Shoals

An occasional blog about mapping, history, art, and technology

Atlas Miscellaneous - December 2025

What has been lost and gained

Posted on November 30, 2025

At work, I’m in the middle of the largest update of imagery I’ve ever supervised. Ten million square kilometers of new satellite views, covering most of the world’s most densely-populated areas and a whole bunch of other locations chosen ad-hoc for various reasons. The last update of this scale was... [Read More]
Atlas Miscellaneous - November 2025

Additional discussion of baseball is pure coincidence

Posted on November 1, 2025

Aru Co, China [Read More]
Minstrel echoes

I haven't been able to get the song out of my head for months.

Posted on October 27, 2025

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is currently dominating the talk of the critics. It’s an obvious Best Picture nominee for the Oscars, it’s a lock, don’t give out the award at all unless it goes to OBAA, etc, etc - It’s a good movie; I saw it on... [Read More]
Atlas Miscellaneous - October 2025

Cultural exports, petroleum imports, and shellfish reports

Posted on October 1, 2025

Hoofddorp, Netherlands [Read More]
Atlas Miscellaneous - September 2025

Decay and rehabilitation

Posted on September 1, 2025

Warsaw, Poland [Read More]
Meaningful Communion

Posted on August 11, 2025

We’re neck-deep in AI these days, the era of the Large Language Model (LLM). It’s all over the news, but also in many of our day to day tasks, as the digital products threaded through our lives race to catch up. I’m not sure I’ve ever in my lifetime seen... [Read More]
Atlas Miscellaneous - August 2025

Leopold's ghost train

Posted on August 3, 2025

Xinjiang, China [Read More]
Atlas Miscellaneous - July 2025

Earth observation is always political

Posted on July 6, 2025

Kilimanjaro, Tanzania [Read More]