7x7

orgonon torpedoes: Wilhelm Reich (previously) used a battery of surface-to-air cannons beginning in April 1952 to defend the Earth from alien invasion

tuppence a bag: animal charity groups fearful that urban pigeons face starvation over lack of human traffic and are starting relief campaigns

part gum commercial level romance mixed with creepy horror elements with an insane musical score: a thoroughgoing review of the 1972 film Love Me Deadly starring Mary Wilcox and Lyle Waggoner

stay the f*ck home: a truly frightening heat map showing where Americans have been flouting lockdown (some other possible explanations here) and going about business as usual—via TYWKIWDBI

the master would not approve: Manos—The Hands of Felt, a puppet-version of the MST3K classic—via the Art of Darkness (lots of other goodies to see here as well)

may thou withstand the loathsome that yond the land fareth: the nine herb charms to cure infection

hyperlocal micromarkets: design interventions and new business models more conducive to social distancing and better for the environment

bottle episode

Via friend of the blog, Everlasting Blört, we are introduced to a range of fantasy maps in the form of comics cartography in a series of cityscapes, headquarters and hideouts that includes one of the more intriguingly maniacal super villains in Brainiac, Superman’s arch nemesis. An extraterrestrial cyborg (a technopathic probe), Brainiac is responsible for the destruction of Krypton but also saved its capital city by miniaturising the buildings and inhabitants (blissfully unawares) as part of scheme to amass a collection of metropolises and repopulate his home world with subjects to rule over.

intaglio

In the a tradition parallel to trap streets (see previously here and here) but with more delightful consequences, we discover that Swiss map-markers faced with the potentially tedious task of reproducing the country’s varied topology are not above, like the marginalia of a medieval scribe, of seeking a bit of relief by the occasional hidden doodle in a mountain face—those isometric lines indicating relief, the angle and the orientation of the slope (and in no way snuck into a guide for climbers mind you), being called hachures (Schraffen oder Bergstriche). See more examples at the link above from Amusing Planet.

‘lil proportional globes import/export map

Musing for Medium, geographer Tim Wallace takes us, courtesy of tmn, on a disorientating windshield tour of superannuated mapping and chart styles. Many of these data visualisations, in the same vein as persuasive, political maps, are sobering reminders that we did not invent obfuscation but are rather heirs to a long tradition of it and many of these representations are rightly consigned as forgotten but also serve to make one appreciate excellence in interpreting and communicating trends, facts and figures. Check out the whole collection including the “air mass potato,” “oversized presidential lollipop” and “swoopy arrow planet” maps at the link up top.

9x9

royal gift: George Washington’s convoluted scheme to set the new Republic (see also) on course through mule breeding, via Miss Cellania

fiddle-free: a functional mobile phone with a rotary dial to cut down on distractions

we’ll fire his identical twin, too: Tom the Dancing Bug takes on Trump’s impeachment acquittal

no man is an island: an exploration into the most isolated individuals through history

bird’s eye view: travel around the globe through some of the superlative telemetry captured by Google Earth, via Maps Mania 

 🈁: the lost and found bureau (see previously) of Japan, via The Morning News

pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun: minimalistic advertising

double helix: a look at the remarkable Bramante Staircase (previously) of the Vatican museum

 💌: a look into how the heart symbol (see also) came to represent love

isla fantasma

Reminiscent of the curious case of Hy-Braʃil positioned in the Atlantic west of Ireland and perhaps perpetuated as a trap-street, a sort of water mark, we enjoyed learning about the phantom islet called Bermeja that appeared on sea charts from the sixteenth century up to the mid-nineteenth century off the coast of the Yucatán peninsula before abruptly disappearing from the map.
The origins and the fate of this would-be strategic land-mass, since its existence would accord México drilling rights to a massive undersea oil reserve, are disputed and range from a simple surveying error repeated in subsequent editions, the island sinking due to climate change or an earthquake—or more sinisterly, as one theory proffers, Bermeja was destroyed by US intelligence services to expand America’s economic zone and fishing-rights. More to explore from Boing Boing at the link above.

thoroughfare

Via the ever-excellent Maps Mania, we are introduced to the easy to use mapping tool City Roads that will generate a raster image of the traffic arteries of any conurbation around the world to download or even order up printed on a mug. From a civil engineering aspect, it’s notable how the negative spaces say as much or more about the character and charter of a city as the streets and roadways designed to navigate and negotiate around or past it and interesting to compare profiles of larger cities.

7x7

economies of ale: after a decade of steep declines, UK pub numbers are seeing a slight uptick charted

parkverbotszone: plans for the future IKEA am Westbahnhof in Vienna is being designed for a post-auto world

women hold up half the sky: Liang Jun, the tractor driving figure, iconically featured on the one yuan bill, has passed away, aged ninety

best in show: winners and honourable-mentions of the Ocean Art Photography competition

the id, the super-ego, and the psyche: the strange, singular encounter between Salvador Dalí and Sigmund Freud

triangle man, triangle man: celebrating thirty years of They Might Be Giants’ (a reference to Don Quixote’s tilting at windmills) seminal album Flood

there and back again: a remembrance of Christopher Tolkien (*1925 – †2020), executor of his father’s literary estate and map-maker of Middle Earth

l’habitat et à l’infrastructure

Via the always engrossing Maps Mania, we are invited to contemplate land use by the Swiss and take notice how for instance, geography and terrain considered, the dominant percentage for Switzerland is found in managed and untamed forests.

In contrast this survey of the American landscape reveals that the majority of its built environment is given over to livestock with the majority of arable land dedicated to growing feed for said cattle and pigs. One wonders how land use might shift in the future and how we might take a more hands-off approach to our empty spaces.

7x7

franking privileges: Royal Mail (see previously) will issue postage stamp sets based on classic arcade games—via Boing Boing

cajun court: a resplendent Louis XV tower sequestered in the heart of Louisiana—via Messy Nessy Chic

cosmodrome: the busiest space ports in the world charted out—via Maps Mania

conurbation: the world’s largest megalopoli tracked on a bar-chart race

yugo.logo: a growing visual archive of brand enblems from Yugoslavia

team rodent: an intricate link diagram illustrating the connections between Disney properties and merchandising from 1967

tomorrow’s on fire: Australia needs our help and needs us to heed this stark warning—via Waxy

the ballad of rocket robin hood: a Canadian animated children’s show that aired from 1966 to 1969 featuring a team of Merry Men living in the “astonishing year 3000” and committed to protecting the poor and innocent from exploitation by Prince John and the Sheriff of NOTT (National Outer-Space Terrestrial Territories)

5-7-5

The cynical, suspicious part of me that prone to insidious conspiracy and thoughts that immediately retreat to somewhere dark in every fun application that triangulates one’s whereabouts is just a cutely disguised ploy to harvest one’s data and commodify it is often vanquished (possibly an instinct that should be overcome) as it was with this non-proprietary mapping service that generates haikus based on the address (or coordinates if you choose to disclose them) we are referred to by Nag on the Lake and Maps Mania.
The poetry is a bit hit-or-miss but the element of serendipity is fun and keeps ones poking around. Nearby, I especially liked “The warm belly of the bus / High up in the trees / Branches of the tree” discovered while zeroing in on my actual spot.

tovvangar

Our gratitude once again to Super Punch for directing our attention to a comprehensive and interactive lesson from the LA Times charting out the villages and sacred sites of the aboriginal people of the Los Angeles basin and Southern Channel Islands, the Tongva, who called their world, bound roughly by what today is called Palos Verdes to the San Fernando Valley. In addition to exploring a map with the metropolis overlaid with native settlements, there is a brief language primer that aims to reconstruct the tongue that became moribund in the early twentieth century but never went extinct, thanks to the culture that’s trying to revive it.

kandinsky park

The always inspired Keir Clarke, as part of an on-going challenge that follows in the tradition, spirit of Inktober, showcases her next cartographical creation that rather beautifully overlays Manhattan’s Central Park and environs with a symphonic palette of colours informed by the style of painter Wassily Kandinsky (*1866 – †1944), who executed some of the first European purely abstract compositions and taught at the Bauhaus until the institute was closed. Learn more about the methodology of generated charts and graphs and the Thirty Day Map Challenge (with previous entries) at the link up top.

u-bahn

Via the always resourceful Kottke, we are directed to a speciality site called Metrobits curating the branding, routes, technology and fare-schemes of public transit systems from major cities around the world. In addition to the expertly annotated legend and key to the icons, there’s also an extensive gallery of metro stations (see also) that are sacred celebrations of public infrastructure.

it’s dangerous to go alone—take this!

Via one of the latest thematic installments of Things Magazine we are directed to this wonderful fantasy atlas, a gazetteer in the proper sense, of video game levels charted. 

The collection contains hundreds of maps categorised by gaming system, platform or genre. The world-building that is behind some of our favourite titles and franchises is really astounding.  Much more to explore at the links above.

weltanschauung

Via our peripatetic friends at Strange Company, we are reacquainted with the figure of polymath and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (previously here, here and here, *1769 - †1859) through his educationally enhanced maps and charts (see also).
The naturalist’s perhaps greatest legacy as a science communicator was his ability to unleash information formerly discrete and disperse (relatedly) and compile figures and synthesise them visually, like this cross section that imparted vegetation topographically and appealed to curiosity through presentation. More to explore at the links above.

zipfelbund

Since the inception of the holiday, the date of formal reunification rather than events leading up to it chosen in 1990, the chief celebrations have cycled through several host cities, usually state capitals.
Wiesbaden was the setting of 1999’s festivities and created the Compass Confederation, settlements that represent the geographical extremes (see also) of Germany:
the cardinal points being List on the Island of Sylt in the North, Selfkant in the West, Görlitz in the East and Oberstdorf in the South, the towns honoured annually as co-celebrants. Though it took decades longer for the German map to have these extremes and present borders, the most westerly municipality of Nordrhein-Westfalen, Selfkant, was annexed by the Netherlands as war reparations in 1949. The allocation of this single district was the much diminished outcome of an original demand for Aachen, Köln, Münster and Osnabrück, pared down significantly when the Dutch failed to garner support from the US for it. After three years of negotiations at the Hague, the territory was returned to West Germany (see also the Kleine Wiedervereinigung) in August 1963—with the exception of a hill and surrounding glade called Duivelsberg/Teufelsberg which the Netherlands retains and maintains as a nature reserve.

8x8

surveillance cinema: iconic movie scenes from the perspective of security cameras, via Kottke’s Quick Links

take this job and fill it: a satisfying gallery of resignation letters

sight safari: a map application that draws on Wikipedia’s proximity function (previously) to generate the most scenic routes

fortress america: Trump wanted to fortify border wall with snake- and alligator-filled moats

🍕: a startup in Seattle demonstrates a mobile robotic chef that makes up to three hundred pizzas an hour, via Slashdot

flyover: a cache of gorgeous, high-resolution images of our planetary neighbour courtesy of the Mars Express orbiter

biogarmentry: living apparel made from biofabricated textiles photosynthesise

pareidolia: a surveillance camera detects a face in the snow and won’t shut up about it

relaciones geográficas

In order to have a better insight into the distant and vast domain that his conquistadors took by force, King Felipe II of Spain, Portugal, Naples and the Two Sicilies commissioned bureaucrats in the 1580s to produce a land survey through a fifty topic questionnaire to solicit descriptions of cities and settlements from the indigenous population.
Their responses came in the form of detailed manuscripts that told the history of their home towns and assigned by one question to visually describe their municipality, those polled answered with these fantastic maps and charts that captured geographical details as well as natural resources. Much more to explore with the intrepid adventurers at Atlas Obscura at the link above.

wonderful.successes.devoured

We very much enjoyed reading this follow-up story on the mapping tool that redresses some of the shortfalls of addresses and directions. what3words (previously) parcels the world into fifty-seven trillion three-by-three meter squares and uses a vocabulary of forty thousand random but memorable word combinations to identify exact coordinates, and search-and-rescue authorities urge people to have the tool at their disposal in case they get lost, on land or sea. There have been several lives saved using this programme.