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Over the past three months, in a small print shop in Toronto, a group of people has been hard at work making the impossible possible: a book that can be read only when you pour water over it. The Dehydrating Book is the first of its kind. It was printed with a special hydrochromic ink that is invisible to the naked eye and becomes visible only when it’s wet. It is 100% waterproof and ships in a pouch full of water. Why? To raise awareness about the global water crisis. [Photo: The Gas Company Inc.] The project is a close collaboration between Water for People, a global nonprofit that helps bring clean water and sanitation systems to underserved communities around the world; communications firm Edelman; and Toronto-based graphic arts studio the Gas Company. Water for People and Edelman came up with the concept. And after three months of iteration (and many sleepless nights) the Gas Company made it a reality by crafting a whopping 130 waterproof books. One of them could be yours freeif you subscribe to the Water for People newsletter and win the raffle that will ensue. [Photo: The Gas Company Inc.] The water crisis, made tangible This book needs water. Just like millions of children in Latin America. This is the opening line on Water for Peoples website, and the sentiment behind it is literal. According to a UNICEF 2021 study, more than 1.42 billion peopleincluding 450 million childrendon’t have enough water to meet their everyday needs. That is one in five children worldwide whose ability to focus, learn, and achieve their potential is hampered by illnesses and decreased cognitive performance caused by a lack of clean drinking water. Water quality issues are so difficult to detect and monitor that the World Bank has called it the invisible crisis. By making a dehydrating book, the team wanted to make the crisis visible: When water disappears, so do opportunities like education. The Dehydrating Book is symbolic of the current realities and obstacles of communities in Latin America, says Mark Duey, Water for Peoples CEO. The region is currently facing a water crisis that’s holding children back. But no such book had ever been made before. [Photo: The Gas Company Inc.] The making of a waterproof book Doug Laxdal founded the Gas Company in 1996. Since then, he has built a strong reputation for kookie projects, as he puts it. In 2022, his team made a completely fireproof version of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to raise awareness of book burnings and bans in the U.S. (The Unburnable Book fetched $130,000 at a Sotheby’s auction, and all proceeds went to PEN America.) Laxdal recalls that when he was first asked to make an unburnable book, he knew exactly what to do. This time around, he wasn’t so sure. A waterproof book is like putting metal in a microwave, he told me on a recent video call. You just don’t it. After he hung up with Edelman, his only thought was: What the hell am I going to do? If you google waterproof books you’ll find a smattering of options, from plasticky baby books to all-weather notebooks, but the Dehydrating Book proved to be a whole other ball game. It had to be waterproof, and the ink had to stick to the page without washing away, and the text had to appear only when you poured water over it. A game of trial and error First on Laxdals to-do list was the book cover. His first instinct was to utilize plastic, but the four plastic manufacturers he reached out to weren’t interested in the project. In the end, he landed on white acrylic, also known as plexiglass, which comes in a gloss finish but in this case was sanded down to a matte surface using an orbital sander. The cover closes around the pages of the book almost like a jewelry box. Then came the pages. Laxdal experimented with a flurry of materials, including Tyvek (a type of synthetic material thats often used to wrap buildings during construction) and polyester. The former wrinkled under water, the latter made the pages too stiff. Other options simply weren’t suitable for the kind of ink he had to use. Various test runs using pouches filled with water for a few days yielded unworkable results: Some ink ether bled into the water or turned sticky, effectively gluing the book shut. The final version is made with a synthetic paper called SuperYupo (regular Yupo wasn’t good enough). The book covers are acrylic. The outside is lined with another sheet of SuperYupo that is glued to the covers using a waterproof adhesive from 3M. The pages are sewn with standard polyester thread. Laxdal’s team printed the first layer of text with a UV litho press, which uses ultraviolet light to instantly cure the ink onto the page. Laxdal likens the process to UV-cured gel nail polish, except in this case, the UV machine is almost 100 feet long. Then, they used a silkscreen press to apply enough layers of hydrochromic ink to conceal the text printed underneath. Finally, they placed the book inside a plastic pouch and dunked it in a small aquarium so the water could flow inside the pouch before it was sealed. In a live demo on Zoom, I watched as graphic designer Layla Laxdal (Doug’s daughter) poured a glass of water over an open book, and instantly, a brightly colored hummingbird appeared on the page. The story, cowritten with students from Palmira, a village in Peru’s Cascas Valley, follows a group of animals, led by a thirsty hummingbird named Lupita, who travel through Peru in search of water. A spokesperson from Edelman explains that the message behind the book is el agua es vida, (or water is life): Its a motto that the community lives by, and it is a powerful reminder for us readers that without water, children cant thrive. By the end of my interview with Laxdal, some 40 minutes later, the image that came into view during the demo had started to fade, apart from one patch in the center where the water had pooled. That patch was still bright.
Category:
E-Commerce
For years, Tesla made the worlds best-selling electric vehiclesbut thats begun to change. As a response to Elon Musks apparent Nazi salute and his involvement in dismantling key federal agencies, both Tesla stock and sales have declined. Tesla Takedown protests have popped up across the country (and the world), and even the value of used Teslas is depreciating. But EVs arent the only electric product Tesla makes. The company has also been a big player in the solar industry, with its Powerwall home batteries, traditional solar panels, and Solar Roof, in which the roof tiles themselves contain the solar panels. And early data hints at how Musks public reputation may be hurting this business, too. EnergySage has begun to notice some of those impacts. As an online marketplace for the solar industry, EnergySage connects solar-curious homeowners with installers to get quotes, or to its own advisors to field questions. Its reportedly the most visited website for the solar industry, and recently, its been hearing from both customers and installers about their desire to stay away from Tesla, particularly its Powerwall 3 home solar battery. From January 1 through January 19before Trumps inauguration and Musks salute at a Trump rallyabout 73% of homeowners who used EnergySage to get a quote on solar with a battery picked one that included the Tesla Powerwall 3, as opposed to a battery by another manufacturer. But between January 20 to March 10, that number dropped to 64%. Thats a slight dip, but its notable, says Kristina Zagame, a senior research analyst at EnergySage, because of how prominent the Tesla Powerwall 3 has been in the marketplace. That battery came out in early 2024; in the first quarter of that year, it accounted for 18% of the market share, but by the end of the year, it was up to 64%. The Powerwall 3 is popular because it eliminates the need to buy an inverter (as one is included in the battery), its an easier lift for installers, and its priced lower than competitive batteries. Besides that drop in selected quotes including Tesla batteries, EnergySage has also heard anecdotally evidence about rising anti-Tesla sentiment. Customers have both called and emailed to either express a negative sentiment toward Musk, or to ask specifically about non-Tesla solar battery options. Zagame even put together a battery guide to Tesla alternatives so that she could send it as an easy response to customer inquiries. But the calls kept coming, the emails kept coming, she says, so she looked more into customer sentiment directly. (EnergySage can see the messages homeowners send to installers when they get quotes, which is where some of the anti-Tesla sentiment was showing up.) Zagame took a one-week snapshot of customer calls in March, and found that a quarter of all calls mentioned Tesla, and 20% of those specifically noted a negative view towards the comapny. Homeowners receiving quotes from EnergySage also mentioned Tesla more than twice as often in emails over the first two months of 2025 compared to the year prior. Of those messages, 68% were requesting a Tesla alternative, while 13.5% specifically shared unfavorable views toward Tesla or Musk. There was also a slight decrease in the amount of installers offering Tesla solar batteries in their quotes: 61% of battery quotes included Tesla from January 1 to 19, compared to 58% from January 20 to March 10. That could also be because some installers have faced Powerwall 3 shortages and so dont have them in stock to offer right away. It’s not clear if this points to an impending downfall of the Tesla Powerwallit’s a bit early to tell, though EnergySage says it’ll keep an eye on these trends. Tesla’s overall solar business has changed in recent years, though, which may have protected it a bit from that changing consumer sentiment. Tesla’s installation businessas in, Tesla actually being the one to install its solar panels or Solar Roofis “particularly exposed to anti-Musk sentiment,” says Max Issokson, a solar analyst with Wood Mackenzie, because the company “relies on brand recognition and competitive pricing.” But that business has declined over the past nine years. Tesla acquired solar panel manufacturer SolarCity in 2016, and when it did so, it held 16% of the residential solar installation market, he says. Since then, the company has steadily lost market share. In 2024, Tesla held only 1.6% share. Tesla has focused less on being a solar installer, Issokson says, and more on being an equipment supplier. That means it has certified third-party installers to do the actual installation work, and instead supplies its panels, shingles, or batteries to installers. While it’s installation business was decreasing, Teslas residential battery and inverter business has increased. And the equipment side of Tesla’s solar business may be a bit more insulated from customer sentiment, Issokson says, as equipment decisions are more often controlled by the solar installer than the consumer. But Zagame says she has heard from a few installers who have been turned off by Musks actions and so are phasing out their Tesla solar offeringsor pushing alternatives like the FranklinWH to customers instead. [Installers] are helping people go solar, but at the end of the day they have a business to run and sales quotas to meet, Zagame says. So for them to say, Hey, we actually don’t want you to install this product anymore, that is a really big deal.
Category:
E-Commerce
For more than 100 years, people in Stanstead, Quebec, have been able to walk into Derby Line, Vermont, to enter the border-straddling Haskell Free Library and Opera Houseno passport required. But municipal and library officials said on Friday that U.S. authorities have unilaterally decided to end the century-old unwritten agreement. Coming at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries, the decision is prompting an outpouring of emotion in communities on both sides of the border, which in places has been marked simply by flower pots. Inside the library celebrated as a symbol of international friendship, Pauline Lussier and Chris Blais put their arms around each others shoulders Friday as they stood on either side of the line taped down the floor marking the border. Lussier, a Canadian, and Blais, an American met for the first time that day. A line doesnt separate us, it never has, said Blais, who held an American flag in her hands while Lussier held a Canadian one. Our kids have gone back and forth over this border without any problem at all . . . this is all going to change now, and theres no reason for this, Blais added. Once inside the library, Canadian and American citizens have been able to mingle freely across the border line drawn on the flooras long as they return to the proper country afterward. In 2016, then-President Barack Obama hailed the symbolic importance of the library, built in 1901. A resident of one of these border towns once said, Were two different countries, but were like one big town, Obama said. A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed that the divide is about to become more pronounced. Starting in the coming days, only library card holders and employees will be able to cross over from Canada to enter the building through the main door on the U.S. side. And as of Oct. 1, no Canadians will be able to enter the library via the United States without going through the border checkpoint, though there will be exceptions for law enforcement, emergency services, mail delivery, official workers, and those with disabilities. The statement acknowledged the library as a unique landmark, but said the border agency was phasing in a new approach for security reasons. Due to the librarys location, and convenience of local populations, CBP has allowed customers of the library to access its sidewalk, without inspection, for decades, the agency said in a statement. However, during that time, this area has witnessed a continued rise in illicit cross-border activity. It noted there have been a number of incidents in and around the library that resulted in apprehensions in recent years, including a person attempting to smuggle firearms in the past year. Town and library officials say Canadian visitors without a library card will have to enter by a back door on the Canadian side, across a muddy stretch of grass. The library announced Friday that it was launching a GoFundMe to raise the estimated $69,000 ($100,000 Canadian) it will cost to build a sidewalk, new parking lot, and wheelchair access. Stanstead Mayor Jody Stone said the U.S. decision makes no sense. However, he said the decision from U.S. President Donald Trumps administration would not affect the close bond between the communities, which share municipal services and facilities. No matter what this administration does, it will not change the fact that Stanstead and Derby Line are partners and friends forever, he said. Several residents, some in tears, gathered at the border to denounce the decision. Penny Thomas stood on the American side, holding up a sign with a maple leaf on it that said Keep Haskell open. In February, The Boston Globe reported that U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited the library and repeated Trumps taunts about making Canada the 51st state as she stepped back and forth across the line that marks the border. According to the librarys website, Canadian visitors had been allowed to enter the library by the main entrance on the U.S. side. While passports or visas were not necessary, library officials had warned that U.S. Border Patrol and Royal Canadian Mounted Police would monitor movements and could request to see identification.
Category:
E-Commerce
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