Cash is expensive for stores to manage, count, and sort. That’s the actual reason they want it gone, not tracking. Sure, we’re being tracked, but that’s not the point. Thanks to our phones, our personal lives have already been completely disseminated.

Cashless is about making things easier for businesses that struggle with handling cash. A cashless society acts like consuming goods from those businesses is the only reason money exists, and that’s wrong.

Cards themselves have been very useful. They’re much lighter and harder to steal money than carrying hundreds in cash in your pockets.

It’s cashless that is a concern, not the existence of cards.

What happens when an abused person has to escape a partner/parent who controls all the money? Where do they go, what food and board are they getting?

How do small traders set up garage sales and marketer stands, especially if they don’t want to give cuts of their money to corporate giants Eftpos and Visa?

How do those with impulsively/memory issues (such as ADHD, dementia, and teenagers) manage the abstraction of their money, leading them to accidentally overspending/overdrafts?

How do you spot a stranger in need a bus fare home?

How do we support the street artists and buskers?

…I don’t like the idea of cashless. My country already uses eftpos and visa as the norm (so ofc we all pay those overseas companies their fees). But while wide accepting of the card is good and useful, true cashless has issues of usability. It’s not just ‘something something government tracking spending’.

Vulnerable people fall through the gaps, and it means people make a lot more consumer transactions and a lot fewer personal ones.

It is more accurate, but for most people it probably makes it more work. If most [Group A] need [Item A], it gets labelled that way so they can be sectioned that way. It probably would be better, especially for more uncommon shapes, to use measurements. But most people don’t want to do that for everything, they want an easy answer so they can go home. A lot of women I know have never bothered to get their bra size professionally measured, and that’s a readily available service that saves so much literal pain.

Reminds me of mens/womens deoderant. IIRC the real difference is that one is creamier (for body hair) and the other is powdery (for shaved skin). So sometimes men might want women’s deoderant or vice versa, and the labelling CAN obfuscate that.

I recommend re-lacing. Autocorrect changed it to ‘replace’, but changing how your shoes are laced really helps. I have a very high arch, and found that I didn’t actually need much arch support in the shoe itself, I just needed the tongue not to be pushing down on it. It means the shoes now feel tight and secure around my ankle and toe, I don’t have to go up a size to fit my arch. Much more comfortable!

Feel like giving it a try?

It’s normal for men to have wider feet, with a wider and longer toebox compared to the length of the foot. Length is only one dimension of several. (Though a lot of people don’t think to re-lace* their shoes for arches.)

It’s unclear how much of that is upbringing. The toebox length is gendered, but toe and foot width go up wen spending a lot of time barefoot, and toe width goes down in pointed shoes that can eve n make toes ‘tuck’ and cause bunions.

A women’s 9 1/2 double-wide fits me about the same as a plain Men’s 7. Women’s dress shoes are rarely in wide, and NEVER double-wide. Though I’ve found success with Aussie brands because going barefoot is normal there and so the shoes are often wider for everyone. We’re also seeing the toebox become a more slanted natural foot shape, instead of the weird point symmetrical one.

Bodies can be complicated, and one size/shape isn’t for everyone. The way we live and dress absolutely changes the shoes we need, too.