Author: Ezra

If you wanted capture more than 55% of the world’s population within a circle with a radius of 4,000 km, which city would you place at its epicenter? It is what was asked in 2013, Ken Myers, a user of Reddit. Within days he calculated that his Valeriepieris circle (from his account name on the platform), a circular region on a two-dimensional map, centered on the South China Sea and with a radius of about 4,000 km, contained more than half of The world population. More people lived within that sixth of the world’s land area than outside. That representation,…

We have asked ourselves the same question a thousand times: “If I ask for tap water, will they charge me or will they serve me a bottle that I will have to pay for?” Not without reason: until now the establishments themselves could decide whether to charge for a glass of non-packaged water or if they simply preferred to endorse you a bottle of Solán de Cabras for almost two euros. Until now. A new law will force establishments to offer this option free of charge. No nuances or small print. Ask for it and that’s it. The new law.…

50 years ago, Cancun was totally unknown to the world. With a population of about 100 people, the “city”, if it could be called that, was located in one of the poorest regions of Mexico. It had strange sand dunes and a coastline filled with swamps, mangroves, and a snake-infested jungle. But over the past five decades, it has become one of Mexico’s top tourist attractions. This change did not happen by chance. In 1968, Mexico used algorithms, computer models and the best brains and know-how of a modern nation to select the site, a 15-kilometer strip of jungle island…

No event accelerates the pace of history as much as a war. Questions that one day seemed unimaginable enter the realm of the possible overnight. We have seen it, for example, on account of the reaction of the European Union in terms of weapons and the military budget. And we have seen it in political positions that were once taboo and that today, in a matter of months, have ceased to be so. Towards NATO. The clearest case is that of Sweden and Finland, countries encompassed within that abstract framework that we call the “West” and included in countless institutions…

Artificial intelligence has come a long way in the last decade. Machine learning algorithms can now do many things previously thought impossible by a machine, including generating original works of art such as novels, screenplays, and even music. AIs can now diagnose tumors, read maps, and play games often much faster and more accurately than the best humans. But there is one thing that has always stuck to these systems: humor. That is, jokes and jokes. Google’s new algorithm is a special system: it’s powerful and smart enough not only to understand a joke you’ve never seen before, but also…

For decades, pediatricians have used growth charts as reference tools for charting and measuring a child’s height and weight from birth through adulthood. The results often help doctors detect conditions such as obesity or poor growth. Since the dawn of medicine, there has been no gold standard for measuring the brain, which has been the cornerstone of medical care for more than 200 years. Until now. Scientists already study irregular brain structure. And the charts confirm that size naturally decreases with age. The investigation. The Brain Chart study, led by the University of Cambridge and published in the journal Nature,…

Shanghai spent two years avoiding a coronavirus lockdown, but when it finally arrived, the authorities in charge of this city of nearly 30 million people were unprepared. The city has responded with protest attacks, a sea of ​​residents screaming from their home balconies in front of flashing apartment lights, and people looting supermarkets for food. The shortage is affecting both the upper and lower strata of Shanghai society. And it’s leaving us with really dystopian images. dystopian quarantine. China’s largest city has been under a draconian lockdown since April 5, when Beijing ordered a complete lockdown as part of its…

The colors and designs of national flags are not arbitrarily selected, but are derived from the history, culture, or religion of the particular country. Many can be traced back to a common originand such “flag families” are often linked by both common traditions and geography. The oldest European flags still in use, for example, are those showing the christian cross, which was first widely used in the Crusades. It is worth noting the British flag, the Union Jack, which incorporates the Crosses of Saint George (England), Saint Andrew (Scotland) and Saint Patrick (Ireland). Also similar are those of Norway, Sweden,…

The assets we accumulate throughout life are no longer just financial, but increasingly digital, from treasured photographs in a social media account to ownership of profiles on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In the past, these memories used to be stored as physical objects: photo albums, postcards, contracts and ownership certificates. That meant that when we died, they were accessible to our loved ones. In the Internet age, much of that information is stored in the cloud. Everything from photos and videos to emails and documents are not easily accessible without legacy planning. Whether you want your information destroyed,…