Phantom islands—islands on the map that turn out never to have existed—have come up a few times here on The Map Room. But it’s wild to see one in real time—and in satellite imagery. Which is what happened this summer in on Williston Lake, a reservoir in northern British Columbia upstream of the
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Above & Below: Cartography Beyond Terrain
Above & Below: Cartography Beyond Terrain, an exhibition at Stanford Library’s David Rumsey Map Center that launched in conjunction with this year’s Ruderman Conference, “explores how cartography depicts the depths of the Earth, the ocean floor, weather systems, the solar system, and even the seemingly intangible internet—anything but the thin boundary that divides land and sky that we tend to associate with maps.” Free admission, on display through 27 February 2026.
The Onion Doesn’t Miss
The Onion: “An alarming new educational survey has found more than 70% of Americans lack the basic geographic literacy to locate the country, region, or continent they are currently being deported to.”
StateFace
StateFace is a font made up of tiny state shapes—all 50 U.S. states, plus D.C. and the lower 48 as a whole. M is Idaho, v is Wisconsin and so on. Seems like it’d be awfully useful for web designers. It’s courtesy of ProPublica and has been around for at least 13 years but I’m only hearing about it now. [Jami Dennis]
AI Chatbots and Geolocation
AI chatbots don’t have the best track record when it comes to accuracy. They appear to struggle with geolocation too, as Bellingcat discovered two years ago in a test of OpenAI and Google chatbots. Bellingcat has now tested them again, this time putting 20 large-language models to work on 25 travel photos to see if things have improved, with Google Lens reverse image search as a control. The result? A few ChatGPT models outperformed Google Lens, but not by much; the rest were worse. Details at the link.
(Update: Bellingcat’s coverage goes in quite a different direction than reports last April highlighting ChatGPT’s “scary” ability to pinpoint locations from photographs, largely because it compares it with existing non-AI reverse image search. Privacy risks may not depend on the kind of technology analyzing the photo, in other words.)
A Globe Safety Tip from xkcd
In Wednesday’s xkcd comic, Replogle has apparently been taken over by mad scientists. I’m having a hard time resisting the urge to explain the joke (I doubt many of my readers are physicists, but then I’m not one either). But in a weird Einsteinian way Randall is doing with globes and mass what Carroll, Borges and Eco did with maps and space: assume a 1:1 ratio between the map and the mapped.
Discounted Map Books at the University of Chicago Press
The annual University of Chicago Press book sale is frequently hazardous to one’s bank account. This year’s is especially dangerous for map lovers: I count more than 20 cartographic titles with discounts varying between 29 and 76 percent (the PDF catalog shows the discount more clearly), including several I’ve previously reviewed (Picturing America, The Red Atlas, A History of America in 100 Maps, The Writer’s Map, Phantom Islands, Elsewhere). The fact that I already have most of these books—admittedly most as review copies—keeps me relatively safe (which is good: I’m still recovering from last year’s sale).
Maps Reveal Extent of Land Privatization in Traditional Territories
New maps show the extent to which the Saskatchewan government has been privatizing or leasing public land near indigenous reserves. First Nations in the province are unhappy to discover that those lands—the subject of ongoing negotiations with the government—are no longer available for their traditional use. CBC Saskatchewan has the story (also see video above; the centre responsible for the maps has not posted them online).
Cartography and Geospatial Accounts on Mastodon
If you’re trying out Mastodon in the wake of Twitter’s latest fail (and given the uptick in new followers I’ve seen over the past few days, it seems more than a few of you are) but aren’t sure who to follow, here are two curated lists of cartography, geospatial, GIS and map-related accounts on Mastodon for you to follow: one from Florian Ledermann, the other from Jorge Sanz.
(The Map Room’s Mastodon account is on both lists. If you’re looking for an instance to join, mapstodon.space is aimed at map and geospatial professionals and enthusiasts.)
Previously: The Map Room on Mastodon; Mastodon for Mappers; A Mastodon Update.
Mastodon for Mappers
There is now a Mastodon instance—mapstodon.space—for map and geospatial professionals and enthusiasts. If it had been up and running when I started The Map Room’s Mastodon account (previously), I might have signed up for it there. (Update Nov. 20: In the end, I’ve moved there: @maproomblog@mapstodon.space.)
It doesn’t matter that much which instance you sign up at (you can connect to any other Mastodon account on any other instance, unless your instance blocks that other instance, which happens when, for example, an instance is full of racist trolls), but instances have local feeds, which is nice when your instance is full of people who share your interests. I’ve already found several familiar faces and/or institutions at mapstodon.space.
Hand-drawn Map Leads Man Abducted in Childhood to Birth Mother
Vice: “In an attempt to locate his birth family, a man who was abducted at the age of four resorted to drawing a map of his childhood hometown from memory and posting it online. The map went viral in China, resulting in the 37-year-old reconnecting this week with his long-lost mother, whom he is set to see for the first time in 33 years on Jan. 1.” [MAPS-L]
New Exhibition of California in Maps
You Are Here: California Stories on the Map is an exhibition showing at the Oakland Museum of California through 2022. “Showcasing a diverse range of maps from Oakland, the Bay Area, and California—from environmental surroundings and health conditions to community perspectives and creative artworks—experience how maps can be a powerful tool to share unique points of view and imagine a better future.” San Francisco Examiner coverage. Admission is $16 or free to museum members.
Erin Davis’s Average Colours of the World
Erin Davis has created maps showing the average colour of each country of the world (plus maps showing the average colour of each U.S. state and county). She derived the average colour from Sentinel-2 natural-colour satellite imagery; she appends the process and the code to the end of her post. [My Modern Met]
A Maps Playlist
CityLab editor Grace McKenzie has assembled a playlist of map songs, though in some cases these songs’ relevance may be limited to the title. Forty-eight songs in all (so far). Warning: “I’m the Map!” from Dora the Explorer is included. “Longitude and Latitude” by Glazer and Evans is not.
Muse Magazine on Maps
Children’s science magazine Muse has dedicated almost its entire May/June 2019 issue to maps, with features on map projections (the new Equal Earth Projection is prominent), cartographers Marie Tharp and Tim Wallace, the Carta Marina, using maps in search and rescue, geocaching, and more. A lot of good stuff, accessible to young readers. The issue is not online, and not available yet via the back issues page, but it can be had via Apple News+ (which is how and where I saw it) or, presumably, on a newsstand somewhere. Subscriptions to Muse can be had via the publisher or Amazon.