Losing BIG, Very SAD!

The Economist has mapped President Trump’s approval rating in each state, and the results look bleak for the president and the Republican Party ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Drawing on data from YouGov polling, The Economist finds that Trump holds a positive net approval rating in only 11 states.

In its cartogram of Donald Trump's Approval Rating, the magazine shows that the president enjoys double-digit positive approval in just three states — Idaho, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Conversely, in 39 states and in Washington, D.C., Trump has a negative approval rating, and in 11 of those his disapproval exceeds approval by more than 30 percentage points.

 

This Strength in Numbers interactive map of Trump's Net Approval Rating in Each State shows a slightly better picture for the president.

One reason it looks different from The Economist’s approval map is that it doesn’t rely on new state-by-state polls. Instead, it models estimates for each state by:

• starting with Trump’s 2024 presidential vote margin in that state,
• comparing his 2024 national vote margin with his current national net approval,
• then shifting every state’s 2024 result by that same national swing.

A separate Strength in Numbers chart shows 53.8% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s performance while 42% approve, giving him a net approval of -11.8 points (about 12 points under water). The map uses that -11.8-point national figure to adjust the 2024 election results and estimate his current net approval rating in each state. The map would look a little different using The Economist's -17% approval rating.

Trump's DEPT of ILL HEALTH

NBC News and Stanford University have created a powerful interactive map that visualizes the percentage of students vaccinated for measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) at the county level. The map is a key component of their six-month investigation - Childhood vaccination rates are backsliding across the U.S.. 

What the Map Shows (and Doesn't Show)

The map's core purpose is to show the current state of vaccination rates, using a choropleth map where each county is shaded based on its MMR vaccination percentage. This is effective for identifying areas with low vaccination rates, which the accompanying article rightly highlights as a growing public health concern. The use of a simple, dark-to-light color scale makes the data easy to interpret at a glance.

However, the map doesn't visualize the change in vaccination rates over time. The investigative article emphasizes that America is "dangerously backsliding," but the map itself only provides a static snapshot of the latest data. It doesn't show where these steepest declines in vaccinations are occurring.

The Missing Piece Map View

After Trump appointed the barely-sentient Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services, there has been a growing tide of government sponsored anti-vaccine messaging - with the obvious concurrent rise in public health scares.

To visualize this fall in vaccination rates the map would need to also display the percentage point change over a specific period, perhaps the last five or ten years. Such a map would more visually connect the current public health crisis to the rise of anti-vaccine sentiment and misinformation. It would directly show where the most significant impacts of these movements, often amplified by political figures and conspiracy theories, are being felt. 

Also See 

CDC Map of Measles Cases
CDC Map of Vaccination Rates for Kindergarteners (which curiously shows New Mexico as having a good rate of MMR vaccinations and not one of the worst rates - as shown on the NBC map)

Is This 2024's Most Detailed Election Map?

VoteHub has launched a new interactive national precinct map for the 2024 election. The map is designed to provide a granular look at the US Presidential election results, allowing users to explore the data at the most detailed level possible.

The 2024 Election at a Precinct Level is a goldmine for election junkies, providing several features that go beyond simply showing who won which state. Users can explore results, compare them to the 2020 and 2016 presidential elections to understand vote shifts, and even see how different demographic groups voted using advanced statistical methods.

One of the most innovative features is the vote density mode, which allows users to see election data in three dimensions. This mode visually represents the concentration of votes, rather than just the geographic size of an area, which helps to illustrate the adage that "land doesn’t vote; people do."

The map also boasts a powerful set of filtering and selection tools. You can filter the map by state, county, metro area, city, and even specific congressional and legislative districts. By simply entering the name of the area you're interested in, you can instantly view the aggregate results for that entire area.

Also See

The NYT's An Extremely Detailed Map of the 2024 Election

What States Would You Live In?

Last year I created the World Level O map for Tripgeo. This fun travel-tracking tool colors the countries of the world based on whether you have lived there, stayed for a while, visited, passed through or never been. You are then awarded a level based on how well you’ve “covered” the globe.

States I'd Live In is a map in the same sort of personal tracking ballpark. However on this map instead of coloring the countries of the world based on your travel experience the objective is to show which countries you would live in. Your preferences are visualized using 5 different colors to indicate Never, Reluctantly, Maybe, Willing and Absolutely.

States I'd Live in includes a number of different regional maps and individual country maps, where you can show which states you would live in within individual countries. In fact I became aware of the map because of the number of people sharing their maps of the United States. Judging from these shared maps, Democratic and Republican supporters seem to have almost diametrically opposed ideas about the best states to live in.

“States I’d Live In” also features a fascinating Stats page that ranks individual states, regions, and countries based on votes from all users. According to the data, Colorado is the most popular U.S. state to live in, while New Zealand tops the list of countries worldwide. The United States itself sits in 17th place, just below Portugal.

At the other end of the scale, Mississippi is the least-favoured U.S. state, and Djibouti ranks last among the 175 countries on the world map.

Here Be Animated Monsters

One of the most underused features in Maplibre and MapBox is the video overlay, which enables developers to display a video on top of a base map layer.

The Hailou AI Video Generator currently has a trial that allows you to create unlimited videos from a starting and finishing image. I decided to make use of this offer to create an animated sea monster. First I asked Gemini to create two images of the same kraken monster with its tentacles in different positions.

I then asked Hailuo to create an animated Kraken sea monster starting from one image and ending with the other. The result is a short video of a kraken waving its tentacles.

 

You can see this sea monster on my Animated Seamonster map. To place the kraken video on the map, MapLibre uses a video source and a matching raster layer. You supply the video file (for example, kraken.mp4) and define four geographic coordinates that mark its corners on the globe. MapLibre stretches the video between those points so it appears as part of the map, following the same panning and zooming behavior as other layers. By adjusting the bounding box, you can position the animation anywhere - in this case, above the ocean.

Observant users might notice that the background color of the video does not quite match the color of the ocean. I attempted to change the background color of the OpenFreeMap base layer in Maputnik. As you can see I seem to have given Maputnik the wrong color.

The 3D Dot Map

Everybody loves a good dot map, such as:

• CNN's Racial Data Map of the USA
• The UK's ONS Census Dot Density Map
• The Dot Map of South Africa

However the Toronto Dot Density Map is not just your average, run-of-the-mill dot map of census data. Yes, the map uses 2021 Canadian Census data to create dot map layers of gender, age, income, ethnicity, immigration, commute modes and commute time in Toronto - but it is also much more.

Press the 3D View button on the map and the hundreds of thousands of dots become a shimmering point cloud, forming a landscape of population density across the city. Peaks reveal Toronto’s most crowded neighbourhoods, while valleys trace the less densely populated areas of the city. The colours of the dots still represent the chosen demographic variable, letting you see not only where people live, but also how age, income, or cultural background shape the city.

The Toronto Dot Density Map is the work of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. 

The Google Maps Platform Awards Winners

Google has announced the winners of the very first Google Maps Platform Awards. The awards were launched to mark the 20th anniversary of the release of the Google Maps API and were open to anyone who has used the Google Maps Platform over the past two decades.

As one of the judges for the competition, I can attest to the overall quality of the maps submitted. Winners were named in 10 different categories, and a Grand Prize was awarded to the overall winner of the Google Maps Platform Awards.

The Grand Prize Winner - Innobrix

Innobrix uses Google’s 3D Map Tiles and the Geocoding API to create an advanced planning environment for architects and builders, allowing them to visualize designs in real-world contexts.

Normally, you need to be an Innobrix customer to access its interactive planning tools. However, for the Google Maps Platform Awards, the company created a special demo map. This demo lets you explore how parcel maps can be integrated directly on top of a 3D Google Map, and how different types of 3D buildings can be placed within a planning site.

10 Category Winners

Daryaft - First Place - Best of Immersive

You can view the winners, runners-up, and fan-vote selections across all 10 categories on the Google Maps Platform Blog. First and second place in each category were chosen by the competition judges, while the Fan Vote winners were decided by the public.

There are many exceptional maps to explore among the winners, runners-up, and fan favorites (plus five honorable mentions). When you click on the links in the Google Maps blog post - look for the 'see in devpost' link to read more and to find the actual link to the winning map.'

Data Visualization in VR

Flow Immersive is a platform that specializes in immersive data visualization for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) environments. It transforms data into interactive 3D visual stories - called “Flows” - which can be viewed on a variety of devices, including VR headsets, desktop browsers, and mobile screens in AR.

CO₂ Emissions Per Household is a demonstration “Flow” that uses a 3D map to visualize the amount of CO₂ emitted by households across the USA. As shown in the video above, the 3D map is visually compelling and, I assume, looks particularly impressive when viewed through a VR headset. Unfortunately, I don’t find the interface very user-friendly.

On the map, colored circles indicate levels of CO₂ emissions, while height represents population density. Users can zoom in and click on individual markers to view the exact amount of CO₂ emitted per person and per household in each ZIP code area. However, there doesn’t appear to be an option to pan the map. The gestures that typically allow panning on an online map instead rotate the scene around a 3D axis. As a result, it’s impossible to obtain a straightforward overview of coastal cities - or any location near the edge of the map - and this makes the data difficult to read.

As far as map visualizations go, I would say that, at the moment, while the immersive 3D map is visually impressive, Flow is not particularly effective as a tool for data visualization. It prioritizes aesthetic impact over clarity, making it hard for users to access and interpret the underlying data. I don't have VR glasses so I may be being unfair here - if in VR there are more intuitive controls and clearer ways to view the actual ZIP code values for coastal cities.

The True Size of Africa

There has been much written in recent weeks about the African Union's endorsement of the Correct the Map campaign. Reuters The true size of Africa is one of the better explanations of why Africa is encouraging the use of the Equal Earth map projection over other maps.

In a neatly illustrated article Reuters explains how for centuries, the Mercator projection has dominated classrooms and navigation, and how its distortions have profoundly misrepresented Africa’s true scale. A couple of animated maps are used to show how on Mercator maps, Greenland looks nearly the same size as Africa despite being 14 times smaller, while Canada and Russia also appear deceptively comparable. 

In reality, Africa spans 30.3 million square kilometers - about three times Canada’s size. Another comparative map is used by Reuters to show how Africa is also larger than the U.S., China, India, and much of Europe combined. The African Union, argue that this long-standing distortion is more than a cartographic quirk; it has fueled perceptions of Africa as “marginal” despite its vast size and significance.

The Correct The Map campaign is pushing for adoption of the Equal Earth projection, which preserves proportional land areas more accurately than Mercator while still offering a practical global view.

The College Football Imperialism Map

The CFB Charts Imperialism Map is a fan-created, season-long project that turns the college football season into a map-based "conquest" game. It started on Reddit and Twitter a few years ago and has become a tradition among college football fans.

Here’s how it works (I think):

• Each FBS team begins the season owning the county in which its school is located (and probably all the nearest counties).
• After every week, the results of the games determine which teams expand their "territory" on the map.
• When Team A plays Team B, the winner takes over all of the loser’s territory.
• That means if a team beats another team that has already conquered a lot of counties, they instantly inherit all of their counties.

The College Football Imperialism Map works on the same principle, except instead of counties it uses a voronoi map.

On this map (presumably) at the beginning of the season the USA is divided up into voronoi territories based on the closest college football team. Again after each game the winning team conquers all the losing team's territory. This includes all the land that the losing team might have previously won from other teams, leading to cascading changes. If the losing team had no territory, then no land is transferred.

The Ancient Ley Lines of Britain Map

Ley Line Locator

The idea of ley lines was first proposed in the 1920s by the amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins. In his book, 'The Old Straight Track', Watkins suggested that many ancient sites in Britain - such as standing stones, barrows, and old churches - could be joined by drawing straight lines across the landscape. He believed these alignments were not accidental but reflected a deliberate system of connecting key points across space, which might once have served as navigational or trade routes.

A distinctive part of Watkins’ theory was his belief in dodmen, or ancient surveyors, who supposedly laid out these lines across the countryside with surveying rods. He imagined that these early engineers intentionally aligned sites to create a coherent network of straight tracks. One crucial aspect of Watkins' theory is often misunderstood: he did not believe people physically walked in perfectly straight lines. Instead, he argued that the straight "ley" was a conceptual line of sight between prominent landmarks. While travelers still had to navigate around natural obstacles like hills and rivers, they would use the visible monuments as a series of beacons to guide them toward their ultimate destination.

I have no doubt that throughout history people have used prominent ancient landmarks as navigational aids. Even today, with GPS and mobile maps, we still navigate primarily by sight. Prominent topographic features such as rivers, valleys, and mountains have always been used to help navigate the landscape, and ancient monuments like hillforts and megaliths have undoubtedly served as waymarks for travelers.

However, while I think it’s very likely people have used landmarks as practical aids for finding their way, the idea of a prehistoric surveying class (dodmen) systematically imposing straight alignments seems improbable. 

In recent decades ley lines have taken on a different life altogether. Rather than being viewed mainly as old trade routes or alignments, they have become part of a spiritual and mystical interpretation of the landscape. Many people today see ley lines as channels of earth energy, linking sacred sites into a web of unseen power. This belief that ley lines are natural channels of energy ignores one fundamental fact. You can find straight lines connecting ancient monuments everywhere and anywhere you look.

To illustrate this point, I created an interactive map that allows you to plot straight lines between ancient sites. The way it works is simple: you can click anywhere on the map, draw a line across the landscape, and almost inevitably that line will intersect with a castle or standing stone(s). This isn’t because the sites were all deliberately aligned in prehistory, or were built on a channel of natural Earth energy, but rather because Britain is so densely dotted with ancient and historic features that some degree of alignment is bound to occur purely by chance.

When you click on the Ley Line Locator map, the code looks for the two nearest sites - either castles, ancient stones, or both - that line up most closely in a straight line with your chosen point. It does this by calculating the angles formed between your click and pairs of nearby sites, searching for the combination that produces the angle closest to 180 degrees (a perfectly straight alignment). Once the best match is found, the map automatically draws a line through your location and the two sites, and highlights them so you can see the alignment. This means that no matter where you click, even with only a few hundred locations, the map will almost always be able to produce a “ley line”.

Isochrone Tokyo

Tokyo has one of the most comprehensive public transit systems in the world. Curtis Fenner has built an isochrone map that allows you to see where you can travel in the city by train in a given time.

The purpose of the map is to help people make crucial decisions about where to live by visualizing real-world commute times. It effectively achieves this by not only showing the reach of the entire network but also highlighting areas that are surprisingly difficult to get to, revealing what Curtis calls "train deserts" -pockets in the city that are more than a ten-minute walk from a station.

Users can input a single destination into the map How Far Can Trains Take Me in Tokyo? to see all the areas reachable within a specified commute time. The map also has a feature that allows for the addition of multiple destinations. When more than one destination is entered, the map blends the travel times, which can be useful for planning a meeting spot or finding a place to live that optimizes the commutes for multiple people. The settings panel also allows users to adjust the maximum door-to-door commute time and the maximum walk time to a station.

Tokyo has around 100 different transit lines and more than a dozen different train operators. These private operators typically do not publish their schedules in an easily usable format, which means most maps simply can't account for them. This map, however, tackles this challenge head-on by using a combination of web scraping and estimation to fill in the data gaps, resulting in a more complete travel time map of the city.

If you are interested in exploring an isochrone map of your city then you might find one under the Maps Mania isochrone tag.

The 2025 Fall Foliage Map

The nights are beginning to draw in which can only mean one thing: autumn is nearly upon us! And for "leaf-peepers" everywhere, that means it's time to consult the annual Smoky Mountain 2025 Fall Foliage Map. This incredibly popular interactive map is back to help you predict the best time to see the vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows of fall across the United States.

Every year, Smoky Mountain releases this map, which plots the predicted progression of fall colors across the contiguous United States. Using a sophisticated data model that incorporates historical and forecasted temperature and precipitation, as well as tree types, the map provides a county-by-county forecast.

The map's interface is straightforward and user-friendly. A date control at the bottom allows you to slide through the weeks, from early September to late November, to see the expected leaf color progression. It's a fantastic tool for planning a scenic drive or a hiking trip to catch the leaves at their peak.

Also See:

• Explore Fall's Fall Foliage Map 2025 - this is a great alternative fall foliage map that provides a real-time, frequently updated map based on 'the latest reports gathered from hundreds of sources throughout the country'.
• New England Fall Foliage Map - if your interest is more regional, this map focuses specifically on the progression of colors throughout New England.

Europe's Migration Crisis

The Guardian's map, Visualised: Europe's population crisis, is an effective and stark visualization of the continent's emerging demographic issue. The map's primary purpose is to highlight the dramatic difference migration makes to Europe's population projections by 2100. It successfully achieves this by comparing Europe's projected population "With migration" and "Without migration".

It is often stated by many of our politicians that Europe needs to curb migration. However, this map shows that the opposite is true. Projections show that migration is essential for addressing the continent's long-term demographic and economic challenges.

The map reveals that without migration nearly all of Europe is going to see a massive fall in population. The only exceptions being a small area around Paris and in parts of the Republic of Ireland. The Guardian explains that this widespread decline will pose serious economic challenges for Europe. Without young migrants a shrinking workforce and an aging population will put immense pressure on social and economic systems. 

By 2100, the proportion of people aged 65 or over is projected to rise significantly, leading to slower economic growth, increased tax burdens, and a greater demand for health and social care services. This demographic pressure is already evident in many EU countries and will be exacerbated further by a lack of migration.

Also See

Demographic Boom and Bust - an interactive map from Zeit that shows the areas of Europe that experienced population growth and population loss in Europe from 2011-2017.

Fall is Warmer Now

Meteorological fall started on September 1, but if you live in the contiguous U.S., you may not have noticed the typical crisp, cool air. That's because the season has been steadily warming for decades. Since 1970, average fall temperatures have risen in every single county in the country.

On average, fall temperatures are now a remarkable 2.8°F warmer than they were in the early 1970s. This might seem like a small number, but it has significant impacts on our environment, from delayed leaf changes to extended allergy seasons. It's a clear signal of our changing climate, right in the middle of a season we often associate with cooling down.

You can explore how much warmer autumnal temperatures are where you live on Climate Central's Fall Warming. The map reveals that the Southwest is experiencing some of the fastest-rising fall temperatures, with many counties in New Mexico and Arizona seeing rises of over 4°F.

You can click on individual counties on the interactive map to see the change in average fall temperature (°F) since 1970. For a deeper dive, you can download a static image of the map and line charts showing the average rise in fall temperatures from Climate Central's 2025 2025 Fall Package.

A Typographic Map of the World

Last week someone posted an animation of a Typographic Map of France on Reddit. This map gradually added the names of 1,156 French communes to a blank canvas, starting with those with the largest populations. I really liked the effect of the animation and remembered that TripGeo's Scrambled Maps has a database of around 11,000 cities worldwide - complete with population data. That meant I should be able to create a global version of the map.

My interactive Typographic Map provides a unique way to watch the world’s major cities appear one by one. Instead of loading all city labels at once, the map gradually reveals them in order of population size - starting with the largest cities and working its way down to smaller ones. With more than 11,000 places in the dataset, you can sit back and watch the planet fill up with names, or take control of the pace with a few handy buttons (it should only take around 1 hour 30 minutes to see all 11k labels added to the map).

How It Works

When the map loads, it starts with a blank white canvas. Every few hundred milliseconds, another city label is added. The order isn’t random - cities are sorted by population, so megacities like Tokyo, Delhi, and Shanghai appear first, followed by mid-sized cities and eventually smaller towns.

Each city is added as a point feature with a text label. If you enable the optional circle layer, cities are also drawn as semi-transparent dots sized according to their population - larger cities get bigger dots.

Humanizing a Sea of Dots

Dot maps can be a powerful way to convey the scale of large numbers. But when each dot represents a human life, there’s a risk that the individual stories behind those numbers will be lost. Reuters’ latest visualization of European migration tackles this challenge head-on: instead of starting with statistics, it begins with a close-up of a single overcrowded boat, allowing viewers to see the people on board before zooming out to reveal the thousands who have died or disappeared while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea.

Reuters’ latest story on migration routes to Europe features a striking 3D visualization of a boat full of migrants. This close-up view of a 3D model then seamlessly transitions to an overhead map view, showing the boat adrift in the Mediterranean Sea. By beginning with a realistic depiction of people precariously packed into a small vessel, the piece powerfully humanizes the thousands of yellow dots on the map - each representing a migrant who has died or disappeared while attempting to cross the Mediterranean since 2015.

Last year, at least 3,812 people died while trying to reach Europe. In Stranded at Sea, Reuters explains how Europe’s renewed focus on deterring migrant crossings has left distress calls unanswered by government agencies. At the same time, Italy has introduced policies aimed at limiting the number of NGO rescues in the Mediterranean.

Towards the end of the article, Reuters returns to its 3D model to show how the overloaded boat set off from Libya with an engine too small for the number of passengers on board and with insufficient fuel to reach its intended destination. Illustrations of the boat also highlight how, because the vessel was so overcrowded, it sat lower in the water and was therefore more easily overwhelmed by waves that at this time of year “can be up to around two metres high.”

The Methane Risk Map

In 2024, atmospheric methane levels reached their highest point in more than 800,000 years, with the oil and gas sector playing a major role in that surge. The methane leaks from oil and gas operations don’t just warm the planet - they also release toxic pollutants that can harm people’s health.

The Methane Risk Map plots significant methane leak events across the United States. By combining emissions data with air quality modeling, it not only identifies where methane “super-emitter” events occurred but also illustrates where nearby communities may have been exposed to hazardous co-pollutants.

When you select a methane leak event on the interactive map, a heatmap visualization shows the areas potentially affected by the leak. The sidebar provides additional details, including the event date, emissions rate, estimated number of people impacted, and the number of sensitive facilities (such as schools and hospitals) within the affected area.

By highlighting sensitive sites such as schools, childcare centers, nursing homes, and hospitals, the map emphasizes how methane leaks may disproportionately affect vulnerable populations. Methane is invisible and odorless, making its risks hard to detect. The map aims to make those hidden dangers visible, and will hopefully empower communities and policymakers with evidence they can potentially act on.

The New Geologic Map of the United States

The United States Geological Survey has released a new geologic map of the United States that lets you click anywhere in the country to see the rocks, sediments, and geologic units under your feet, along with their age and material type.

The Cooperative National Geological Map was created by combining around 100 state and regional maps into one seamless, nationwide view of U.S. geology. The map uses standard U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) colors and patterns, but you don’t need to know those standards in advance - when you zoom in on the map, a legend automatically appears. This legend automatically updates to explain the colors currently visible in your map view.

The map sidebar allows you to explore different geologic map layers:

• Earth Surface - geology exposed at the surface.
• Quaternary - deposits from the Quaternary Period (youngest geologic materials).
• Pre-Quaternary - older rocks beneath surface deposits.
• Precambrian - very old basement rocks.

This new national geologic map lets you explore both a simplified national view and the original state-level geology. Users can spot big geologic patterns across the country, then zoom in for detailed views from local maps. It offers instant access to America’s geologic story in a way that’s easy and engaging to explore.

GeoGuesser - Hosted by an AI

The geo-guessing genre has seen a sudden surge in AI-powered experimentation. Just yesterday, I reviewed GeoGPT, which pits players against an AI to identify locations using Mapillary imagery. Today, I came across GeoGuesser AI, a geo-guessing game that’s actually hosted by an AI..

In many respects, GeoGuesser AI follows the familiar geo-guessing format: you’re dropped into a random location in Google Street View and must rely on visual clues to pinpoint where you are. But here’s the twist- unlike every other geo-guessing game, you don’t submit your guess by clicking on a map. Instead, you interact directly with the AI, giving your answers through natural conversation.

This turns out to be a genuinely refreshing change. Not only does it make the game feel more immersive, it also unlocks some unique advantages. You can ask the AI for hints when you’re stuck - like help identifying a language from strange accents on a road sign, or insights into what countries might have cathedrals with bulb-shaped domes. 

If there’s one drawback, it’s the limited pool of locations. After only a few minutes, I started encountering repeat locations, sometimes even three times in a row. Hopefully, this is just a temporary issue that will be solved as the location database grows.

Play GeoGuessr Against an AI

GeoGPT is now one of my favorite geo-guessing games. GeoGPT follows the usual GeoGuessr inspired format: you’re dropped into a random street-level image, and your task is to figure out where in the world you are. But here’s the twist - rather than competing against other humans, you’re up against an AI, which makes its own guesses alongside yours. The closest guess to the true location wins the round.

The game uses Mapillary images rather than Google Street View but the format is straightforward: you play a 20-round match, marking your guesses on an interactive map while the AI does the same. Each round becomes a mini showdown: your human instincts versus GPT-5’s reasoning. If you want to compete against me as well then you need to win more than 5 rounds - because that's how many rounds I won - while GPT-5 took the other 15.

Unfortunately I think there is only one game of 20 rounds available to play. I started a second game and I’m pretty certain that the locations and Mapillary images were the same from the first game played. Hopefully, in the future the pool of locations will be expanded, because this AI twist on the classic GeoGuessr theme is inspired.

ALSO SEE

7 Free Alternatives to GeoGuessr

Growing a World Wide Web

Every year Telegeography publishes a comprehensive, annually updated map that visualizes active and planned submarine telecommunications cables around the world. The futuristic looking 2025 Submarine Cable Map was released back in January. This map shows the current extent of the world’s active submarine telecommunications cables and those currently under construction.

The Internet Infrastructure Map allows you to see how the current network of submarine telecommunication cables has developed over the last 36 years. The map combines two key elements of the internet: submarine fiber-optic cables, which connect continents across the ocean floor, and Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), the data hubs where networks interconnect and exchange traffic.

One of the standout features of the Internet Infrastructure Map is its animated timeline. Starting from 1989, when the first modern subsea cables appeared, you can step year by year through time and watch the growth of the global internet unfold on the map. The animation reveals how over time the sparse early connections developed into the dense intercontinental webs of cables of today, with new systems being added almost every year. By sliding through to 2025, you can literally watch the internet’s backbone expand, seeing when major routes were built and how new IXPs shifted regional connectivity patterns.

How Big is Anything?

The Size of Anything is an interactive map that lets you compare the sizes of different locations around the world.

To be honest, when I first heard about The Size of Anything I thought, “Not another size comparison map.” Just off the top of my head I can think of several similar tools:

• The True Size Of ... 
• GeoSize Compare 
• Country Size Comparison 
• Reprojector

- all of which let you directly compare the scale of different geographical areas on the same map.

However, as soon as I started playing with The Size of Anything, my mood quickly improved. It’s very well done. Perhaps the most impressive feature is the sheer number of locations you can compare. As long as OpenStreetMap knows about it, The Size of Anything can handle it. That means the options are enormous: parks, airports, islands, neighborhoods, towns, cities - almost anything mapped on OSM.

There’s also a fun extra: if you select the Treasure button, you’ll find a few non-geographic objects to overlay, such as a blue whale, the Titanic, or an airplane.

So, while The Size of Anything isn’t exactly a brand-new concept, it takes the idea and executes it brilliantly. With its huge range of locations and playful extras, it’s probably one of the best tools out there for exploring and comparing the true scale of different geographical areas.

Letters Found on the Moon

This isn’t a tale about Lunar correspondence, but of letters shaped from the craters and shadows of the Moon. Alphabet Moon uses imagery of Lunar contours and ridges to shape a typeface out of unfamiliar terrain. Each letter is drawn not with ink but with the valleys, peaks, and scars of the lunar surface, transforming geological history into the letters of the alphabet.

Enter your name - or any other word - into Alphabet Moon, and watch it spelled out in letters drawn from the Moon’s ancient terrain. Each character is carefully matched to the shape of a crater, ridge, or valley, so that what begins as a simple word is reimagined in a language etched into the lunar surface.

Beneath each lunar letter lies a short explanation of how that form was created. These notes not only reveal the exact location on the Moon where the feature can be found, but also describe the geological forces that shaped it - whether an ancient impact, the slow cooling of lava, or the shifting of the Moon’s crust.

Alphabet Moon is a brilliant reinterpretation of Rhett Dashwood’s Google Maps Typography. Back in 2009, Dashwood unveiled an “Earth font” made up of 26 satellite images of our planet, each one resembling a different letter of the alphabet.

NASA appreciated Dashwood’s idea so much that they went on to create their own interactive typewriter, allowing you to write your name using satellite imagery. Type a name into Your Name in Landsat and watch it spelled out in Earth features captured by Landsat satellites. You can even download an image of your word written in massive Earth letters, and by hovering over each letter you can discover where in the world those shapes occur.

And if letters alone don’t satisfy your curiosity, there’s also Earth Clock - an online digital clock that uses satellite images of natural features resembling numbers to display the current time wherever you are.

Changing Parking Lots to Homes

Over recent years, a number of urban planning maps have revealed just how much valuable city land is devoted to surface parking lots. For example, the Parking Lot Map highlights the percentage of land in U.S. city centers taken up by parking.

The School of Cities at the University of Toronto has gone a step further with its project From Parking Spaces to Living Spaces. Using a compelling story map, the school shows how Toronto could repurpose underutilized surface parking lots into new housing. This shift could help address the Toronto housing crisis, while also generating significant property tax revenue for the city.

The interactive map illustrates:

• How much land in Toronto is currently used for parking lots.
• How much of this space sits within 1 km of public transit stations.
• How much additional revenue could be created if these lots were converted into city-owned housing developments.

The report makes a clear case: Toronto’s surface parking lots, often located in prime, transit-friendly neighborhoods, produce little revenue while the city struggles with an acute shortage of affordable housing. Redeveloping these sites into well-designed residential communities would not only increase tax revenue but also create much-needed homes and build more vibrant, complete neighborhoods.

Using AI to Search Maps

The magnificent David Rumsey Map Collection now has an AI Search Assistant that can help you find maps, learn more about individual maps, and even query specific elements within maps.

The David Rumsey Map Collection is one of the largest online collections of maps, and its new AI Search Assistant is a fantastic resource. It not only helps you search and discover maps in the collection but also lets you dive deeper into individual maps and the cartographers who created them.

1. Find Maps in the Collection

From the David Rumsey Map Collection home page, you can now use the AI Search Assistant to find maps based on themes, locations, or any other criteria you can imagine. The Assistant will return a list of maps in the collection that match your search.

Examples of queries you might use are:

• Show me maps of ancient Rome
• Show panoramic maps of New York 
• Show maps that feature compass roses

Ask what projection is used in a map!

2. Ask Questions About an Individual Map

When viewing a specific map, click the blue chat icon in the bottom-right corner to open the AI Search Assistant. You can then ask technical or contextual questions about the map you’re looking at. 

For example:

• What map projection is used by this map?
• Can you translate the map title into English?
• Who was Mercator?

What is this building?

3. Ask Questions about Map Details

When viewing a map you can zoom in on details to ask questions about a specific section of the map. 

Examples of these types of queries might be:

• What was happening at the Colosseum in the time depicted?
• What is this building? 
• What do the words below the map say?

Tourist Minesweeper

Tourist Minesweeper is a twist on the classic puzzle game, using a gridded map of real locations to highlight the spread of Airbnb in popular Spanish tourist destinations. If you’ve ever played Minesweeper (and who hasn’t?), you’ll recognize the rules - but here, instead of dodging bombs, you’re “sweeping” for zones of tourist pressure.

Currently you can play Tourist Minesweeper on gridded maps of Mallorca and Barcelona (more locations are on the way). It is worth noting that the visualization rules are a little different in each location: 

• In Mallorca, a cell has a mine if it contains more than 15 Airbnb listings, turning clusters of vacation rentals into hotspots on the map. 
• The Barcelona map, on the other hand, uses price as its metric: any grid cell with an average nightly rate above €200 is treated as a mine. 

This shift between quantity in Mallorca and affordability in Barcelona highlights different facets of the tourism problem - the sheer density of rentals in one case, and the economic pressure of high prices in the other.

The grid cells in each city are also based on different sized areas. I believe that in Barcelona each grid cell represents a 500 m square, while in Mallorca each grid cell is a 2 km² area.

Via: Quantum of Sollazzo

Roll Your Own Geocoder

One of my favorite recent side-projects has been Meet Cute, a playful web map that generates tiny “micro-romance” stories whenever you click on a location. The conceit is simple: click on a map, and out comes a love story set in the nearest town.

But behind that simple experience was a not-so-romantic technical problem: finding the name of the nearest town.

At first, I leaned on the Overpass API, which is built on top of OpenStreetMap. Every time a user clicked somewhere on the map, my code would:

1. Send a query to Overpass.

2. Ask it to return the nearest place=city|town|village node.

3. Use the closest name to plug into my romance grammar.

This worked beautifully… sometimes.

Overpass is a shared resource, and as many OSM developers know, it can be slow when overloaded. On bad days, a single click could stall Meet Cute for several seconds. Worse, I didn’t want to keep hammering the Overpass servers every time someone got carried away clicking for story after story.

---

Building My Own Geocoder

So I decided to roll my own lightweight client-side geocoder.

I realised that instead of calling Overpass for every click, I could pre-build a list of towns and cities and serve it as a static file. In fact I knew that TripGeo has just such a list of over 11,000 towns and cities around the world, that it uses for its daily Scrambled Maps Challenge. 

Here’s what I did:

• I grabbed the TripGeo dataset of world cities (latitude, longitude, name).

• I saved it into a cities.json file and hosted it on GitHub Pages.

• I wrote a little Geocoder class that loads this JSON into memory and, given a latitude/longitude (defined by a user map click), finds the closest matching city by brute force distance calculation.

const geocoder = new CityGeocoder('https://mapsmania.github.io/geocoder/cities.json');
const town = geocoder.reverse(lat, lon);

The entire geocoder lives in a single JavaScript class which is loaded into Meet Cute and then called when the map needs to find a new location.

Now, when the user clicks on the map, my code doesn’t need to make a network call at all. It just looks up the nearest city locally. The result is that Meet Cute is suddenly very snappy. Users no longer have to wait for Overpass to respond and every click instantly produces a new love story.

---

You Can Use the Geocoder Too

Because the code is hosted on GitHub you can also drop my lightweight geocoder straight into your own map projects. All you need to do is include the script and point it to the cities.json file hosted on GitHub Pages. For example:

<script src="https://mapsmania.github.io/geocoder/geocoder.js"></script>

<script>

  const geocoder = new CityGeocoder("https://mapsmania.github.io/geocoder/cities.json");

  const nearest = geocoder.reverse(52.517, 13.388);

  console.log(nearest.name); // "Berlin"

</script>

That’s it - no API keys, no server calls, and no waiting on external services. Just a single JavaScript class, a static JSON file of cities, and you have a ready-to-go reverse geocoder that works instantly inside any JavaScript mapping library.

⚠️ One thing to note: the dataset is limited to just over 11,000 cities and towns worldwide. That makes it lightweight and fast, but it also means it’s not as detailed as commercial geocoders. It works perfectly if you only need to identify the nearest major town or city, but it won’t return smaller villages, streets, or individual house or business addresses.

🙂 The Emoji Map of Train Delays ☹️

In the classic 1990s management console game Theme Park, visitors’ satisfaction levels were shown through the use of small expressive icons - 🙂☹️. A similar visual cue has been used in Bloomberg's new mapped visualization of train delays on the New Jersey Transit commuter rail service.

In NJ Transit Is NYC’s Least Reliable Commuter Rail — By a Long Shot Bloomberg has mapped a series of smiley-face emojis onto a New Jersey Transit map. Happy, sweating, and sad emojis are used to represent trains that are on time, 10-30 minutes late, and more than 30 minutes late, respectively. The use of expressive smiley emojis on an animated transit map vividly illustrates the levels of delays on different lines during a particularly bad evening commute.

Bloomberg tracked more than 190,000 trains using real-time transit feed data from May through July 2025 to determine that NJ Transit passengers experienced major service disruptions at six times the rate of other commuters on its New York and Connecticut counterparts. The data revealed that there are frequent delays of 15 minutes or more, cancellations, and particularly long delays of 30 minutes or more on NJ Transit trains.

By translating raw delay data into an immediately understandable visual language, Bloomberg’s mapped emoji visualization makes the scale and severity of NJ Transit’s service disruptions as clear as a smiley or sad face emoji.

The Cold Case Murder Map

I'm not a huge fan of crime maps. I think in many cases they oversimplify or distort patterns of criminal activity. However, I find Japan's Unsolved Murder Cases project particularly compelling.

According to the map, there are at least 369 homicides in Japan (since 1995) that remain under investigation - because the murderer has yet to be identified. The map was created by The Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s oldest and most influential newspapers, in response to the 2010 Criminal Procedure Law. This law abolished the statute of limitations for crimes carrying the most severe punishment, such as murder. In practice, this means there is no longer a "time limit" on investigations for crimes committed after April 28, 1995.

To create the map the newspaper interviewed Japan's police departments about unsolved cases involving murder and robbery-murder that occurred between April 28, 1995 and December 31, 2023. The map itself presents a choropleth view of the number of reported cold cases in each prefectural police jurisdiction. 

Clicking on a highlighted prefecture reveals details of individual unsolved murders. Each case entry includes information such as the victim's age, gender, and the circumstances of the incident. Obviously these details can be explicitly gruesome (which may be why I feel a little uneasy about finding the map so compelling).

Via: weeklyOSM

Swimming With the Tide

English Channel Swim Tracking has released its 2025 map of English Channel swim attempts, charting the routes of all swimmers who have so far tried to cross from England to France this year.

The English Channel Swim Tracks 2025 visualization is very straightforward - just hundreds of line strings plotted on a single map. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of data makes it heavy to load - in fact, the map repeatedly crashes my laptop. However, despite this, the project is still extremely compelling, and I like it a lot. It has taught me something new, and in a way that only a mapped visualization could.

I had always assumed that swimmers crossing the English Channel took the shortest, straight-line route between the English and French coasts. One glance at the map was enough to disabuse me of that notion. As you can see, most swimmers set off in an easterly direction - almost as if heading toward the North Sea. Those who don’t tend to swim in a southwesterly direction, as though they were aiming for the Atlantic Ocean.

Swimmers rarely take a straight path across the English Channel because of the strong, shifting tides. The currents change direction roughly every six hours, so starting at the right moment is crucial. Many swimmers set off just before a tide shift, allowing the water to carry them in a generally westerly direction while minimizing sideways drift.

As the tide begins to change, swimmers adjust their course and gradually turn in a more south-easterly direction toward the French coast. This careful timing and navigation allow them to use the currents to their advantage, rather than fighting against them. The result is that the tracks often appear curved or counterintuitive on a map, with swimmers weaving in response to the tides rather than following the shortest straight line route between England and France.

The average time for an English Channel swim is typically between 10 and 16 hours (though conditions and swimmer speed can push this higher or lower). Because the tide shifts roughly every six hours, most swimmers experience at least two tidal changes during their crossing. This is why most tracks on the map show at least two major twists, as swimmers adjust their course to move with - rather than against - the tidal currents.

Love Story 2 - Dressed to Kill!

I have given my Meet Cute map a little romantic make-over. Using MapLibre expressions and a bit of creative styling in Maputnik I have managed to transform my Meet Cute base map into something that feels more appropriate for a procedural love-story map generator.

Reimagining Place Names with Expressions

MapLibre allows you to dynamically change label text with expressions, giving you full control over what appears on the map. In my case, I didn’t just want to show “Seattle” - I wanted to see “Sleepless in Seattle.”

By using a case expression, I was able to check the first letter of each city or town name and swap it for something more romantic. For example:

• Cities starting with S become “Sleepless in …”
• Cities starting with L become “Love in …”
• Cities starting with R become “… Romance”
• Cities starting with A become “An Affair in …”

Here’s a simplified snippet showing how this works:

map.setLayoutProperty('label_city', 'text-field', [
'case',
['==', ['slice', ['get', 'name'], 0, 1], 'S'],
['concat', 'Sleepless in ', ['get', 'name']],

['==', ['slice', ['get', 'name'], 0, 1], 'L'],
['concat', 'Love in ', ['get', 'name']],

['==', ['slice', ['get', 'name'], 0, 1], 'R'],
['concat', ['get', 'name'], ' Romance'],

['==', ['slice', ['get', 'name'], 0, 1], 'A'],
['concat', 'An Affair in ', ['get', 'name']],

['get', 'name'] // default ]);

The result? A world map where towns and cities take on the titles of romance movies and love stories. Instead of London, you see “Love in London.” Instead of Rome, you’re reminded of “Rome Romance.” Suddenly the geography itself feels more like part of the love-story theme.

Designing a Romantic Map Style with Maputnik

Of course, labels are only half the story - the map’s colors set the mood too. To create a soft, romantic atmosphere, I turned to Maputnik, a visual editor for Mapbox/MapLibre styles.

Using Maputnik, I swapped out the usual earthy blues and greens for a warmer palette of blush pinks and lavender tones. The result feels like a valentine card painted across the world map.

Once the style was ready, I simply exported the style.json from Maputnik and pointed my MapLibre map to it:

const map = new maplibregl.Map({
container: 'map',
style: 'path/to/romantic-style.json',
center: [2.3522, 48.8566], 
zoom: 2 });

A World of Love Stories

The combination of expressions and custom styling transformed a standard basemap into something much more romantic and poetic. Now, when you zoom across Meet Cute, every city feels like the title of a love story waiting to be told - set against a basemap of warm, romantic colors.

Spies in the Sky - Satellites of the Cold War

US Satellite image of Havana, Cuba 1966

Space From Space's Historic Declassified Satellite Image Gallery allows you to step into the vantage point of Cold War intelligence analysts, exploring the world as it was seen from orbit decades ago.

Since the 1960's U.S. spy satellites have quietly orbited hundreds of miles above the Earth, capturing images that would never be seen by the public - until their declassification. Operated by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in partnership with the CIA and U.S. Air Force, these missions were part of an unprecedented intelligence effort during the Cold War. The goal was simple but urgent: to monitor military installations, track missile development, and keep a close watch on global hotspots.

The Historic Declassified Satellite Images Gallery showcases more than 500 interactive satellite photographs captured between 1960 to 1984, giving modern audiences a rare glimpse at the geopolitical tensions of the era. The imagery comes from four major reconnaissance programs: CORONA, ARGON, GAMBIT, and HEXAGON (nicknamed “Big Bird”), each designed for specific intelligence-gathering tasks.

Click on any image in the gallery and you’ll open an interactive map viewer. Here you can zoom in, pan across, and explore the selected image in remarkable detail - just as intelligence analysts might have done during the Cold War. The gallery of declassified images can be filtered by Satellite Variant (the four reconnaissance programs), Date Range and Location. 

Space From Space’s gallery is a time machine in pixels and film grain. Whether you’re a historian, a student of geopolitics, or simply curious about the hidden chapters of the 20th century, these images offer an extraordinary window into a world once seen only from space, and only by a select few.

Draining the Planet

ProPublica has mapped the worrying increase in groundwater depletion around the world. In The Drying Planet, the publication examines the hidden reservoirs that lie beneath our feet - vast underground aquifers that supply drinking water, irrigate crops, and sustain industries. When these aquifers are pumped faster than they can be replenished, they begin to shrink, sometimes irreversibly. This process, known as groundwater depletion, can cause land to sink, reduce river flows, and even contribute to rising sea levels as the lost freshwater eventually drains into the oceans.

The map at the center of ProPublica’s feature is built on more than two decades of data collected by NASA’s GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites. Co-authored by hydrologist Jay Famiglietti, the underlying study takes a comprehensive inventory of Earth’s freshwater - spanning glaciers, rivers, lakes, soil moisture, and aquifers - and tracks how it is changing over time.

The results of the study reveal a stark truth: the rapid drying of landmasses is largely driven by the human over-pumping of groundwater, which now accounts for 68% of water loss in non-glaciated regions. This could have devastating consequences, leading to rising seas, threatening food security, and intensifying the global impacts of climate change.

Unfortunately, ProPublica never allows readers to explore the data for themselves. Their Mapbox powered visualization of groundwater depletion pans and zooms as you scroll, highlighting conditions in various locations around the world. However, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, you’ll likely never see how your country is affected, since ProPublica focuses mainly on North America. While this is understandable given its primarily American audience, it feels like a strange editorial choice to create a global map and then never allow your readers to explore it.

Via: Map of the Week