Category Archives: Maps

Emptying Europe

Posted on May 7, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

Where Europe’s Population is Shrinking, is an excellent example of how large-scale spatial data and clear visual design can come together to tell a nuanced geographic story. In this case, the story is one of Europe’s rural depopulation and how … Continue reading →

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France and Canada share a border (really)

Posted on April 29, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

Canada and France share a maritime border, despite the ejection of France from North America in the Seven Years’ War. Article 6 of the 1763 Treaty of Paris allowed France to retain the tiny islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon in the … Continue reading →

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Discover Britain with Geograph

Posted on April 19, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

Geograph: You don’t have to be an Anglophile to get lost in this wonderful project. It’s a bit like like Google maps, but crowdsourced  – “The Geograph® Britain and Ireland project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for … Continue reading →

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NYC People

Posted on March 19, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

Named Streets NYC: This is a neat  – a website showing New York, and specifically giving information about who the people some of its streets are named after were. “This map shows the names and biographical information for streets that … Continue reading →

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Cartography comes to Harlem (apologies to Chester Himes)

Posted on February 19, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

Elmer Simms Campbell is famous for his decades of work as an illustrator for some of the most popular U.S. periodicals, such as Esquire, Playboy, and Cosmopolitan,  during the mid to late 20th century.  In 1939, Campbell became the first … Continue reading →

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New York, New York

Posted on February 9, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

I was astonished by the new website isometric nyc. This project offers an amazingly detailed and incredibly comprehensive isometric pixel art map of New York City – not just Manhattan either, but all the other boroughs too, including my ancestral land of … Continue reading →

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Occupation Cartography

Posted on January 27, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

Over the last year or two I’ve seen many social media posts about “occupying powers” and accusations about nations or peoples being “colonizers”. I’ve been thinking that maps may help clarify some of the confusion.    

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How well do you know geography

Posted on December 15, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

When I was just a nerdy little kid, my friends and I would play a simple game the we called “Geography”. It entailed a player naming a country and the next player challenged to name another nation starting with the … Continue reading →

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Too Many Rivers To Cross

Posted on December 1, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

Possibly inspired by All Streets, Ben Fry’s map of all the streets in the US, Nelson Minar built a US map out of all the rivers in the country.  

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Dylan’s mind and other diversions

Posted on November 16, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

Can AI tell us anything meaningful about Bob Dylan’s songs? What was uncovered when computer scientist Prashant Garg  fed Dylan’s official discography from 1962 to 2012 into a large language model (LLM), building a network of the concepts and connections … Continue reading →

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