How long are the world’s coastlines? The length of any coast is a matter of opinion, because a coastline is a fractal. Connect the dots along a coast every 100 meters and you'll get a much shorter total length than if you connected dots every meter. The coastline paradox is easier to visualize when downsampling is taken too far. (Update: I might not have made this map if I’d seen this excellent explanation.)

Britain has decided to leave Europe. Where will it go? Adrift without a leader, it will likely be carried north on the warm North Atlantic Current. Fluid dynamics simulations suggest it will eventually lodge between Iceland and Greenland. The fate of Northern Ireland is less certain.

It’s a graticule party.

Locations approximate. Learn more: 1, 2, 3.

My plan to create a perfectly flat and level Kansas by moving 5,501 cubic miles of earth from west to east. It’s the ideal Kansas. Still some details to work out about rivers, roads, etc. Watch out for the 900-foot cliff bisecting Kansas City.

Yolo is a city in Yolo County, California.

Mars has surface water, but not enough. Ceres, the largest asteroid, might be 25% water. If we simply crashed Ceres into Mars, that could cover 33% of Mars with oceans up to 5900 meters deep. (Spherical projection by request.)

Mars has surface water, but not enough. Ceres, the largest asteroid, might be 25% water. If we simply crashed Ceres into Mars, that could cover 33% of Mars with oceans up to 5900 meters deep.

Two ways to turn the San Juan Islands into hexagons, as for gaming.

The reason for the season.

Relief map of the western Gobi desert, including all major towns.

Point map of countries and territories, because the wrong way to map something is sometimes also nice.

Frequently, buyers express their patriotism for their local economy by buying vehicles which were actually made elsewhere. (Statebins map in Excel, with vlookups in conditional formatting.)

Mount St. Helens.

The Chuckanut Mountains. Much 3D stuff, from landscape design to video games, approximates a surface with a network of irregular triangles (TIN). This is what happens if you force the triangles’ vertices to be spaced on a grid, then apply a hillshade.

Flooded mudflats from the air, with each RGB color normalized.

The population of Eugene and Springfield upsampled to 100 x 100 meter cells.  Census Blocks are odd shapes, and sometimes it's nice for everything to be square.  Pycnophylactic interpolation, besides being fun to say, is one way to address the MAUP (see also ecological fallacy).  Compare here to locate downtown, dorms, rivers, and industrial areas.

Recreational marijuana stores in Washington will not be permitted near parks, libraries, schools, arcades, and child care facilities.  Treating marijuana stores more like sex offenders than alcohol stores excludes most of Bellingham.  Although Bellingham's City Council is supportive, I predict more pocket parks in socially conservative towns.  If you've ever wanted to start a day care or arcade, now's the time to seek funding from those opposed to nearby recreational marijuana stores.

Here, I stacked these for you.

Oregon, string art style.