Today's Articles 2 (14/7/2025)
‘It’s the only thing between me and a divorce!’ The remarkable rise of the big family planner
We are now far more aware of the limit of our free time, which has in a way led us to optimising that too.
The more stuff we can remove – or check off – the more in control we feel.
You could think of these non-planned moments as fallow time, essential to recovery and long-term health. We all struggle with a work/life balance, and often planning is an essential part of our lives. But so too is having unstructured free time.
What if every artwork you’ve ever seen is a fake?
A 2014 study published in the journal Leonardo tested how the belief in authenticity of art shapes our perception of it. Participants were shown paintings labelled either originals or, erroneously, copies, then asked to rate their experience. Paintings that were labelled as copies were consistently rated as less moving, less well-made, less well-composed and the work of less talented artists. It’s a stark example of the extent to which our experience of art is moulded by the story we are told about it: the value we place on authenticity trumps reason, perception, our own eyes. A copy is automatically worse, even when it’s not really a copy.
Human beings are pretty inept at understanding our world without context, without story.
Perhaps there is beauty in embracing the lessons taught by fakes, that what we bring to art is our human selves: subjective, easily bamboozled, ready to be moved.
To understand shoes, we need to think about them as worn objects: material articles that interact with the bodies that wear them.
Shoes support our entire bodies, so they affect how we stand, how we move, and what sorts of surfaces we can move upon. This, in turn, enables the wearer to do certain things, and prevents them from doing others. Choices of footwear therefore say a lot about someone’s job, the spaces they are expected to occupy, and the role they have in society.
This is because shoes have a very close relationship with their wearer. Because they support the weight and motions of the body, they are put under considerable stress, and have to be made in such a way so as to withstand it. This means that they have to be made from particular materials, which on the one hand are comfortable and pliable, but on the other are hardwearing and waterproof. For centuries, the only material that ticked all the boxes was leather. Leather comes from animal skin, so when we wear it on our bodies it becomes a kind of second skin. As the foot rubs on the shoe, hardening its own skin and softening the leather, it is difficult to draw the line between where the body ends and the shoe begins.
As we exert weight and pressure on the shoe, it moulds to our foot and our way of walking. The shoe takes on the shape of our foot and becomes more comfortable and flexible. Our shoes ‘wear in’ until they eventually ‘wear out’: the sweet spot for comfortable footwear is somewhere in the middle. A heavily worn shoe may not look very presentable, but it is likely more comfortable than a new one, so it is no wonder that we become attached to them.