Robert Simmon

Map of when housing structures were constructed in the United States

Here’s a map of when housing structures were built in the United States

Where to next? A Geotourism guide to some of the World’s most epic landscapes Geological tourism, or geotourism, offers a unique way to experience our planet’s incredible history and ongoing dynamic processes. Beyond simply admiring beautiful landscapes, geotourism invites us t...

blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2025/...

🧪🛰️🌍

Today's smoke over the Mid-Atlantic highlights a critical gap in our air quality monitoring.

We rely on satellites and surface data to track long-range pollutants, but we are about to lose a vital part of that network.

1/n

Fog Today Is it sunny at the beach? Check the latest fog conditions in the Bay Area with Fog Today.

This one? fog.today

Too forward for a cover letter?

“Effective climate visualization combines technical skill and domain knowledge with an intuitive understanding of what makes an image compelling. As a cartographer and science communicator I have created some of the most widely viewed images of Earth.”

North Korea Expert Jeffrey Lewis Imagines Nuclear War in New Novel The most terrifying thing about the new novel by Professor Jeffrey Lewis about a nuclear war with North Korea “is how much of it is true,” says The Economist.

Reminiscent of _The 2020 Commission Report On The North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The U.S._

By @armscontrolwonk.bsky.social

www.middlebury.edu/institute/ne...

Lovely!

It’s plausible if web mapping was designed today, from the ground up, by cartographers, it would be a lot more flexible. I can certainly see a system that optimizes for particular areas (lots of web maps aren’t global), or uses an agent to guide projection choice, for example.

And it’s awesome that you can choose a map projection for a web map with ArcGIS — if you use ESRI, know you’re not restricted to defaults, and are willing to forgo raster tiles. That}s not true for all map-makers, and several alternatives (Protomaps, Felt) are locked to web Mercator.

Properly communicate spatial relationships. Web Mercator isn’t always bad, but (like the rainbow palette) it’s a poor _default_ choice. Decisions made 20 years ago to mitigate technical limitations of the time have an outsized impact on contemporary cartography.

YouTube video by Green Day Green Day - Longview [Official Music Video] (4K Upgrade)

mood: youtu.be/42BBdzzgPNM?...

But can you make good rhubarb *brandy*?

I’d re-frame it as older tools encouraging proper projection use, while newer tools make it difficult (impossible in some cases) to make an interactive map that’s not Mercator.

I’m amused by the difference in map projection — in the 1970s it was something like an Albers appropriate to the continental United States. In the 2020s, everything’s web Mercator.

Thunderstorms rip across New York & the Northeast, leading to rush hour flooding for the second time in a few weeks. Custom true-color imagery from @NOAA’s GOES-East satellite.

#weather #flooding

(It’s nice to have the processing pipeline set up to create these quickly!)

cc @jkeefe.bsky.social

Which satellite?

YouTube video by RHINO Dio - Rainbow In The Dark (Official Music Video) [HD]

mood: youtu.be/PrBUjXaRSUQ?...

Thunderstorms rip across New York & the Northeast, leading to rush hour flooding for the second time in a few weeks. Custom true-color imagery from @NOAA’s GOES-East satellite.

#weather #flooding

(It’s nice to have the processing pipeline set up to create these quickly!)

cc @jkeefe.bsky.social

AlphaEarth Foundations helps map our planet in unprecedented detail New AI model integrates petabytes of Earth observation data to generate a unified data representation that revolutionizes global mapping and monitoring

Google just released an Earth foundation model!

deepmind.google/discover/blo...

That’s unsettling, given my proximity to a certain medium-sized fault that last ruptured in 1868 …

Plan oblique map/3D render with fault lines pixelated and smeared by the extruded landscape.

I’m also beginning to wonder if the novelty of plan oblique is offset by the distortion of the overlaying raster. 🤔

Crop of a plan oblique map/3D render with excessive vertical exaggeration.

One little tweak to the camera settings and all of a sudden the Sierras look like Baffin Island …

#blender

Still working on editing the paper, but thanks to @southarrowmaps.co.nz, we've now got a method that seems to work from any viewing angle, allowing animation doodles like this.

Meltwater bursts through Greenland ice in first-of-a-kind eruption Satellite images reveal how a subglacial lake erupted through the Greenland ice sheet – a phenomenon never witnessed before which could be driven by rising temperatures

A subglacial lake erupted from 85m below the surface of the Greenland ice sheet, apparently because of pressure caused by the increasing buildup of meltwater www.newscientist.com/article/2490...

Shaded relief map of Malakoff Diggins State Park, California. Elevation is color-coded from 530 (green) to 1595 (beige) meters. The lowest elevations are in the valley of the South Fork of the Yuba River, which meanders along the bottom of the map. The park itself is in the center of the map, and the steep hillsides eroded by hydraulic mining are highlighted by the shaded relief. Roads and trails appear as thin, dark lines.

Hilariously over-detailed shaded relief map of Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park #wip #cartography #maps

earthexplorer.usgs.gov

Or

worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov

I made this video of fog flowing through the Golden Gate from sunrise to sunset, July 27, 2025, to show why #sanfrancisco is so chilly in the summer. Warm air rising over the Central Valley sucks cold marine air from the ocean into the SF bay.

#dataviz #cartography #weather

They are fantastic. Also new album/tour this fall!!

YouTube video by The Beths The Beths - "Expert In A Dying Field" (Official)

mood: youtu.be/-KACt6YhOyY?...

I’m not trying to pick on this map in particular, just starting to think about recent color and visualization research.