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The crisp crinkle of fallen leaves beneath your feet. The swish and trickle of water moving through a stream. A breath of crisp, fresh air. Spending time in nature can be invigorating or produce feelings of peace and calm. But many professions allow little time or access to the outdoors during the workday. After a youth spent climbing trees and playing soccer, Anna Rose Smith found it difficult when her first job as a psychotherapist in Utah required working in a windowless office. So she spent her lunch breaks outside, walking to nearby fountains or gardens. She picked up flower petals or leaves from the ground and brought them back to her desk, where she would listen to recorded bird songs, sometimes incorporating the soothing chirps into sessions with clients. It helps to just have that reminder that these things are going on outside, Smith said. I can remember, no matter what happens in this room or with my job today, theres still going to be birds singing. Getting to trees or shorelines can be challenging during work hours, especially in cold weather and urban environments. But there are ways to enjoy the outdoors and to bring the natural world into your place of work, even if it’s a windowless cubicle. Al fresco meetings Scheduled meetings don’t have to take place indoors. An in-person appointment can happen on a park bench. Smith sometimes suggests a walk and talk meeting at a nearby greenway. Mobile devices mean virtual get-togethers also aren’t limited to conventional work spaces. You can also attend Zoom meetings while walking a woody path. Smith will ask if she can participate in an online meeting with her smartphone and headphones, allowing her to still be able to get sunlight on my face or see water and plants and birds, she said. I do definitely feel more calm, Smith, who grew up in South Dakota but now lives in a more moderate climate in North Carolina, said. I think it helps with focus as well. Im just feeling more peaceful and optimistic. Atlantic Packaging, a sustainable packaging manufacturer headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, encourages employees to hold meetings in the courtyards of its facilities or while taking a walk, said Becca Schusler, the company’s wellness director. The company added fig trees and native plants to its Charlotte location. It launched a nature challenge in 2024 in which employees tracked the time they spent outdoors while dog walking, eating meals, attending meetings, or watching a sunset. Participants uploaded photos into a group chat from their workstations around the U.S. It was just so wonderful because we got sunrises in the mornings, sunsets at night from all different areas, from the beach to the mountains in Nevada,” Schusler said. Some employees reported they felt like they handled stress better as a result of spending more time outside, she said. Just walk Separate from meetings, a group of Atlantic Packaging employees get together for Walk it out Wednesdays, a weekly time to take strolls together. It helps provide a quick break in the day where they can reset and refocus,” Schusler said. The Ford Motor Company also has encouraged employees to move outdoors. When it redesigned its Dearborn, Michigan, headquarters in 2025, the automaker included native plants, walking paths, and outdoor pavilions, and suggested people use the grounds for meetings. The parking lot was put further away from the main building by design so people would walk for a few minutes by tall grasses, rocky outcroppings, bridges, and flowers. We are very careful about how we are engineering space so that our brains and our bodies react positively, said Jennifer Kolstad, Ford’s global and brand design director. Designing for human health is our priority, our responsibility. Find the light When temperatures dip and more time is spent indoors, windows can provide a connection with nature. The designers who laid out Ford’s new headquarters placed offices in the center of floors so exterior walls with tall windows could be enjoyed by everyone in collaborative spaces, Kolstad said. During Smith’s windowless office days, she kept a pothos plant in the room. The greenery didn’t need much light and survived with the dose it got when Smith moved it to spend weekends in a colleague’s office that had a window. If its really ugly weather, extreme, then I think thats where windows are truly a godsend, she said. To catch some sunshine and feel the wind on your face during a commute, consider biking all or part of the way. Many cities and towns have bicycle sharing programs. A warm coat and mittens can keep you from getting too cold while pedaling. Layer up with a neck gaiter, balaclava or hat under your helmet. Erin Mantz, who works in Washington, D.C., as vice president of marketing for public relations firm Zeno Group, walks to a Pilates class before work four times a week, often before the sun rises. On the days she works from home, she takes breaks to walk her dog on the meandering paths in her neighborhood. Mantz said that as a child living in Chicago, she often played at the park with neighborhood friends while bundled up in winter gear. She found it difficult to maintain her connection with nature when she had prior jobs that called for working in an office full-time. Growing up Gen X, we were always running around outside, and you have that great feeling of freedom and fresh air, she said. Now that she has a hybrid work schedule, she’s realized that spending time outdoors helps her feel relaxed and destressed. It’s so good for me, Mantz said. The fresh air reminds me of that youthfulness of being outside, and I think its physical and mental, honestly. I feel reinvigorated. ___ Share your stories and questions about workplace wellness at cbussewitz@ap.org. Follow APs Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well Cathy Bussewitz, Wellness Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
In the age of rampant AI slop, seeing isnt always believing. Theres more than one way, though, to make people doubt their own eyes. Many have long predicted and warned that AI deepfakes could profoundly distort public opinion. For example, although swiftly debunked, a fake video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urging his troops to surrender in early 2022 seemed to be a harbinger of horrors to comewhen AI would become indistinguishable from reality. But as events this week in Minneapolis and the White House demonstrate, no visual manipulation is necessary for forging reality from whole cloth. All it takes is a federal government united around its leaders preferred narrative. On Tuesday afternoon, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot a woman driving an SUV in a Minneapolis suburb. Amid a crowd protesting the agencys recent incursion into the Twin Cities, legal observer Renee Nicole Good was stopped in the middle of the street when federal vehicles zoomed toward her, sirens wailing. Agents then hopped out of the vehicles and aggressively approached Goods car on foot. As captured on video from multiple angles, she tried to evade the agents, prompting one of them to fire several shots through Goods windshield, one of which hit her face. She died of her injuries on the scene. Even before many of the above details were known or confirmed, the official government narrative had already begun to coalesce. Today, ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill theman act of domestic terrorism.— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) January 7, 2026 Who are you going to believe? Journalism may be the first rough draft of history, but the Trump administration, famously hostile toward journalists, prefers to write the first rough draft of reality themselves, in real timeoccasionally with a Sharpie pen. As videos of the incident in Minneapolis proliferated online, a tweet from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declared that a nameless violent rioter had committed an act of domestic terrorism by attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem soon held a press conference, reiterating this version of events. She claimed that the still-nameless woman had been stalking officers and suggested that shed used her vehicle as a weapon. Both accounts claimed that officers involved had been hurt but expected to make a full recovery. Of course, no narrative from the Trump administration is complete until the president himself weighs in, which he did soon enough on Truth Social. Apparently, it wasnt enough for Trump to just reiterate the skewed DHS version of events; instead, he added some flourishes of his own. In Trumps telling, the driver hadnt merely attempted to run over an ICE agent; shed viciously ran over himto the point where it is hard to believe he is still alive. Before Goods name had even been confirmed by The Minnesota Star Tribune and released to the public, the administration had turned her into an attempted murderer (the rare type of attempted murderer, no less, who drives around with a glove box full of stuffed animals for her young child). Stranger than fiction Much remains unknown about the events that led to Goods killing, since video has yet to emerge showing what happened before her vehicle stopped in the middle of the road. Whether her attempt to flee the scene was illegal or ill-advised may be up for debate. What is absolutely certain, though, is that this was the ninth ICE shooting since just last September, which suggests that Good had more reason to be scared of the agents than they were of her. Either way, to describe what is depicted in the videos as a ramming attack is so staggeringly detached from reality, its an attack on the very idea that one should believe their own eyes. Unfortunately, in this administration, such brazen fabrications are par for the course. One day before Goods shooting death, the White House crystallized Trumps paradoxical reframing of the Capitol riots with an official new government web page. On the fifth anniversary of the attack, the administration touted a timeline that grossly misrepresented what happened on January 6, 2021, despite countless freely available video clips taken by the rioters themselves. In this fanciful retelling, the pro-Trump marchers were orderly and spirited, while the Capitol police escalated tensions by firing tear gas and flash-bangs for no reason. And somehow its all then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosis fault. Perhaps more egregious, the site presents this revisionist history as a corrective to the purportedly revisionist history spun by the Biden administration. Its not that Trump and his defenders are being dishonest; theyre just the only ones courageous enough to tell the truth! The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, the site reads, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as insurrectionists and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trumpdespite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government. In truth, roughly 174 of the 608 defendants charged with assaulting, resisting, or interfering with law enforcement that day were charged for using a deadly or dangerous weapon or otherwise causing serious injury to an officer. Footage that shows it happening is out there for all to see. But for the second Trump administration, it doesnt matte if hard video evidence disproves their narrative. What matters is their unwavering insistence that their narrative is the way it is. Seeing is still believing Although Trumps reelection in 2024 has essentially rendered moot the truth about January 6, the story of what happened in Minneapolis on Wednesday is still developing. Local politicians are not mincing words as they attempt to wrest control of the narrative out of Trumps handsand back into the realm of evidential reality. “They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said during a press conference on Wednesday. Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly: that is bullshit.” Shortly afterward, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz tweeted that hed also seen the video, and urged people to not believe this propaganda machine. (Walz was on the business end of Trumps propaganda machine last Saturday, when the president reposted a video falsely suggesting that Walz was behind the murder of Minnesota state senator Melissa Hortman last summera video Hortmans children have asked Trump to take down, so far to no avail.) Walz’s and Freys statements reiterate that seeing is believing, an idea that Trump himself apparently shares. Asked by visiting New York Times reporters on Wednesday about his version of eventsin which Renee Nicole Good viciously ran over an ICE agentthe president ordered an assistant to play video footage that he seemed to think proved him correct. While watching the video, the reporters claim they told Trump that the angle did not appear to show an ICE officer had been run over. Well, Trump responds, I the way I look at it He then apparently trails off, without ever admitting that the footage shows something different than what he previously claimed it does. The report describes this remarkable exchange as a glimpse into Mr. Trumps reflexive defense of what has become a sometimes violent federal crackdown on immigration. But this characterization doesnt tell the full story. Its more of a glimpse into how the president routinely invents whatever version of reality best serves him, regardless of whether it clashes with realitys version of reality. On Thursday morning, the Times released a forensic analysis of Goods killing from three different angles, definitively contradicting Trumps account. And yet even conclusive video evidence is bound to have little impact, not as long as the presidents supporters in and out of Congress insist on only viewing the world the way Trump looks at it.
Category:
E-Commerce
If you visit the Herms website in search of a scarf or a handbag, you’ll be greeted by a collection of whimsical sea creatures swimming across the screen. To navigate to the watch section, you’ll click on an image of a watch flanked by an eel. To locate shoes, you’ll click on a loafer with a pelican sitting inside it as if it were riding a boat. [Screenshot: Herms These sea horses and fish and eels and star fish are intriguing to the eye. While digitally-rendered images are hyper smooth, symmetrical, and flawless, these pictures bear all the imperfections of a hand-drawn illustration. We see the texture of the paper grain in the background, a slight irregularity in the lines, unevenness in the coloring. In a world of AI-generated images, these pictures feel special, perhaps even luxurious. [Image: Linda Merad (illustration), Quentin Klein (animation), Pascal Armand(music)/courtesy Herms] Herms, which unveiled a new website this week, partnered with the French artist Linda Merad to create these images. Merad, whose pen and ink illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and The Atlantic, specializes in hand-drawn images. It was her old-fashioned, analog process that appealed to the brand. “They wanted t create the impression that the art was made by a human,” Merad explains. “They wanted the viewer to feel the materiality of the drawing.” Illustrations from the portfolio of Linda Merad [Images: courtesy of the artist] For Herms, it is on-brand to tap a small artist for its imagery. The 188-year-old fashion house has become a luxury giant (generating $13.8 billion in revenue last year) by emphasizing the handcrafted nature of its products, which are made in European factories by well-trained artisans. Through its Instagram page, Herms has put out calls to artists who are interested in offering their own interpretation of the brand, from creating images of horses as a reference to the brand’s equestrian roots to drawing pieces from the collection. [Illustration: Linda Merad for Herms] Merad answered the call six months ago, illustrating Herms hats in her own fantastical style, drawing the bucket hats and caps with legs, dancing across a field of mushrooms. The Herms team was so taken with her work that they invited her to create images of sea animals that would be featured on the brand’s Instagram campaign. Then, a few weeks ago, the Herms team said they would be incorporating the images onto the e-commerce website, which came as a surprise. This is the first time that Herms is using illustrations on its website. “It wasn’t planned,” Merad says. “The e-commerce team really liked my universe, so they wanted illustrations.” [Illustration: Linda Merad for Herms] Given how enormous the company is, Merad says she was given remarkable creative freedom. She only worked with four other people, two Herms art directors, one animator, and one musician. She says she was compensated for her work, with the Herms team accepting her first offer. Herms wanted to start with the motif of a seahorse, but she was free to build out an entire under sea world. “It’s the year of the horse in the Chinese calendar, and Herms felt that horse imagery would be everywhere, so they wanted to do something distinct,” she says. [Illustration: Linda Merad for Herms] Her main constraint was including various products in the imagery, such as shoes, jewelry, and scarves, since they would be used to help customers navigate to product categories. Merad says she didn’t find this very onerous because sheoften juxtaposes animals with human elements. “I was surprised to get so much creative freedom from a luxury brand,” she says. “I like to mix several ideas and create hybrid forms. It allows me to make images that are funny and poetic.” [Illustration: Linda Merad for Herms] In a world where AI can produce high quality images for free, many artists fear that there will be less demand for their work. Indeed, AI image generators are trained on existing art, which effectively means that they are using artists’ work without compensating them, then reworking it into new images. But this partnership with Herms suggests that original art made by human beings will also become increasingly valuable. Standing out in a digital world full of slop will require taking the time and money to work with artists. [Illustration: Linda Merad for Herms] Merad believes there is already a growing desire, in some quarters, for hand-drawn work. From the time she was a child, she always loved drawing pictures, particularly of clothing. She considered becoming a fashion designer, but she didn’t like the idea of having to creating large collections every season; she preferred to spend time focusing on each individual image. She thought her best chance of finding work as an artist was to become a graphic designer, so she attended the French art school, École nationale supérieure des arts appliqués et des métiers d’art, to learn graphic design. [Illustration: Linda Merad for Herms] But over the last few years, she’s found that clients are more interested in her hand drawn illustrations. She believes all the imperfections that come along with handcrafted work create images that are more interesting to the eye in a world where so much digital art looks the same. “When things are made by hand, you can tell there is a soul behind them,” she says. “There is charm and humanness in the imperfections than something that looks more robotic.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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