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How to request the 400 euros to buy music, video games and subscriptions if you are 18 years old

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Let’s explain to you how to apply for the 2026 Young Cultural Bonusthe new edition of this aid so that those who turn 18 in Spain have a credit of 400 euros to spend on cultural products. He Young Cultural Bonus It was launched in 2022 to bring young people closer to the cultural sectors punished during the pandemic, but since then it has been maintained. The idea is that young people spend money on culture. We are going to start the article by telling you what this bonus is and all the details, specifying what the money will be spent on. Then, we will explain to you the process you must follow to request it. Finally, remember that in addition to turning 18 in 2026, the aid is aimed at young people of Spanish nationalitythose who have legal residence in Spain, and asylum seekers, temporarily displaced persons or formerly protected foreigners. What is the Young Cultural Bonus The Young Cultural Bonus is the aid that is given each year to young people who turn 18 years old. Come on, 400 euros are going to be given to everyone who comes of age in 2026. This money is not for them to spend on whatever they want, but for them to buy products, services and activities related to the world of culture. This aid was born to finance and revitalize the Spanish cultural sector after the COVID-19 quarantines, although once they returned to normal they have been maintained. It is not known how long this cultural bonus will exist, because it is something that is approved each year. This is indirect aid for the cultural sectors. Instead of simply giving money to establishments, it is given to young people so that they can consume the culture they want in pre-established cultural products. This last part is the most important. You cannot spend 400 euros on a specific type of product. this money It is divided into three types of productsand for each of them there is a spending limit. You can’t spend it anywhere either.but in establishments that have joined the program. The aid is only for those who turn 18 years old. Therefore, it will only benefit those who have born in 2008while people and young people of other ages will not be able to benefit. Only those who turn 18 during 2026. In addition, it will be necessary to have Spanish nationality, legal residence in Spain, or be asylum seekers, temporarily displaced or ex-tutored foreigners. The management of the aid is centralized on a specific website, where young people can request the voucher. And then, In your city you will see which establishments participatesince they usually put in the window that they accept Cultural Bonus, and you will know that you can spend the money there. What can the bonus be spent on? What’s new this year is that There are two types of spending to decide the structure of what to spend the money on. On the one hand we have the traditional modality, which is the following: A maximum of 200 euros in live arts, cultural heritage and audiovisual arts: This will be divided between tickets and passes for performing arts, including live music, cinema, museums, libraries, exhibitions and performing, literary, musical or audiovisual festivals. Also for bullfighting shows. A maximum of 100 euros in cultural products in physical format: This will be divided between books, magazines, press and periodicals. It can also be spent in video gamesmusical scores, vinyl recordsCD, DVD or Blu-ray. A maximum of 100 euros in digital or online consumption: This will be divided between subscriptions and rentals to music, reading or audio-reading, audiovisual platforms, purchase of audiobooks, purchase of ebooks, subscription to podcasts, subscriptions to online video games, digital subscriptions to press, magazines or other periodical publications. Yes indeed, Subscriptions will be limited to a maximum of four months. The purchase of some stationery products such as printed or digital curricular textbooks, as well as computer and electronic equipment, software, hardware and consumables, is excluded from the aid. You will also not be able to buy musical instruments, go to sporting events, or buy pornographic material. The second modality is training. With it, you can invest the full 400 euros in courses and workshops with cultural content in person and online and musical instruments and means of artistic creation and material. A final condition is that You can only use the voucher in certain establishments or institutions attached to the program. These businesses must operate within Spain or carry out activities of sale or provision of cultural products, activities and services. How to request the Young Cultural Bonus 2026 To request the Young Cultural Bonus for 2026 you have to enter its official website, which changes every year. This year’s is beneficiaries.2026.bonoculturajoven.gob.es. who is the official of the program. In it, press the button Registerand create an account using your email and a password. Once you have registered, on this same website you can log in with your created account. Once you have created your username and password, you will receive an email with a confirmation link, and you must click on it to complete the process. Once you do it, press the button Request bonus that will appear to you. The first time you do it you will have to verify your information and age using the digital certificate either Cl@ve. Afterwards, you will have to fill in the rest of your main information. Once you have done this, you can now choose how you want the cultural bonus. The easiest thing is to have a virtual card that you can add to Google Pay or Apple Pay to pay with your mobile’s NFC, although you will also have the possibility of requesting a physical card. When you finish the setup, you will need to verify your request using Self-signature. Once you have everything, remember that you will only be able to use this balance that is given to … Read more

23 years ago a Boeing 727 left the runway without authorization. What happened next remains an enigma

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A commercial airliner should not disappear like this. We are talking about one of the largest and most monitored machines in the transportation industry, with flight plans, airport controls, maintenance records and normally traceable components. That is why the case of Boeing 727 N844AA It’s so hard to close. According to Aviation Safety Networkthe aircraft took off from the Quatro de Fevereiro international airport, in Luanda, on May 25, 2003, around sunset and without the corresponding authorization. Since then there has been no confirmed landing, no identified remains or a definitive explanation. Before becoming a mystery, N844AA had led a much more conventional life. Washington Post explains that it was a Boeing 727-223 built in 1975, delivered to American Airlines and removed from the airline’s fleet towards the end of the summer of 2001. Then came the strange twist: the plane was converted to transport diesel within Angola, with seats removed and large internal tanks installed in the cabin. The idea was to supply operations linked to diamond mines in areas difficult to serve by road, but the plan soon went awry. The operation began to accumulate problems. The fuel transport project was met with unpaid invoices, problems with stolen passports, security lapses and questions about who really controlled the plane. By May 2002, the crews had already left and the original plan was practically undone, but the 727 was still there, immobilized at the Luanda airport. Almost a year later Ben Charles Padilla appearedsent by Aerospace Sales & Leasing for try to recover an aircraft that it could still have value as an asset, even if it fit increasingly worse into its previous life. A stranded plane, an unauthorized departure and too many open questions Padilla is a central figure because most stories place it inside the plane at the time of departure. There is also an important nuance: he was a certified flight engineer, aeronautical mechanic and private pilot, but not a qualified captain for a Boeing 727. That model required a crew of three people, with two pilots and a flight engineer dedicated to managing systems. John Mikel Mutantu is also mentioned as a possible companion, although the accounts do not entirely agree on his identity and there is no clear evidence that he was trained to pilot that device. The known sequence of May 25, 2003 is brief, but enough to explain why the case caught on so quickly. That afternoon, N844AA began taxiing without proper communication, entered the track without authorization and took off towards the southwest, towards the Atlantic and the Gulf of Guinea. Its lights were off and the transponder, the equipment that allows an aircraft to be identified in air traffic systems, was not transmitting. And there was another important point: the 500-gallon tanks installed in the cabin were part of the diesel transportation project, but they were not used to fuel the plane’s engines. To fly, the 727 relied solely on the aircraft fuel available in its own tanks. If he went low, he would hardly have gone far; If there was more margin, the range of possibilities expanded. Delta Air Lines retired its last 727 from scheduled service in April 2003. The image shows a plane of that model, not the N844AA missing in Angola The search did not close the case either. US organizations such as the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Homeland Security and CENTCOM participated in it, and the US embassies in Africa received notices to monitor a plane that needed a long runway to land. In the weeks that followed, and also over the years, theories circulated: a fall into the sear, a landing at another airfield, a dismantling to sell components or even its use on irregular routes. A runway of a repainted 727 in Conakry, Guinea, looked promising in July 2003but the US authorities ended up discarding it. A possible terrorist connection was also examined, in the midst of post-9/11 sensitivity. It was a logical fear for Western intelligence services at the time, but The Washington Post and ABC News agree that no evidence emerged to support that hypothesis. That is precisely what keeps the enigma alive 23 years later. There is no confirmed landingidentified remains, pieces publicly linked to N844AA nor a record of maintenance or sales of components that would allow its fate to be reconstructed. If one day an answer appears, it will probably not be the entire plane: it will be a fragment, a document or a part number capable of finally giving it a place on the map. Images | JetPix In Xataka | The European fighter may have died, but there is a plan B to avoid the F-35. One with Spain, Germany and an unexpected guest

24 years ago Oliver Kahn sued EA and won. Then a new goalkeeper appeared in football games: Jens Mustermann

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There are two things that I have to eternally thank my love for football simulators: locating places on the map and being familiar with a good part of the new talents that emerge in the quarries. I got off this annual roulette a long time ago, when the textures of the grass or the expressions of the players were not so important, but their faces were already well understood and you could recognize them thanks to the transfer of image rights, a tricky and lucrative topic even at that time. And for example, a button: Oliver Kahn’s. The name of the legendary goalkeeper of Bayern Munich and the German national team in the 90s and early 2000s disappeared from soccer games to return almost a quarter of a century later, it became an icon to close one of the longest and most curious legal disputes. Oliver Kahn’s lawsuit. Coincidentally, while searching for images of the special FIFA game for the 2002 World Cup, I found in the Xataka newspaper archive it is which illustrates the cover of this article and which is great for us. Because it was just then that the German goalkeeper filed a lawsuit against EA for image appropriation, as stated in the Ace article of the time: He believed that they were commercializing his identity without having given his permission or receiving compensation for it. The video game company faced a fine of up to 250,000 euros or up to six months in prison. Why is it important. This trial changed the rules of the game because it showed that video game companies cannot use the image of a famous athlete without their direct permission. In fact, it marked a before and after: from then on companies had to be much more careful with contracts, thus preventing big brands from taking advantage of the fame of footballers for their faces. After all, Kahn was a pioneerbut it could have been the tip of the iceberg of a barrage of similar lawsuits, such as explains the law firm Pinsent Masons. Context. It was the 2000s when football games began to look very real and in that image quality significantly improved compared to that FIFA 94 original Having the real names and faces of the stars was a powerful and attractive selling point. EA had signed agreements with FIFPro to be able to use player identities en masse, so in the hit FIFA series were represented virtually 800 players from 40 countries. The problem? That the union did not have the rights of everyone. It was one of the first train wrecks between the ambitions of a huge American technology company versus European privacy laws. Kahn 1 – EA 0, So titled Der Spiegel the goalkeeper’s victory in the German courts in 2003, ruling that the agreement that EA had with the FIFPro union did not cover the use of Kahn’s image, since the goalkeeper was not part of that organization. But it was more a moral victory than a practical one: Kahn managed to stop the distribution of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, but by the time he won, EA had already launched FIFA 2003. In fact, the goalkeeper tried to make ads featuring a blonde goalkeeper disappear, but the judge dismissed the petition: “Not all blonde goalkeepers are Oliver Kahn.” EA removed Kahn from the national team but kept him as Bayern’s goalkeeper under a separate agreement with the German league. The most striking thing is what happened next: to avoid any problems, the character based on Kahn was simply called “Jens Mustermann”, the equivalent of a completely generic and anonymous name like John Doe. Paradoxically, that name bears quite a similarity to that of Jens Lehmannthe goalkeeper who sent Kahn to the Mannschaft bench in the 2006 World Cup. Yes, but. Kahn won, but did not convince: The director of EA Germany stated that FIFA 2003 would still be on the market and that the new contracts were “even more solid” than before. EA did not change its business model: it continued to use block licenses and continued to operate normally. Kahn was absent from EA video games for years and It was not for legal reasons, but because he did not want to negotiate with them again. It has been now, with nostalgia and the evolution of modern game modes based on micropayments, when it has returned in the form of ICON card in EA Sports FC 26 actively participating in promotions and profiting from it. In Xataka | The most important thing about the ‘FIFA’ games was that they were called ‘FIFA’: EA is proving the hard way the weight of a franchise In Xataka | It’s World Cup time and millions of fans will pay for it with sleep: the graph that shows which countries suffer the most from FIFA’s schedules

We thought it was a bend in the Rhine. In reality it was a huge Roman water channel that survived the fall of the Empire for 300 years.

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If there is something for which Rome has remained in memory, it is for its impressive road layout throughout their empire, but be careful because in hydraulic engineering they were not far behind either, the aqueducts of Segovia and Tarragona serve as close examples. It is true that aqueducts are striking constructions due to their dimensions, but there is another that rivals them in size and capacity to move water: canals. In fact, a research team just “discovered” that what looked like an old abandoned Rhine channel was actually an ancient Roman canal. They had an unappealable clue on the terrain: it is rare to see such a long and straight line in nature. The discovery. In southwestern Germany, on an agricultural plain next to the Rhine River, an interdisciplinary research team from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel and the Hessen Monument Office have found something that has been buried for more than a thousand years: an artificial Roman canal 15 meters wide and 2.5 meters deep that connected the Rhine to a small military fort called the burgus of Trebur-Astheim. Why is it important. Because the Trebur-Astheim Canal is one of the few known navigable canals north of the Alps during the Roman period and the Early Middle Ages, demonstrating that the Roman Empire in Germania modified the landscape more intensely and lastingly than previously believed. The presence of Rome was more than a mere occupation. As explains the research teamthe burgus of Trebur-Astheim probably functioned as a central logistical node for the Landgraben region, where cargo ships of the time could dock and goods were redistributed around the area on other vessels. This demonstrates a global vision of the empire for supplying its troops through infrastructure that goes beyond the roads. Context. The consolidated Roman presence in the Hessische Ried began in the 1st century AD, under the Flavian emperors. The fort of Trebur-Astheim was built between 364 and 375 AD under the command of Emperor Valentinian I as part of his plan for military deployment along the Rhine. with a goal: contain the Alamanni, a group of tribes settled on the right bank of the river. In fact, the Rhineland border is clearly demarcated by watchtowers and forts, as can be seen on the UNESCO World Heritage List. In detail. In short, the town of Trebur-Astheim was practically a protected inland port: its dimensions were similar to those of the Roman navigable canal Fossa Corbulonis (present-day Netherlands) and made it suitable for different types of Roman river vessels, such as military type Mainz-A or the cargo boats found near Xanten, both with drafts of between 0.35 and 0.65 meters, well below the depth of the channel. Carbon 14 has revealed that, from the sediments of the canal, it was in operation from Roman times until the 7th-8th centuries AD, when it became clogged with mud and was abandoned. In fact, the large amount of sediment in the area forced the channel to be dredged frequently for centuries: after the Romans, the team points out that the Merovingian and Carolingian communities exploited it and maintained the infrastructure. Yes, but. The excavation carried out in 2024 did not reach sufficient depth to physically see the walls of the canal due to the high water table and the amount of sediment. That is to say, the dimensions that we know have been estimated indirectly, something that is common in underwater archaeology. In this sense, a complete excavation is pending to obtain direct data on the construction of the canal. In Xataka | Some go to the gym to do legs and others to discover an impressive mansion from the Roman Empire In Xataka | The Romans found a macabre and sophisticated way to use perfume: breaking pigeons’ necks (made of glass) Cover | Wolfgang Pehlemann and An Artificial Canal Connecting the Roman Burgus at Trebur-Astheim (Upper Rhine Graben, Germany) with the River Rhine

German scientists have discovered that the Earth has been receiving radioactive fallout for more than 100 million years due to the violent “kiss” of two supernovae.

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Planet Earth is home to the ocean depths a radioactive plutonium deposit that could only be formed in space, during a violent cosmic cataclysm. Although there are reserves of this radioactive dust at great depths, it has been proven that it continues to rain down on us today. That would lead one to think that it was a recent cataclysm in astronomical terms. However, according to a recently published study by German scientistsit was hundreds of millions of years ago. Two isotopes to understand everything. Plutonium-244 does not exist naturally on Earth. In fact, the only isotope of this element that can be produced naturally in some geological processes is plutonium-239. and it does so mostly in the form of traces. Plutonium-244 is the heaviest isotope of this element. That is, the one with the most neutrons. It is known that it is usually formed by cosmic phenomena during something known as the r process, where lighter atoms quickly absorb neutrons into their nuclei. Generally, the event that usually gives rise to this phenomenon is the kilonova, an explosion resulting from the merger of two neutron stars. In the process, curium-247 is also formed, which is why these scientists have also analyzed its levels. Taking this data into account, they have discovered that the explosion in question must have occurred more than 100 million years ago, but less than one billion years ago. And, also, that the radioactive fallout has not stopped since then. The key is in the ferromanganese crust. Ferromanganese bark It is a layer of the ocean floor which is formed when metals dissolved in sea water, such as iron and manganese, are deposited and solidify. This occurs at a fairly slow rate, with growth of between 1 and 10 millimeters per million years. The deposits do not only have iron and manganese. Mixed with them are other substances that have fallen into the sea at that time. Therefore, this crust is a perfect chemical photograph of the history of our planet. A section with surprise. The authors of this study analyzed a section of this crust extracted at a depth of 4,830 meters in 1976. This had already been analyzed previously and had pointed out something surprising. And, in addition to plutonium, iron-60 was also found, another radioisotope associated with supernova explosions, which has a fairly short half-life of 2.6 million years. This figure means that, every 2.6 million years, half of the initial atoms of this isotope will have decayed. In another 2.6 million years half of what remained and so on. Since it is a fairly short half-life, it was concluded at the time that the kilonova that caused the fall of radioactive dust took place about 3 million years ago. However, the authors of the study just published debunked that hypothesis. Half-life of the study isotopes Curio to the rescue. The formation of plutonium-244 when neutron stars merge is always accompanied by the formation of curium-247. The plutonium isotope has a half-life of 81 million years, while that of curium “only” has a half-life of 15.6 million years. When analyzing the ferromanganese bark sample, these researchers found no curium. Therefore, it must have completely disintegrated. That places the explosion more than 100 million years ago. Be careful, remember that the half-life is the time it takes for half of the radioactive material to decay. Every 15.6 million years, half of it disintegrates, so in 100 million years there should be no curium left, but a lot of plutonium, which only lost half of it 19 million years ago. For plutonium to completely disappear, it would take 1 billion years. What about iron? The reason why there is iron-60 in the sample, despite having a lower half-life than that of curium-247, is that they originated in different events. In fact, the level changes of iron do not coincide with those of plutonium. On the other hand, it has been seen that plutonium continues to appear uniformly in the upper layers, hence it has been concluded that the radioactive fallout has not ended. At least it hadn’t ended in 1976 and that in astronomical terms was before yesterday. And now what? These scientists think that the cataclysm that released this long radioactive fallout must have been immense. Possibly even affected life on Earth. But at the moment it is something that cannot be known. We will have to continue investigating to have the answer. Image | University of Warwick/Mark Garlick | B. Schröder/HZDR/NASA, ESA, J. Hester, A. Loll/ASU In Xataka | Gravitational waves work their magic: we are closer to revealing the enigmas of neutron stars

One would expect that finding a meteorite crater in Spain would be easy, but it has taken more than 20 years to confirm the first one. And it is in Almería

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It is estimated that on Earth About 17,000 meteorites fall a year. However, some break down into unrecoverable fragments and others are mistaken for ordinary rocks. Many may be abandoned at the back of some closet. In fact, to date, only 80,000 meteorites have been located worldwide. But if finding meteorites is complicated, finding their impact craters is much more difficult. The figures speak for themselves. Today, only 196 of these structures have been documented. In Spain, for example, none had been found until very recently. There were two footprints suspected of having been left by a meteorite, one in Azuaranear Zaragoza, and another in the Tabernas basin, between the Almeria towns of Alhama de Almería and Alhabia. The first has been deflating as it has been investigated, but the second has finally been recognized as such by the international scientific community. It’s now official: the first meteorite impact crater has been found in Spain. It wasn’t an earthquake, it was a meteorite. The discovery and description of this crater is the result of research carried out by the University of Almería, the Astrobiology Center and the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA). It all started in 2005, when two scientists from the University of Almería, Juan Antonio Sánchez Garrido and Sebastián Sánchez, set out to study Fat Megabeda much studied rock, which for many years was considered to have seismic origin. However, they found some characteristics that did not fit with what is known as an earthquake. There was an anomaly with platinum group elements, such as iridium, which has been located in many impact craters of meteorites detected in other parts of the Earth and even on other planets. They also tried to search shocked quartz. That is, a form of quartz that, when observed under a microscope, shows a structure displaced along crystallographic planes. It is something that can only happen at exorbitantly high pressures, such as those generated by the impact of a meteorite. Suspicions were becoming clearer. The Gordo Megabed was formed by a seismic movement, it is true, but said movement was caused by a meteorite impacting our planet. The tests continue. Since that discovery was made, the area has been and continues to be excavated and this possible impact crater analyzed. Thus, they have also been found shatter conesknown in Spanish as splintered cones. These are striated and conical fracture surfaces found in rocks that have undergone very high pressure. This pressure is only related to the impact of a meteorite or a nuclear explosion. Since the calculations carried out indicate that this structure is 8 million years old, a nuclear explosion is ruled out. Rock cores extracted in the excavation But that’s not all. Magnetic evidence has also been detected. When a rock is subjected to very high temperatures, it acquires something known as a negative magnetic anomaly. With the impact of a large meteorite, great pressure is generated, which in turn gives rise to an enormous increase in temperature. They can reach more than 2,000ºC. Therefore, it is more than normal for these anomalies to be detected, the monitoring of which has allowed the crater to be delimited in the case of Almería. Or, at least, it allowed us to define where the crater was suspected to be. The Swedes enter the scene. The fact that an impact crater has never been detected in Spain means that Spanish scientists are logically not familiar with this type of anomaly in the rock. For this reason, these scientists from the University of Almería partnered with the rest of the aforementioned institutions, but they also consulted Swedish researchers. In Nordic countries, such as Sweden, Norway and Finland, there are older geological materials, in which several impact craters have been detected. When these scientists joined the investigation, they confirmed the suspicions that had gradually taken over Spanish scientists. They had found the impact crater of a meteorite. The first in Spain. The characteristics of the crater. When we think of a crater we imagine it as a hole clearly drilled into the Earth. Like the typical craters of the Moon. However, we must keep in mind that on Earth there are winds and geological movements, absent on our satellite, that do not leave the craters visible over the years. What these scientists have found is close to the surface in some points, but in others it is buried with a sediment pressure of 800, 900 and even 1,000 meters. Even so, with all of the above, we know that it is a crater with a radius of 5 kilometers, along with a fragmented area that reaches a radius of 24 kilometers. That is, in a way we have the “hole” left by the meteorite and, around it, all the ground that is fractured as a result of the impact. The very edges of the crater are what we see today as mountains. In the video below it can be seen perfectly. And what about the meteorite? There are very well-studied impact craters that have made it possible to calculate the relationship between the size of a meteorite and the radius of the crater it leaves. Taking this and some other factors into account, it is estimated that the meteorite must have measured around 800 meters. All this is what is known so far. The excavations are not over yet. Rock cores are being extracted with them. That is, cylinders of material excavated for subsequent analysis. With this they hope to find even more crushed quartz and new evidence that will allow them to describe more concisely what happened in that area of ​​the Tabernas desert, then submerged under the sea, when a huge meteorite hit it 8 million years ago. Images | SEA In Xataka | In 1724 a meteorite fell in Germany: we have just discovered that it contained a material ‘impossible’ for physics

Tim Ferriss has been selling productivity tips for years that ChatGPT now gives away for free

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sell books it was already difficult before AI. Now it is starting to get almost impossible. This is exactly what Tim Ferriss, productivity guru and author of historical bestsellers such as ‘The 4-Hour Work Week’ or ‘The Perfect Body in 4 Hours’, is confessing. This writer has made a analysis of sales evolution of his catalog and his conclusions are shocking. 80% drop in sales. Relying on official data from BookScan and Publishers Weekly By the start of 2026, Ferris has confirmed that sales of self-help and personal development books have taken a nosedive: Sales are 80% lower than before the explosion of generative AI. The reason is simple. I already have ChatGPT. For millions of people, the best format to learn how to optimize their time is no longer a 400-page book. Instead, they talk with a free chatbot that is in fact capable of condensing all that wisdom in just 20 seconds and that never stops encouraging us and adapting that knowledge to each of us. The data. According to Ferriss’ study, the first quarter of 2026 already points to worrying data, because it has detected a global decline of 9% in the adult non-fiction category. Things are even more serious for the self-help books and instruction books segment, which plummeted 26.3%. This writer’s conclusion is disturbing: in his opinion, the most powerful literary franchises on the market could be suffering a contraction of between 40 and 60% so far this year. Ferriss’ bestsellers aren’t such bestsellers anymore. Your own catalog It is a clear example of what is happening. Following the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, its sales saw a slight decline of 5% in 2023 and 13% in 2024. The real problem came in 2025: sales of its books plummeted 46%, and the projected decline for 2026 is even greater and Ferriss estimates it will be 57%. If the current trend continues, this author’s books will sell 80% fewer physical copies this year than four years ago. Books 0 – ChatGPT 1. Ferriss pragmatically analyzes what is happening: works such as ‘The Perfect Body in 4 Hours’ or ‘Weapons of the Titans’ essentially function as decision trees. Until a few years ago, books of this type were a perfect way to package knowledge and advice, but in 2024, 2025 and 2026 users prefer a conversational, often free, interface that AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini provide transparently. Not only that: they adjust to our needs instantly, we can ask questions and the advice is more personalized than ever, something that a self-help book cannot achieve. YouTube videos, the next to fall. Literature dedicated to self-help therefore seems condemned according to Ferriss, who assures that there will also be an imminent collapse for YouTube video tutorials: there the AI ​​will filter the 40 useful seconds of a 20-minute video. In his opinion, something similar will happen with podcasts based on practical advice, online courses, newsletters and productivity and self-help blogs. Original content will not disappear, he says, but it will become increasingly difficult for the average user to access it directly. The trap of paywalls. Ferriss does not foresee a very encouraging future for the media either. “What happens when 99% of the fact-checking media is behind a paywall? The short answer: people bypass them and ask the AI.” Pew Research Statistics reveal that 83% of users have not paid for information in the last year, and only 1% end up paying when they hit a paywall. Readers who want to be informed are turning massively to social networks and increasingly to AI chatbots to bypass restrictions and offer them a summary of the protected article. Nuances are lost, immediacy and freeness are gained. The 1,000 real fans. For Ferriss, the situation has some salvation. In his opinion, the publishing sector will return to its origins and will be an increasingly smaller space in which the authors will search its “1,000 true fans” who seek the personal voice and tone of certain authors. The connection with those fans will theoretically sustain these businesses. Image | Shiromani Kant In Xataka | In Oslo there is a library where books are being written with one condition: that they not be read for 90 years.

a colossal work of engineering that has been waiting for 150 years

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The project has lurched back and forth for decades, but Norway has finally kicked off one of its most amazing engineering feats: the Stad Ship Tunnel. It is the first tunnel in the world designed for ships to navigate inside. After many years of debatea budget that did not stop growing and a failed attempt to cancel it by the Government, the project is resurrected with approved financing and works planned to start in early 2027. We will tell you all the details. What you are looking to solve. The Stad Peninsula, on the west coast of Norway, is one of the most dangerous areas for navigation in the entire country. With no nearby islands to act as a natural barrier, the Stadhavet Sea has very rough waters, as for about 100 days a year it has waves that can exceed 30 meters arriving from several directions at the same time. That’s a problem for ships, as both fishing boats and cargo ships are forced to wait days (and sometimes weeks) until the weather eases enough to safely navigate the peninsula. Being late when transporting fish has serious consequences, since perishable products spoil, the railway network collapses as an alternative and companies in the sector lose money. “If we are going to export salmon from Trøndelag to the mainland, we cannot risk it getting stuck in Stad due to bad weather. Because it would arrive on the mainland as rakfisk (Norwegian fermented fish) and not as sushi,” counted Tore O. Sandvik, regional mayor of Trøndelag. The boat tunnel. The answer that has been gaining weight for years has been drilling the mountain. The Stad Ship Tunnel will cross the narrowest point of the peninsula (just 1.7 kilometers) between Moldefjord and Kjødepollen, in the Vanylvsfjord. With its 36 meters wide and 50 meters total height (33 meters free from sea level to the roof), the tunnel will be able to accommodate everything from small fishing boats to ferries and cruise ships, including ships on the Hurtigruten coastal route. The ships would pass through the tunnel in about 10 minutes, at a speed of 8 knots. Century and a half of history. The first sketches of crossing the Stad peninsula They date from 1874although the technology of the time condemned it to be considered a utopia. In the eighties the Norwegian government took up the idea, and in 2013 the tunnel finally managed to enter the National Transportation Plan. In 2021, Parliament gave the project the formal green light and talk began about the imminent start of works. But there was a problem: money. Lots of fights. The tunnel budget has been its biggest enemy. From the initial 267 million dollars it went to estimates of 325 million, then to 690 million in 2023 and finally to about 780 million dollars (around 8.6 billion Norwegian crowns) according to the most recent data. In October 2025 Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre announced the cancellation of the project within the framework of the presentation of the 2026 state budgets. “The cost will be so high that we consider it not responsible to continue with the project,” he declared then. The argument was that the country preferred to prioritize other areas, such as health, defense, or municipal investment, rather than assuming that expense. green light. The Støre Government did not have a majority in Parliament to impose the cancellation, and the pressure between the parliamentary opposition and that of more than 500 companies in the fishing, maritime, tourism and industrial sectors ended up tipping the balance. The center-left parties reached a budget agreement which includes financing to start construction. “We are ready to initiate the necessary processes to facilitate the start of works in early 2027,” counted Einar Vik Arset, director general of the Norwegian Coastal Administration (Kystverket). About 15 million dollars will be allocated for the initial phase, within a total budget estimated at around 888 million dollars (about 8.6 billion Norwegian crowns). How it will be built. “The selected contractor will then be able to begin preparations with the aim of starting works in early 2027,” assured Harald Inge Johnsen, project director. The Norwegian Coastal Administration has already evaluated the offers of three finalist consortiums: AF Gruppen, Eiffage Génie Civil and the consortium formed by Skanska and Vassbakk & Stol. If the schedule is met, the tunnel could be inaugurated around 2032. Of course, the excavation will require removing nearly three million cubic meters of rock and earth. Why it is unique in the world. Just like they point out Since El Confidencial, boat tunnels have existed since 1679, when the Malpas tunnel was opened on the French Canal du Midi. But all of them serve inland waterways (canals and ports) and have never been designed for ocean shipping traffic. The Stad Ship Tunnel will be the first in its category. According to estimates from the Norwegian Government itself, the infrastructure also promises to reduce fuel consumption and emissions by up to 60%, by eliminating long waits and forced detours around the peninsula. In Xataka | Building tunnels is very good, but in China there are regions that are doing other things: cutting mountains in half

3,000 years ago there were no notaries, so in Sweden agreements and marriages were closed with footprints carved in rock

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In Atapuerca there are animals, in Irulegi there is a hand and in Lake Mälaren, in central-eastern Sweden, there are feet. Thousands of footprints carved into rock that are between 2,500 and 3,700 years old. To date, archeology thought that they were a sample of symbolic or religious art, but a recent study proposes something much more practical and not at all ornamental: they were contracts engraved in stone. Take off your shoes and sign here. Fredrik Fahlander, an archaeologist at Stockholm University, has examined hundreds of footprints carved into rock surfaces along the southern coasts of the Scandinavian peninsula and has found that these petroglyphs are not placed at random nor do they belong to the same person, like when you mess around with fresh cement. So that it lasts, exactly like the contracts. In fact, that is their hypothesis: when two people wanted to seal an agreement, a friendship or a marriage, they engraved their footprints together on the rock. Faced with the oral promise, the stone made it permanent. Map of southern Scandinavia where carved footprints have been found. Fredrik Fahlander Why is it important. Because they offer a different vision than what we know about how prehistoric societies worked. Historically we have assumed that formal pacts were typical of cultures with writing, but this study shows that peoples without writing could also formalize commitments using the physical landscape as support. On the other hand, as important as knowing what those footprints mean is knowing what they were not: in the Scandinavian Bronze Age, the sacred and the symbolic was engraved in bronze and deposited in tombs and the foot prints are not in either of those two places. They appear only and exclusively on rock exposed to water. It is no coincidence: it reveals that these traces did not belong to the world of the dead or to that of symbology, but to that of the living and their agreements. Context. The Nordic Bronze Age lasted from approximately 1700 to 500 BC. During that period, Scandinavian people left tens of thousands of rock carvings with various common motifs, such as ships, animals, human figures or circles. The category of footprints is rare within this set: they are very careful, carved to life size and with so much detail that they even show the straps of the sandals. The main site studied is the Mälaren region, which during the Bronze Age was a bay of the Baltic Sea. The uplift of the land after the last ice age has made it possible to chronologically date the engravings: those located at higher altitudes are older. In detail. In the Mälaren region, 627 carved footprints have been documented in 140 sites, although it is not an isolated phenomenon: they are present throughout the province of Småland and on the Bjäre peninsula. They are deliberately arranged around water sources and shallow depressions where rainwater collected and flowed, as well as near natural crevices and mineral areas. In addition, there are certain patterns: most sites have a single footprint or an odd number. When there are two, they are almost always different in size and shape, suggesting that they belong to different people. In some cases, the second print was added some time after the first. Fahlander interprets this as an accepted invitation: the first print proposes the link, the second confirms it. If both were recorded at the same time, the commitment was sealed simultaneously by both parties. Yes, but. The study hypothesis is coherent and well-supported, but it remains a hypothesis. In fact, as Fahlander himself explains, these footprints probably had more than one meaning or purpose. However, there are no written sources from the time that confirm it simply because they do not exist. In Xataka | When they opened a remote tomb in Poland, archaeologists discovered something strange: two women embracing In Xataka | Archaeologists have found a puzzle in a Neolithic tomb: where the hell are the heads of its 77 skeletons? Cover | Fahlander, F. (2026). “A Step in Stone. Ontologies of Podomorphic Petroglyphs in Southern Scandinavian Bronze Age”

90 years ago a Basque company decided to manufacture the “Rolls-Royce of staplers”. It hasn’t gone particularly well

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What do they have in common the MoMA, Vladimir Putinthe former Colombian president Andres Pastrana and the veteran reporter Gillian de Bonowho for decades dedicated himself to advising wealthy readers of Financial Times How to spend your money in style? The answer is only two characters long: M5the Basque brand stapler The Helmet. His name may not ring a bell, but it sure does. your imageneat, efficient, sophisticated. So much so that it has elevated the stapler to the category of art worthy of the desks of leaders and museums. Despite all that and its centuries-old history, El Casco has not managed to avoid bankruptcy. After declare bankruptcynow his legacy is sold to the highest bidder. The art of putting together pages. Life offers us many kinds of pleasures, but there is one that we did not know about until the Basque company El Casco got to work: collecting papers. This was recognized a few years ago, Gillian de Bonothe veteran reporter of the How I spend it (‘How I spend it’) from the diary Financial Times. In 2017, after testing the M5 stapler from the Guipuzcoan company, recognized to his readers that he had never enjoyed stapling papers so much. It hasn’t been the only one. The design, efficiency and above all the elegance of El Casco staplers (the M5 is perhaps the most famous and exclusive, but in the catalog of the company there are many more models) has led them to such unexpected places such as the collection of the MoMA museum in New York or the desks of Vladimir Putin and Andrés Pastrana, as well as the offices of executives from around the world. After all, stapling report sheets may be a mundane task, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done glamorously. “The Roll-Royce of staplers”. Perhaps the best definition of the M5 was given years ago by designer Juli Capella. For him, remember The Countrythe Basque creation is something like “the Rolls-Royce of staplers.” It may sound like an exaggeration, but the phrase is better understood if several factors are taken into account. First, the design of the article, which has allowed it to be passed from parents to children in many cases and continue to fulfill its function. just like decades ago. Second, its history: the company behind it traces its origins to before the Civil War. Third, its exclusivity (and prices): in its online catalog You can find different models ranging from 150 to almost 400 euros. And yet… All of the above guarantees El Casco staplers a privileged place in the history of national design, but that does not mean that at a business level they have to do well. On the contrary. The passing of the decades, the change of habits, digitalization and competition of articles low cost Asia is over taking its toll to the company, unable to balance its accounts. At the beginning of the year, Tuncalya, the Eibar-based company behind the El Casco brand, declared bankruptcy and months later, in May, was auctioned most of the machinery and facilities that allowed it to manufacture its staplers. Brands, domains and know-how. Now comes the second (and final) chapter of its corporate epilogue. As I remembered a few days ago The Mailthis week the other part of his business legacy is auctioned: around twenty trademark registrations in different countries, the know-how accumulated after decades of activity, its commercial fund and a series of web domains that will remain valid at least until October 2026 or 2030. The bid is organized by Pacelma Auctions, it comes out in a single Lope with a starting price of 50,000 euros and is part of the bankruptcy procedure supervised by a court in San Sebastián. More than just design. Although what probably made Putin, Pastrana and Bono fall in love with it is the design of the staplers, El Casco stands out for another reason: its history. The roots of the company must be found in the Basque Country of the 20when Juan Olave and Juan Solozabal (former Orbea employees) founded a business in Éibar that was initially dedicated to weapons. After a few years marked by the Great Depression and the Civil War, the company decided to focus on office supplies. What didn’t change was his mentality. “A staple should move through the stapler with the same precision as a bullet through the barrel of a revolver,” explains Joan Solozábal, grandson of the founder. Against all odds. Throughout its extensive history, the firm has encountered the occasional crisis. In 1937, just a few years after it began manufacturing stationery, the business suffered the blow of the Civil War: the town suffered bombings that left the company damaged. Over time, it was able to resume its activity, it was equipped with a larger factory and, already in the 60s, it gathered around 200 employees. The crises of the following decades, digitalization and competition from low cost However, they undermined his business. In 2014 the company was forced to bankruptcya delicate situation that was saved thanks to the Turkish investor (and former client of the firm) Bayrak Vedak. Their disembarkation gave a boost of oxygen to the Gipuzkoan company, but it has not allowed them to fully weather the storm. Twelve years after that critical episode and despite attempts to refocus the business, the firm declared bankruptcy at the beginning of 2026. Now its future remains in the air. Images | The Helmet and Wikipedia In Xataka | What happened to Barreiros, the Spanish automotive company that manufactured Dodges “made in Spain” in the second half of the 20th century

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