I had braces when I was young. I remember my parents obsessing about me brushing my teeth well and flossing, because the braces cost a “fortune” and I had better make sure I took care of my teeth and blah, blah, blah (i.e., the sound a teenager hears when he is tuning his parents out and thinking about how to get to the next level in Sky Shark on the Commodore 64).
Finally, after several years or so, the braces were finished. And then I had a retainer. Had being the key word. It’s a hard part of personal history to forget, as it was neon green.
No one had told me that after years of pain, I would need to wear that every day at night for the rest of my life. Yeah… okay, like whatever.
I moved to Hungary as a foreign-exchange kid for a year in 1993. My retainer came with me and wasn’t used more than… well even… once. I brought it home, naturally, so my mum would see it. But by then I was pretty much grown up – a teenager set on doing unhealthy things with my life, as Generation Xers were far more wont to do than today’s generations, I feel like, but maybe that’s what my kids tell me so I don’t worry so much? Hmmm…
In the grand scheme of things, not wearing the retainer again, losing it at some point over two decades ago, I suppose, is a very minor thing. Yes, my teeth are quite crooked again. My daughter last year said: Dad, you have an overbite. I hadn’t ever noticed or thought about it. It was one of those non sequitur comments that kind of goes right through the parental armor. Ever since, I’ve been obsessed with my teeth’s newfound crookedness, which I hadn’t even noticed before my daughter nonchalantly called it out. Ironically, she just got braces three months ago. My wife is obsessed with having my daughter brush her teeth and floss. And so the cycle goes… We know how this is probably going to end. My daughter is half me, after all. (Sigh. Poor thing.)
Alas… why this long story about retainers, teeth brushing, and … I really do lose myself in these posts. It must be WordPress or something. Apologies.
Today is National Retainer Day. At first, I figured only a lawyer/barrister lobby group could come up with such a patently absurd name. But no… t was instituted by orthodontists and dentists, I read. Must have been one hell of a slow day (or year?) at the American Dental Association lobby group when they came up with this. Perhaps they were huffing too much laughing gas? (I’m not saying they did, but “other people are suggesting” as a notoriously slippery US President is fond of saying to avoid litigation.)
Anyway, National Retainer Day is a real thing. And I really am mad to my teenage and 20-year old self for not wearing the darn thing. Though, to be fair to my younger self, I don’t have cavities yet, so apparently I did brush well. Silver linings.
All of these things were on my mind when I came up with the idea for today’s map. As well as, metaphorically it occurred to me, the US could use a social and political retainer to jar us back to a place of normalcy. But I quickly squashed the ides – orthodontics are incredibly expensive and the US is already bankrupt.
Alas, my mind wandered to the new Map Styler GPT tool I’ve been playing with. It’s soooo fun!
Before making this map in Web Mapper, I asked Mapy Styler to create a map design schema based on dental x-rays, ultrasounds, and mammograms – essentially, medical imaging theme. I think you’ll have to admit the results are… well, let’s just say they are pretty satisfactory.
Then, I wrote a simple prompt with a quirky request, uploaded the medical imaging style with the prompt, and waited…
3 minutes and 26 seconds later – Gangbusters! (A word I’m not sure I’ve ever used in my life. I’m starting to confabulate more than my own LLM agents. Where did that word come from? Downright creepy.)
Happy National Retainer Day, World! 🙂
Bonus: this one used a gnomonic projection, which is really fun bur rarely used, because it’s not very practical unless your launching missiles or making a retainer map. A shout-out to the University of Kansas cartography family, as it’s centered somewhere near Lawrence. 🙂
View Map HereWeb Mapper Prompt
Hi. Sunday is National Retainer Day, celebrating tooth hygiene and orthodontics or something weird like that.
Speaking of weird, I have an insane vision. I’m imagining a very minimalist map of the contiguous US states. But they are projected in an unconventional manner (for example they are oblong or stretched and distorted (perhaps a gnomonic projection centered on the middle of the contiguous US (i.e., Kansas/Nebraska area?)
I would like this “slippy” map to do something special. As the user zooms in or out, or pans, it systematically should shift, transpose, rotate, angle, shear, and every other design geometry parameter there the states into different projections, distortions, etc. I leave it up to you to create it, but the joke is that there is no retainer, so they are malleable. Their geometry stays the same, but the underlying projection and positions of them are moveable, etc.
Please find an appropriate free API or coding method to make this playful, fun, and not at all serious but interesting enough to look at for 10 seconds, laugh, and share with others.
Here is another fun part. I would like this to be styled like a medical image/dental x-ray. Fortunately, I had another agent create a map style schema for you on this. It’s attached.
If possible, please set this up to be entirely gray scale and medical image-esque. The neatline should be the edge of a laptop or desktop monitor. (On mobile devices, just give a small black bevel for the same effect. Like the person is looking at it and playing with it on a computer in the dentist’s office.
Sources button should just be a simple “i” in the lower right, which should show attribution to Creator: Ian Muehlenhaus (link to muehlenhaus.com)
Prompting tools:
– Web Mapper (link to your own self, but not this conversation)
– Map Styler (https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6a57dc08e31481918450b1d81c92518f-map-styler)
Map Style:
– Medical Imaging (www.promptcartography.com)
Attribution:
– other APIs, etc.
—
The map title should be relatively small font, the same as all other font on the image, upper left. No pre-title above it. No subtitle.
National retainer day. Sun 07/19/2026.
The US map must fill as much of the viewport as possible. Nothing else. Let the user click and drag or zoom a tiny bit and see the distortion.
Please make zoom do something that distorts, etc. No need to zoom in on the map. Any interaction with the map should have a precalculated impact on the distortion and movement of it.
Thank you!
IMPORTANT: please make sure the states have the great lakes cut out of them. Otherwise they look kind of silly… and the map is silly enough. 🙂