Meet Language Explorer: Google’s New Open-Source Linguistic Atlas

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 28/01/2026 à 09:23

Google Research's Language Explorer, is a new interactive map that anyone can use to explore the world's languages.Mapping the World’s TonguesThe interface of the Language Explorer is built around a highly responsive interactive map. Users can dive into the data in several ways:Spatial Discovery: You can use the map to zoom into a specific region - like the Highlands of Papua New Guinea or the

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The World's Oldest Globe

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 27/01/2026 à 10:10

Today, Reddit user u/Brooklyn_University posted an animated GIF of Martin Behaim’s Erdapfel, the world’s oldest surviving terrestrial globe, dating to 1492. As the globe turns, you’ll notice a striking absence: the Americas are nowhere to be found. Sail west from Europe on this map and the first landmass you would expect to encounter is “Cipangu” (Japan).Made in the same year

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The Giant Pixel Art Map of New York

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 26/01/2026 à 09:16

Isometric NYC is a huge pixel art map of New York City - and I mean huge. Anyone who lives in, or knows NYC can spend hours exploring this map, zooming in on their favorite neighborhoods, streets, and landmarks, all reimagined in a classic old-school pixel art style. From iconic skyscrapers to tucked-away corners, Isometric NYC has captured the city block by block in isometric perspective.Of

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Subways Built by Slime Mold

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 24/01/2026 à 10:00

Subway Sim: Watching a City Think In 2010, researchers in Tokyo ran a slime mold experiment on a map of the city.They placed oat flakes on a map of the Greater Tokyo Area, positioning each flake over a metropolitan center. Then they released a slime mould - Physarum polycephalum - at the location of Tokyo itself.Slime moulds are single-celled organisms with no brain, no nervous system,

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Where is Trump Still Popular?

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 23/01/2026 à 09:19

One year into his presidency, Donald Trump is again breaking records. He is now even more unpopular than at any point in his political career. To mark the first anniversary of his second term, a number of new polls have been released evaluating the president’s popularity across the United States. The Economist's Approval Tracker shows the president's net approval rating at -19%. Using YouGov

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How Big is Big?

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 22/01/2026 à 09:25

META is building a massive (AI)-focused data centre in northeast Louisiana. The site footprint is 2,250 acres of land - making the Hyperion Data Center one of the largest data-center construction sites ever attempted in the United States. It is a nearly five-mile-long, one-mile-wide tract of land that is being developed to power Meta’s AI ambitions.It is hard to understand the true scale of a

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Drunk Map

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 21/01/2026 à 14:58

With inflation making a night out increasingly expensive, getting drunk can cost a small fortune. To save your wallet, I created Drunk Map - a way to experience the dizzying effect of looking at a map while inebriated, without spending a cent on today’s sky-high alcohol prices.There’s no practical purpose to Drunk Map, but it serves as a neat demonstration of how you can access and

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Mapping U.S. Military Interventions

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 20/01/2026 à 09:12

Since the United States’ controversial military operation in Venezuela - including the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro - and in light of recent threats by Donald Trump to invade a NATO ally, there has been renewed interest in the long history of U.S. military interventions around the world.American Empire: A Century of Global Military Presence is a new interactive atlas that visualizes

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Make a Map Poster

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 19/01/2026 à 07:30

Ankur Gupta has created an impressive Map Poster Generator. The code for which is available on GitHub.While the original repository is fantastic for developers, it also requires a local Python setup, terminal commands, and the installation of geospatial libraries like OSMnx and GDAL - which can be intimidating if you aren't a coder.I’ve therefore adapted the core logic into a Google Colab

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The Bovine Brands Browser

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 17/01/2026 à 10:03

One of the biggest problems I face when riding across the prairie is identifying the cattle ranching owners of lost steers. Which is when I turn to Ranch Brand Search!Ranch Brand Search is an interactive map that brings one of the most distinctive traditions of the American West into the digital age. Instead of leafing through dusty brand books or wrestling with outdated state websites, users

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Did You Win the Global Lottery?

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 16/01/2026 à 09:02

Are you feeling lucky? You probably should be. Based on where most Maps Mania readers are located, there’s a good chance you’ve already won the birth lottery.The Birth Lottery map makes global inequality tangible by illustrating how much our quality of life depends on chance. With a single spin, the map randomly “re-births” you somewhere in the world based on real statistics. It poses a simple

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The Last Train Map

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 15/01/2026 à 09:41

I really love this Tokyo Last Train Map, which is designed to visualize the times of the last train from every Tokyo station. If you’ve ever stayed out too late in Tokyo, you’ll know that missing the last train can be an expensive mistake. The Tokyo Last Train Map turns this anxiety into something beautiful — and strangely mesmerizing.On this transit map, the city’s rail network is reframed

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The World on Fire

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 14/01/2026 à 09:16

The Guardian has Mapped: how the world is losing its forests to wildfires and, in the process, managed to transform abstract climate statistics into clear, spatial comparisons.The story opens with an interactive 3D globe that is used to reveal the sheer scale of forest lost to wildfires around the world. By panning and zooming the globe to recognisable areas, the article provides

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War Atlas: Mapping 3,500 Years of Conflict

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 13/01/2026 à 09:25

War Atlas is an interactive, web-based map that visualizes 8,500+ historical battles spanning from around 1500 BC to the present day - providing users with a guided historical tour of human conflict.At its core, War Atlas is an interactive timeline-driven map. Users can select a specific war, explore through time using a slide control or through inputting a specific year, and see battles

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Mapping ICE Activity

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 12/01/2026 à 10:14

People Over Papers is a community-driven map showing reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity. People Over Papers lets anyone submit sightings of possible ICE operations and view recent reports near them. The project’s stated objective is to “collect community-submitted information about possible ICE activity to help inform the public and raise awareness,” with every

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Where are the Most Expensive Houses?

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 10/01/2026 à 09:38

Homes Are Expensive is an interactive map that can help you find the cheapest and most expensive places to buy a property in the United States. The house prices are based on data from Zillow listings.The map visualizes property prices across the USA using data scraped via hasdata.com in November 2025, and provides a comprehensive look at the 1.85 million homes currently on the market. What makes

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12 Million Bike Rides on One Map

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 09/01/2026 à 10:32

bikemap.nyc is an interactive visualization of the entire history of New York City’s Citi Bike system. Every animated arrow you see on the map represents a real bike ride, taken by a real person somewhere in New York City.And there are a lot of them.The map visualizes 291 million Citi Bike trips, spanning more than 12 years, from June 2013 through December 2025. If you want, you can simply sit

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A Map of Personal Memories

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 08/01/2026 à 11:28

AMOU (A Map of Us) describes itself as “a shared map of our memories.” In essence, the map allows people to pin their own personal stories, memories, and emotional milestones to specific locations around the world. The result is a global atlas of deeply personal landmarks.Each marker on the map - called a mou - is a short note anchored to a location. Some are deeply personal reflections,

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A New Year’s Flight Around Planet Earth

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 07/01/2026 à 09:48

On New Year’s Day, I released a small virtual fireworks show to celebrate the start of the year. The Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung then put my effort to shame by publishing an impressive orbital tour of the entire planet on the same day - recorded by the International Space Station.Illuminated Cities and Northern Lights: A New Year's Flight around the World around the World is a guided

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The United States on Mars

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 06/01/2026 à 08:44

I think we would all like to banish the United States to Mars. Well now you can thanks to a new size comparison map. There have been a lot of (what are probably mostly vibe-coded) 'true-size of' maps lately. The True Size of Countries definitely has the AI-map template aesthetic often associated with large language model–designed maps, however it also offers a fresh twist on a familiar

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Estimating Population with OpenStreetMap

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 05/01/2026 à 09:21

Estimating how many people live within a specific area is a recurring challenge in public health, urban planning, and humanitarian work. Census data is often outdated, too coarse, or unavailable at the scale decision-makers need. A new open-source map created by Carlos Felipe Castillo shows how far you can get using nothing more than OpenStreetMap data and lightweight analytics.Carlos has built

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Mapping Global Migration Patterns

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 03/01/2026 à 09:29

Where do people around the world live today - and where were they born?The new Global Migration Map lets you explore international migration patterns using the United Nations’ International Migrant Stock 2024 dataset. By clicking on any country, you can discover where people living there originally came from, or where people born there now live - and how many people moved between each pair of

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When Climate Data Speaks: Letters From The Earth

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 02/01/2026 à 09:19

Imagine the Earth could write to you. What would it say?Letters from The Earth is an attempt to visualize global climate data not as charts or forecasts, but as daily first-person letters written by the Earth itself. It is an experiment to see whether data can be translated through narrative and emotion to convey a broader, more intuitive form of understanding than by raw numbers

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The Virtual Fireworks Show

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 01/01/2026 à 10:48

I couldn't get tickets for London's very popular New Year's Eve fireworks display, so I had to make my own virtual version.My 3D Fireworks Map displays colorful bursts of fireworks exploding above the City of London. The map starts by loading real-world buildings from the Global Building Atlas, a massive dataset of city structures from around the world.The real magic happens with the fireworks.

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What-3-Songlines

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 31/12/2025 à 09:40

Earthsounds I’m guessing you’ve heard of - and perhaps even used - the popular location-addressing system, what3words. You may even know the three-word address for your home. But do you know your home’s personal songline? Aboriginal songlines are ancient pathways that crisscross the land, created and sung into existence by Ancestral beings during the Dreaming. Each songline is a living map:

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The Restaurant Map Your Gut Needs

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 30/12/2025 à 09:42

Most restaurant maps are designed to answer one question: what looks good right now? The dreadfully named Shittr answers a very different one - what won’t ruin my digestive system for the next 48 hours? Shittr is an interactive map that assigns restaurants a “Shit Score” - a 1 to 5 🚽 risk rating - based on real government health inspection data from the US and UK.💩💩💩At its core, Shittr uses

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Car Parks or Play Parks?

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 29/12/2025 à 08:52

How much of Berlin is designed for cars - and how much for children and nature?Hans Hack has released an interactive map that offers a clear view of how urban space is allocated in Berlin. The tool compares the amount of urban space taken up by parking lots with that devoted to children’s playgrounds and other green spaces across Germany's capital.By centering the map on any point in the city,&

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HOT Export Tool

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 27/12/2025 à 10:17

The HOT Export Tool from the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team is an online service for creating custom extracts of OpenStreetMap (OSM) data.The tool allows users to select an area of interest and produce custom OSM data extracts. You can choose which map features and tags to include (e.g., roads, buildings, amenities, boundaries) and then download the data in multiple file formats (including

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Tracking Santa for Christmas

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 24/12/2025 à 08:44

🎅 Santa’s Big Adventure: Follow Him Around the World! 🌍It’s Christmas Eve - the most magical night of the year - and guess what? Santa is already zooming around the world, delivering gifts to kids just like YOU! 🎁 This year, why not join in the fun by following Santa’s incredible journey around the world? 🎄✨ 🦌 NORAD Santa Tracker: Powered by Rudolph’s NoseDo you know how NORAD tracks

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How Christmas Lights Up America

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 23/12/2025 à 09:14

According to NASA, Christmas lights up the winter. Using nighttime satellite imagery of American cities, NASA discovered that nighttime lights in American cities shine 20 to 50 percent brighter during the Christmas season than at other times of the year. In Even from Space, Holidays Shine Brightly NASA explains that nighttime lights start getting brighter on the day after Thanksgiving. You

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True-Size Geography Games

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 22/12/2025 à 10:09

True-Size.com has become a go-to destination for anyone curious about the real dimensions of our world. It is best known for its interactive map that lets you compare the true size of countries. The site allows users to drag countries around the globe and make direct comparisons with other countries and regions around the world. It’s a simple idea with a powerful impact, often reshaping

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Fuzzy Neighborhoods

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 20/12/2025 à 09:36

City neighborhoods rarely have crisp, universally agreed-upon boundaries. Unlike political jurisdictions, neighborhood borders are shaped by lived experience: where people shop, who they identify as neighbors, and shifting social and cultural trends. These boundaries are often fluid, overlapping, and contested, changing over time and varying from person to person. As a result, neighborhood

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The Global Building Atlas Downloader

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 19/12/2025 à 07:00

Easily Download 3D Building Data from the Global Building AtlasThe Global Building Atlas is one of the most ambitious open mapping projects to date: a global, high-resolution dataset describing 2.75 billion buildings worldwide, including their footprints, heights, and simple 3D (LoD1) geometry. Developed by researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the dataset offers an

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Welcome to My Garden

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 18/12/2025 à 09:05

If you’re planning a long hike or bike trip, then you should definitely bookmark Welcome to My Garden. This interactive map shows the locations of gardens that offer free camping spots for slow travellers.If you’re travelling on a low budget and want to keep your journey low-impact, Welcome to My Garden is the ideal companion. The concept is refreshingly simple: find somewhere to stay, book your

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I ❤️ San Francisco

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 17/12/2025 à 08:54

Today I ran a 33 km heart-shaped route around San Francisco to demonstrate my love for the city1. If you are interested in creating your own GPS art - or you just want to make your daily walk, jog or bike ride a little more fun - you can now use Routista to help you plan a pictorial route.Have you ever seen a bike ride that traces a heart, a star, or even a dinosaur on a map? That’s GPS art

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The Flat Earth Map

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 16/12/2025 à 09:48

In 1892 Alexander Gleason, author of Is the Bible from Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe?, published his New Standard Map of the World. The map includes the subheading ‘As it is,’ reflecting Gleason’s belief that the map showed a world that was flat - and not round.The map actually uses an azimuthal equidistant projection (which the map's subheading indicates was borrowed from an English cartographer

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The Freedom to Pollute

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 15/12/2025 à 09:46

4.6 million Americans live within two miles of a facility that has been given permission by President Trump to pollute the air. In March, the Trump administration initiated a process allowing industries to apply for up to two-years of compliance exemptions under the Clean Air Act. More than 180 facilities, including coal plants, chemical manufacturing and petrochemical facilities applied and

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The Housing Potential of NYC’s Parking Lots

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 13/12/2025 à 08:55

There are 2,222 surface parking lots in New York City within walking distance of an MTA station. If these sites were redeveloped for housing, they could provide an estimated 62,820 additional homes citywide.This estimate is based on a mapped analysis by Tom Weatherburn. His story map, How Much Housing Could Fit on the Surface Parking Lots of NYC?, visualizes the number of surface parking lots

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The AI Mapper and the AI Map Doctor

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 12/12/2025 à 10:34

Real-Time Earthquakes Map made by Web Mapper GPT If you’re new to mapmaking, two recently released AI tools can help you create interactive maps with little or no coding or cartographic expertise. These tools - Web-Mapper GPT and Map Doctor GPT - are designed to simplify both the technical and design aspects of map creation, making it easier than ever for beginners to produce professional-looking

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Mapping a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 11/12/2025 à 09:32

A well-designed star chart is essential for any galactic adventure. The Interactive Star Wars Galaxy for RPGs is a detailed, dynamic map of a galaxy far, far away, built specifically with tabletop roleplaying in mind. Beyond simply charting hyperspace lanes, registered users can unlock integrated features like a dedicated dice-roller and tools for organizing your next gaming party.Even

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Country Recall - How Well Do You Know the World?

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 10/12/2025 à 09:01

Country Recall How to PlayIf you enjoy geography quizzes, map challenges, or just perusing a map of the world, then you need to play Country Recall. This brand new interactive geography game asks a deceptively simple question: How many of the world’s countries can you identify on an unlabelled map?Type a country into Country Recall and - if you’re right - it will instantly light up on the world

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New Build Housing in San Francisco

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 09/12/2025 à 09:04

This animated map shows new housing construction in San Francisco by decade- since 1900. The map provides a clear picture of how the number of new homes built in the city has been declining since the 1970s.The orange dots on the map represent the locations of units built in that decade, while the gray dots show the existing housing stock from previous decades.The map is part of San Francisco

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How to Guarantee a White Christmas

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 08/12/2025 à 08:59

If you’re determined to experience a white Christmas, I suggest booking a trip to Zermatt, Switzerland. According to White Christmas Forecast 2025, residents there have a 100% chance of snow on Christmas Day. (Disclaimer: I'm not in charge of the weather and previous snowfalls do not guarantee future flurries).Last week I linked to NOAA’s Probability of a White Christmas map. This

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Geo Racers: The Ultimate Travel Game

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 06/12/2025 à 09:14

Race Across the World is a BBC television game show in which contestants must travel from a starting point to a final destination on a low budget - using only land and sea transport. For American readers, think The Amazing Race but on a strictly limited budget and with no flying.Geo Racers is a really fun new game that lets you play Race Across the World style challenges without having to

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Is Your Team an Animal?

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 05/12/2025 à 09:19

Lions, tigers, and grey wolves are the most frequently used animals in sport logos. The interactive Wild League Map shows over 700 sports teams around the world that use wild animals in their name, logo or fans' nicknames. It was developed using research from Wildlife Diversity in Global Team Sport Branding and was developed by the Wild League, who aim to leverage the global

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Who's Dreaming of a White Christmas?

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 04/12/2025 à 09:34

Coldest Day of the Year If you live in the western United States, then there is a good chance your coldest day of the year is fast approaching.You can find out when your coldest day is likely to occur on NOAA's interactive map, Coldest Day of the Year on Average. On this map, weather stations across the United States are color-coded to show when, on average, they experience their coldest day

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🌍 Introducing the Global Building Atlas

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 03/12/2025 à 11:24

The Global Building Atlas is a new global, high-resolution 3D dataset of the world's 2.75 billion buildings. Developed by a research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) the Global Building Atlas provides broad coverage of areas historically missing from digital maps, including much of Africa, South America, and rural areas worldwide. All the data is freely available on the project's

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How Russia Smuggles Stolen Ukrainian Grain

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 02/12/2025 à 09:48

Bellingcat has exposed how some Russian cargo ships are managing to circumvent the European Union’s sanctions on the shipment of stolen Ukrainian grain. In its investigation Russia’s Grain Smuggling Fleet Continues Undeterred, the investigative journalism organization tracked and mapped the movements of a Russian-flagged bulk carrier called Irtysh, revealing how it has been smuggling grain

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"I Ain’t Afraid of No Map" - Ghost Mappers

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 01/12/2025 à 09:49

The ghost of the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin is said to visit his uncle’s grave in St Mary the Virgin Church in London. He is just one of three spirits believed to haunt the churchyard, which is also visited by a grey lady searching for her dead husband, and a skeletal figure pushing a cart with an empty coffin - forever hunting for his wife, whose body was stolen by grave robbers.This is

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Mapping the Wikipedia Rabbit Hole

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 29/11/2025 à 09:43

All of us have, at some time or another, fallen down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. You begin with the noble intention of looking up a single topic, only to find yourself tumbling through an unplanned journey of blue hyperlinks.Start with Geradus Mercator, follow a link to Antwerp, hop over to the Tomorrowland festival, and before you know it you’re reading about Metallica. What began

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Back to Black

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 28/11/2025 à 17:24

Back to Black Today’s #30DayMapChallenge is Black. For this challenge I decided to create a map that makes use of and demonstrates one of MapLibre’s most powerful features: the ability to programmatically restyle map layers in real time. My Back to Black map itself isn’t designed to be practical or analytical in itself - it’s simply an exploration of how to change a map's style in

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Deadly Rivers in the Sky

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 28/11/2025 à 09:51

The Washington Post reports that rising global temperatures are leading to ever more extreme rainfall around the world. Since the 1990s global heating has dramatically increased the amount and movement of water vapor in the Earth’s atmosphere , in some regions by more than 15 percent. These “invisible rivers” of vapor act like atmospheric fire hoses: and when they encounter disturbances such as

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The McGritter Tracker is Back!

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 27/11/2025 à 09:44

By 6:00 AM this morning, Skate Bush could already been seen trundling up that hill, and Sled Zeppelin was hard at work sanding the stairway to Leven.Yes, Traffic Scotland’s Gritter Tracker is back in action - your one-stop, salt-powered, pun-splattered window into the heroic world of gritters battling Scotland’s icy roads.The Gritter Tracker map shows the live positions of Scotland's

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The History of the World Map

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 26/11/2025 à 10:16

It has been a boom week for Wikipedia-sourced history maps. In the last five days I've reviewed Landnotes & Globe of History, and I’ve now stumbled on another Wikipedia based history map - the Time Travel App.Time-Travel App is a world history explorer that uses Mapbox, OpenHistoricalMap, and data from Wikipedia to let you browse historical events, important people, cultural realms, and even

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Blockbusters USA

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 25/11/2025 à 17:19

Population Paths Day 25 of the #30DayMapChallenge is Hexagons! In response I've created a little hex-map puzzle game. The aim of Population Paths is to create a continuous path from the West Coast to the East Coast, one state at a time by correctly guessing whether each neighboring state has a higher or lower population than the one you’re currently standing on. How to Play You begin

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Mapping the Property Tax Divide

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 25/11/2025 à 09:31

Most U.S. municipalities rely on property taxes to fund public services. This means that the amount of taxable wealth within each city boundary can create stark inequalities - even between neighboring communities. Wealthy municipalities are able to raise far more revenue than places with lower-value property, allowing affluent enclaves to spend generously while less affluent communities -

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A Literal Map of America

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 24/11/2025 à 18:24

Literal Map of America Today’s #30DayMapChallenge theme is Places and their names. My Literal Map of America reveals the literal meaning behind every U.S. state name (hover over any state on the map and you can reveal its real name). Many of the states have names that reflect physical landscapes, others describe people or tribes, and several are named for royalty. Wisconsin comes from a

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How Much Does it Cost to Live in Every U.S. County?

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 24/11/2025 à 09:23

The Economic Policy Institute has mapped out how much income a typical family of four (two adults and two children) needs to achieve a “modest yet adequate standard of living” in counties across the United States. The EPI's Family Budget Map breaks down costs into seven essential categories: housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, other necessities, and taxes.Load the map, zoom

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The Map of Human History

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 22/11/2025 à 09:01

You wait an age for a historical Wikipedia map and then two come along at once. Hot on the heels of yesterday's post about Landnotes, we can now explore another Wikipedia-sourced map of human history.The Globe of History is an ambitious new interactive map that attempts to visualize the entire sweep of human history - 6,000 years of wars, inventions, discoveries, philosophers, political

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Icons of Tokyo

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 21/11/2025 à 18:18

Icons of Tokyo I recently visited the Pictograms exhibition at the Japan Center in London. At the heart of this exhibition were a number of icons designed by the Nippon Design Center, Inc., a renowned Tokyo-based design studio.Today's 30DayMapChallenge theme is Icons, and my first thought was: how could I utilize Nippon Design Center's beautiful Tokyo tourism icons? I

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Your Birthday Map

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 21/11/2025 à 10:13

Landnotes I was born on the very first day of the Dominican Civil War (also known as the April Revolution). Meanwhile, on a completely different continent, Luciano Pavarotti was making his La Scala debut in a revival of La Bohème. Not to brag, but it seems the universe scheduled a pretty dramatic day for my arrival.Over the last twenty years of Maps Mania I’ve seen more Wikipedia maps than I

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Time Traveling with Street View

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 20/11/2025 à 10:49

Have you ever wondered what your neighborhood looked like in the 18th century—or even during the Middle Ages? Thanks to Street View and AI, you can now almost find out. TimeJourneyAI is a new application that lets you pick a location in Street View and generate an AI-imagined version of that same spot for any year in history.Liberty 2025rom my limited testing, the historical views

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Mapping the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 19/11/2025 à 10:57

Back in 2021, Slate published a very impressive animated map The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes. The map is an incredibly powerful visualization of the massive scale of the transatlantic slave trade, highlighting the trade routes used and the destinations of slave ships over three centuries.Slate’s map includes an interactive timeline that allows you to skip to any year in the

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Winter on Mars

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 18/11/2025 à 19:10

Winter on Mars Today's #30DayMapChallenge is to map "something non-Earth". As the holiday season is fast approaching, I therefore decided to create a little Christmas message from Mars? This latest interactive map lets you explore the Martian surface while enjoying a snowfall animation - all from the comfort of your browser. Exploring Mars in Leaflet The map is built using Leaflet,

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Explore Ancient Tenochtitlan in 3D

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 18/11/2025 à 09:45

You can now explore the heart of the Aztec world on a huge 3D map. Technical artist Thomas Kole, has released an impressive, immersive 3D Tenochtitlan Viewer that allows anyone to navigate the city as it looked on the eve of Spanish contact. Published to coincide with the 700th anniversary of Tenochtitlan’s founding, the interactive model goes far beyond a typical historical map. Instead of

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Make Your Own Ridgeline Plots

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 17/11/2025 à 19:12

Joyplot Map Today's #30DayMapChallenge is to use a New Tool (create your map using a software, language, library, or technique you have never used before). For this challenge I decided to build something using Terrain RGB.My Joyplot Map is an interactive map that turns elevation data into ridgeline plots - right in your browser.This map lets you draw a rectangle anywhere on the globe and view

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Mapping Memorials to the Victims of Fascism

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 17/11/2025 à 08:47

Memorial Markers is an interactive map showing the locations of memorials to those persecuted or murdered by the Nazi regime in Germany. Originally a Munich-based initiative, the Memorial Markers project is now steadily expanding beyond the Bavarian capital. Munich has installed 317 plaques since 2018, each placed at the last known residence of someone persecuted or murdered by the Nazi

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Conway's Game of Life

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 16/11/2025 à 11:04

Conway's Game of Life Today's #30DayMapChallenge is Cell. For this challenge I've created an interactive version of Conway's Game of Life that turns the entire globe into a dynamic cellular automaton.Conway’s Game of Life is a mathematical simulation created by British mathematician John Conway in 1970. It’s not a game in the traditional sense - there’s no winning or losing - but a set of

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Ring of Fire

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 15/11/2025 à 18:56

Ring of Fire Today's #30DayMapChallenge is Fire. For this challenge I have created an interactive map with an animated ring of fire.The map itself is just a basic MapLibre GL instance centered on Washington DC. The fire itself is a Canvas element overlaid on top of the map.In this fire animation hundreds of small particles orbit a central point representing the map center. Each particle has

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Take to the Skies in the Battle of Britain

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 15/11/2025 à 09:43

When the Luftwaffe comes for Britain, will you be ready? Battle of Britain is a new map-based game that puts you in charge of RAF Fighter Command during one of the most pivotal moments of World War II—inviting you to relive the tension, urgency, and strategic decision-making that defined the summer of 1940.Inspired by classic board and computer games of the 1980s, Battle of Britain challenges

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There Are No Roads in London

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 14/11/2025 à 17:30

Streets of London Today's #30DayMapChallenge is to use OpenStreetMap (OSM) data as your primary source.To meet this challenge I decided to use OpenStreetMap data to explore the toponyms of London's streets, visualizing how different road types - Streets, Lanes, Alleys, Courts, Yards, and Avenues - are named and distributed across the City of London.One of my favourite quiz questions is - 'How

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A Map of Spain's Mass Graves

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 14/11/2025 à 08:58

No matter where you are live in Spain, you’re never more than 50 km from a mass grave of the Spanish Civil War.Spanish broadcaster RTVE has launched The Country of 6,000 Mass Graves, an interactive map documenting the known burial sites from the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship. The map documents 6,000 known graves, of people killed during Franco's political repression, of soldiers

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The 10 Minute Map Challenge

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 13/11/2025 à 16:33

10 Minute Map Today's #30DayMapChallenge is to create a map in just 10 minutes."The maximum allowed time to design and produce this map is 10 minutes. Focus on speed, simplicity, and core communication".My 10 Minute Map shows how far you can walk in ten minutes from Fenchurch Street Station in London. This station is notorious for having no direct Tube connections. Yet, a number of tube

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Where the World's Billionaires Were Born & Live

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 13/11/2025 à 10:00

Billionaire Migration is a fascinating new interactive map that visualizes where the world’s billionaires were born - and where they now live. The map accompanies the research paper Where do billionaires come from and where do they live?, and draws on the International Database on Economic Elites and their Wealth (IDEE Wealth), a new dataset tracking the geography and social characteristics of

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Amtrak 2125

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 12/11/2025 à 17:00

Amtrak Maglev Rail 2125 Today's #30DaysMapChallenge, is to create a “Map from 2125” - imagining what maps might look like a century from now. For this challenge I created Amtrak Maglev Rail 2125, a speculative map of the United States showing a network of high-speed maglev rail lines, with moving “trains” that visualize travel in real-time across the country.ConceptThe map simulates a

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The AI GeoGuessr

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 12/11/2025 à 08:42

Geospot Infinity is a fascinating experiment in OSINT or AI geolocation. The web app lets you upload a photograph, and in seconds it suggests ten possible locations where the picture might have been taken. The most likely match appears at the top of the list, while the remaining nine give alternative guesses.Built by Surya Dantuluri, Geospot Infinity combines a vision-language model (GeoCLIP)

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A Minimal Flight Tracking Map

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 11/11/2025 à 09:30

Minimal London Day 11 of the #30DayMapChalenge is to create a Minimal Map. For this task my Minimal London flight-tracking map strips away everything but the essentials - a bold black canvas, a clean blue river, crisp white bridges, and the silent drift of planes crossing the city in real-time.🗺 What the Map ShowsAt its heart, the map visualizes:The River Thames, rendered as a smooth, blue line

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🛩️ Air Snake

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 10/11/2025 à 18:18

🛩️ Air Snake – Fly Your Plane, Avoid The Chemtrails Map Snake is a fun new twist on the classic Snake game - except this time, instead of a pixelated reptile, you’re flying a plane across the world, leaving behind a shimmering contrail. The goal is simple: collect map markers to grow your trail, and whatever you do - don’t fly into your own chemtrails!You can play the game right in your

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American Business is All at Sea

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 10/11/2025 à 09:57

This is a map by Joseph El Haddad that shows businesses which Google Maps shows as being located in the sea. In other words it is a map of misplaced businesses due to geolocation and data entry errors. The Distribution of Businesses Located at Sea map shows tens of thousands of wrongly mapped businesses and provides a glimpse into how data entry mistakes ripple across the web’s most popular

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A Pencil Style for Maplibre

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 09/11/2025 à 09:50

Pencil Style vs Positron Day 9 of the #30DayMapChallenge is Analog. I have no artistic talent whatsoever so I decided to cheat a little and take this as a challenge to create a hand-drawn (analog) style map using digital tools.A Journey from Positron to Hand-Drawn CharmIt is possible to create custom map styles for Maplibre with Maputnik. So using Maputnik I decided to try to transform

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Road Orientations Map

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 08/11/2025 à 18:11

Road Orientations Map The topic for day 8 of the #30DayMapChallenge is Urban. For this challenge I decided to go old-school and convert Vladimir Agafonkin's original Road Orientations from Mapbox to Maplibre. The original code analyzes street orientations and visualizes them as a polar histogram. I've just adapted Vladimir’s approach to work with MapLibre GL JS.What the Map ShowsThe

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Unpave Parking Lots, Put Up a Paradise

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 08/11/2025 à 08:10

P2T Parking to Tree is an arcade-style map game designed to encourage players to participate in a form of urban greening.The mission is simple: Turn parking spaces into trees across Berlin and help the city achieve its ambitious goal of planting a million trees by 2040. You've got 60 seconds on the clock!The game drops you onto a real-world map of Berlin, challenging you to convert designated

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The Roman Britain Travel Map

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 07/11/2025 à 19:41

The theme for day seven of the #30DayMapChallenge is Accessibility. For this challenge I decided to visualize travel times in Roman Britain.My Roman Britain Travel Map allows you to see how far it was possible to travel along Roman roads in Britain on foot in one to five day periods.The Roman Britain Travel Map visualizes the vast network of Roman roads that crisscrossed Britain nearly

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Do You Live in a 15 Minute City?

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 07/11/2025 à 11:30

The urban planning concept of the 15-Minute City has become one of the most important ideas in modern urbanism. The goal is simple: to design neighborhoods where residents can access all their essential needs - such as shopping, education, healthcare, transport, and leisure - within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from their home. This philosophy aims to create more sustainable, equitable, and

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The 3D Flight Tracker

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 06/11/2025 à 08:29

We are all familiar with live flight tracking maps, like Flightradar24, adsbexchange and FlightAware, that show planes moving in real time on top of a 2D map. These services let us see where aircraft are flying, where they’re headed, and where they have come from - all on an interactive map. But what if you could actually see those planes move through the air in three dimensions,

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New York Mayoral Election Maps

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 05/11/2025 à 10:10

A number of elections took place yesterday, but by far the most talked-about was the race for New York City mayor - where Zohran Mamdani emerged victorious, securing over 50% of the vote.According to The New York Times’ interactive map, The Most Detailed Map of the N.Y.C. Mayoral Election (paywalled), Mamdani dominated in much of the city, outpacing former Governor Andrew Cuomo in a wide

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140 Million Years on Earth

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 05/11/2025 à 08:31

Earth Coastlines Through Time The theme for day five of the #30DayMapChallenge is Earth. What better way to explore this theme than to map how the Earth's land masses have shifted, collided, and drifted apart over geological time?My Earth Coastlines Through Time map lets you see how Earth’s coastlines and continents have shifted voer 140 million years, from the Early Cretaceous period to

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Organic Maps - Personal Data

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 04/11/2025 à 08:20

GPX Track Viewer The theme for day four of the #30DayMapChallenge is Data challenge: My Data. I don't have a lot of personal data that I want to share - so for this challenge I decided to tell you about how I track my daily 10,000 steps. I don't want to share my location data with private companies like Google, Apple or Fitbit. I therefore use Organic Maps to record my daily walks and my

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Tweening Map Projections

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 03/11/2025 à 09:19

World Map Projections The theme for day three of the #30DayMapChallenge is Polygons. For this theme I've created a map that visualizes a map of the world using five different map projections.Maps shape how we see the world. Depending on the projection used, continents and countries can appear stretched, squashed, or rotated in surprising ways. This interactive map lets you explore five

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Lines of Population

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 02/11/2025 à 08:08

County StripesPopulation Density Shown as Longitude and Latitude Stripes  🗺️ County Stripes – Exploring America’s Data in Stripes The theme for the second day of the #30DayMapChallenge is Lines. For this theme I've created a map that colors longitude and latitude lines based on population density.County Stripes is an interactive map that visualizes U.S. county data not just by county

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Bars vs Baskets

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 01/11/2025 à 07:37

Today marks the first day of the 2025 #30DayMapChallenge. The theme for day one is:Points - Map with point data (e.g., individual locations, points of interest, clusters). Focus on effective symbolization and density visualization. 🗺️ Bars vs Baskets: Mapping the Balance Between Nightlife and NecessitiesFor my Day 1 entry, I've created Bars vs Baskets, an interactive map that compares the

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The Working Class Heroes Map

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 31/10/2025 à 08:08

Working Class History Map Yesterday I posted links to a number of history maps. One thing that all those maps have in common is that they mostly document the actions of empires, wars, borders, and elite figures - the traditional historical narratives written by and for those in power. What these maps largely omit are the stories of the working class heroes who have struggled and fought for

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What's Missing from Human History?

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 30/10/2025 à 09:20

The Globe of History is a new interactive map that recounts 6,000 years of human events. In fact, not only does it recount history - it reinterprets it as well.For example, it reveals that what most historians have considered one of the most revolutionary and significant periods in human history was, in fact, a new dark age. That’s right - according to The Globe of History, only one significant

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Preparing for the #30DayMapChallenge

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 29/10/2025 à 07:44

Are you ready for the #30DayMapChallenge? It starts this Saturday!If you’re new to it, the idea of the #30DayMapChallenge is very simple: create a map every day for 30 days, following a different theme each day. You can use any data, any tools, and any style you like. It’s a great way to experiment, learn new techniques, and connect with the global mapping community.Despite spending most of my

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The Most Distressed Communities in the USA

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 28/10/2025 à 09:07

15.4% of the United States population lives in a distressed area. You can find out if you are one of them on the 2025 DCI Interactive Map.The Distressed Communities Index uses seven different metrics to rank every ZIP code area in the country. These indicators are:No High School Diploma - number of residents without a high school diplomaHousing Vacancy Rate - share of habitable housing that is

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Watch the USA Grow, State by State

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 27/10/2025 à 07:48

The Library of Congress has launched a new animated map, The United States at a Glance, that lets you literally watch the nation growAt its core, the map is a powerful educational resource, allowing you to click on any point to access the foundational legal documents that established, admitted, or incorporated that state or territory. Much of the legal content is drawn from the Library’s massive

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The New Multi-Player Geo-Guessing Game!

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 25/10/2025 à 08:52

Introducing GeoBoxLast year, I collaborated with TripGeo to release Backdrop, a geo-guessing art game that challenges players to identify the real-world locations depicted in famous works of art. Backdrop is a simple yet highly addictive game - and now, thanks to TripGeo, it’s even better with the launch of Multiplayer Backdrop.With GeoGallery, you’ll still test your geographical art knowledge -

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The Destruction of American Democracy

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 25/10/2025 à 00:20

Thanks to Soar you can watch the destruction of American democracy in near real-time. The animated GIF above shows satellite imagery from before and after Trump's illegal demolition of the East Wing of the White House. The republic that built a White House of reason and restraint is now being demolished by its would-be king. Only one man could believe that the neoclassical and Palladian

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A 3D View of Our Warming Seas

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 24/10/2025 à 08:14

An impressive new 3D globe visualization allows you to explore how the oceans are warming day by day. The Global Sea Surface Temperature map displays daily ocean temperatures and anomalies - how much warmer or cooler each part of the ocean is compared to its long-term average - on an interactive, animated globe.Built by Gary Oberbrunner, this visualization draws on daily global ocean temperature

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The Glasses Free 3D Map

Maps Mania Par Keir Clarke 23/10/2025 à 08:37

This morning I found a link on Hacker News to a glasses-free 3D webpage. This Dragon Courtyard demo uses your device's webcam to track your head motion and then applies motion parallax to make it feel like you're looking through a window into a 3D scene.I decided to see if the same approach could be applied to a 3D map. The result is this Head Tracked 3D Map.The concept is simple and reasonably

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