xkcd’s 2020 Election Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Randall Munroe, “2020 Election Map.” xkcd, 16 Dec 2020.

xkcd did another map thing, so I have to post about it; it’s a rule. This time Randall revisits the design of the map he did for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in which one figure represents 250,000 votes for each candidate. In a Twitter thread, he explains the rationale for the map:

It tries to address something that I find frustrating about election maps: Very few of them do a good job of showing where voters are. […] There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than New York, more Trump voters in New York than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont.

Previously: xkcd’s 2016 Election Map.

The ‘Critical Role’ of Maps in Video Games

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

In a long piece for Canadian Geographic that came out in May 2019, Aaron Kylie explores a subject that really should get more attention: maps in video games. “Maps have long played a critical role in video games, whether serving as the primary user interface, a player reference tool or both. This virtual cartographic world (and its remarkable Canadian connections), however, remains widely unheralded, even as mapping has become increasingly important to many games.” The focus of the article is Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, though Kylie touches on other games as well. [The History of Cartography Project]

New Books from the University of Chicago Press

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Two books from the University of Chicago Press

I received as review copies the following books from the University of Chicago Press, both now available:

In The Eternal City: A History of Rome in Maps, Jessica Maier “considers Rome through the eyes of mapmakers and artists who have managed to capture something of its essence over the centuries. Viewing the city as not one but ten ‘Romes,’ she explores how the varying maps and art reflect each era’s key themes. Ranging from modest to magnificent, the images comprise singular aesthetic monuments like paintings and grand prints as well as more popular and practical items like mass-produced tourist plans, archaeological surveys, and digitizations.” Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

Edited by Kären Wigen and Caroline Winterer, Time in Maps: From the Age of Discovery to Our Digital Era collects nine essays on the “ingenious and provocative ways” maps have attempted to depict time. “Focusing on maps created in Spanish America, Europe, the United States, and Asia, these essays take us from the Aztecs documenting the founding of Tenochtitlan, to early modern Japanese reconstructing nostalgic landscapes before Western encroachments, to nineteenth-century Americans grappling with the new concept of deep time.” Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

Related: Map Books of 2020.

John Nelson’s Cassini Globe Ornament

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Another year, another DIY papercraft globe ornament from John Nelson. “This ornament is a blending of NASA Visible Earth imagery and Esri/USGS Ecological Land Units. It uses the Cassini projection as six half-gores for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, arranged in ArcGIS Pro.” In this blog post he shows how to print and assemble it.

Last year John released a set of Dymaxion ornaments. The year before that, a more complex geodesic globe ornament. This is now officially a tradition, John.

Mapping COVID-19 Hospitalizations

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The thing that seems to worry authorities most about COVID-19 is its potential to overwhelm hospitals, at which point the mortality rate really begins to shoot up. In March, the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management released the COVID-19 Hospitalization Tracking Project, which maps, on a county-by-county, basis, the percentage of hospital and ICU beds occupied by COVID-19 patients. [Maps Mania]

The Contiguous 41 States—Wait, What?

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Contiguous 41 States (xkcd)
Randall Munroe, “Contiguous 41 States.” xkcd, 4 Dec 2020.

The thing about this xkcd cartoon is that at first glance it’s entirely plausible: Randall has done violence to state boundaries while maintaining the rough overall shape of the lower 48. He’s snipped out seven states without anyone noticing if they don’t look too closely.

Previously: xkcd’s United States Map; ‘They Just Wanted to Fix Some Things About the State Borders’.

Approved and Rejected Place Names in Ontario

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

CBC News explores how places in Ontario receive new names. There are hundreds of thousands of unnamed places in the province, and at the rate new names are being approved by the Ontario Geographic Names Board, it’s likely to stay that way: 85 new names have been approved in the past five years. On the other hand, 54 proposed names were rejected for not failing to meet the rules, which the article digs into:

The Ontario Geographic Names Board is guided by a strict list of naming rules. Submissions can’t have the same name as another nearby feature. Bad words are not allowed, nor are names that could seem like advertisements.

When it comes to people, a name won’t be considered unless that person has been dead for at least five years. Even then, there’s niche criteria. The person needs to have left a legacy either locally, provincially or nationally.

There’s even a rule about not naming something to commemorate a victim of an accident or a tragedy if they didn’t leave some sort of other legacy.

Fifteen Ways to Depict Elevation on Mars

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

How do you depict elevation on a map of Mars? Earlier this year, Daniel Huffman posted a roundup of hypsometric tints for Mars.

I have a peculiar hobby of collecting Martian hypsometric tinting schemes: those sets of colors that cartographers use to depict elevations on the Red Planet. It’s a fascinating cartographic frontier. While the classic (and somewhat flawed) way of showing Earth’s elevations is to use a color scheme that starts with green lowlands, and then proceeds through some combination of brown/yellow/orange/red until it reaches white in the highest areas, there’s no standard yet for Mars. Maybe centuries from now, one of the schemes below will become that standard.

Huffman looks at fifteen schemes in total in the post, and in this video on YouTube:

A History of Maps in Games

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Matthew Edney explores the history of maps and games, beginning with the three basic forms of early map games: playing cards, board games, and puzzles, all of which had the “improvement” of youth as their aim. Over time game maps became more abstract (grids, simplifications) and puzzle pieces didn’t follow territorial boundaries. Edney doesn’t get very far into modern-day computer games, where the map becomes synonymous with the playing field, but that’s understandable: it’s too big a subject on its own (I’ve left it out of my fantasy map work for that reason).

Critical Tourist Map of Oslo

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Markus Moestue’s Critical Tourist Map of Oslo turns the unremitting positivity of tourist maps on its head, painting the Norwegian capital’s landmarks and history in a bracingly negative light.

In most countries, what we are taught about our own nation in school does not correspond much to reality. And Norway is no exception. We are made to believe in myths surrounding our own nation and are given a perfect mirage of excellence and good intentions in our history lessons. Stories of abuse, greed and war are often swept under the carpet, and it seems that, by some twist of faith, we are born into the best country in the world, and that all other nations are beneath us. Is Norway really the most happy place, the most environmentally conscious, the most peace loving or the most ethical? Hardly!

In this map I aim to correct a few myths, point to some problematic aspects of  Norway and Oslo. And I wish for this map to be a contrast to the mindless commercially motivated map you’ll receive at the tourist information centre.

In a short video, Markus tries to stunt-distribute the map on the streets of Oslo:

CityLab Wants Your Homemade Map of 2020

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Earlier this year CityLab invited readers to submit maps of their life under lockdown. Now they’re soliciting reader maps again, with a slightly expanded focus: 2020 in general. (Which, in general, was a year: how do you represent that cartographically? That’s the idea.)

We’re inviting you, our readers, to create a homemade map of your life, community, workplace or broader surroundings as you experienced them in 2020. Show us how the extraordinary changes of this year have shown up in your life. Or, try to envision how this year will impact 2021. Perhaps you want to map the city you hope to see—changes in architecture, transportation or public space—or how you imagine, hope or fear humanity might be changed due to this collectively lived experience.

Deadline is Monday, 7 December.

Previously: CityLab Wants Your Hand-Drawn Quarantine Maps; Maps from Isolation.

Making 3D Art from Old Geological and Relief Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Sean Conway
Sean Conway
Dmitriy Worontzov
Dmitriy Worontzov

Apparently independently of one another, Sean Conway and Dmitriy Worontzov have been taking old geological and relief maps and applying using digital elevation models to apply 3D effects to them. The end result is a two-dimensional image, or a print, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that these maps now have real depth and texture. Conway, an orthoimagery specialist, works mainly on old U.S. relief maps; the results are available for sale as posters. Read more about him at My Modern Met. Worontzov, a Moscow-based art director, goes for geological maps, mainly from the Soviet era; see his work on Behance and Instagram, and read about him at Abduzeedo. [Alejandro Polanco, WMS]

BBC Future Explores Alternate History Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Alternate history is a long-established subgenre of science fiction. “But one of the deepest pleasures of alternate histories are their maps. Sometimes these allow stories to unfurl, or complement the hypothetical world of a tale being told. But in many cases, the map alone tells a story,” writes Samuel Arbesman in a piece exploring alternate history and its maps at BBC Future. It’s a 101-level piece insofar as alternate history the subgenre is concerned; the pleasure, as you might expect, is the maps shared and linked to. [ICA]

Previously: Alternate Geographies on the Imaginary Maps Reddit Group.

London Trees, Pyongyang Architecture

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Blue Crow Media, which for the past few years has published a series of maps focusing on urban architecture, sent me samples of two of their most recent maps. The Great Trees of London Map is the first of a series of maps highlighting noteworthy trees in a city’s urban forest (Amazon). (A similar map for New York is forthcoming.) The second is another in their line of architecture and urban design maps: Pyongyang Architecture Map features 50 buildings in the reclusive North Korean capital, and includes text and photographs shot by Guardian architecture critic Oliver Wainwright (Amazon). An architecture map of Tbilisi, Georgia, in English and Georgian, has also been released (Amazon). Each map costs £8.

Previously: Architectural Maps of London; London Underground Architecture and Design Map.

How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Mobile Apps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Motherboard reported last week that the U.S. military was buying location data that originated, among other places, from Muslim prayer and dating apps. The Motherboard exposé details how it happened: how the location data supply chain works, and, for example, how data brokers pay app developers to incorporate their frameworks into apps so that user data can be harvested and sold to buyers like law enforcement and military contractors. Developers may not necessarily be aware of what they’re agreeing to when they accept those frameworks, but they don’t have to embed data harvesting algorithms in their apps either. [Daring Fireball, MetaFilter]

Previously: New York Times: How Location Data Is Gathered, Shared and Sold.