Russia's Disinformation Network Mapped

The Pravda Dashboard

The Pravda Network is a coordinated Russian disinformation campaign designed to disseminate pro-Kremlin content across the globe. At its core, the network launders news from sanctioned Russian media outlets and questionable Telegram channels, distributing it through a constellation of country-specific websites. In each country the news is recycled to fit local narratives and most likely distributed through AI-driven systems: 

In the last two years this disinformation network has published over 3.7 million articles, with an alarming focus on influencing audiences in countries like France, Germany, Ukraine, Moldova, and Serbia. To help researchers, journalists, and open-source investigators make sense of this complex ecosystem, the DFRLab has released a public interactive map. This map is part of a broader Pravda Dashboard, designed to provide near-real-time visibility into how specific countries are being targeted.

The map allows users to click or search for any country and immediately see how it is being influenced: the volume of articles, the most commonly cited sources, and notable surges in activity over time. The map is a powerful reminder of how Russian propaganda is not just local - it’s multilingual, multi-platform, and meticulously engineered for impact. The map reveals a sprawling operation pushing coordinated disinformation across over 80 countries, fueled by bots & AI.

The Hotness Map No One Needed

LooksMapping is a digital map that rates restaurants not by food or service, but by the attractiveness of their clientele. It scrapes millions of Google Maps reviews, runs each reviewer’s profile photo through an AI model trained to score “hotness” out of ten, and then color-codes restaurants accordingly - red for hot, blue for not.

LooksMapping feels like a relic from a digital past - with the dated visual style of a 20-year-old Google Map and the same superficial, objectifying logic that powered early websites like Hot or Not. The map gamifies human appearance in a way that feels both regressive and oddly voyeuristic, echoing a time when online interactions prioritized judgment over connection.

I'd like to believe the retro aesthetic of LooksMapping is an intentional satire of the outdated cultural views of Trumpian America. That it’s a sharp, self-aware parody of the very culture it mirrors. But more likely, it's not a commentary at all - just another product of the MAGA-fueled gamification of culture and human interaction.

For me LooksMapping earns a 'blue for not'.

Via: Quantum of Sollazzo

Scrambled Maps in the Wild

Maps in the Wild is a crowdsourced and curated map archive of real-world maps found in everyday life - such as park maps, museum guides, transit maps, or historical maps displayed in public spaces. The website consists entirely of images of real-world maps submitted by readers.

People from around the world submit photos to Maps in the Wild of maps they spot in real-life. These can include maps on clothing, tattoos, café walls, subway stations, advertisements, public murals, or even on cakes. The archive is a fun, often quirky celebration of how maps appear in unexpected places and how they’re used creatively outside of on-line contexts.

Scrambled Maps in the Wild

Now, TripGeo (to which I also contribute) has teamed up with Maps in the Wild to launch Scrambled Maps in the Wild - a new twist on the classic scrambled map jigsaw game. This special series takes selected real-world map images from Maps in the Wild and turns them into interactive puzzles.

The first installment features seven scrambled map games (with more to come), each challenging players to reassemble these creative and unusual map sightings.

Check it out and get puzzling!

If you have an image of a map that you want to contribute to Maps in the Wild e-mail it to "Maps at Mappery dot Org". 

Hyperlocal Social Media

Ever wondered what people might say if conversations were pinned to real places - like digital graffiti on a map? That’s exactly the experiment Pintalk is trying out.

Created as a minimalist web app, Pintalk invites you to talk where you are - or more accurately, to start or join public text conversations anchored to specific latitude/longitude points. Think of it like a chatroom stapled to a street corner, trailhead, or coffee shop patio.

The developer describes Pintalk as:

“an experiment in discovering real-time, hyperlocal public discussions. What happens when conversations are anchored to places?”

And that’s what makes it fun. There’s no algorithm feeding you trends. No follower counts or hearts. Just geography and curiosity. 

So far, only a handful of discussions have been started on Pintalk, so it might be too early to say how it might be used. However, there’s already a brief conversation in Florida referencing the Blue Origin space launch, and a note in East London about the closure of a local cycle path. These two pins hint at possible uses for Pintalk - as a live event thread or a tool for hyperlocal community chat. Other potential applications include offering tourist tips, venue reviews, documenting local history, or providing real-time incident reports.

🧭 How It Works

Pintalk is stripped down to the essentials - and that’s very much by design.

• Visit the site - Pintalk uses your browser’s geolocation (or IP fallback) to center the map near you.
• Click any spot on the map - That opens a chat panel for that exact point.
• Start talking - Send a message, & boom - you’ve created a persistent pin and public conversation.
• Or jump into existing pins - Click one to read and join ongoing discussions.
• No login. No account. - You’re assigned a username like User_1234, and that’s it.

🎯 Will it Work?

Letting users add notes or start local conversations on a map isn’t a new concept. Over the years, there have been plenty of attempts to launch “note maps,” but in my experience, most haven’t gained much traction. The ones that have found success usually serve a clear and focused purpose - like Hoodmaps with its crowdsourced neighborhood stereotypes, or FixMyStreet's local issue reporting tool.

Pintalk’s minimalist, open-ended approach might end up being a weakness - it risks feeling aimless without a defined use case. Then again, that very lack of structure could be its strength. By leaving space for users to shape its purpose, Pintalk might stumble into something more meaningful. Maybe the conversations that emerge will reveal a natural direction - or even inspire a more targeted version down the line.

The Tariff Busting Map Game

Introduction: The Egg Crisis

In a world where breakfast has become a luxury, an evil empire has imposed crippling tariffs on eggs, sending prices skyrocketing. Omelettes are now a distant memory for the average citizen, and scrambled eggs are a delicacy only the wealthy can afford. But hope is not lost! Rebel forces have uncovered a loophole in the empire's trade barriers - by launching eggs directly into strategic targets across the USA, you can disrupt the tariffs and bring egg prices back down to earth.

Welcome to Angry Eggs, a map-based catapult game where your mission is simple: fire eggs at targets to evade trade tariffs and make breakfast affordable again!

How to Play Angry Eggs

1. Launching Your Egg

Aim & Pull: Click and drag the egg away from the center of the screen to set your trajectory. The further you pull, the harder you launch!

Release: Let go to fire your egg across the map. Watch as it soars through the air—will it hit its target?

2. Hitting Targets

Red Zones: Your objective is to land eggs inside the red circular targets scattered across the USA.

Economic Impact: Every successful hit causes egg prices to plummet, giving the people relief from inflation.

Missed Shots: If you miss, prices keep rising—so aim carefully!

3. Tracking Progress

Egg Price Tracker: A live ticker shows the fluctuating price of eggs. Watch as your hits cause dramatic market crashes.

Distance Indicator: An arrow points toward the nearest target, helping you line up your shots.

Behind the Scenes: How Angry Eggs Works

Angry Eggs is built with JavaScript and MapLibre GL, an open-source mapping library that brings real-world geography into the game. Here’s how it all comes together:

Catapult Physics: The egg-launching mechanic uses vector calculations to determine trajectory, making each shot feel dynamic.

Procedural Targets: The game generates random targets across the USA, ensuring no two playthroughs are the same.

In truth I started developing Angry Eggs as a joke rather than as a fully-blown map game. It is being released on TripGeo Labs as it really isn't a fully developed game. I do think, however, that there is potential to use some of the features of Angry Eggs to develop a much more engaging map based 'golf-game'.

Play Angry Eggs

Live London Underground Trains

Live maps displaying the movements of planes, trains, and automobiles have been among my favorite mash-ups over the years, so it seems fitting to launch the third decade of Maps Mania with a beautiful illustration of a live, real-time transit map.

The Live Tube Map is a fully interactive, real-time 3D map that lets you watch underground trains move across London as they shuttle through tunnels, stations, and lines. It’s like the classic Tube map - but alive. Built by Ben James, the Live Tube Map uses real-time data from Transport for London (TfL) to visualize each train’s location, progress, and route. Each moving colored line you see gliding across the screen is a real train, updated in near real-time and placed on a highly stylized 3D map of London.

The choice of using moving colored polylines with transparent tails gives the map a beautiful and mesmeric aesthetic (although I think the blocky trains used by Mini Tokyo 3D are hard to beat). 

Under the hood, the map is powered by:

• MapLibre GL for rendering a high-performance, interactive map in WebGL
• TfL’s live feed to gather real-time train movements and trip plans
• MapTiler map tiles with 3D buildings

Hovering over a train on the map reveals a clean tooltip: line name, current status, journey progress (with a neat progress bar), and even upcoming stations. Beyond the sheer visual appeal, the Live Tube Map is a fascinating demo of what’s possible when you mix open data with open-source tech. It transforms a complex network of live infrastructure into something playful, transparent, and informative. 

It shows you moving trains on a map in real-time!

Celebrating 20 Years of Maps Mania

It was 20 years ago today Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play when Mike Pegg first started writing about Google Maps. Which means Google Maps Mania is 20 YEARS OLD TODAY! 

🎉 Celebrating 20 Years of Maps Mania: A Cartographic Journey

For twenty years Maps Mania has been tirelessly chronicling the evolving world of interactive maps. Since its inception on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 Google Maps Mania has been celebrating and showcasing the wonderful online interactive maps created by the cartographic community, and for two decades, Maps Mania has been one of the go-to destination for map lovers, geospatial techies, data journalists, and curious minds worldwide. 

In this time tt has showcased everything from quirky custom visualizations to groundbreaking tools that have reshaped how we interact with space and place online.

So today, we celebrate not only Maps Mania but also the incredible journey of online interactive mapping over the last 20 years. Let’s take a look at some of the pivotal developments that Maps Mania has tracked - and perhaps help shape since 2005.

🌍 2005–2010: The Birth of the Mashup Era

When Google Maps launched in early 2005, it didn’t take long for developers to start “hacking” the platform, overlaying their own data onto the base map. This gave birth to the map mashup - an entirely new genre of DIY cartography.

Maps Mania was there from the start, curating early examples like:

- Real estate listings on maps

- Live transit tracking

- Crime mapping

- Flickr photo maps

Soon, APIs from Yahoo, Microsoft, and OpenStreetMap joined the party, and online mapping became an even bigger playground for creativity.

🧰 2010–2015: The Rise of Tools and Platforms

As the web matured, so did mapping. This era saw the emergence of powerful tools like:

Leaflet.js and Mapbox GL JS, enabling slick, custom maps in the browser

CartoDB (now CARTO), democratizing geospatial data analysis

D3.js, pushing the boundaries of data-driven cartography

Maps Mania didn't just report on these tools - it spotlighted how people were using them to tell stories, explore data, and visualize everything from climate change to historical journeys.

📱 2015–2020: Mobile, Real-Time & Story Mapping

With smartphones in everyone’s pockets, maps have now become more than just static guides - they have become live, reactive, and personal. Highlights from this period include:

- The explosion of story maps (via Esri, Knight Lab, and others)

- Maps for activism and crisis response (like during Hurricane Harvey or COVID-19)

- Location-based games and apps like Pokémon Go, changing public space experiences

Maps Mania tried to capture it all, curating the finest examples of maps that moved - both emotionally and physically.

🧠 2020–2025: AI, 3D & the Future of Place

In recent years, interactive mapping has leapt into new dimensions - literally and figuratively:

- 3D mapping with Google, Cesium and Mapbox adds realism and immersion

- Machine learning now detects buildings, roads, and land use from satellite images

- Digital twins of cities are enabling simulations for climate, traffic, and urban planning

- WebGL and immersive web tech are making maps feel more realistic

💚 A Labor of Cartographic Love

For 20 years, Maps Mania has been more than just a blog - it has been a living archive of the internet’s mapping imagination. 

Here’s to the next 20 years of exploration. The world is always changing - hopefully, Maps Mania will continue to help make sense of it, one map at a time!

Spinning at a Thousand Miles an Hour

I'm currently sitting in London, spinning at 640 miles per hour. 

My friend Sofía lives in Quito, Ecuador, and because of the equatorial speed bonus, she’s currently spinning much faster than me - at 1,037 mph.

The Earth rotates once every 24 hours (roughly), and we all rotate with it. The circumference at the equator is about 24,901 miles, so at the equator, you're spinning at about 1,037 mph:

24,901 ÷ 24 hr = ~1,037 mph

But this speed decreases as you move toward the poles. The speed you're traveling is determined by your latitude, because - unless you live at the equator - you're moving in a smaller circle.

London is around 51.5° North, so I can calculate my rotational speed with this formula:

        Speed = equatorial speed × cos(latitude)

So:

        Speed = 1,037×cos(51.5)

        cos ⁡(51.5) ≈ 0.623 

        Speed = 1, 037 × 0.623 ≈ 646 mph

To calculate your speed, just plug in your latitude using the same formula.

Or you could just use the Earth Surface Rotatio Speed Calculator. 

Enter your location into this interactive map, and you won’t need to do any math - this map will automatically show you your tangential speed based on where you live.

The Most Beautiful Places in the World

Hollow Rock. Grand Portage, MN by @TuckOlson

The Earthporn Map is a simple interactive map that showcases the top 1,000 images submitted to r/EarthPorn. r/EarthPorn is a subreddit on Reddit dedicated to sharing stunning, high-quality images of natural landscapes and scenery from around the world.

To be clear—despite the name, there's nothing explicit or NSFW here. Just a whole lot of beautiful photography of nature from across the globe.

The Most Beautiful Countries in the World Are:

Based purely on the number of photographs featured in the top 1,000 posts, the most beautiful countries in the world (according to r/EarthPorn) are:

1. United States: Posts - 544 photos
2. Canada: Posts - 69 photos
3. Iceland: Posts - 60 photos
4. New Zealand: Posts - 29 photos
5. Norway: Posts - 29 photos

Conversely, the "least beautiful" countries on the list (again, based solely on the number of photos featured) are:

69. Kenya: Posts - 1 photo

70. Romania: Posts - 1 photo

71. Costa Rica: Posts - 1 photo

72. The Bahamas: Posts - 1 photo

73. Thailand: Posts - 1 photo 

Obviously, this is a definitive list, and I will not be entertaining any comments suggesting it's merely a reflection of the EarthPorn user base’s geographic distribution or where they can easily travel. Definitely not. Nope.

Geolocating the EarthPorn Top 1000

To determine the locations of the top 1,000 posts, a combination of AI and manual methods was used. A Large Language Model (LLM) extracted location data from post titles and comments. In about 10% of cases, manual review was required to refine or determine more accurate locations. Once each location was identified, the data was geocoded using the Google Maps API to retrieve latitude and longitude coordinates. This data was compiled into a GeoJSON file and mapped using Leaflet.js.

You may also like: r/MapPorn

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Mapping the Red Sea Attacks

The International Crisis Group has released an interactive story map, The Red Sea Attacks Explained, that does a great job of breaking down the background and consequences of the Houthis’ attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea.

The map uses Mapbox's Story Map template to great effect, illustrating the Houthis’ strategic strongholds and their disruptive impact on global trade routes. I would like to give a huge amount of personal credit to the developer behind the ‘red-sea-scroll’ URL address.

The Houthis’ dominance of Yemen’s western coast and Red Sea islands (like Kamaran and the Hanish archipelago) becomes starkly clear when visualized on an interactive map. These chokepoints enable the group to harass ships near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a narrow passage just 18 miles wide - effectively turning geography into a weapon. The consequences ripple outward: over half of Suez Canal traffic has evaporated as ships reroute around Africa, adding weeks to delivery times and inflating costs. 

The result is that around 12% of global trade has been disrupted by the Houthis attacks. Thanks to this ICG story map we can clearly see how and why.

Via: Data Viz Dispatch