Amsterdam Centraal

You could be forgiven for missing the huge bike parking facility at Centraal Station. A colleague of mine pointed out that our previous imagery here showed hundreds [thousands?] of bicycles tied up on the landward side of the station, so when we recently updated the view, we were curious about where they’d gone. Turns out they’re all underground, as many at 11,000 of them at a time. Underground, yes, but also underwater, with canal boats motoring in and out above them.

There’s a woderful timelapse video of the facility’s construction process, reinforcing that - while they have a healthy respect - the Dutch are very good at making water do what they want it to.

Minamitorishima, Japan

I was making a high-pitch map of the Pacific region with Mapbox Studio recently, and I noticed a label for “Tokyo” popped up a loooooooong way from the home islands - 1100 miles, to be exact.

With the requisite research, I found that this is Minamitorishima, the Easternmost territory in Japan. It’s so far from the mainland, that it’s actually the only part that doesn’t geologically belong to the massive wrinkle between tectonic plates that forms the edge of Asia. By a quirk of postwar administrative hot potato, the island belongs to Ogasawara Subprefecture, making it a part of the Tokyo metropolitan area, hence the map label, correctly placed via Openstreetmap.

There’s no civilian population on the island (“strategic importance”, and all), but the cutest darned pocket-dragon of a gecko species is endemic, apparently having hitchhiked there via literal driftwood.

Adassiyah, Jordan

Zara Ma’in pump station in the Jordanian Highlands was funded in part by USAID to bring additional water capacity from lower elevations up to the city of Amman, which is 3000ft above sea level and - to put it lightly - not in the most humid part of the world.

Say whatever you like about the nature and comprimises of soft power, but this boring piece of infrastructure is a 100x better investment in regional stability and national reputation than another batch of unguided munitions.