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England will be battling against history as well as entire nation when the face Mexico in the World Cup last 16 at The Azteca, says chief football writer Phil McNulty.

An underground church pastor has been released from prison in China and has arrived in the United States, less than two months after President Donald Trump publicly raised his case with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The update will be available to all users in England by April 2028, the health service says.

Hi readers! Shayla Love here, science journalist and longtime fan of Your Mileage May Vary. I’m honored to be subbing for Sigal while she’s out on parental leave. I’m diving into your questions as a way to help understand human nature and our choices through multiple lenses: philosophical, psychological, and beyond. Please send in any emotional, body/brain, sociological, perceptual, or other kind of life quandaries you might have.

Being online is extremely stressful and unpleasant, and on days I don’t use Twitter, or Bluesky, or any other social media, I typically feel much better mentally — less stressed about the posts I see and less upset about the state of the world. 

There’s two problems: The first is that I think it’s pretty irresponsible to put yourself and your emotional comfort above being informed and active in debates about the future. I have a non-insignificant following on both sites, and it would be a bit of a dereliction of duty to give up my influence over my followers for it. The other part is that this non-insignificant online presence has helped me in my non-professional writing career pretty significantly, and I wouldn’t have either source materials or similar opportunities if it wasn’t for my online presence.

So, all in all, there’s pretty strong reasons to not be there. There’s pretty strong reasons to be there. There’s pretty strong personal benefits from leaving and pretty strong personal benefits from staying. Should I stop being online?

Dear Wishfully-Off-the-Grid, 

I feel you. In late June, throughout New York City, I started noticing posters appearing for the “Summer of Ludd” — a series of very offline events organized by a group trying to bring back the philosophy of the Luddites, the 19th-century movement against automated machinery. I attended one of their lectures recently in Manhattan, and I have a hunch that the Luddites could help you with your concerns about becoming detached from the world if you leave social media. 

The word “Luddite” has, for the most part, become an insult (even if deployed for self-deprecation), used to describe a person who won’t keep up with the advancements of their time — rejecting innovation in favor of older, slower, and less effective products. There is a hint of this in your question: You’re worried that social media is the more potent way to be informed and to communicate with others. If you leave these platforms, will you lose that ability?

First, the real Luddites were more complex than how we refer to them colloquially. They were English clothmakers who saw how machines owned by wealthy merchants resulted in lower wages and worse working conditions. After trying to organize in support of workers’ rights failed, Luddites broke the looms that were automating their labor. “They would sneak in through the windows or hold up the overseer at gunpoint, and methodically smash just those machines that were de-skilling their work,” wrote journalist Brian Merchant, author of the excellent book Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. 

Luddites weren’t against all technology, Merchant notes, just the tech that took away resources from humans or gave too much power to those at the top. The British government retaliated against the Luddites, and laws were passed that made it punishable by death to break a machine. 

The neo-Luddites that I saw and met at The Luddite Conference on Participatory Futures event were bound by a similar distrust and antagonism towards, in this case, big tech. But there was another question they grappled with that was even more closely aligned with your concerns. “This week is just sort of an experiment, right?” said one of the organizers during opening remarks. “Can we get a bunch of people together in a room without using any of these platforms?”

Based on the turnout, the answer was a resounding yes. The large auditorium was standing-room only. It was filled with young people in their 20s in cool outfits who I heard giving each other advice about switching to flip phones. 

These neo-Luddites would say to you that learning about the world is an act that is better done offline. In fact, in-person meetings are not only the superior medium through which to express your politics — it is the politics. The act of organizing IRL creates deeper relationships unfettered by algorithms, which build stronger foundations for talking about or acting on any issues that you may care about. This applies to finding sources and opportunities for your writing career, too. The neo-Luddites would challenge you to imagine the rich and exciting people you might meet if you seek out and spend time in what they described as “social infrastructure”: public places where people meet face-to-face — not only for political solidarity, but also for learning, support, play, and rest. 

This resonates with me; I only felt connected to my community once I spent a lot less time online and got involved in local organizing a few years ago. As part of my neighborhood’s mutual aid group, I help run our community garden, which teaches people about the area’s environmental history, food justice, and climate change and grows hundreds of pounds of produce for free fridges. I rarely post about this publicly, but I’ve met dozens of neighbors and local politicians and feel much more agentic as a result.

I also should mention the limitations of making a difference through online posting. 

Many of us, of course, are trapped in echo chambers in our online communities. Even if you break through, the likelihood of online discourse being the most effective way to share your values is low. I think often about an experiment researchers from Princeton and Stanford did to see if people would change their minds if they saw posts on their Facebook or Instagram that differed from their own perspectives. In the end, they found very little effect on altering people’s opinions or political behaviors. 

Not only that, but the more likely, and more disturbing, outcome of a lot of posting is the impact it can have on your own views. In the book The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World, reporter Max Fisher explains that when you get feedback in the form of likes and replies, it provides powerful positive reinforcement that gives you the signal that your beliefs are good, and you should hold onto them even more tightly. If someone starts contradicting you or pushing back, you’re likely to double down to further emphasize your point. This means that you yourself may end up with even more extreme opinions than you started out with — all without swaying anyone else’s beliefs (potentially even pushing the other person further into more entrenched versions of their views). That doesn’t sound like a very effective technology, does it? 

This might seem like I’m telling you to go off social media entirely and join the neo-Luddites. But, actually, I’m not. I do think there are compelling reasons to be on social media platforms, but they are human ones, not political. 

Researchers have described our access to the internet and social media as a “mobile connectivity paradox.” Even though we are able to, in unprecedented ways, connect with anyone at any time, it can make us feel isolated. Yet, I haven’t been able to fully give up on the “connection” piece of the paradox; I like seeing pictures of my friend’s baby who lives far away from me! I got a lot out of posting pictures of my wedding party! I’ve tried to (lovingly) cull my followers to only people I really know, but whom I might not get to see as much as I’d like in person. Going on Instagram feels more joyful as a result. 

You say that being on social media makes you feel terrible, and you should pay attention to that signal. People respond differently to social media, and it could be a reflection of other aspects of your life. For those who are already feeling vulnerable, lonely, or depressed, spending time on social media tends to make them feel worse. 

Where and in what contexts you use social media can also affect how it makes you feel. People feel more lonely when they use social media while in transit, around people they have close relationships with, and when they are in nature. In contrast, when people use social media for shorter periods when they are alone at home or in study locations, it doesn’t have as much of a negative effect. And when people share big life events, like weddings or births, it can even increase their happiness.

Reclaiming social media for quieter and more intimate uses could make you feel lighter. At the same time, perhaps you can redirect some of your activism energy away from the digital sphere and see what happens if you take it offline. 

That doesn’t mean, of course, that your IRL life should become unduly heavy either. During the Q&A at the Luddite talk, a person from San Francisco, who was part of a group organizing to get Mark Zuckerberg’s name removed from a local hospital, asked how best to reduce personal social media use. Bill Hartung, a political scientist there, didn’t suggest guilt or recrimination. “I think we just need to make real life more attractive,” he said. 

Anyone dabbling in Luddism today is lucky; this is a more enjoyable call to action than meeting up to smash looms in the middle of the night. One of the best ways for you to be invested in the future is to make sure that at least part of yours takes place offline.

Bonus: What I’m reading

• Now that summer is in full swing, I’m re-reading chapters of my copy of How to Be Idle, a book by Tom Hodgkinson, the founder of the similarly themed publication The Idler. Each of the book’s chapters documents an hour of the day and how to be as lazy as possible during that time. Fun to read as inspiration, even when you’re not able to loaf. 
• At the Folk Art Museum in midtown, I saw a group exhibition of American self-taught artists as part of the celebration of the country’s semiquincentennial. I was riveted by paintings of pastel, layered, topological landscapes by Joseph E. Yoakum, who was a Chicago-based artist. I recommend this 2021 New York Times profile of him, which explains how his drawings don’t represent real places but figurative terrains from his mind. 
• Not something to read, but a fun game called Anthropeum that gives you 10 objects to assess per day. Try to guess where and when they were made and see how you compare to other players. I’ve learned I’m much better at guessing where things are from than their time period!

The Watermelon Sugar singer is the first artist to perform 12 shows on a single tour at the stadium.

The Watermelon Sugar singer is the first artist to perform 12 shows on a single tour at the stadium.

The Watermelon Sugar singer is the first artist to perform 12 shows on a single tour at the stadium.

Former independent Sen. Joe Manchin (W.V.) blamed the Democratic Party’s “void in leadership” on internal splits over the rise of democratic socialist candidates in a new radio interview on Sunday morning. In a conversation with radio host John Catsimatidis on his show “Cats Roundtable,” Manchin cited democratic socialist candidates’ recent wins in states like New…

A makeup artist on how to get the easy, high-impact look.

When Deckers, the company behind fleece-lined UGG boots, recently took Quince to court over its lookalike boots, it tried to bar Quince from referencing “dupe culture” at trial.

The bid failed, confirming that “dupes” and “dupe culture” — a commercial ecosystem built around providing consumers cheaper alternatives to name-brand products — are cultural phenomena here to stay.

The trial focused on whether Quince’s shearling boots that really, really look like UGGs violated the existing patent for the design. And in a twist, the jury ruled that yes, Quince had copied the UGG design — but the patent over the UGG boot should not have been issued in the first place because the design was too generic to protect. The ruling opened the door for Quince and any other brand to make a similar-looking boot, opening up a new frontier for “dupe culture.”

And the culture is, undoubtedly, thriving. While it used to be embarrassing to own a fake, that’s no longer the case. Today, if you can find a cheaper, knock-off alternative – that’s a life hack.

In our online age, social media and online shopping exist awash in copies, dupes, and knock-off versions of name-brand products. Rather than outright counterfeits, these products carefully step around trademark and copyright rules with the express purpose of offering consumers cheaper alternatives to something a different brand created. It’s become an entire industry, embraced by influencers and companies like Quince.

In her recent piece, “Knock It Off!,” Mia Sato, a senior reporter at The Verge, outlines just a few things that have been duped recently: makeup, Le Creuset Dutch ovens, hand sanitizer, designer perfumes, Apple AirPods Max, Oura Ring fitness trackers, viral phone cases, dishwasher pods, famous banana pudding recipes, Pilates workouts, and the entire island of Santorini.

“We could probably surmise that there will be even more dupes in the future,” Sato told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram, “but I think there are more dupes than have ever existed in the history of mankind right now.”

She joined Sean on Today, Explained to discuss the rise of “dupe culture” and changing ideas of ownership and originality in an era of internet-driven mass consumption. 

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

What exactly is dupe culture? What has it become?

Dupe culture is this idea that the limitlessness of the internet allows you to find a cheaper alternative, a copy, something that is a reasonable stand-in for the thing that you actually want. And it has permeated every industry: guitars, clothing, makeup, food, recipes.

There are dupes for Lululemon pants. There are dupes for Birkin bags, which are incredibly expensive, incredibly hard to purchase designer handbags that go for tens of thousands of dollars. There was a $50 version for sale at Walmart. It was called the ‘Wirkin.’

There are dupes for fancy pots and pans. There are dupes for lip glosses and lip oils and lip stains. There are dupes for vacations — someone was marketing a different island as a dupe of Santorini, right? You can apply this dupe framing to just about anything. 

What’s different now is that dupes are kind of just a way of life, in that you don’t have to go somewhere seedy or weird or black market-y to get a dupe. Anything you can think of, dupe culture means that there is a dupe out there somewhere. But it’s walking a line, being very careful not to infringe on things like trademarks or copyright.

And how do you find your dupes? Do you just go to dupe dot com?

Dupe dot com is a thing. Dupe.com, basically, you can copy a URL to any product, plug it into dupe.com, and it will do a reverse image search of the web and find products that look similar. Some of them might be cheaper, some of them might be expensive, but the whole idea is you’re looking for lookalikes. 

A lot of modern online shopping actually has all the tools you need to find a dupe. Amazon, for example, just introduced a new feature where you can write out a text version of what you’re looking for, and it will use AI to generate an image of what it thinks you’re describing and then use that AI-generated image to look for similar products. It’s basically a reverse image search. 

TikTok has a feature where if you pause a video, it will highlight products in the video and you can click those products and find similar-looking dupes on TikTok Shop. So finding dupes has never been easier because a lot of these features are built into the platforms that we’re using in the first place.

When you talk about copying and pasting a URL into dupe.com or all these reverse image searches, where do we end up on the legality?

That’s sort of the million billion dollar question: What is allowed?

Obviously I’m not a lawyer, but when IP attorneys describe this to me, every, every question I would ask them, they’re kind of like, It depends. When you get down to something like fashion, one expert told me that a lot of it is not protectable. This shirt that I’m wearing, right? It’s like a button-down shirt with a lace pattern. No one should be able to own that specific thing. And just because a fast-fashion company were to rip this off, is there legal grounds to sue them? Maybe not. Just because two products look the same doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s illegal.

And it can turn people against you, right? People feel like they can rip off [guitar manufacturer] Fender because Fender’s the biggest fish. And people feel like they can rip off UGGs because for a decade, it was the boot to have and it doesn’t feel like they’re struggling. 

Is that a part of this broader dupe culture that may or may not be peaking right now?

The public’s engagement with dupe culture is endlessly fascinating to me because people have a lot of thoughts. Often, the thoughts are, ‘Of course I’m going to buy a dupe of a Birkin because I can’t afford a $50,000 handbag. If there’s a cheaper alternative, I’m just going to buy that because poor people deserve nice things too, or I shouldn’t have to be mega-wealthy to afford a bag that I like.’ That thinking often colors the dupe discourse. 

It gets messy and it gets really heated and emotional, I think, because we’re talking about something that Americans love to do, which is to consume, which is to shop. People get really defensive and protective of what they’re able to buy and the morality of dupes.

The dupe, I think, is never enough. This is my hot take, but I think when you have a dupe, you still lust over the product it’s duping. And in that way, it’s doing the opposite of putting them out of business. It’s actually making them even more aspirational.

I think that modern online shopping has kind of lied to consumers and almost rewired our brains to make us think that there is such a thing that costs five dollars and will last a really long time and is ethically made and looks good. Often, that is not the case. And often, that’s what dupes are. 

They give you the illusion of finding something nice or finding something beautiful or something that you identify with, but when you strip away a lot of it, it’s a lie. You get what you pay for. And the cost of things has gone down so much, especially since Temu and SHEIN, these ultra-fast-fashion brands, that I think consumers have forgotten what is literally possible when it comes to cheap and good products. I think cheap and good products do still exist, but not to the extent that we would like to believe. 

How did you think when you’re writing your piece, Mia, about where the internet has taken the idea of originality?

I think our current algorithm-driven feeds make it so that copying someone or recreating something is not just easier, but it actually sometimes makes more sense. Think about the way that trends circulate, right? The platforms encourage us to use the same sounds as other people, do the same dances, edit in the same way, pick up on the same formats. They want dupes of the content. 

What I was interested in when I was writing this piece was that the textures of the internet, the endless copies and the similar but different creators and the little niches were recreating themselves in our physical world, in the things that we surround ourselves with. If you went home and looked around your house, you probably have a dupe of something. I have dupes of stuff in my house that I didn’t even know were dupes. They’re all over, and sometimes you buy a dupe without even realizing it.

William Hutchinson was last seen on 24 June and Stuart Tallis was reported missing three days later.

William Hutchinson was last seen on 24 June and Stuart Tallis was reported missing three days later.