five friday finds: cicada summers, upflation, election art

Hey folks,

My daughter fancies herself being a mouse sometimes. In matters of wild imagination, we’re nothing if not indulgent parents. So last week we picked up an adorable book from the library that goes into #DatMouseLyfe. It’s part of the Brambly Hedge series.

Brambly Hedge is on the other side of the stream, across the field. If you can find it, and if you look very hard amongst the tangled roots and stems, you may even see a wisp of smoke from a small chimney, or through an open door, a steep flight of stairs deep within the trunk of a tree. For this is the home of the mice of Brambly Hedge.

The mice of Brambly Hedge live together in a close-knit community making best use of what each season has to offer.

In a world where we find ourselves in dense yet isolated urban living situations, community of the physical kind is rare, the focus the book brings to the power and promise of the collective is refreshing. I instantly fell in love with the art in the book too - which goes into incredible detail of the geography and architecture of the hedge. This week’s art-as-a-habit-and-not-just-a-hobby is a panel from the book where two characters bump into a hidden palatial hall inside the tree-trunk.

Now, onwards to this week’s finds:

1. WHAT ZONE? Where do you live now? How would you describe the weather there? Do you think the answer will be the same in a few years? Play around with this incredibly engaging (and scary) interactive play on climate data that shows you how your city will feel in the future.
2. HOT CICADA SUMMER One of my favorite animes of all time is Evangelion. It’s all about mecha-giant-robots and aliens and apocalyptic events and existential angst. But aurally, the low-octane moments when the protagonist is walking around rural Japan are the most memorable to me. It’s the cicadas! The Japan Times goes deep on what cicadas have meant to Japanese culture.
3. WHAT’S UP(FLATION)? It’s the latest trend with packaged goods brands of selling old products with new uses. All-over body deodorant? “Tricky areas” razors? The spate of new uses for old products is a somewhat awkward attempt by some of the world’s biggest packaged goods-makers, including P&G, Unilever Plc and Edgewell Personal Care Co. to claw back sales in the US’s more than $100 billion personal care and beauty market.
4. SASEA. SAZ-ee-uh? South Asia and Southeast Asia are globalization's next frontier. Even without India, SASEA would still be more populous than the entire Western hemisphere! In other words, SASEA is not some minor peripheral region of the globe. If it were one of the World Bank’s official regions, it would be the world’s largest.
5. ELECTION ART UK wrapped their polls today. Behind the scenes with The Guardian creative team making all its election artwork by hand. In direct response to the rise of AI generative imagery and fake news, the newspaper’s election coverage this year is made with purposely imperfect paper cuttings. I love how it looks!