Personally, I’ve never been one for body painting. But alas, there is a day for it. And it was a good excuse to do something a little more lighthearted. Plus, there weren’t many other options on this day, as I recall.

I live in a pine forest. We have lots of birds flying about – and a lot of very large wild turkeys hammering on our windows at their own reflections. If you don’t believe turkeys and windows don’t mix well, check out what they did to the entryway at Science Hall in Madison, Wisconsin, when I worked there.

So as I was walking to my garage and I saw my dog pounce at a robin which, rightfully, freaked out and flew right above my head, a thought entered my brain… remember, thoughts and ideas are just datasets in the quantum verse that use humans as their medium for diffusion in my world-view…

I thought: what about a bird’s-eye view of a human head painted with a stereographic projection? (I opted out of placing a target on it; though, a bird has targeted me in the past with some success.)

The image would presumably be a male, I figured. Though I know female-pattern baldness is increasing in western countries, fewer women have shaved heads to paint, and the ones that don’t are a bit sensitive about it – ask Chris Rock! I also asked for a caucasian male, because I am white and understand the issues with painting and racism broadly.

And already, one of the easiest, most mundane daily maps was turning into a social faux-pas summersault. When imagining a bird crapping on a map on the top of my head, I had no idea there were so many human-constructed, non-tangible, things to consider about the design, worry about getting in trouble for, and consider. So much for a one-off, silly-a** map for International Body Painting Day?!

I didn’t, but I do now. I’ll tell you right now: this is the last map I ever make for this day. Full-stop.

So the “easiest” map I created this week, using a simple ChatGPT Image generator, was also the most difficult in many ways.

I attempted to steel myself for any potential trolling and cancelling by asking my kids to look at the image and try to rip me for anything they can find. Alas, they only gave it a half-hearted effort; they don’t like the brown shoes and said I have a much larger nose and hairier ears than the LLM-generated dude. Fair enough.

Fortunately for the anonymous troll that keeps peppering Ken every day we post a map, my kids don’t critique maps – because they don’t care about cartography as much as I – or apparently the anonymous online troll – do.

So anonymous troll, please let Ken know what’s just a little wrong with this map. I know it’s missing at least one country. Can you find it?! 🙂 I hope it makes you feel better, even though it reminds me of darkroom cartographers ridiculing early, dot-matrix print maps, saying:

“See! Hahaha, digital cartography is not the future. I will not replace, skilled hand-drawn cartography work.”

I don’t know if any actually thought this, but if they did, I’m pretty sure it didn’t bode well for their future careers.

So without further ado, happy International Body Painting Day!

View the map image full-size here.

ChatGPT Image Creator Prompt

I would like to create a map image to celebrate world body-painting day. I’m imagining a photo-realistic image top-down on a caucasion’s man’s bald head oval. It should be painted like a stereographic world map using six unique colors. It should look well done and quite accurate (though generalized). Each major country should be colored differently from its neighbors. Oceans should be NC Tar Heel blue. The map should be centered on the north pole. Antarctica and arctic ice should be white. In the upper left, put a prevalent but non-dominant H3 or H4 style heading title, sans-serif font (e.g., Helvetica), from left-to-right: “Bird’s-eye view” In the lower-right, in small and subtle font place a label: CC: 2026, #365DaysOfMaps Include the person’s shoulders, neck, maybe the tip of his shoes or whatever would be in a photo taken directly above a bald person’s head. The background should be completely white – as though the photo were taken in a professional studio. The person should be wearing a white, polo-knit shirt and blue jeans, which shouldn’t be very visible, obviously, but for the parts viewable that is what it should be. Brown shoes like Born or Danskos if any part of the shoes are available. Thank you!