You may be engaging in digital overconsumption, and suffering from digital indigestion. And the solution, to borrow a metaphor, may be a digital fast.

Fasting doesn’t mean quitting forever. It means putting limits on when you consume. For millennia, religious and cultural traditions have used fasting to reshape daily rhythms. During Ramadan, Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset. The Black Fast, an early Christian practice, also required abstinence from food and drink during daylight hours, followed by a simple vegetarian or pescatarian meal after sundown.

There’s also a modern, non-religious version: intermittent fasting. Here the motivation is usually physical fitness and the limits are simpler: you eat only within a defined window, say from 12pm to 8pm, and abstain from food for the rest of the day.

Each model sets boundaries around time. None demands total, permanent abstinence.

What if we applied that logic to our screens?

Daytime digital fasting may be impractical for most of us. Work, logistics and social life run through our devices. But flip the model and it becomes far more workable.

If your habit is to scroll whenever you sit on the train, wait in line or idle at a red light (dangerous and illegal, in case you need reminding), vague promises to “use your phone less” rarely stick. Nor does micromanaging – for example, trying to limit yourself to fifteen minutes per app per day.

Fasting offers a more workable structure: time limits.

Try a “digital sundown”. Spend your day on your devices, if work demands it. Then power down when you get home. Or borrow from intermittent fasting: no phone before 9 a.m., no scrolling after 8 p.m. Start later. End earlier. Structured boundaries often succeed where willpower or an intricate list of rules fails.

You can also introduce friction. When our thumbs seem to open apps faster than we can think to stop ourselves, the best solution may be deleting them entirely. Of course, you can still stay connected to these services via desktop. The added effort of logging in may dramatically reduce casual consumption without cutting you off completely.

But fasting often requires replacement. You don’t just remove; you redirect. Which explains the recent TikTok Analog Bag trend. People are assembling kits filled with books, crosswords, sketchpads, letters, knitting – tactile things to reach for instead of reflexively reaching for a phone.

Digital fasting is about reclaiming control of your time – deciding when to consume the feed, instead of letting it consume you.

The post Take a break from the feed appeared first on Open.

She competes in regularity racing, a discipline built on timing and focus. Riders follow a route marked with photocells, aiming to pass each checkpoint at the exact second required. It’s a simple idea, but demanding in practice, with long routes, changing weather, old machines, and very little room for error.

Her ride of choice is a Vespa 125 Faro Basso, a wide-frame model from the 1950s with its distinctive low headlight and tubular handlebar, like a bicycle. It’s a design icon, famously appearing in the 1953 film Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. As with any vehicle of this vintage, it takes skill, attention and knowhow to keep it not running, but running well enough to win.

Tatiana races for Vespa Club Merano, one of the most historic clubs in her home region of South Tyrol. With the club she travelled across Italy this year, from Lecce to Campobasso, completing 21 races in total. She placed second in her category at the 1,150-kilometre Giro dei Tre Mari, won the national “Faro Basso” title in the Historical Re-enactments championship, and earned promotion to the Expert class – becoming the first woman in Italy to reach that level.

Finishing these events is never guaranteed, especially with machines that have seen seven decades of use. But Tatiana’s consistency, patience and technical skill have made her stand out in a sport where precision is everything. And next season, she’ll be competing among the very best.

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MM01 Plus introduces a new 130 × 210 mm format, slightly larger than the original MM01. That means more room for your to-dos, your bucket lists, your designs and your notes, while remaining conveniently travel-sized. It’s still just as easy to slip into a bag, a backpack or a jacket pocket.

Created for life on the move, the MM01 Plus notebook features a singer-sewn binding that opens flat wherever you are: on a train table, at a café, or balanced on your lap. The softcover is made from sturdy Favini Burano paper, available in seven elegant matte colours ranging from Canary Yellow to Vulcan Grey. Inside, 90 g/m² paper provides a reliable, comfortable writing surface, perfect for holding the ink of your favourite Prodir pen.

Designed by Portuguese paper specialists mishmash as part of the mishmash × prodir collection and produced in Italy, this compact notebook is made to travel.

MM01 Plus also offers more space for your brand. Your brand logo can be debossed on the front or back cover in colour or clear gloss. A QR code can be added to connect the notebook to your digital world via Prodir Cloud Services.

Discover the notebook to share with customers, partners and travel companions. MM01 Plus is made for wherever your journey takes you.

Discover MM01 Plus

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Thankfully, everyday life is a bit simpler.

New MC01 Connector is a carabiner for everyday use, designed to keep essential items – keys, badges, or anything worth keeping at hand – together and within reach. Made of anodized aluminium, it’s light, durable, and strong enough to help you keep everything together.

Connector is available in six colours – Silk, Silver, Black, Red Jasper, Cobalt Blue and Canyon Orange – and offers a generous print area for your brand message.

Additional customization features include a choice of seven colours for the safety dot in ABS, and a choice of three colours for the ring, including graphite, black and silver.

Designed with the same precision and quality as our pens and notebooks, Connector shares a natural link with the Prodir family of everyday tools.

New Connector makes every connection a reminder of what makes your brand unique.

Discover new Connector

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The combination of low weight, strength and durability makes aluminium the natural choice for the new MS8 Metal Pen. The casing is made of anodized aluminium, with a cool surface and a balanced feel designed for everyday writing.

The new aluminium-casing MS8 is available in six colours – Silk, Silver, Black, Red Jasper, Cobalt Blue and Canyon Orange – with matching satin metal clip. Personalization options include a push button in your choice of standard colours or chrome, and a clip holder in one of 7 colours.

There’s a generous printing area for your brand message, and can be printed in up to five colours on the clip or applied by laser engraving.

Like all Prodir writing instruments, MS8 comes standard with our low-pollutant Floating Ball® Lead Free refill and is refillable to indefinitely extend the writing life of your pen.

Help your brand communication fly higher in 2026 with the new aluminium-body MS8 Metal Pen.

Discover MS8.

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Let’s start with aluminium. Light, strong and resistant to corrosion, aluminium has been used everywhere from bicycle frames to icons of Swiss design. It can be recycled again and again without losing quality, while using only a fraction of the energy required to produce it from raw ore. And it’s the material behind our two featured innovations for 2026, the MS8 metal pen and the MC01 Connector.

Biopolymers like PLA and PHA follow a different logic. Made from renewable raw materials certified “OK biobased” by TÜV Austria, an independent international testing and certification body, these biopolymers are engineered to behave like conventional plastics, with clearly defined end-of-life pathways. PLA is the material behind the DS3 Biotic, the refresh of our best-selling classic, while PHA can be found in our True Biotic pens.

Mineral- and shell-enriched compounds change perception through weight and texture. By combining finely ground minerals or lime derived from seashells with ABS plastic, these materials add substance and a distinctive feel. The result is noticeably heavier in the hand. Stone is a material option available for our QS01, QS20 and QS50 models, while our DS5 metal clip writing instrument is available in a Shell option.

ABS plastic itself remains a workhorse material: durable, formable, reliable – and regeneratable. In fact, at Prodir, we minimize material loss by integrating ABS plastic regenerated from our own production waste wherever appropriate. Coloured casings include

a high proportion of regenerated ABS, while black and white casings can be produced

entirely with it. Design choices can also reduce material use further – from more compact formats to casings that require significantly less plastic.

This is what we mean by material difference. Not a single material, but a way of choosing and using materials honestly – according to how they feel, how they last, and how credibly they enable brands to express what makes them who they are.

The post What we’re made of appeared first on Open.

Is it performative reading, or is it real? Probably both. Because when you carry a book in public, you’re not just reading – you’re saying something about yourself. About curiosity, maybe. About style. About being the kind of person who still makes space for paper in a world of screens. Call it performance if you like, but it’s also part of your personal brand – the story you tell about who you are and what you value.

But books aren’t the only paper that can help stake a claim for your sense of taste – consider the notebook. It’s the quieter cousin of the paperback. And it’s less about what you’re reading and more about what you’re thinking. A good designer notebook looks good in your hand but also gives you something to do with it. It’s not just an accessory – it’s broadcasting the fact that you have an inner world all your own.

The mishmash × prodir collection captures that balance of aesthetics and purpose. Designed by mishmash, an up-and-coming Portuguese brand exploring every nook and cranny of the paper world, and produced in Italy, each personalized notebook features FSC®-certified pages that offer the ideal surface for handwriting. Minimalist, tactile and elegantly branded, they’re made to personalize with your logo – a refined canvas for your company brand. Paired with a Prodir pen, they become a branded notebook set that doesn’t need to shout. It quietly says your brand has taste – and the tools to back it up.

Because in the end, we’re all performing – every choice, every object, every note we take. The trick isn’t to stop, but to make an elevated performance become a part of you.

The post Notebook style appeared first on Open.

Across Europe, authorities are unravelling webs of forgery that stretch across the continent, and throughout the world. In Italy, for example, investigators recently dismantled workshops turning out counterfeits of Dalí, Banksy and Picasso, and uncovered another 70 fake canvases attributed to Rembrandt and Pissarro in a Roman apartment.

These aren’t amateur imitations: they come complete with falsified certificates, auction histories, and gallery stamps. Forgeries, unlike thieves, don’t need ladders or cinematic getaways. They only need to look convincing enough to hang on a wall.

But as deception grows more sophisticated, so do the tools to expose it – and some of these are Swiss.

In Zurich, Art Recognition AG has built an AI trained to spot the invisible rhythms of an artist’s hand. Feed it a simple photograph and, within days, the system delivers a probability score of authenticity – a data-driven verdict that once took months of expert debate. It’s already challenged museums on attributions once thought untouchable, including London’s contested Samson and Delilah, long credited to Rubens.

Meanwhile, Lausanne-based MATIS brings the science of light to art. Its handheld multispectral camera peers beneath the surface, mapping pigments and revealing hidden underdrawings, the kind of ghostly sketches that betray whether a painting is genuine inspiration or careful imitation.

And at ETH Zurich, scientists are turning to atomic history itself: measuring trace isotopes of carbon-14 left by Cold War nuclear tests to determine whether a paint’s oil binder could really date from the 1600s – or from a forger’s studio in 1986. Though the process has been around for decades, it was mostly thought too destructive of the artwork, until ETH Zurich successfully managed to reduce the necessary testing sample sizes to a tiny strand of canvas or microscopic paint particle.

Together, these Swiss innovations offer a practical response to a global forgery industry worth billions, using light, data, and chemistry to uncover what signatures and certificates can’t.

In an era of deepfakes, artificial companions and counterfeit everything, perhaps authenticity has become the rarest material of all. But these Swiss art sleuths are showing us that the genuine article is out there, if only you know how to look.

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Handwriting is more than marks on paper. It’s the version of you that lingers after you’ve left the room: the loops and lines that stand in for your voice, your memory, your authority. The best typefaces are anonymous. Everyone’s email looks the same. But your handwriting is unmistakably you – unless it’s so messy that even you can’t recognize yourself in it.

That’s the risk: bad handwriting is like showing up in public in stained sweatpants. You may not actually be disorganized – but it sure might look that way. A handwritten thank-you note can lose its charm if it’s barely legible. A signature that collapses into a squiggle doesn’t suggest personality, but the lack of it. After all, writing is a technology – an extension of your memory and your mind. If you can’t read it, you’re cut off from yourself.

So should you bother to improve your handwriting as an adult? Probably yes. Not to become a calligrapher, but to write like you mean it.

How can you improve it? These small shifts can help.

1. Create more opportunities to write. Keep a notebook, send postcards, fill out the shopping list by hand. Handwriting fluency comes from handwriting practice.
2. Slow down. Neatness rarely comes at speed. A fraction more time per letter makes your writing clearer – and the act more mindful.
3. See it from the outside. Imagine your colleague squinting at the flip chart, your child puzzling over your note, or your future self rereading your journal. Handwriting is performance – dress it up accordingly.

And tools matter. A pen that glides too fast can make scrawl inevitable; one that resists too much can feel like punishment. The sweet spot is a writing instrument that flows without slipping, balanced in the hand, refillable for the long haul.

Your handwriting is the version of you that survives when you’ve walked out of the room. Make sure it’s one you actually want to leave behind.

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The ballpoint pen was born from impatience. Fountain pens were elegant, yes, but also moody: they leaked in pockets, blotted on paper, scratched when they were dry and smudged when they weren’t. No wonder frustrated inventors kept searching for something better.

Bíró’s breakthrough was to pair quick-drying ink with a tiny rotating ball, a design he patented with his brother György, a chemist. The two emigrated to Argentina to escape the war, and there began mass-producing what quickly became known simply as the “Biro”. From there, the ballpoint pen spread fast, refined by brands like Parker and Bic, until it became so common it vanished into the background.

But hidden in every “ordinary” ballpoint pen is something extraordinary: the tip itself. A tungsten carbide ball, often less than a millimetre wide, spins in a cradle engineered to microscopic tolerances. Too much ink and it smears, too little and it scratches. Get it right, and the line glides across the page without a second thought. A tiny mechanism that must run as smoothly as a Swiss watch, except it writes essays instead of telling the time.

Switzerland has become one of the quiet capitals of this invisible craft. Since the 1960s, billions of ballpoint pen tips have rolled out of Cadempino and into writing systems around the world – from the branded pen you casually borrow at a reception desk, to the one you quietly steal from a colleague’s desk, to the one you receive at the flashy new launch party. Much of that precision comes from Premec, part of the same Pagani Pens family as Prodir, whose tips and refills quietly power writing for countless pens worldwide.

The demands are higher than you’d think: lead-free inks that won’t fade, pen refills that can be replaced instead of thrown away, and a writing experience that starts instantly and stays consistent to the very last word.

That’s where Prodir comes in. We were the first in the promotional market to make every model a refillable pen, because if the tip and refill are this good, your pen deserves another life. Our Floating Ball® Lead free refills are designed for that balance: smooth, indelible, never scratchy or blotty. The result? A writing system you barely notice – which is exactly the point.

So next time you sign your name or scribble a reminder, pause for a second. That smooth line exists because of a ball smaller than a poppy seed, turning freely in its tiny cradle. The most ordinary thing in the world – and one of the most extraordinary.

The post Small ball, big story appeared first on Open.

Writing is thinking with your hands. When you sit down to write, whether it’s an email, a lecture summary, a project plan, or a pitch deck, you’re forced to organize what’s in your head. You have to choose what matters, decide what to leave out, and put your thoughts into an order that makes sense. That act of shaping ideas on the page is what makes them sharper in your mind.

Science backs this up. Students who take notes by hand, rather than relying on a laptop or app, consistently remember more. Professionals who write things down during meetings are better at recalling details, making connections, and following through. Writing, it turns out, isn’t just a way to preserve knowledge – it’s a way to create it.

It’s also a way to build credibility. In business, a clearly written email or report is more than information: it’s a demonstration of competence. A muddled message is usually read as muddled thinking, while a well-structured argument builds trust. Leaders who can write well project authority. Leaders who don’t risk sounding generic, especially when their words are generated by AI.

That’s the irony of artificial intelligence. It’s a brilliant assistant, but only if you already know how to write yourself. Without the skill to frame a problem, communicate your essential points, and understand whether the results meet your objectives, you risk being managed by the machine rather than the other way around. AI may help with speed, but communicating your voice to your audience still depends on you.

And the good news? Writing isn’t a gift you either have or don’t. It’s a skill that grows with practice. Every journal entry, every meeting note, every outline you sketch before typing is training. Over time, it adds up. You don’t become a better writer overnight – you become a better one one word at a time.

Even in an AI-saturated world, writing remains the quietest, most powerful way to shape thought. And when it’s done by hand – in a notebook, on a page, with your own pen – the benefits multiply. Yes, AI can write for you. But in the age of AI, write anyway.

The post In the age of AI, write anyway appeared first on Open.

The researchers created a two-step experiment. In step one, participants received a blast of the powerful painkiller fentanyl in the form of a nasal spray. In step two, they received a blast of painful heat. The test was supposedly to measure fentanyl’s ability to kill pain.

Except the fentanyl was fake – it was a placebo. And there were two kinds. The first kind of fake-fentanyl was a bland, painless saline solution. The second kind was actually spiked with capsaicin, one of the active components of chili peppers. Which, taken right up the nose, is the stuff of absurd TikTok challenges – it burns.

When the blast of painful heat was administered, researchers discovered that those who had first received the peppery fake-fentanyl in step one reported less pain from the heat in step two than those who had received the bland saline solution. In other words, if the placebo hurt, it was more effective in reducing perceptions of pain. Fake works better if it hurts.

This finding, which may have broad implications for how placebos are conceived of in medicine, is classic Ig Nobel material: science that first makes you laugh, then makes you think. The award, created in 1991 by Marc Abrahams of the Journal of Irreproducible Results, has honoured decades of eccentric brilliance – from levitating frogs to the physics of slipping on banana peels – and its 35th edition will be held this September at Boston University, complete with mini-opera, circus acts and bemused Nobel Laureates physically handing over the prizes.

Switzerland has long had a proud place in this irreverent hall of fame. There was the team that proved playing the didgeridoo can reduce snoring. The forensic researchers who determined whether full or empty beer bottles are better for busting heads in a bar fight. The economists who found a correlation between political corruption and politicians’ waistlines. And the biologists who proved that wine connoisseurs really can detect the scent of a single fruit fly in a glass of wine. (And assuredly deserved a prize for demonstrating that American hip hop music makes the best-tasting cheese.)

But perhaps the most uniquely Swiss Ig Nobel win is the Peace Prize awarded not to scientists, but to the Swiss people themselves. Or rather, to the Swiss Constitution, which recognises the inherent dignity of plants – a principled stance referenced in Prodir’s own manifesto. When we say care of natural resources is in our Swiss DNA, we mean it literally.

So as the Ig Nobels prepare to crown another round of improbable brilliance, one thing is certain: being serious about science doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun – or a little pain – along the way.

➝ OPEN LINK
improbable.com/ig/winners/

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