A Clearer View of Darkness

Light pollution maps typically use satellite data from NOAA’s VIIRS to visualize levels of light pollution around the world. Some maps, like Light Pollution Map, also allow users to click on different locations to view detailed information - such as light pollution levels using the Bortle Dark Sky Scale.

My favorite dark sky map is actually the (identically named) Light Pollution Map. I like this map because it explains light pollution levels in clear, easily understood layman's terms. For example, where I live, the map tells me that the: “Entire sky is brightened. No Milky Way visible; only the brightest constellations can be recognized.” The Light Pollution Map not only displays the Bortle Scale for any location, but also does a great job of describing what you can realistically expect to see in the night sky.

Both maps use satellite data from NOAA’s VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite). VIIRS is a sensor aboard weather satellites that captures low-light imagery of the Earth at night. It’s one of the most reliable tools for measuring artificial light emissions globally and is widely used in scientific studies of light pollution.

I Traveled the World Through Trending Videos

If you’ve ever wondered what’s capturing the attention of YouTube viewers in Brazil, Japan, or South Africa at this very moment, Trending Videos is a great place to start. This new web tool uses a 3D globe interface to deliver a geographic window into YouTube’s trending content across the world.

The interactive globe allows users to spin, zoom, and click on any country to instantly access the top trending videos in that region. Once a country is selected, a curated list of YouTube's most popular current videos is displayed, with direct links for instant viewing. 

You can also refine your exploration by selecting from various categories, including Music, Sports, Gaming, and more - making it easy to see how different types of content resonate across different countries. Want to see what's hot in sports in Japan? Or perhaps the latest music sensations dominating the charts in Brazil? Maybe you're keen to explore the top gaming videos in Germany? Trending Videos has you covered!

The Death of Local News

One in three U.S. counties now has no full-time local journalist - a staggering 75% decline over the past 23 years. This collapse means communities across the country lack "even one full-time reporter to cover all of the schools, the town councils, the economic development projects, basketball games, environmental decisions, local businesses, and local events."

To document this crisis, Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack partnered to create the Local Journalist Index 2025, which maps journalist staffing in every U.S. county. The report analyzes data from over 100,000 journalists and 3.5 million daily articles tracked by Muck Rack’s platform, using a metric called "local journalist equivalents" (LJEs) to account for part-time and freelance work.

An interactive map in the report reveals the stark, nationwide scale of the decline. The erosion of local news isn’t confined to specific regions - it’s a universal crisis. As the report notes, the "evaporation of local news coverage has hit small towns and big cities, suburbs and rural areas alike."

You can explore which counties are most likely to become local news deserts on an interactive map developed by the Medill Local News Initiative. The Local News Barometer and Watch List maps the US counties which have a more than 40% chance of becoming news deserts within the next five years. 

These at-risk counties are not just underserved - they are, on average, poorer, older, and less educated than even existing news deserts. If you select a state from the map sidebar then the Watchlist will update to show all the counties in the selected state in the most danger of becoming news deserts. 

This map’s most sobering takeaway is that America is increasingly becoming two nations when it comes to local news: one with abundant access in affluent, urbanized regions, and another without. The consequences are profound. Research shows that communities without local news experience lower civic engagement, less voter participation, and weaker accountability in public institutions.

A Time Machine for Maps

World History Atlas is an impressively detailed, time-traveling cartographic project that lets users explore the ever-shifting borders of human civilization. Covering thousands of years of global history, this interactive map platform provides a deep spatial context to the rise and fall of empires, nations, and cultures.

Think of it as a Google Maps for world history - except instead of zooming into street view, you're diving through millennia. 

The core of the World History Atlas is its sweeping collection of political maps, spanning from prehistoric hunter-gatherer bands to the modern nation-state system. The site is organized chronologically, allowing you to select a time period (e.g., 3000 BC, 500 AD, 1500 AD) and instantly see who ruled what, where - and for how long. Each map offers a color-coded look at the political boundaries of the time, with tooltips and links that provide more information on historical states, tribes, and empires.

The World History Atlas echoes a number of other historical map projects that are dedicated to mapping the shifting political borders of countries through time - like Chronas, the OpenHistoricalMap, or TimeMap.

Institute for Men Says Women Are Underpaid

The American Institute for Boys and Men has released an interactive map highlighting the declining percentage of men in college enrollment and graduation. But the most striking revelation isn’t the gender gap in enrollment and graduation but the persistent earnings gap that follows. That's right - despite women being more likely to enroll in and graduate from college, they are far more likely to earn less than their male peers six years after starting college.

Men in higher education: A national data tool uses an interactive map to compare male and female metrics - including acceptance rates, enrollment, and graduation - across U.S. higher education institutions. As the Institute notes, “male college enrollment has stagnated, while the female share continues to rise.”

What is also shown by the map is that in 67.7% of the colleges in the dataset, men earned more than women six years after enrollment. There are exceptions, such as Adelphi University (where women earn $71,401 vs. men’s $60,751), Bentley University ($94,778 vs. $92,944), and Daemen University ($70,586 vs. $61,133). However, some disparities are staggering - like Cooper Union, where women earn $24,423 compared to men’s $64,824, or Brigham Young University, where women make $39,962 versus men’s $83,404.

These figures underscore a harsh reality: women are very likely to experience systemic pay inequity in the workplace after graduating from college.

How Big is it Really?

the outline of Central Park overlaid on San Francisco

GeoSize Compare Pro is a highly useful map utility for visualizing and comparing geographic areas by drawing custom shapes and overlaying them on different map views. For example, the map above shows the outline of New York's Central Park overlaid onto a map of San Francisco.

How It Works:

1. Select the "Measure distances" (📏) button and trace the outline of your area on the map.
2. After completing the shape click "Compare" to lock it in place.
3. In comparison mode, the shape stays centered as you pan the map, making it easy to compare sizes across locations.

Additional Features:

The "Measure distances" tool lets you calculate real-world distances between points - helpful for route planning (e.g., estimating walking or cycling distances).

Pro Tip:

When drawing shapes, ensure you close the polygon by clicking the first marker again and use at least 3 points for valid comparisons.

moving Alaska to the heartland of the US

If you prefer not to draw shapes manually, the ever popular The True Size Of ... offers a different approach. This map lets you select predefined country or state outlines and drag them onto other regions to compare their true sizes.

Unlike GeoSize Compare Pro, which focuses on custom shapes, The True Size Of... emphasizes preloaded geographic data, making it ideal for quick comparisons of well-known borders. For instance, you could overlay Alaska onto Brazil to see how they stack up without Mercator projection distortions. 

The Daily MapGame Challenge

It has been a while since Maps Mania featured a new daily map game (see The 12 Best Daily Map Games) - so may I introduce to you the MapGame!

MapGame is a daily brain teaser that challenges you to identify a mystery country on a map using the fewest number of clues. With each incorrect guess, you unlock a new hint — nudging you closer to the answer through geographical and directional clues.

The brilliance of MapGame lies in how it rewards not just accuracy, but strategy. You score points based on how quickly you solve the mystery, how few hints you need, and how well your guesses align with the clues. It's not enough to be right — you also have to be thoughtful.

Aside from the joy of solving each day's challenge, what keeps players coming back to MapGame are the detailed stats and the global leaderboard. The stats page records how many games you've played, how many countries you've solved, your current win streak, your best-ever streak, your average score, the average number of hints used, and your average time. The global leaderboard shows how your score ranks against all of today’s players and where you stand in the all-time rankings.

Tour de Street View

Stage 13 in the Pyrenees

Every summer, millions tune in to watch the world’s greatest cycling race snake its way through the heart of France. But watching from a helicopter shot or following time splits only tells part of the story. What if you could experience each stage for yourself - all from the comfort of your own home?

That’s exactly what Map Channels' new interactive Tour de France 2025 map delivers.

This Tour de France map isn’t just another route overview. It’s a fully immersive, animated map where each of the 21 stages of the 2025 Tour de France is brought to life through Google Street View animations. With one click of this map, you're no longer a spectator - you’re rolling through the same roads as the pros.

The official Tour de France website also includes maps of each stage of this year's race. Alongside each official route map you can view a stage profile, the time schedule for the stage and discover what points are on offer.

VisuGPX has also mapped out each stage of the Tour de France. The standout feature of this map is that you can view each stage route animated on a 3D terrain map. This is perfect for previewing those exciting mountain stages and discovering the locations of the biggest and most exciting climbs in each stage.

Routing for Vampires

One of the hardest tasks in navigation and wayfinding is calculating safe routes for vampires. The Damned have a number of unique routing requirements that demand more than just Google Maps in dark mode—chief among them, the need to avoid direct sunlight.

The Department of Computer Science at the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences has developed a unique "vampire mode" that allows the undead in Zurich to navigate the city while staying out of the sun. Simply select "vampire mode" and enter two locations, and Routing OSRM Switzerland will suggest routes that prioritize shaded areas.

This new vampire mode may also prove useful for other city dwellers looking to avoid the intense daylight heat during the summer months, helping them navigate Zurich using footpaths that stay in the shade. The concept of providing sun-avoiding walking directions could also be of interest to shadow mapping platforms such as Shade Map and Shadow Map. Their detailed, time-based global shadow data could be ideal for generating personalized walking routes based on the date, time, and position of the sun.

The Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences's 'vampire mode' is made possible by (OSRM). This is a high-performance routing engine designed to calculate fast and flexible routes using OpenStreetMap data. The Open Source Routing Machine is highly customizable, which means it is perfect for tailoring routing behaviour based on different requirements (eg based on wheelchair accessibility or via green spaces).

The Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences' "vampire mode" is powered by the Open Source Routing Machine  (OSRM) - a high-performance routing engine designed to calculate fast and flexible routes using OpenStreetMap data. OSRM is highly customizable, making it ideal for tailoring routing behavior to suit specific needs, such as wheelchair accessibility, routes through green spaces, or (as in vampire mode) avoiding direct sunlight.

Via: weeklyOSM and the Swiss OpenStreetMap Association

Has a Nuke Gone Off?

Not so very long ago - in the days before America became great again -  Has a Nuke Gone Off would have made a nice Friday Fun post. Now it doesn't seem quite so funny. 

Has a Nuke Gone Off is a simple website that does just thing - it monitors a home-built nuclear blast detector to tell you whether a nuclear bomb has exploded. I am happy to report that as of '2025-07-05 05:47:53' no nuclear blast has been detected.

Has a Nuke Gone Off even includes instructions on how to build your own Bhangmeter V2 nuclear blast detector from a Raspberry Pi.

Via: webcurios

If you want to depress yourself further then you can use NUKEMAP to explore the effect that a nuclear bomb might have if dropped on your home. 

For reference - if Iran were to build a nuclear weapon and deploy it on a ballistic missile, the likely warhead yield would be in the range of 10 to 25 kilotons. The image above shows the result of dropping a  25 kilotons bomb on San Francisco. Just enter your own address into the map to simulate the demise of your own neighborhood.