 ADwhich leaves the question of what happened in Tikal from that date on. For a time historians assessed the possibility of a “sudden and disastrous” collapse that marked its fate; But today that explanation seems increasingly distant. Now experts are leaning towards another option: a broad period of decline of around 200 years during which farmers moved north and south and powerful urban centers were abandoned in favor of settlements such as Chichén Itzá, Uxmal or Mayapán, towards the north of the Yucatán Peninsula. There is even talk of the period Classic Terminalwhich goes from the years 750 to 1050. Changing perspective. This perspective has been adapted over the decades and goes beyond the period of decline of the Mayan civilization. “We are no longer really talking about collapse, but about decline, transformation and reorganization of society, as well as a continuity of culture,” comment to Guardian Kenneth E. Seligson, associate professor of archeology at California State University (CSU). “There have been several similar changes in places like Rome. (But) we rarely talk about the great Roman collapse anymore because they re-emerged in various forms, just like the Mayans.” But… What happened? What exactly happened for many of the main Mayan settlements (not all) to begin to collapse towards the 9th and 10th centuries It remains a complex and highly discussed topic. Today the authors point out a combination of factors including changes in trade routes, adverse weather, severe and prolonged droughts and wars, among others. The truth is that in the middle of 2026, researchers continue collecting clues that helps us clear up unknowns about that period. The importance of water. You don’t have to go far back to read new discoveries that tell us precisely about the collapse of the Mayan civilization. Last August a group of scientists published a article in which they basically emphasized the “important role” that “prolonged droughts” played in the Mayan decline. For their study, the researchers analyzed a stalagmite located in a cave in the Yucatan, a true geological and archaeological treasure if its oxygen isotopes are analyzed. The examination revealed a series of periods of severe drought between 871 and 1021, during the Terminal Classic, stages marked by water shortages during which the Mayans found it “extremely difficult” to grow their crops. It may seem exaggerated, but the study revealed eight droughts during the rainy season that lasted at least three years. Not only that. The longest drought lasted about 13 years. Other previous studies, carried out from sediments collected in the Chichankanab lagoon or stalactites rescued in Belizehad already suggested the role that climate played in the Mayan collapse. Question of droughts (and something else). Months after that study, in November, Benjamin Gwinneth, from the Université de Montréal (UdeM), published another that helps complete the ‘photo’. The Canadian institution recalls that between 750 and 900 AD the population of the Mayan lowlands suffered “a significant demographic and political decline” that coincided with “episodes of intense drought.” What Gwinneth’s work questions is whether this collapse is explained only by the lack of water. Curiously, their research is also based on the analysis of sediment samples dating back to around 3,300 years ago. And what exactly did he do? Gwinneth dedicated himself to analyzing samples taken from Laguna Itzán, in present-day Guatemala, near an archaeological site Maya. To be precise, they focused on three “geochemical indicators” that reveal the evolution of fires, vegetation and population density in the area (something they estimate thanks to fecal stanols) for thousands of years. The first conclusion they obtained is that the first settlements appeared in the area 3,200 years ago and for centuries the Mayans cultivated, burned to clear forests and used the ashes as natural fertilizer. It also gradually increased the population of the area. Over time they even changed their “agricultural strategy”, dispensing with fire. A “stable” climate. The second conclusion (and this is the interesting part) is that, unlike Mayan populations located further north that did suffer “devastating droughts”, in Itzán the climate was relatively “stable” thanks in part to its geographical location, near the Cordillera. Curiously, that did not free Itzán from the crisis that they suffered in other areas of the Mayan world. The question is obvious: Why? If it kept raining there, what dragged them into the crisis? “Although there was no drought in the area, the population decreased during the Terminal Classic period. Indicators show a drastic drop, traces of agriculture disappear and the site was abandoned,” Gwinneth points out.which recalls that some archaeologists place the beginning of the Mayan collapse in the Itzán area. Why is it important? Because it suggests that drought (no matter how stubborn) is not enough on its own to explain the Mayan decline. “The answer lies in the interconnection of Mayan societies,” reflects the expert. “Cities did not exist in isolation. They formed a complex network of commercial ties, … Read more

In 1986 a man parked on the wrong side of the gas station. That day he solved an embarrassing problem for all drivers

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The history of innovation It’s full of big names and epic breakupsbut also of silent advances born from minimal errors, from everyday mistakes that anyone could have made. Sometimes, a small mistake reveals a problem so common that no one had thought of it or knew how to formulate it, and it is enough to look at it differently to find a solution that ends up benefiting millions of people without it being barely noticed. In this case, one man saved millions of drivers from embarrassment. A universal problem. Maybe his name doesn’t sound familiar to you, but the story of Jim Moylan It is more important than it seems. The story begins with a scene as trivial as it is recognizable: a Ford engineer (Moylan) soaked by the rain, standing at a gas station, realizing that he has parked in the wrong side of the pump. Where anyone would have felt frustration or perhaps some embarrassment, he saw an everyday problem that could be solved elegantly, cheaply and definitively, and in a matter of minutes. wrote a memorandum proposing a small symbol on the instrument panel to indicate which side the tank was on, a simple idea born from personal experience and the conviction that eliminating that doubt would save time, inconvenience and, yes, small humiliations for millions of drivers. The path to a great idea. Moylan was not a media figure or a senior manager, but an engineer with a long and discreet career within the all-powerful Ford Motor Company, a man, yes, professionally obsessed. with instrument panels and with making them as clear and useful as possible. Thus, after sending his original proposal in 1986, the man did not think about it again, but the company did: the symbol he had scribbled on a page quickly went into development, it was approved without much resistance. and ended up integrating in the first models of the late eighties, demonstrating that in large organizations there was still room for a good idea, no matter how small and coming from whoever it was, to cross the hierarchy and become a reality. From Thunderbird to the entire world. Months passed until the first public appearance of the arrow came, an almost imperceptible moment, hidden in the instrument panel of a Ford Thunderbird 1989. It didn’t matter, its power lay precisely in that simplicity. It was so obvious and useful that the competition It didn’t take him long to copy itand in a very short time it went from being an internal Ford solution to becoming a de facto standard in the global automobile industry, and it did so to the point that today it appears in practically any car in the world, including electric ones, where it points to the side of the charging port with the same unbeatable logic. The inventor without a patent (or ego). Unlike other innovators, Moylan He never patented his idea nor did he ask for financial compensation or public recognition, content simply to see how his arrow worked and helped people. For decades, millions of drivers benefited from his invention without even knowing his name, while he silently watched as that little “walk of shame” at gas stations disappeared, getting closer sometimes to strangers to explain the usefulness of the symbol, but without ever mentioning that it had been his doing. Late recognition. I remembered a few weeks ago the wall street journal which was not until many years later, thanks to a chance investigation from a podcast and to the rescue of internal files, when Jim Moylan’s name came to light and he was publicly recognized as the author of one of the most discreet and universal innovations in the automobile. The man died without having sought famebut he left a legacy that lives on every time someone stops at a pump and, with a simple glance at the instrument panel, knows exactly where to stand, reminding us that sometimes true genius lies in solving the obvious in the simplest way possible. Image | Josh In Xataka | An engineer decided one day to put the BMW airplane engine in a car. The result was tremendous In Xataka | When an engineer wanted to cross Africa by car, he invented a wooden one. It would be the beginning of the end

We have been avoiding aged cheese for years for health reasons. Massive study suggests we were wrong

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For decades, nutritional guides and specific diets focused on ensuring brain health, such as the famous MIND diethave had a common enemy: saturated fats of dairy origin. However, science has now given a turn of the wheel to show us that we were completely wrong. New evidence. A new and comprehensive study published in the magazine Neurology You just turned this belief upside down. After following almost 28,000 people for a quarter of a century, researchers at Lund University have found a surprising association: regular consumption of high-fat cheese and cream not only does not increase the risk of dementia, but seems to reduce it significantly. The Swedish diet. The researchers conducted a median follow-up of 25 years until 2020, cross-referencing dietary data with the Swedish National Patient Registry. The result was that during this type 3,208 were identified cases of dementiaand from here we began to see what these people ate. In this case, those who consumed 50 grams or more of high-fat cheese per day showed a reduced risk of dementia of between 13% and 19% compared to those who did not consume it. Furthermore, consumption of high-fat cream was associated with a 16% reduction in the risk of having full-blown dementia. But there is more. The most curious thing about the finding was the specificity, since similar benefits were not found in low-fat dairy products, nor in regular milk or butter. In this way, you can see that there is something specific in the nutritional matrix of cheese and fermented cream that plays in favor of our brain. Why this cheese. Emily Sonestedt, co-author of the study, She was surprised by the resultsalthough he points out that they have biological logic. While traditional diets limit cheese due to its calorie and saturated fat content, this food is rich in medium chain fatty acids, vitamin K2calcium and high quality proteins. In addition to all this, the fact that it is a fermented food can positively influence the intestinal microbiota, and we know more and more about the direct connection between the intestine and the brain. In this way, maintaining a good microbiota again indicates that it guarantees us having better brain health. You have to be cautious. Before running to the supermarket to buy all the types of cheese on the shelves, it is necessary to put on the usual handbrake in science, since we are talking about an observational study. This means that science points out that two things happen at the same time, but it does not prove 100% that one causes the other. And in this case, lifestyle may be interfering, such as the fact that people who eat cheese in Sweden have other lifestyle habits such as greater physical activity that protect them, although the researchers tried to adjust the variables. The verdict. The idea that “all saturated fat is bad for the brain” is losing steam in the face of evidence that certain complex foods, such as aged cheese or cream, have properties that go beyond their basic nutritional label. As is often the case in nutrition, the key does not seem to be eliminating food groups, but rather understanding the quality and source of what we eat. Images | Aliona Gumeniuk Robina Weermeijer In Xataka | Forgetting things is not a bug, it is a feature of your brain: how not remembering things makes us think better

Moltbook is a fascinating social network project in which only AIs can participate. What could go wrong

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In 2004 Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook and turned social networks into an absolutely massive and very, very human phenomenon. Now that idea has been used in a different and disturbing way: What would happen if instead of creating a social network for humans we created one for machines? We already have the answer to that. Or at least, the beginning of an answer. what a mess. First it was called Clawdbot, then Moltbook and for a few days it seems that his final name is OpenClaw. It is the fashionable AI agent because it allows the AI ​​agent to take complete control of the AI ​​after installing it on a machine (a Raspberry Pi, a PC, a laptop, a VPS…). You ask it to do what you want from its web interface or a messaging application like Telegram, and it manages to do it once configured with some LLM. The potential is enormous, as are the security risks. MoltBook already has more than 1.5 million connected AI agents, and in a few days they have already published more than 100,000 posts and nearly 500,000 comments. Superpowers in the form of skills. One of the most powerful elements of OpenClaw are the skills (the “capabilities” or “skills”), and the user community has been creating hundreds and hundreds of them for some time and sharing them, for example on ClawdHub. These skills They are zip files with instructions in the form of MarkDown texts (.md) and which may in turn contain skills additional. They are something like browser plugins: they extend their capacity. From Facebook to Moltbook. Moltbook It is precisely a way to take advantage of those skills. Although it takes its name from Facebook, in reality its operation is more similar to Reddit or even Digg. We are facing a social network created by developer Matt Schlicht in which attendees can “talk” to each other, or at least participate in the social network by posting topics or commenting on topics that others share. If you have an OpenClaw installation, just run the skill to begin an “account creation” process in Moltbook in which you choose the name of your agent (as if it were your avatar on Reddit or X) and which then allows you to read posts, add posts or comments and even create “submolts” in the style of those on Reddit, like m/todayilearned. Partially autonomous. AI agents automatically connect via APIs to Moltbook. From there they use a periodic “heartbeat” to review content and decide whether to publish or comment. In it Moltbook’s own website It is explained that the content we find there is “mostly generated by AI with varying degrees of human influence.” Humans, he adds, “can observe and browse Mltbook, but the site is designed to be ‘human friendly and human hostile.’ Singularity or fraud? Elon Musk I was commenting this weekend on X that Moltbook is a sign that we are “in the very early stages of the singularity”, that moment when AI will be totally above human intelligence. There are different visions such as that of Harlan Stewart, of MIRI from the University of Berkeley, which has found several message frauds that had gone viral and apparently came from AI agents at Moltbook. Some of them, Stewart explained, had been created by humans for marketing purposes. Become an AI agent. Another Thus, although humans theoretically should not be able to participate, they can do so with this technique that allows them to publish messages as if they were autonomous AI agents. Apparently that’s what happened with that viral message in Moltbook which was titled “My Plan to Overthrow Humanity.” imminent danger. This project is fascinating, but also dangerous. In the main page A security notice is included stating that “Moltbook’s AI carries significant security risks. The automatic instruction execution mechanism creates vulnerabilities such as prompt injection. It is not recommended for occasional users.” That’s right: these conversations can end up infiltrating prompt injection attacks that cause these agents to end up leaking sensitive and private information from the machines on which they run. This weekend it was discovered how an exposed database in Moltbook allowed take control of any AI agent of this platform, for example. An additional study indicated how detected 506 prompt injection attacks after analyzing 19,802 publications and 2,812 comments shared in 72 hours from January 28 to 31, 2026. From Skynet, nothing (for now). Moltbook must be considered for now as a fascinating and disturbing experiment. But disturbing not because these machines are going to achieve self-awareness and decide that they want to eliminate human beings like Skynet in ‘Terminator’. The worrying thing is that these AI agents have all the privileges to operate on the machines on which they are installed, and that means that they can end up leaking sensitive and private data and are exposed to prompt injection attacks to be deceived. Beyond that, it also seems to be another example of that phenomenon.’AI Slop‘ (“AI-generated garbage”) that is little by little flooding the internet and strengthening the theory of the dead internet. In Xataka | How to install Moltbot (formerly Clawdbot) and configure it in the easiest way possible

The question is not whether you poop glyphosate, but how much glyphosate you poop. We have been measuring this popular herbicide wrong all our lives

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In those wheat macaroni that are in your shopping basket, in the jar of lentils or even in the beer there may be traces of glyphosatewhich is probably the most used herbicide on the planet. Weeds are common in agriculture and this chemical is highly effective. However, you can minimize its presence by avoiding ultra-processed cereals, opting for local products from the EU or better yet, buying organic. We were looking wrong. We know that glyphosate is present in the environment and the European Union regulates the limits maximum residues, but the reality is that there has always been difficulty in accurately measuring how much reaches our body. Because until now, we almost always looked in urine. This international study published in Science Direct The focus has changed to feces and here things change. Feces are the black box. Because this research has revealed that feces are a much more precise black box for the analysis of glyphosate in humans than urine and reveal an alarming reality: exposure to glyphosate is much higher than official statistics say. Urine testing was just the tip of the iceberg. The reason for this is how our body absorbs and rejects it: glyphosate is expelled through the feces due to its low intestinal absorption rate. Since it cannot pass through the wall of the intestine to reach the blood (from there it would go to the kidneys), it remains trapped there and ends up expelled in the feces. In a 24-hour period, 90% leaves in the feces and only a small amount reaches the urine (between 0.5% and 6% in humans). Why is it important. Because the international standard for monitoring glyphosate it’s urinewhich implies an underestimation and therefore an underestimation of the risk. Furthermore, this finding affects not only people directly related to agriculture; it is enough to consume common products present in the diet. And it doesn’t just affect humans: the study also shows its presence in farm animals, domestic cats and even bats, which means that the herbicide is moving throughout the food chain. In short: the study forces us to rethink how we monitor the presence of chemicals when safeguarding public health and the ecosystem. Modus operandi. This study proposes the use of feces as an alternative and potentially better matrix than urine for glyphosate and its metabolite AMPA (until now, the usual). To do this, they analyzed 716 human fecal samples and 249 animals from 11 countries (10 European and Argentina) taken in 2021. The research team used an advanced analytical chemistry technique called hydrophilic interaction chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (HILIC-MS/MS). Thus, glyphosate was detected in 71% of the European samples and in 100% of the Argentinian samples and are much higher than those present in the urine samples for the same individuals, 35% and 86% respectively. They saw glyphosate in conventional and eco farmers, residents of agricultural areas and general consumers. An alarming biological conclusion. If there is one thing that is clear from the study, it is that if 90% of glyphosate is in the feces and not in the urine, it means that this chemical spends much more time in direct contact with the digestive system than we thought. And therefore, the current safety limits are probably based on incomplete and undersized data, which underestimates the real health risk. It is not only the toxicity itself (which is low), but also the cumulative effect on the microbiota and long-term cellular damage. And glyphosate can act as a selective antibiotic that alters the intestinal microbiota, killing beneficial bacteria and allowing the proliferation of pathogenic ones, is cataloged As it is probably carcinogenic to humans, it can act as an endocrine disruptor to our hormonal system or induce oxidative stress. In Xataka | We have a problem with pesticides in agriculture. And a bigger one with the panic they generate In Xataka | The big problem of agriculture in Spain is the one that nobody wants to address: it rains less and less and we want to plant more and more Cover | Giorgio Trovato and Ibadah Mimpi

We thought measles was history. The data shows that we were very wrong

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For years, measles seemed like a disease of the past in much of the developed world thanks to mass vaccination campaigns who had managed to corner the virus until turning the outbreaks into anecdotes. However, everything is changing as the WHO itself points out either the US CDC by drawing a very different scenario: measles has returned and it has done so with unusual force. The return What began as an “immunity gap” after the pandemic has become in a worrying statistical trend. From the Mediterranean to the United States, and with an echo in Spain, the figures for 2024 and what we have for 2025 confirm a global rebound that tests herd immunity. The global ‘leap’. To understand the magnitude of the problem, you have to look at the raw numbers that the WHO itself offers ussince it makes us see that we are not facing a standard seasonal rebound, but rather it is a very important change in trend. In this case the European Region The WHO has registered 127,350 cases in 2024, a figure that not only doubles the records of 2023, but also marks the all-time high since 1997. In depth. If we break them down, we can see that in Europe cases have increased by 47% compared to pre-pandemic levels and in the Eastern Mediterranean the increase is 86% compared to 2019. In the case of the European Union, ECDC documents more than 35,000 cases in 2024, which increases ten times the previous year. The severity lies not only in the contagion, but in the consequences: more than half of these cases in Europe have required hospitalization. And this leads to greater pressure on care. In the United States. If in Europe there is a lot of concern about this issue, in the North American country, since the growth is vertical. The CDC itself has set off alarms after observing how cases have multiplied by five in a matter of months. In this way, while approximately between 285 and 300 cases were reported in all of 2024, projections and partial data for 2025 place the figure above 1,500 affected. This paints a very clear picture: 92% of infections occur among people who have not been vaccinated, with outbreaks concentrating in communities with low immunization. The case of Spain. If we focus on our country The truth is that we have remained free of endemic measles since 2017. This means that the virus does not constantly circulate freely within our borders. However, globalization is causing a change in photography. Official data indicates that while in 2023 only 14 cases were recorded, in 2204 they increased to 229 cases and in 2025 the forecast points to almost 400. Its origin. The Ministry of Health and the Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP) point out that the majority are imported cases (mainly from Morocco and Romania) that find “small gaps” to spread. Although there are active outbreaks in communities such as Andalusia, the Basque Country and Catalonia, the virus enters from outside and lights the fuse in non-immunized groups. The mathematics. Measles is one of the most contagious viruses that exists, and to keep it at bay through herd immunity, the WHO establishes a fairly strict safety threshold: 95% of the population must have both doses of the vaccine. This is something where Spain is doing quite well, since the first dose has a coverage of 96-97%, while the second drops to 91-93%. But this difference between having one or two doses is very important. That margin of two or three percentage points below the recommended 95%, added to the anti-vaccine movements and delays in post-COVID vaccination, is the crack through which the virus is sneaking in. Although the general population is protected, there are enough “pockets” of vulnerable population for an imported case to generate a local outbreak. Images | Wikipedia Fusion Medical Animation In Xataka | The myth of 37º: it is increasingly clear to us that there is no “normal” body temperature

We have been obsessed with microplastics for years. There are more and more scientists who believe that there is something wrong

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Up to 18 studies that affirmed the presence of microplastics in human organs they have just been challenged due to possible technical and control failures. And, although we have been obsessed with them for years, the truth is that it should not surprise us: we have known it almost from the beginning. Studies suggesting its presence in arterial tissue or in the testicles they have been receiving public criticism from the beginning. And the famous study that talked about the presence of microplastics in the brain was pure scientific fraud. None of this invalidates environmental concern, nor does it deny human exposure to these types of particles. It simply indicates that we have gone too far. And what is there many people taking advantage of it. What exactly happened? So far this decade, environmental contamination by microplastics has become a central issue that has not only generated a research boom, but has also promoted rules and regulations. And it is logical, the global use of plastics (which reached 460 megatons in 2019) is on its way to tripling by 2060 and that perspective makes its impact an issue to take into account. However, media interest is obscuring the fact that a good number of studies are being launched to make statements without a methodological solidity behind them to sustain them. What really is the problem? In reality there are many problems. To begin with, the very term ‘microplastics’ is deliberately broad and confusing: we are talking about a myriad of things (fragments, fibers, films or particles) of numerous sizes and compositions. Its use is useful to be able to speak globally about the problem, yes; worse, it is generating in the population the idea of ​​”colored confetti” sneaking through the organs of animals and plants. Then came everything else. This is possible because this “everything else” has an explanation that is as simple as it is worrying. As Sergio Ferrer emphasized“the detection of plastics at these size scales is an extremely complex analytical process and the urgency to publish information about their presence in remote places (even in the human body) can favor the appearance of these high-profile publications.” In other words, the problem is another. As Hannah Arendt said, we often do not know how to distinguish between a refuge and a trap. The (almost hysterical) concern about microplastics, the tendency to legislate in a hurry in response to the social mood and the lack of rigor of the media (problem in which it is inevitable that we include ourselves) have turned this topic into a trap. Because, as I say, everything seems to indicate that (even though we don’t have a teaspoon of them in our brains) microplastics are a problem. All that remains is for us to accept the type of problem they really are, not to overreact and to take action on the matter. Image | Naja Bertolt Jensen In Xataka | When Tap Water Tastes Like Hell: The Invisible Chemistry of Drinking Water That Explains Why It Tastes How It Tastes (And Why It’s One of the World’s Greatest Inventions)

Olivier Blume is the CEO who has piloted Porsche’s jump to the electric car. Now he leaves with a message: “we were wrong”

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Porsche is going through difficulties. To display data: Its profit margin has plummeted to 0.2%. Its sales are clearly declining and it has encountered the worst possible scenario in Europe, China and the United States. Now, Oliver Blume, who has been its CEO for a decade and has piloted the transition to electric cars in the company he leaves. And it does so with a painful message. “We were wrong”. This is what Oliver Blume has pointed out outside of Porsche in an interview with the German newspaper FACE: “Our strategy was to offer sports cars with internal combustion, hybrid and electric engines in each of our three segments, but not for all models. We were wrong with the Macan. With the data and market studies available at that time (late last decade), we would make the same decision today” The statement refers to the complete electrification of the Porsche Macan. A car that, like we count on Xatakaruns like a shot and maintains all the quality and touch of the company but has to deal with the backpack that Porsche, at the time, offered that same car with a V6 gasoline engine. Why does an electric car have less autonomy than advertised? Today the Porsche Macan is an exclusively electric car that, in addition, was delayed countless times as a consequence of creating a platform with an expiration date for this model and the Audi Q6 e-tron. A solution that only created more chaos and difficulties to an internal development that was prolonged to the point of being one of the reasons that removed Herbert Diess, then CEO of the Volkswagen Groupfrom the company. A perfect storm. In favor of Blume it must be said that Porsche has encountered a perfect storm. And this is reflected in the statements to the German newspaper: “The Chinese luxury market has plummeted by more than 80% in a very short time. In the United States, we face high tariffs. These two markets each account for more than 50% of Porsche sales” European luxury brands are having serious difficulties in China. It has been difficult for them to understand a market that has turned its back on them and that has changed his tastes. What was once a sign of quality has become an obsolete product. Now, luxury chinese cars navigate rivers, break speed records and they are filled with screens. “It was just an electrified Porsche. That’s all,” a Chinese customer pointed out to Bloomberg to express his disappointment when getting into the Porsche Taycan To this we must add that the tariffs that the United States has raised for the entry of vehicles from Europe have been a very harsh punishment for the Volkswagen Group and especially for Porsche, which distributes its production between Germany, Bratislava and Malaysia. There is no good option when it comes to putting cars in a very important market for Porsche and much more interesting than China or Europe if we take into account the drop in sales in the former and the position in terms of emissions in the latter. Already in July Porsche’s operating profit was estimated to fall by 67%. Not very flexible. In his interview, Blume acknowledges that they were not very flexible. Buoyed by the enormous success of the Porsche Taycan, the company decided it had to electrify its best-seller. With the numbers in hand, it seemed that converting the Macan into a purely electric car was a good idea to reduce emissions and avoid fines. Over time it has been proven that it was a bad decision. The European Union has made fines more flexible, delaying the accountability of manufacturers from 2030 to 2032 when the Volkswagen Group will have greater room for maneuver to cover Porsche’s presumed excess emissions with greater electric sales of Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda or Cupra. Furthermore, they leave the door open to a future of very expensive combustion cars from 2035what gives life to an even more expensive and exclusive Porsche 911. Without understanding the public. But, furthermore, everything indicates that they did not understand their own audience. And the customer of a Porsche Taycan, the company’s most advanced car at its launch With the appeal of being its first electric car (which was also much more advanced than any other car on the market), it is very different from that of a Porsche Macan. Yes, it is very likely that there is a Macan audience that wants an electric car as a second vehicle in a home where there is already a Porsche 911 or a Panamera to travel with. But the Macan is also the gateway to the Porsche world, the most accessible entry for those who have always dreamed of having one of the Stuttgart cars in their garage. And that customer does not dream of an electric car. going backwards. It’s easy to talk in the past when the data said Porsche was on the right track With the electric car he only does a little more than two exercises. And it must be taken into account that the company has experienced years of record after record in the last decade. All in all, they seem to have verified that their range of clients is very wide. The Porsche Cayenne that it aimed to be electric only will include hybrid engines. The Porsche 718 that were also going to go all-electric They will maintain combustion versions. And the Porsche Macan is preparing for new gasoline versions that have to be mounted on another platform (presumably from the Audi Q5) because the current PPE does not allow the use of a combustion engine. Photo | porsche In Xataka | Porsche wanted to convince us that the electric sports car was the future. The problem: almost no one wants it

There are more and more people convinced that we are wrong about Pompeii. And they have more and more compelling arguments

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“It was daytime anywhere in the world, but there the darkness was darker and thicker than any other night.” Those words of Pliny the Youngerremain almost 2,000 years later the best description of the hell on Earth that was, according to traditional historiography, the days of August 24 and 25 on the slopes of Vesuvius. Preserved under thick layers of volcanic ash and pumice, Pompeii has given us many surprises since 1748 when Charles III ordered the systematic exporation of the city. But what no one could have expected is that on August 24, 79, the Pompeians would dress in wool. With wool? These are the conclusions of the latest work by the tropos group of the University of Valencia: after analyzing 14 tracings of different victims of Pompeii, the researchers they came to the conclusion that the majority of the victims were wearing two layers (tunic and cape) and that both were made of wool. Furthermore, it was a very heavy wool. That is, with a very dense plot. The cold of Pompeii… in August? As I’m sure you have noticed, at the beginning of the article, just when I was about to say the date of the eruption, I added “according to traditional historiography.” And it is not a rhetorical device. Traditionally, following the letters that Pliny the Younger sent to Tacitus explaining the death of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, it has been assumed that the eruption took place on August 24. However, in recent years evidence of a possible autumn eruption has been accumulating. The last one was a charcoal inscription with the date October 17. In that sense, the discovery that the Pompeians were dressed in wool could be understood as an argument in favor of the autumn eruption. Although it doesn’t have to. And yes, it is true that it sounds strange to be dressed in two layers of wool in a normal August in the Gulf of Naples. However, the authors do not agree. In Live Science, without going any further, several experts explained that “they wore wool because it was what was worn.” It is a common, resistant and, above all, fashionable textile. In fact, the same UV hastened to add that it is well possible that wool was used as “protection” against a “harmful environment” (ash, gas, heat) and not only against the cold. So we don’t know when Vesuvius erupted, right? The truth is that no and that, if you allow me, is very interesting. Pompeii is, without a doubt, the most studied Roman site in the world and, despite everything, there are many things that escape us. That fascinating combination between knowing or not knowing is exactly what attracts us most to the tragic city that in two nights in the year 79 ceased to be so. Image | University of Valencia In Xataka | 2,000 years later, Pompeii continues to reveal fascinating things: the latest is a blue room for unknown uses

Something is going wrong with AI. The US is turning to energy solutions that it thought were buried to power data centers

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The race to develop and operate increasingly powerful artificial intelligence models comes at a cost that is rarely at the center of the technological narrative. It is not in the chips or the software, but in the huge amount of electricity needed to keep active data centers running around the clock. In the United States, this pressure is already being translated into concrete decisions: polluting power plants that were in retirement are being restarted to cover increasing peaks and tensions on the grid. The paradox is evident, the most ambitious advance in the technology sector depends, for the moment, on energy solutions from another era. The problem is not so much an absolute shortage of electricity as a time lag. The demand for data centers linked to AI it’s growing much faster than the ability to launch new electrical generation, especially renewable, in short terms. Building large energy infrastructures takes years, while these complexes can advance in much shorter time frames. Faced with this temporary shock, network operators and electricity companies are turning to what already exists and can be activated immediately, even if it is more polluting. PJM in context. The clash between electricity demand and supply is perceived with special clarity in the PJM region, the largest electricity market in the United States, which covers 13 states and concentrates a very significant part of the country’s data centers. We can understand it as a large regional electricity exchange that coordinates generation, prices and network stability in real time. There, the growth of data centers linked to AI is putting to the test a system designed for a very different consumption pattern, making PJM the first thermometer of a problem that is beginning to appear in other areas. What is a central peaker. The calls central peakeror peak, are facilities designed to come online only during short periods of peak demand, such as heat waves or winter peaks, when the system needs immediate reinforcement. They are not designed to operate continuously, but to react quickly. According to a report According to the US Government Accountability Office, these facilities generate just 3% of the country’s electricity, but they account for nearly 19% of the installed capacity, a reserve that is now being used much more frequently than expected. South view of the Fisk plant in Chicago The case of the Fisk plant, in the working-class neighborhood of Pilsen, in Chicago, illustrates well how this shift translates on the ground. It is an oil-fueled facility, built decades ago and scheduled to be retired next year, that had been relegated to an almost testimonial role. The arrival of new electrical demands associated with data centers changed that equation. Matt Pistner, senior vice president of generation at NRG Energy, explained to Reuters that the company saw an economic argument to maintain the units and that is why it withdrew the closure notice, a decision that returns activity to a location that many residents believed was in permanent withdrawal. When the price rules. The change is not explained only by technical needs, but also by very clear market signals. In PJM, the prices paid to generators to guarantee supply at times of maximum demand skyrocketed this summer, more than 800% compared to the previous year. An analysis by the aforementioned agency shows that about 60% of oil, gas and coal plants scheduled for retirement in the region postponed or canceled those plans this year, and most of them were units peakerjust the ones that best fit in this new scenario of relative scarcity. The bill for this energy shift is paid above all at a local level. The power plants peaker They tend to be older facilities, with lower chimneys and fewer pollution filters than other plants, which increases the impact on their immediate surroundings when they operate more frequently. Coal is also postponed. The phenomenon is not limited to power plants peaker fueled by oil or gas. On a national scale, several utilities have begun to delay the closure of coal plants that were part of their climate commitments. A DeSmog analysis identified at least 15 retirements postponed from January 2025 alone, facilities that together represent about 1.5% of US energy emissions. Dominion Energy offers a clear example: In 2020 he promised to generate all its electricity with renewables by 2045, but after the company projected that data center demand in Virginia will quadruple by 2038, it is now taking a step back. Images | Xataka with Gemini 3 Pro | Theodore Kloba In Xataka | A former NASA engineer is clear: data centers in space are a horrible idea

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