In a world where many of us are glued to our smartphones, Dulcie Cowling is something of an anomaly — she has ditched hers. The 36-year-old decided at the end of last year that getting rid of her handset would improve her mental health. So, over Christmas she told her family and friends that she was switching to an old Nokia phone that could only make and receive calls and text messages.

She recalls that one of the pivotal moments that led to her decision was a day at the park with her two boys, aged six and three: “I was on my mobile at a playground with the kids and I looked up and every single parent — there was up to 20 — were looking at their phones, just scrolling away,” she says.

“I thought ‘when did this happen?’. Everyone is missing out on real life. I don’t think you get to your death bed and think you should have spent more time on Twitter, or reading articles online.”

Ms Cowling, who is a creative director at London-based advertising agency Hell Yeah!, adds that the idea to abandon her smartphone had built up during the covid-19 lockdowns.

“I thought about how much of my life is spent looking at the phone and what else could I do. Being constantly connected to lots of services creates a lot of distractions, and is a lot for the brain to process.”

She plans to use the time gained from quitting her smartphone to read and sleep more.

About nine out of 10 people in the UK now own a smartphone, a figure broadly replicated across the developed world. And we are glued to them — one recent study found that the average person spends 4.8 hours a day on their handset.

Yet for a small, but growing number of people, enough is enough.

Alex Dunedin binned his smartphone two years ago. “Culturally we have become addicted to these tools,” says the educational researcher and technology expert. “They are blunting cognition and impeding productivity.”

He has become happier and more productive since he stopped using a smartphone, he says.

Mr Dunedin doesn’t even have an old-fashioned mobile phone or even a landline anymore. He is instead only electronically contactable via emails to his home computer.

“It has improved my life,” he says. “My thoughts are freed up from constantly being cognitively connected to a machine that I need to feed with energy and money. I think that the danger of technologies is that they are emptying our lives.”

Yet, while some worry about how much time they spend on their handset, for millions of others they are a godsend.

“More than ever, access to healthcare, education, social services and often to our friends and family is digital, and the smartphone is an essential lifeline for people,” says a spokesperson for UK mobile network Vodafone.

“We also create resources to help people get the most from their tech, as well as to stay safe when they’re online — that’s hugely important.”

Suzanne Bearne.

The people deciding to ditch their smartphones. Internet: <www.bbc.com> (adapted).

The worn wooden floorboards squeak under Rafael Molina’s heavy steps as he paces the saloon. Outside, the sound of galloping horses breaks the silence of the surrounding desert. All around him, the Old West town’s empty shops and abandoned houses look as if they have just been ransacked by cowboy bandits.

“When I was a kid, I could only dream about all this,” says the 68-year-old former actor and stuntman. “My aspiration was to see a film set firsthand. Today I own one of the most famous ones in the history of Western movies.”

But this busy movie site is located in Spain — not Montana or Texas. It’s one of three faux Old Western towns inthe small village of Tabernas and the surrounding desert of the Almería province. Since the late 1950s, these rugged mountains, arid plains, and dry canyons have provided the backdrops for more than 170 movie Westerns, including The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) and Once Upon a Time in The West (1968).

Molina belongs to a small community of local cowboy actors and stuntmen in Tabernas who have played a role in movies and TV shows since the first productions in the 1950s. They can perform anything from fistfights to horse drags. Knowledge and skills often pass from father to son, keeping tricks of the trade in the family. Steeped in the golden era of Westerns, these actors embody the values of their movie heroes: pride, bravado, freedom, and a trusting relationship with horses.

“I’ve always liked horses and the [U.S.] West,” says 29- year-old Ricardo Cruz Fernández, a stuntman and cowboy who appeared in recent productions including Game of Thrones. Fernández started his career as a cowboy after completing a stuntman course a decade ago.

Between productions, he performs daily shows at Fort Bravo for thousands of tourists who visit the set each year. In one show, Fernández portrays a bank robber who absconds with some gold. Visitors encounter him in the saloon, fist and (fake) gun fighting with actors playing his double-crossing accomplices. The town also offers cancan dance shows and set tours by horsedrawn wagon.

“I prefer to play the bad guy, because it gives me a wider range of possibilities,” says Fernández. “The good guy only has to keep things in order.”

Almería has hosted more than 500 productions, including blockbuster films (Patton, Terminator: Dark Fate) and TV shows (Doctor Who). “Our landscapes are very convenient. We have sea, desert, and snowy mountains all within a short distance,” says local producer Plácido Martínez. “We can serve as Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and endless other natural settings.”

Matteo Fagotto. The Wild West lives on in southern

Spain. In: National Geographic. Internet: <www.nationalgeographic.com> (adapted).

The worn wooden floorboards squeak under Rafael Molina’s heavy steps as he paces the saloon. Outside, the sound of galloping horses breaks the silence of the surrounding desert. All around him, the Old West town’s empty shops and abandoned houses look as if they have just been ransacked by cowboy bandits.

“When I was a kid, I could only dream about all this,” says the 68-year-old former actor and stuntman. “My aspiration was to see a film set firsthand. Today I own one of the most famous ones in the history of Western movies.”

But this busy movie site is located in Spain — not Montana or Texas. It’s one of three faux Old Western towns inthe small village of Tabernas and the surrounding desert of the Almería province. Since the late 1950s, these rugged mountains, arid plains, and dry canyons have provided the backdrops for more than 170 movie Westerns, including The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) and Once Upon a Time in The West (1968).

Molina belongs to a small community of local cowboy actors and stuntmen in Tabernas who have played a role in movies and TV shows since the first productions in the 1950s. They can perform anything from fistfights to horse drags. Knowledge and skills often pass from father to son, keeping tricks of the trade in the family. Steeped in the golden era of Westerns, these actors embody the values of their movie heroes: pride, bravado, freedom, and a trusting relationship with horses.

“I’ve always liked horses and the [U.S.] West,” says 29- year-old Ricardo Cruz Fernández, a stuntman and cowboy who appeared in recent productions including Game of Thrones. Fernández started his career as a cowboy after completing a stuntman course a decade ago.

Between productions, he performs daily shows at Fort Bravo for thousands of tourists who visit the set each year. In one show, Fernández portrays a bank robber who absconds with some gold. Visitors encounter him in the saloon, fist and (fake) gun fighting with actors playing his double-crossing accomplices. The town also offers cancan dance shows and set tours by horsedrawn wagon.

“I prefer to play the bad guy, because it gives me a wider range of possibilities,” says Fernández. “The good guy only has to keep things in order.”

Almería has hosted more than 500 productions, including blockbuster films (Patton, Terminator: Dark Fate) and TV shows (Doctor Who). “Our landscapes are very convenient. We have sea, desert, and snowy mountains all within a short distance,” says local producer Plácido Martínez. “We can serve as Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and endless other natural settings.”

Matteo Fagotto. The Wild West lives on in southern

Spain. In: National Geographic. Internet: <www.nationalgeographic.com> (adapted).

The worn wooden floorboards squeak under Rafael Molina’s heavy steps as he paces the saloon. Outside, the sound of galloping horses breaks the silence of the surrounding desert. All around him, the Old West town’s empty shops and abandoned houses look as if they have just been ransacked by cowboy bandits.

“When I was a kid, I could only dream about all this,” says the 68-year-old former actor and stuntman. “My aspiration was to see a film set firsthand. Today I own one of the most famous ones in the history of Western movies.”

But this busy movie site is located in Spain — not Montana or Texas. It’s one of three faux Old Western towns inthe small village of Tabernas and the surrounding desert of the Almería province. Since the late 1950s, these rugged mountains, arid plains, and dry canyons have provided the backdrops for more than 170 movie Westerns, including The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) and Once Upon a Time in The West (1968).

Molina belongs to a small community of local cowboy actors and stuntmen in Tabernas who have played a role in movies and TV shows since the first productions in the 1950s. They can perform anything from fistfights to horse drags. Knowledge and skills often pass from father to son, keeping tricks of the trade in the family. Steeped in the golden era of Westerns, these actors embody the values of their movie heroes: pride, bravado, freedom, and a trusting relationship with horses.

“I’ve always liked horses and the [U.S.] West,” says 29- year-old Ricardo Cruz Fernández, a stuntman and cowboy who appeared in recent productions including Game of Thrones. Fernández started his career as a cowboy after completing a stuntman course a decade ago.

Between productions, he performs daily shows at Fort Bravo for thousands of tourists who visit the set each year. In one show, Fernández portrays a bank robber who absconds with some gold. Visitors encounter him in the saloon, fist and (fake) gun fighting with actors playing his double-crossing accomplices. The town also offers cancan dance shows and set tours by horsedrawn wagon.

“I prefer to play the bad guy, because it gives me a wider range of possibilities,” says Fernández. “The good guy only has to keep things in order.”

Almería has hosted more than 500 productions, including blockbuster films (Patton, Terminator: Dark Fate) and TV shows (Doctor Who). “Our landscapes are very convenient. We have sea, desert, and snowy mountains all within a short distance,” says local producer Plácido Martínez. “We can serve as Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and endless other natural settings.”

Matteo Fagotto. The Wild West lives on in southern

Spain. In: National Geographic. Internet: <www.nationalgeographic.com> (adapted).

The worn wooden floorboards squeak under Rafael Molina’s heavy steps as he paces the saloon. Outside, the sound of galloping horses breaks the silence of the surrounding desert. All around him, the Old West town’s empty shops and abandoned houses look as if they have just been ransacked by cowboy bandits.

“When I was a kid, I could only dream about all this,” says the 68-year-old former actor and stuntman. “My aspiration was to see a film set firsthand. Today I own one of the most famous ones in the history of Western movies.”

But this busy movie site is located in Spain — not Montana or Texas. It’s one of three faux Old Western towns inthe small village of Tabernas and the surrounding desert of the Almería province. Since the late 1950s, these rugged mountains, arid plains, and dry canyons have provided the backdrops for more than 170 movie Westerns, including The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) and Once Upon a Time in The West (1968).

Molina belongs to a small community of local cowboy actors and stuntmen in Tabernas who have played a role in movies and TV shows since the first productions in the 1950s. They can perform anything from fistfights to horse drags. Knowledge and skills often pass from father to son, keeping tricks of the trade in the family. Steeped in the golden era of Westerns, these actors embody the values of their movie heroes: pride, bravado, freedom, and a trusting relationship with horses.

“I’ve always liked horses and the [U.S.] West,” says 29- year-old Ricardo Cruz Fernández, a stuntman and cowboy who appeared in recent productions including Game of Thrones. Fernández started his career as a cowboy after completing a stuntman course a decade ago.

Between productions, he performs daily shows at Fort Bravo for thousands of tourists who visit the set each year. In one show, Fernández portrays a bank robber who absconds with some gold. Visitors encounter him in the saloon, fist and (fake) gun fighting with actors playing his double-crossing accomplices. The town also offers cancan dance shows and set tours by horsedrawn wagon.

“I prefer to play the bad guy, because it gives me a wider range of possibilities,” says Fernández. “The good guy only has to keep things in order.”

Almería has hosted more than 500 productions, including blockbuster films (Patton, Terminator: Dark Fate) and TV shows (Doctor Who). “Our landscapes are very convenient. We have sea, desert, and snowy mountains all within a short distance,” says local producer Plácido Martínez. “We can serve as Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and endless other natural settings.”

Matteo Fagotto. The Wild West lives on in southern

Spain. In: National Geographic. Internet: <www.nationalgeographic.com> (adapted).

As tecnologias de contar e escrever histórias não seguiram um caminho linear. A própria escrita foi inventada pelo menos duas vezes, primeiro na Mesopotâmia e depois nas Américas. Os sacerdotes indianos se recusavam a escrever as histórias sagradas por medo de perder o controle sobre elas. Professores carismáticos (como Sócrates) se recusaram a escrever. Algumas invenções posteriores foram adotadas somente de forma seletiva, como quando os eruditos árabes usaram o papel chinês, mas não demonstraram nenhum interesse por outra invenção chinesa, a impressão. As invenções relacionadas à escrita tinham muitas vezes efeitos colaterais inesperados. Preservar textos antigos significava manter vivas artificialmente as línguas. Desde então, passou-se a estudar línguas mortas e alguns textos acabaram sendo declarados sagrados.

Martin Puchner. O mundo da escrita: como a literatura

transformou a civilização. Pedro Maia Soares (Trad.). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2019, p. 18 (com adaptações).

Alguns linguistas acreditam que o Homo erectus, há mais ou menos 1 milhão e meio de anos, já tinha uma linguagem. Os argumentos que eles dão são que o Homo erectus tinha um cérebro relativamente grande e usava ferramentas de pedra primitivas, porém bastante padronizadas. Essa hipótese pode ser verdadeira, mas pode também estar bem longe do correto. O uso de ferramentas certamente não requer linguagem.

Chimpanzés usam galhos como ferramentas para caçar cupins, ou pedras para quebrar nozes. Obviamente, mesmo as ferramentas mais primitivas do Homo erectus (pedras lascadas) são muito mais sofisticadas que qualquer coisa usada por chimpanzés, mas ainda assim não há uma razão convincente para crer que essas pedras não pudessem ter sido produzidas sem linguagem.

O tamanho do cérebro é igualmente problemático como indicador da presença de linguagem, porque ninguém tem uma boa ideia de quanto cérebro exatamente é necessário para a linguagem. Além disso, a capacidade para a linguagem pode ter permanecido latente no cérebro por milhões de anos, sem ter sido de fato colocada em uso.

Guy Deutscher. O desenrolar da linguagem.

Renato Basso e Guilherme Henrique May (Trad.). Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 2014, p. 28-29 (com adaptações).

Alguns linguistas acreditam que o Homo erectus, há mais ou menos 1 milhão e meio de anos, já tinha uma linguagem. Os argumentos que eles dão são que o Homo erectus tinha um cérebro relativamente grande e usava ferramentas de pedra primitivas, porém bastante padronizadas. Essa hipótese pode ser verdadeira, mas pode também estar bem longe do correto. O uso de ferramentas certamente não requer linguagem.

Chimpanzés usam galhos como ferramentas para caçar cupins, ou pedras para quebrar nozes. Obviamente, mesmo as ferramentas mais primitivas do Homo erectus (pedras lascadas) são muito mais sofisticadas que qualquer coisa usada por chimpanzés, mas ainda assim não há uma razão convincente para crer que essas pedras não pudessem ter sido produzidas sem linguagem.

O tamanho do cérebro é igualmente problemático como indicador da presença de linguagem, porque ninguém tem uma boa ideia de quanto cérebro exatamente é necessário para a linguagem. Além disso, a capacidade para a linguagem pode ter permanecido latente no cérebro por milhões de anos, sem ter sido de fato colocada em uso.

Guy Deutscher. O desenrolar da linguagem.

Renato Basso e Guilherme Henrique May (Trad.). Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 2014, p. 28-29 (com adaptações).

Alguns linguistas acreditam que o Homo erectus, há mais ou menos 1 milhão e meio de anos, já tinha uma linguagem. Os argumentos que eles dão são que o Homo erectus tinha um cérebro relativamente grande e usava ferramentas de pedra primitivas, porém bastante padronizadas. Essa hipótese pode ser verdadeira, mas pode também estar bem longe do correto. O uso de ferramentas certamente não requer linguagem.

Chimpanzés usam galhos como ferramentas para caçar cupins, ou pedras para quebrar nozes. Obviamente, mesmo as ferramentas mais primitivas do Homo erectus (pedras lascadas) são muito mais sofisticadas que qualquer coisa usada por chimpanzés, mas ainda assim não há uma razão convincente para crer que essas pedras não pudessem ter sido produzidas sem linguagem.

O tamanho do cérebro é igualmente problemático como indicador da presença de linguagem, porque ninguém tem uma boa ideia de quanto cérebro exatamente é necessário para a linguagem. Além disso, a capacidade para a linguagem pode ter permanecido latente no cérebro por milhões de anos, sem ter sido de fato colocada em uso.

Guy Deutscher. O desenrolar da linguagem.

Renato Basso e Guilherme Henrique May (Trad.). Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 2014, p. 28-29 (com adaptações).

A PETROBRAS responde por cerca de 80% dos combustíveis ofertados no Brasil. Para isso, muito foi investido em infraestrutura, com operações que consomem quase 100 bilhões de reais ao ano, conforme dados de 2021.

O caminho do petróleo do poço até virar combustível no carro das pessoas é longo e complexo. Começa na procura: acertar onde furar e encontrar petróleo exige conhecimento técnico de geólogos e geofísicos e bastante investimento. E, mesmo com um time de experts do mais alto nível, achar petróleo não é certo.

Transportar o petróleo do mar até as refinarias é também uma tarefa complexa, para a qual são utilizados dutos e navios. Em terra, ele é tratado em refinarias, que separam desse óleo as frações de gasolina, diesel e gás de cozinha, entre outros derivados. Os produtos são então disponibilizados às diversas distribuidoras que hoje atendem o mercado brasileiro, responsáveis por fazer chegar cada um deles aos consumidores finais.

Internet: <duvidasgasolina.petrobras.com.br> (com adaptações).