Shoals

New Belgium, 1650

When historical maps read like alternate histories

Posted on July 10, 2018

I found an old map of my corner of the world, in Dutch. Made by Nicolaes Visscher I in 1650, this version is held by the Library of Congress. [Read More]

Imagination vs. the Moat

Some thoughts on Justin O'Beirne's meticulous reverse-engineering of Google's geodata infrastructure

Posted on December 20, 2017

I did some doomsaying last night, and it needs following-up, wrapped around the idea of “imagination”. [Read More]

Bonten Poad

Generating fake Vermont placenames with a neural network

Posted on July 20, 2017

“Yup, take the Pendoil bridge just past Sad Cahue Village, and you’ll be up ta’ Ponkey before ya know it!” [Read More]

Landsat 1 launched in 1973, and the world hasn’t been the same since. Nearly 50 years later, Google has provided a way of realizing the promise of such a long transect of data, offering a viewing portal for timelapses anywhere on earth (well, anywhere that the clouds occasionally part). [Read More]

Drawing the planet in brushstrokes

Posted on November 11, 2016

To take my mind off certain things, I’ve been experimenting with a novel style of cartography: cubism. [Read More]

Putting the Clinton campaign on the map

Posted on October 25, 2016

Everything happens somewhere. In the home stretch of this epic presidential campaign season, location awareness can impact the razor-thin vote margins we expect to see in battleground states. [Read More]

Superblocks for a small city

Posted on August 11, 2016

Bernie Sanders’ hometown of Burlington, VT is tiny: just 200k people in the metro area. Barcelona, on the other hand, clocks in at 4.7 million. [Read More]

From Above

Posted on April 1, 2016

On a plain in western Kenya, mesquite trees flourish where a river spills out of the mountains. Introduced from North America, mesquite has been used worldwide for rapid re-afforestation. It sinks deep roots, quickly. It fixes nitrogen and sequesters carbon. [Read More]