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We have spent 30 years forgetting how things are made. Now China has the keys to the matter and the West is in panic

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For the past three decades, Western democracies have operated under an intellectual mirage. Elites, blinded by a neoclassical bias, assumed that control of intellectual property, financial instruments, and software code constituted the pinnacle of value creation. In this worldview, physical processes—the “dirty work” of mining, refining, and manufacturing—were considered low-margin commodity services that could be outsourced to low-cost jurisdictions without strategic risk. As Gillian Tett explains in his Financial Times columnthis cognitive bias allowed China to dominate global supply chains with little protest. The material deterioration of the West. The essence of the current problem is defined by investor Craig Tindale in his essay “The return of matter”. In it he argues that the West has suffered “strategic disarmament” by dismantling its national productive economy in favor of quarterly financial efficiency. As Tindale details, he fell into the “raw material paradox”: believing that possessing the raw mineral is equivalent to possessing the usable material. While the West possesses vast geological deposits, China has monopolized the “Midstream,” that is, the heavy industrial capacity to refine, smelt and purify these materials into useful forms. Without this capability, a lithium mine in Australia or a copper mine in Arizona are simply quarries for a Chinese smelter; They are not strategic assets for the West if Beijing has the keys to access them. The data is there. The data of the Chinese industrial domain are, as investor Craig Tindale describesoverwhelming and unprecedented in history, consolidating what he calls “processing sovereignty”: Gallium: China controls approximately 98% of global production, a material that is essential for AESA radars, 5G networks and the semiconductors of the future. Rare earths: The Asian giant dominates 90% of chemical separation capacity – the true technical “separation wall” – and more than 90% of the production of NdFeB magnets, vital for electric vehicle engines and defense systems. Graphite: Control more than 90% of the production of graphite anodes, the indispensable component of virtually all lithium-ion batteries. Magnesium and Polysilicon: Your control extends to 90-95% of magnesium casting (key for aluminum alloys) and 95% polysilicon necessary for solar energy. As Tett points outwhile the West became obsessed with software and services, China was quietly building the physical infrastructure that today gives it a massive competitive advantage in the race for artificial intelligence and the energy transition. This physical reality is what has forced the Trump administration to try to redraw the energy map by taking Venezuelan crude oil, desperately seeking to regain control over the “matter.” The electric wall of AI. This physical reality has revealed that the race for Artificial Intelligence It’s not just a question of code or chips. The digital leadership of the West is now encountering the physical limit of cheap energy. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and Jensen Huang, director of Nvidia, agree that the biggest current problem is not the excess of chips, but lack of electricity to connect them. On this board, China has gone from being a dependent petrostate to becoming the first “Electrostate” in the world. Beijing now produces 2.5 times more electricity than the US and builds 74% of all current solar and wind projects on the planet. By investing massively in electrification, China is expanding an infrastructure that could give it a definite advantage in the AI ​​race. The Venezuelan trap. Against this backdrop, Donald Trump’s administration has accepted the importance of physical matter, but seems determined to fight with tools from the last century. The taking of Venezuelan crude oil seeks to consolidate the reserves of Venezuela, Guyana and the United States are under US influence, which would represent close to 30% of the world’s oil reserves. according to a JPMorgan report. However, Venezuelan oil alone cannot solve the AI ​​problem. As Gillian Tett warnswhile Washington asks the world to buy 20th century infrastructure (fossil fuels), Beijing offers 21st century infrastructure (renewable energy and high voltage networks). In addition, Venezuelan crude oil is “mortgaged”: The country owes up to $60 billion to China under the oil-for-loans model, and its infrastructure is in ruins. The skills gap and the clash of “clocks.” Rebuilding industrial sovereignty is not just a question of money. The West has closed its heavy industrial capacity for thirty years, causing a “human bottleneck”. Metallurgists and process engineers who know how to adjust an unstable furnace or a chemical separation train are retiring without relief. Tindale further postulates a conflict of time horizons. The “Western Financial Clock,” which requires quarterly profits, has destabilized the “Industrial Clock” (which requires decades of investment) and the “War Clock” (which requires immediate reserves). While China’s clocks are synchronized by the state, the West remains trapped in short-term financial efficiency. Towards a rematerialized sovereignty? The JPMorgan report suggests that the US has won the short-term battle for Venezuelan crude oil. But, as Gillian Tett concludesrisks losing the global strategic war for the energy that will power AI. Tindale’s thesis is blunt: a civilization that financializes everything ends up sacrificing the material base that keeps it independent. If the West does not rebuild its foundries, refineries and factories, it will renounce the material sovereignty that sustains democracy, becoming a simple “quarry” rich in resources but poor in capacity in the face of a rival that already holds the keys to the physical world. Image | freepik Xataka | Venezuela has something much more valuable than oil and the US knows it. The big problem is that he doesn’t know where he is.

Three years of delay later, Valladolid is about to complete what seemed endless: the A-11

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Cross Castilla y León on a highway. From Soria to Zamora, passing through Valladolid, to link the first of them with the A-66 or give access to Portugal without having to go through secondary roads. It is known as the Duero Highway and its end is already visible at its central junction, in Valladolid. It arrives, yes, three years late. The works They have already been extended for more than six years, well beyond December 2022 for which the section between Tudela de Duero and Olivares was expected to be inaugurated. Two populations that should have been united three years after work began in 2019, explain in Valladolid newspaper. When this section is inaugurated and connects with the Quintanilla de Arriba section, it will be open the largest highway link which has been opened to traffic once in our country. 34 kilometers that should arrive in spring. Because first there is a hurdle to overcome. A viaduct to finish Until now, the stretch of highway inaugurated only once in our country is the 27.8 km that separate Solares and Torrelavega in Cantabria by the A-8 and which were opened to traffic in 2015. The record should become obsolete when Quintanilla de Arriba and Tudela de Duero are finally linked by the A-11. This section, as we said, was planned in two segments. Between Tudela de Duero and Olivares de Duero there are 20.2 kilometers in length and between this town and Quintanilla de Arriba there are another 14.5 kilometers. The intention is that this first section will be open to traffic in 2022 after investing 79.1 million euros. The second was to be ready at the end of 2023 after spending 97.9 million euros. It is estimated, however, that this section has gone above 220 million euros. A figure that pales compared to the total work, if we take into account that the last 120 kilometers of the Duero Highway under construction have been awarded some 980 million euros in the sum of all the projects. It remains to be built, for example, the expansion of the Aranda del Duero variant. As far as Valladolid is concerned, residents have yet to see how the 34 kilometer link is completed with the construction of the Duero viaduct. When completed it will be the culmination of works that are expected to be ready by the spring of this year. However, in May of last year Those responsible preferred to remain cautious and make it clear that until the end of 2026 the deadlines projected with the last extension would be met. Whether you arrive in spring or winter, the opening of this section next to Valladolid will be key to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The connection between Soria and Zamora by highway is a historic demand that should have been completed a long time ago. Especially if we take into account that The first section of the A-11 was opened to cars in 1995. More than 30 years later, there are still fringes to close. Photos | Ministry of Transport In Xataka | Spain has dozens of unique abandoned roads. Now he wants to save them by turning them into “historic roads”

A YouTube video that lasts 140 years has gone viral. Nobody is clear why

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A YouTube video which, on paper, would not end for more than a century is the type of oddity that the internet knows how to turn into a phenomenon. It is enough to see an impossible figure in duration and verify that that same clip exceeds 2.3 million views to understand why half the world has stopped to watch it. Not because someone intends to reproduce it in its entirety, but because something like this challenges what we think we know about how the platform works. Even more so when it comes from a strange channel, with only three published videos and 137,000 subscribers. The longest video on YouTube? What has triggered the confusion is not only that exorbitant figure, but the way in which YouTube shows it depending on where you look. A counter appears in the channel view and in the video thumbnail that, translated into real time, is equivalent to about 140 years of continuous playback, as we can see in the screenshots. However, when you press play and load the player, the duration changes and is around 12 hours, with variations of minutes and seconds. The length of the video when embedded in a web page The limits of the platform. On your own help pagesGoogle explains that the maximum upload is 256 GB or 12 hours, whichever comes first, and remembers that these limits have varied over the years, leaving longer videos from previous times on the platform. This framework is essential to not get carried away by the impact of the number that appears on the screen. If the player shows something close to 12 hours, it’s within what YouTube considers normal, while a duration of decades simply doesn’t fit with the service’s known rules. The only direct source of this entire case is the file of the channel that hosts the video. On YouTube he appears as @shinywrand in your profile YouTube indicates as location “North Korea”. It also shows minimal but striking activity: three videos published, 137,000 subscribers and 2,551,606 accumulated views, with the channel’s registration date on July 31, 2023. There is no additional information or descriptions that clarify what it is or where it comes from, beyond what the platform itself shows. A metadata failure. The hypothesis that best fits what we see is that we are not dealing with a real duration, but rather a number that is poorly recorded or poorly read within the YouTube infrastructure. Each video has several time measurements associated with it, the one declared by the original file, the one calculated by the system when processing it and the one used by the different interface modules. If one of them fails, inconsistencies could appear as striking as a preview that points to decades of playback and a player that moves in a normal range. The threshold of direct. Google explains that Live shows of less than 12 hours are automatically archived, but if they exceed that time they may be lost, a detail that helps to understand why that number appears again and again as a border. Although there is no confirmation that this video comes from a glitch in a live broadcast, that technical framework adds context to the duration displayed by the player. The result is a phenomenon that lives on the border between what the platform teaches and what really happens in its internal functioning. There is a video with an impossible length, a player that tells another story and a channel that provides no clues other than its own figures. And while the reasons remain unclear, the video continues to gain views and more than 30,000 comments. Images | BoliviaIntelligent | Screenshot In Xataka | Before, advertising was to monetize. Now it is to punish you and YouTube has taken it to the extreme

500-meter ice dome melted 7,000 years ago and is now melting again

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When we think of Greenlandthe image that automatically comes to mind is that of a terrain with a large amount of snow and very cold. But science has bad news for this country belonging to Denmark: the Greenland ice sheet It is much more fragile than we could think.. And that is a problem. From the terrestrial bottom. This statement is not something that has been extracted on paper, but rather has been ‘seen’ in the depths of the earth. This way, after drilling more than 500 meters of ice at Prudhoe Domeresearchers have found evidence that this gigantic mass completely disappeared just 7,000 years ago and then resurface. And the worst thing is not that it happened thousands of years ago, but that now the temperatures that caused that collapse are the same ones we hope to reach by the year 2100. The GreenDrill project. The researchers recently published in Nature on this project, which has been made possible thanks to a technical feat. To achieve this, the team drilled about 509 meters to reach the sediments that rest beneath the base of Prudhoe Dome, a 2,500 km² ice dome in northwest Greenland. To find out exactly what happened there, scientists used a technique called cell dating. infrared stimulated luminescence. In this way, what is allowed is to see when was the last time that part of this deep ice was exposed to the radiation of sunlight. The results. They were pretty clear: the sediments beneath Prudhoe Dome saw the sun between 6,000 and 8,200 years ago. This can be translated into a very simple sentence: at that time, there was no 500 meters of ice above, so the dome simply did not exist. And that is now a problem. Because? At that time Greenland ended up melting due to the ‘Holocene Thermal Maximum’. During this period, temperatures in the Arctic were between 3 and 5 °C higher than the pre-industrial era. And this is exactly where the data becomes really worrying. Worrying because precisely those temperatures that thousands of years ago erased entire ice domes from the map are the exact range of heating that climate models predict for the end of this century if emissions are not drastically reduced. This is why the ice we see today is not an eternal relic of the Ice Age; It is a structure that has collapsed before under conditions we are about to replicate. The domino effect. Prudhoe Dome is just one piece of the puzzle, but its past disappearance suggests that much of the northwestern sector of the Greenland Ice Sheet was much reduced during the early Holocene. The conclusion to this is quite clear: if history repeats itself and the Greenland ice sheet completely melts, global sea level it would rise about 7.3 meters. But logically it is not something that will happen tomorrow, but rather the process of fusion of the entire island will still take several centuries. Although if the estimates are met, it may go faster than you think. Change the rules of the game. Until now, the central, thickest areas of Greenland were thought to be almost indestructible. This study demonstrates that even massive domes 500 meters thick can fade in geologically short periods. And this is something that has already happened as science points out. Images | Visit Greenland In Xataka | China has turned the Arctic into its own “Panama Canal.” And that explains the US obsession with Greenland

Being over 55 years old does not only mean having work experience. Now it is also synonymous with being unemployed

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Labor market and demographics are two closely linked factors in which changes in one affect the other. Demographic aging is not only affecting the generational changebut is also generating an unprecedented change: for the first time in historical series, unemployment among those over 55 years of age exceeds that of the population between 25 and 54 years of age. Furthermore, the main difference is that reintegration into labor market for those over 55 years of age It does not occur in the same terms as in the younger segment of the population. This reversal of the historical pattern comes at the height of demographic aging, just when people are asking to work longer to support the pension system. A historic “sorpasso” in the senior unemployment. Historically, people aged 55 years or older registered less unemployment than the rest of younger workers, to the point that in 1994 their unemployment rate for this segment of the population was 9.2 points (11.7%) below that of the group of 25 to 54 years old (20.9%). This favorable gap has been progressively reduced until it disappears in 2023, at which point the differential became negative for senior workers. As stated in the study prepared by the BBVA and IVIE Foundation, in 2025, the “sorpasso” no longer leaves room for doubt and the average unemployment rate for those over 55 years of age reaches 9.8%, compared to the 9.4% unemployment rate registered for people between 25 and 54 years of age. This change occurs in a context of general improvement in employment in Spainwhich indicates a very notable relative worsening of the position of seniors within the labor market. That is, more is hired, but People over 55 years of age are not hired.. More time unemployed. As the BBVA Foundation report reveals, the problem is not only how many people over 55 years of age are unemployed, but also their duration of unemployment. it has been lengthening to the same extent that the gap with those under 55 years of age was reduced. “Their labor insertion is complicated, with longer periods of unemployment, fewer job opportunities and lower quality jobs,” the report points out. The data indicates that 57.9% of unemployed people aged 55 or over are long-term unemployed, having been unemployed for more than a year. looking for a job without finding it. This percentage contrasts with 36.1% among unemployed people aged 25 to 54 and 17.8% among young people aged 16 to 24. When they return they do so with worse conditions.. When these employees manage to re-engage in the labor market, they do so in much more fragile conditions than those they had. Among employees aged 55 or over with less than a year of seniority, that is, they have just joined a company, 52.6% have a temporary contract, 10% are in precarious employment with contracts of up to three months and 4.5% are permanently discontinued. On the other hand, among those employees over 55 years of age who have been in the same company for more than 25 years, temporary employment falls to 2%, there is hardly any precarious employment and discontinuous permanent employment is reduced to 2.4%. They return, but to worse jobs. According to the authors of the report, the differences are also noticeable in the type of occupations they enter after the period of unemployment. Among senior workers with more than 25 years of seniority who maintain their jobs, management, management or highly qualified occupations represent 45.6% of the total, while basic jobs only represent 7%. However, among older people who have just gotten a new job, only 15.6% occupy highly qualified positions and 29.4% end up in elementary occupations. This pattern is even worse than that of younger workers in the same situation: among those aged 25 to 54 who have just started a job, high-skilled occupations reach 29.1%, while basic occupations account for 20%. For the 16 to 24 year old group, these percentages are 27% and 15.5%, respectively. More dissatisfaction. Changing to a job with worse conditions also leads to an increase in job satisfaction for this segment of the active population, which, according to encrypts the studyrecords that 21.5% of newly employed seniors want to change their schedule and 16.4% continue looking for another job despite having found one, compared to 0.8% of their peers who have kept their job. In terms of salaries, the data paint a similar reality. The study by the BBVA and IVIE Foundation shows that the average annual salary of those over 55 years of age is 30,038 euros, above the 26,855 euros of the group between 25 and 54 years of age. But when the focus is placed on newly hired people over 55 years of age, their salary drops to 19,558 euros, slightly below the 19,837 euros earned by those aged 25 to 54 in the same situation and far from the 40,520 euros of senior workers who have not had their careers interrupted. In Xataka | 47% of the unemployed in Spain are over 50 years old. The problem is that many will not return to work until they retire. Image | Unsplash (guven karakoc)

When a town found a dead whale on its beaches, it decided to dynamite it. 55 years later they still celebrate it

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One of the most excessive and gory stories you have ever heard in your life is also one of the funniest, because for a change it does not involve the suffering of any living being, but rather a series of unfortunate decisions and systematic ignorance of the laws of physics. It is the story of the whale Oregon explosion, a crazy event that just turned 55 years old… and is still being celebrated. The problem. On November 12, 1970, engineers from the Oregon Highway Division, which is in charge of road traffic on a day-to-day basis, encountered an unusual dilemma on the beach in the small coastal town of Florence: getting rid of a dead eight-ton sperm whale that had been decomposing in the sun for three days. After consulting with the Navy about demolition techniques, the team decided to apply a solution as direct as it was disastrous to the corpse: half a ton of dynamite (twenty boxes), in the hope of pulverizing the cetacean. The seagulls would be in charge of cleaning up the remains. Good marines, bad advisors. The consultation turned out to be counterproductive. The marines advised on demolition with explosives, their specialty, but no one consulted marine biologists or coastal wildlife experts. Walter Umenhofer, a local businessman with military experience, warned Thornton that twenty boxes of dynamite was excessive: he recommended twenty individual cartridges or, if not, a much larger amount to completely pulverize organic tissue. His advice was ignored. Boom. The detonation, at 3:45 PM, caused a 30 meter high sand and grease apocalypsethrowing whale fragments in all directions. Blocks of tissue and muscle the size of coffee tables fell on spectators located at a safe distance of more than 400 meters from the explosion point. The screams of excitement from the hundred or so spectators turned into screams of horror as fragments of tissue fell from the sky. Some of the pieces of fat, almost a meter long, crushed the roof of a vehicle. The smell of burning flesh lingered for days and the seagulls never appeared. The decision of George Thornton, responsible for the action, lacked technical basis from the beginning. In one previous interviewadmitted: “I’m sure it will work. The only thing we’re not sure about is exactly how much dynamite we’ll need to break this… thing up, so the seagulls and crabs and other scavengers can clean it up.” Thornton decided to treat the cetacean like a rock on a road: half a ton of explosives strategically placed under the animal, in the hope that the force would propel the remains into the Pacific. What to do with a whale. Cetacean strandings have posed logistical dilemmas for coastal authorities for decades. Prior to the development of unified scientific protocols (that prioritize scientific necropsy on rapid elimination), methods for dealing with dead whales often relied on improvisation. The most common options They included burial on the beach, towing out to sea for sinking, or simply allowing the animal to decompose naturally. Today, disposal methods have evolved: countries such as South Africa, Iceland and Australia continue to use controlled explosives after towing cetaceans out to seabut the United States ended up abandoning this practice. When 41 sperm whales stranded near Florence in 1979, authorities They buried them without hesitation. Hunting In 1970, Oregon lacked specific guidelines for these cases. The Oregon Highway Division had jurisdiction over state beaches (an administrative quirk arising from the legal consideration of coastlines as part of the public highway system) but no expertise in marine biology. When the sperm whale arrived in Florence, George Thornton publicly admitted that he had been assigned to the case.”because his supervisor had gone hunting“. The closest precedent had been successful because of its modesty: two years earlier, in 1968, authorities in Long Beach, Washington, had managed a similar stranding through a conventional burial without incident. The unforgettable video. All was immortalized by KATU journalist Paul Linnman, who arrived on the scene initially frustrated by what he considered a menial assignment. Until he found out the amount of dynamite involved. With cameraman Doug Brazil documented the event on 16mm film with live magnetically recorded audio, a format that, unlike video, would retain its visual quality for decades. On. After the disaster, most of the sperm whale remained intact on the beach. Highway Division workers spent the afternoon manually burying the remains, including huge sections of the animal that were not moved from the explosion point. Thornton declared to Bacon that same afternoon that everything had gone “well…except that the explosion dug a hole in the sand beneath the whale,” directing the force upward rather than toward the ocean. decades laterThornton continued to defend the operation as a technical success distorted by hostile media coverage. It goes viral. For two decades, the incident remained a regional anecdote until comedian Dave Barry resurrected history in his Miami Herald column on May 20, 1990. Titled “The Far Side Comes to Life in Oregon,” in reference to the immortal series by gary larson. His description of the event introduced the American public to the concept of “epic fail” before the digital age popularized the term. The Oregon Department of Transportation received calls from angry people, convinced the incident had occurred recently. Which makes the exploding whale one of the first stories to go viral on the internet. Beyond the meme. The phenomenon transcended the purely digital. In 2015, Oregon indie musician Sufjan Stevens released the song ‘Exploding Whale‘, where it said “Embrace the epic failure of my exploiting whale”. Of course, the event appeared on ‘The Simpsons’, in the 2010 episode ‘The Squirt and the Whale’. In 2020, the Oregon Historical Society commissioned a 4K restoration of the original 16mm footage of the news story. The laughs. 55 years later, that fiasco in public management has been transformed into folklore and local heritage. In 2024, Florence declared November as “Exploding Whale Month”and the city celebrates the anniversary with a festival that culminates with the “Superlative … Read more

We have been obsessed with Japan for decades to understand people who live over 100 years. The key was in Brazil

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For decades, when science was searching for secrets of aginghe always looked in the same places: Japan’s “Blue Zones”Sardinia or the icy and homogeneous populations of northern Europe. However, researchers have pointed out that all this time we have been ignoring a biological gold mine: Brazil. The study. Understanding why there are people who live to be over one hundred years of age is undoubtedly an objective of science to to be able to unlock possible therapies in the future that will extend our lives much longer. Since it is curious that in specific areas such as Japan the population ages far beyond the normal average, being a mystery to science (although the reasons are already gone). The latest research on the matterpublished on January 6 in Genomic Psychiatry, has identified a genetic mix in the South American country that could contain protective variants invisible in more uniform populations. The Brazilian superhumans. The study, led by geneticists Mayana Zats and Mateus Vidigal de Castro, is based on the analysis of a group of more than 160 centenarians and at least 20 supercentenarians, who They are those people who are over 110 years old. Among these people, some quite relevant figures stand out, such as Sister Inah, who reached the age of 116, and several of the oldest men in the world, according to the LongeviQuest Atlas. But what really makes this group of people who have been analyzed by researchers special is not their age, but their biological resilience. Its biological resistance. The researchers’ main thesis is that the intense Brazilian miscegenation, fruit of centuries of interaction between indigenous populationsPortuguese colonizers, enslaved people of African origin and European and Japanese immigrants, has created a unique genomic diversity. By analyzing this genetic “breeding ground”, scientists have identified millions of variants that do not appear in large international biobanks. The hypothesis suggests that this mixture allows protective variants to emerge that are practically invisible in homogeneous populations. It is, in essence, a search for the genes of resilience in an environment of maximum diversity. COVID resistance. Without a doubt, it is one of the most fascinating examples of this history, since before the arrival of vaccines, three supercentenarians of the study they managed to survive the disease. By analyzing their immune response, the researchers found a concentration of cells related to innate defense that was very efficient. In this way, it was seen that individuals not only live longer, but also have a defense system capable of neutralizing threats that are lethal to people decades younger. Something that seems to be related to an increase in biological processes related to autophagy, that is, the ability of some cells to literally clean the body of harmful components. What was already known. This paradigm shift connects with previous works such as those done by researcher Manel Esteller on the epigenetic profile of the Spanish María Branyasthe oldest Spanish person of all time. In this case, what was done was to understand the “biological clock” of longevity in Europe. Now, the Brazilian project expands the map into the unknown. By sequencing entire genomes in this mixed-race population, scientists have discovered some eight billion undescribed variants, many of which could have a functional impact on how we age and how our cells withstand the test of time. Towards the future. The study of Brazilian supercentenarians is not only a matter of biographical curiosity about who holds the age record, but a critical step towards genomic medicine of the future. By understanding how the mixture of ancestors can concentrate protective factors against degenerative or infectious diseases, science is getting closer to discovering whether there is a biological “formula” for longevity that can be translated into therapies for the rest of the population. Brazil, with its genetic mosaic, is demonstrating that the most complex answers to our survival could be written in the genes of those who, against all odds, have seen more than a century of history pass by. Images | Unsplash In Xataka | The change of year has a weapon to slow down your aging: a list of New Year’s resolutions

Years ago we ridiculed China for copying Western mobile phones. The fact is that now they copy them… and improve them

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We Europeans have integrated into our culture that copying is something negative, an act of theft according to tech industry figures such as John Ive. In China, the culture of ‘shanzai’ It tells us the opposite: learning and replicating what the best teachers do is the best way to reach (or surpass) their level of knowledge. In China, the logic is different. The culture of ‘shanzhai’ It starts from a much more pragmatic premise: learning by replicating the best is the fastest—and most effective—way to reach their level, or even surpass it. For years, seeing Chinese brands copying giants like Apple was a source of ridicule on social networks. Until the country’s technological advance has made the outcome inevitable: copies that no longer only imitate, but also technically improve the products from which they are inspired. The Honor Magic 8 Pro…Air. Apple sets the conceptual pace for where industry trends will move. And, although Samsung was the first with its Galaxy Edge, the race to create increasingly thinner flagships has been started by Apple with its iPhone 17 Air. A model that It is not working very well on a commercial level.precisely because of the sacrifices that supposedly entail creating such a thin mobile phone. It only has one camera. It is the iPhone with the worst autonomy of the entire family iPhone 17 It is, in practical terms, inferior in some key aspects to a base iPhone The most talked about mobile phone this week is the Honor Magic 8 Pro Air, of which we have leaks through JD’s own pageand whose presentation date and part of the design are already confirmed by Honor itself. We will meet him on January 19 in China. Don’t take away my basics. “I’m willing to lose two cameras and suffer with the battery in exchange for a thinner phone.” Said nobody, ever. According to the information leaked, this Honor It has three cameras It has a 5,500mAh battery The rest of the specs will be those expected in any high range honor Power 2. The Honor Magic 8 Pro Air will not be the only Honor model “inspired” by Apple for this 2026. Recently, the company presented its Power 2a mid-range with just 8mm thickness and only 216 grams of weight. In addition to having specs that border on the first line, it is practically a humiliation in terms of battery for all its rivals: it has 10,000mAh, the same as the powerbanks that I have at home for my trips. It’s not a player thing. Xiaomi has even renamed its star flagship from Pro to “Pro Max”, in a model in which even the case of an iPhone 17 Pro Max fits almost perfectly. Differences with the Apple model? Battery… 7,500mAh. In less thickness. Screen with more peak brightness. Double the base memory. Three keys. China It is in one of the best moments to lead the smartphone race. The generational leap in batteries is leaving Western manufacturers behind. The maxim is clear: add all the hardware that fits in the body of the phone. A strategy focused on volume. Giants like Apple or Google need to hit the mark with their flagship model to make their mobile division profitable. Chinese manufacturers maintain their profitability thanks to broader catalogs, with dozens of models that cover all price ranges. A market of traditions. The data of Counterpoint in Q3 2025 They make one thing clear: the lack of technological innovation does not affect Samsung or Apple. The two leading companies maintain their position, followed by Xiaomi, which is already practically traditional in markets such as Europe. Despite this, China is demonstrating something key in a market that aspires to win in the coming years. He not only knows how to copy: he knows how to improve what already exists. In Xataka | China has a replica of 12 European cities with Parisian neighborhoods and part of the Alhambra. And it belongs to Huawei

China sold cheap batteries for years. The problem is that in the meantime no one built an alternative

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For more than a decade, the world became accustomed to an idea that seemed unquestionable: batteries—the heart of electric cars, of renewable energies, of data centers and of modern warfare— would be increasingly cheaper. China mass-produced them, dominated the technology, controlled critical materials and accepted minimal margins, even losses. For the West, the model was comfortable: import, reduce costs and accelerate the energy transition. That normality, however, has begun to crack. A turning point in the Chinese market. In recent months, several lithium battery manufacturers have begun to announce price increases after almost three years of fierce competition and below-cost sales. According to South China Morning Postthe most visible case is that of Deegares, which reported an increase of 15%, opening a debate on whether the sector is beginning to emerge from the “involution” cycle, a dynamic in which producing more, selling cheaper and earning less had become the norm. The immediate trigger has been the rise in the price of lithium, which has risen around a 70% from its annual minimum. This rebound responds to several overlapping factors: the rise of data centers for artificial intelligence, a rebound in demand for electric vehicles in China and an increasingly explicit intervention by the State to organize the sector. The Chinese Ministry of Industry itself has gathered to the main market players and has promised to accelerate measures to stop the so-called “irrational competition”. A stressed model. Sales prices for energy storage systems in China have plummeted by up to 80% in just three years. Some companies operate with gross margins of 15% to 20% in the domestic market, a far cry from the 40% or 50% common in the United States. The real profitability, analysts cited by SCMP admitwas in exports. And exporting, China has continued to dominate. This year it has managed to sell lithium batteries worth more than $69 billion. According to the analysis of energy expert Gavin Maguire in Reutersthis milestone is explained by the voracious hunger of Germany and the United States for large-scale storage systems, essential to stabilize electrical networks saturated by renewables and data centers. In practice, every new AI data center in Europe or North America starts with a silent dependency: thousands of batteries designed, manufactured and assembled in China. The low price hid an uncomfortable reality. All this time there was a truth that no one said out loud, perhaps because it was so obvious: there was no real Chinese alternative. This new year 2026 will be marked by the massive expansion of data centers that power artificial intelligence, facilities that consume amounts of electricity comparable to that of a small city and that need large-scale batteries to guarantee a continuous supply. Google has installed more than 100 million lithium-ion cells in its data centers, while Microsoft plans to eliminate diesel generators before 2030, replacing them with batteries to meet their climate goals. The forecasts confirm that the risk is not theoretical. The International Energy Agency sums it up crudely. If in 2024 China manufactured 99% of the world’s LFP cells and refined most of the critical materials such as lithium and graphite. For its executive director, Fatih Birol, depend on a single country For a strategic technology, it is a risk comparable to that posed to Europe by its dependence on Russian gas. The Chinese adjustment. Far from retreating, Beijing now seeks to organize the sector without losing its dominance. State intervention translates to braking the most extreme overcapacity, review mining licenses, limit sales at a loss and allow prices to rise to sustainable levels. The objective is not to make batteries abruptly more expensive, but to prevent a strategic industry from self-destructing by competing with itself. Control of raw materials remains the central lever. China process around of 80% of the world’s lithium and produces nearly 90% of the anodes and electrolytes used in batteries. When the United States or Europe impose tariffs, China responds by restricting exports of critical metals. The message is unmistakable: the power lies not only in making batteries, but in controlling every link in the chain. The Western Response. In parallel, the United States and Europe are trying to react. According to Sprott’s reportWestern governments have begun to treat lithium and batteries as strategic assets. Washington has invested directly in mining projectshas multiplied the number of planned gigafactories and has included restrictions on the purchase of Chinese batteries in defense legislation. Europe is following a similar, albeit slower path, supporting local extraction and refining projects and seeking to reduce its dependence on China. Big oil companies like Exxon either Chevron have entered the lithium business, and countries like Germany finance domestic production to ensure supply and reduce geopolitical risks. Still, the consensus among analysts it is clear: replicating the Chinese model will take years. Environmental regulations, labor costs and the absence of centralized industrial planning make competing on price impossible for now. Decoupling, if it comes, will be slow, expensive and politically uncomfortable. A planned domain. It is the direct result of the plan Made in China 2025with which Beijing decided to stop being the world’s cheap factory to become a technological leader. China already dominates solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and lithium batteries. In addition, it controls strategic minerals such as graphite and has vertically integrated the entire value chain. In fact, the Asian giant It is the first “electrostate” in the world: a power whose power is no longer based on oil, but on renewable gigawatts, electrons and batteries. This strategy has reduced its emissions, weakened petrostates and turned its energy industry into a tool of global influence. The true cost of batteries. For years, this low price allowed us to accelerate the global energy transition, but it also created a deep and silent dependency. Now that China begins to organize its market, raise prices and prioritize its own industrial strategy, the world begins to discover the real cost of having delegated the heart of its energy system. Batteries are no … Read more

We have been failing with New Year’s resolutions for decades. Science says it’s because we don’t know how to “cheat”

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January starts with a predictable ritual: paying gym membership, fill the fridge with kale or buy paintbrushes for a new hobby. It is the “clean slate effect” that defines Professor Katy Milkman. Human beings do not perceive time linearly, but rather like chapters of a novel. The New Year is the “Black Friday” of new beginnings; a symbolic border that makes us believe that the “me” of last year—the one who didn’t know how to draw a line without looking like a preschooler—has finally died. In fact, 4,000 years ago the Babylonians they already made promises at the Akitu festival to appease their gods. The difference is that they sought to avoid divine wrath and we simply sought to avoid the guilt in the mirror. The autopsy of a failure foretold. Despite our enthusiasm, the statistics are devastating. According to the media Selphonly one in five people manages to stick to their long-term resolutions. Most of us throw in the towel before the month is over, because we always make the same mistake: wanting to be a different person overnight. We want to eat healthy, meditate, travel and be experts in some subject, all at the same time. The problem is that we focus obsessively on the result (losing 10 kilos) and not on the process (enjoying the taste of a new recipe). Added to this is what psychologist Kimberley Wilson describes how the danger of “forbidden words”. Using terms like “always” or “never” puts us in an “all or nothing” trap. If work gets complicated on a Wednesday and you can’t go to paint or eat a pizza, you feel like the entire year is a failure. It’s tunnel vision that ignores that life is, by definition, unpredictable. Furthermore, today we have a new enemy: metrics. As behavioral experts saywe have gone “from enjoyment to performance.” We no longer read for pleasure, but to update the counter. goodreads; We do not run for health, but to not break the streak of Strava. This culture of productivity applied to leisure turns our hobbies into a second working day. If the app says we haven’t complied, guilt appears. The science of “traps”: The method of temptation. What if the key to compliance was not military discipline, but rather being a little “cheatful”? Katy Milkman, behavior change expert, confesses her own trick in an interview with the Washington Post: he “temptation bundling” (temptation pairing). When he was a student, he hated exercising but loved Harry Potter. His solution was to allow himself to listen to the audiobooks of the saga only while he was at the gym. “It made me want to go to work out,” he explains. It’s basically using a guilty pleasure to “bribe” our brain into a healthy habit. This idea is complemented by the “Habit Stacking” (habit stacking). Instead of reaching for willpower you don’t have, “glue” your new purpose to something you already do automatically. Want to learn that paint stroke? Do a five-minute sketch right after your morning coffee. Want to finish that Pinterest scarf? Do ten rows while watching your favorite Netflix series. You don’t add effort, you just take advantage of the architecture of your current routine. Less “goals”, more “values”. From Harvard University, Dr. Aisha Usmani suggests that we see change as “shaping a sculpture”: It is done by removing pieces of stone little by little, not all at once. Cognitive science tells us that if you want to paint, don’t set out to do one canvas a day; Start with one a week. And above all, align your goals with your personal values, not with external pressure. If crochet stresses you, perhaps it does not respond to your value of “creativity”, but rather to an aesthetic imposition. According to Usmani, We must ask ourselves every day: “Is this still important to me?” If the answer is no, adjusting course is not failure, it is being flexible. Self-compassion as a strategy. We cannot forget the weight of the treatment we give to ourselves. As the psychologist Ángel Rull explains in his columnmany resolutions are born from “being fed up with oneself” and not from self-care. If you join the gym because you hate your body, there is a good chance you will quit. If you do it to feel more energetic, the commitment changes. Another interesting note is how we talk about our setbacks. A recent study highlights the difference between saying that we didn’t “have time” and that we didn’t “make time.” While the first sounds like an external excuse, the second implies active control over our agenda: if we didn’t do it today, we can decide to do it tomorrow. According to this research, focusing the cause of failure on external factors and not on our lack of will is the best lifesaver for our confidence. A more human 2026. In short, we are not computers that restart on January 1st. The real change is not about saturating our to-do list, but about transforming initial fatigue into real self-care. If this year you want to start lifting some weights or for your painting stroke to gain firmness, science gives you permission to be a strategist: combine effort with pleasure through temptation bundlingopt for small things—because a page read will always be better than an abandoned book—and accept that perseverance necessarily includes days of hiatus. In the end, perhaps the best resolution for this year is not to become an “optimized” version of ourselves, but to stop treating ourselves as a defective project that must be fixed by decree. The key to success this year lies not in military discipline, but in the ability to begin to see ourselves as someone who is simply trying to live with a little more presence, realistic tools and, above all, a little less guilt. Image | freepik Xataka | Neither board games nor karaoke: ‘Word on Beat’ is the new king of the living room and proof that we prefer rhythmic chaos

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