Wow… I mean…

World War III may have already started without most people noticing, but one thing the entire world can unite over is the celebration of human talent acquisition.

If nothing else, this day truly highlights the human spirit and ability to come to together (at least in HR board rooms) to find and bring out the best human qualities wherever they may be hiding.

But in all seriousness, today’s official name SCREAMS HR double-speak. It’s borderline parody – particularly given the current situation with LLM agents (and AI broadly) upending the social compact between the bourgeois and the (very) disunited workers of the world.

But hold on… why am I so skeptical. “Talent” implies that today is a positive – humans are indeed very talented. (After all, we invented LLMs!)

The day seems tranquil enough. It’s a nice beginning for a celebratory day. But is it merely an adjective luring us in? Like a patronizing comment before the pink slip is handed over? “Oh, please know that you aer so talented. …. Unfortunately, the company has decided to move in a new direction.”

Unable to help themselves, the creators of this day follow the traditional HR playbook of immediately following positive vibes with the sinister crux of their position – “acquisition.”

They aren’t celebrating human talent; they are celebrating the acquisition and control over human talent. They want their cake, and they don’t mind if they chop it, dice it, strip the frosting off it, and eat it too. It’s all theirs! And you – in fact, we, as in all of us – are the cake.

In sum, if you read the title carefully, it’s obvious the day is not about finding or helping talented people at all; it’s about catching them and ensnaring them. Owning them. And this is why HR offices come off as a bit slimy to some people who have bothered reading even a little bit of Marx – or seen Office Space.

Perhaps HR has nothing to do with this day, though. Perhaps it is just a corporate headhunting day broadly. Maybe some tech bros came up with it at one of their meditation retreats? I could look it up, but really… the economist in me says that doing so would have a greater opportunity cost than just free writing about the topic. So I won’t.

But free writing got me free thinking…

Will this day die off in the near future, as companies continue to downsize human talent when it is more affordable to instead retain very few talented humans to direct, guide, and pretend to shepherd extremely talented LLM agents? Might this be one of the last years that people celebrate this International Talent Acquisition Day?

I was curious, so for today’s map I decided to research and visualize the likelihood of HR-based positions being replaced by AI – country-by-country. But then I decided… why not visualize all layoffs globally (and US state-by-state) and create an HR-inspired infographic highlighting these numbers in a way that only an HR office could – in bright colors and with a cheerful demeanor.

So here you go: two maps and a tree map.

The world map shows reported layoffs since 2023 (right when ChatGPT4 came out).

The US state map shows layoffs during the same time period as reported to each state by companies – as required by law.

The tree map shows how many employees were laid off by sector, and when you click on the sector, which companies did the laying off.

It’s not a perfect infographic, but for one styled on a picture of a puzzle box I had lying in my shop, and real data, it’s not too bad.

Overall, it is startling just how devastating tech and other layoffs have been in the US over the past three years since the rise of ChatGPT (and other countries, though, less so). There isn’t much talent acquisition going on here these days, but the outlook doesn’t look particularly bright elsewhere either.

Perhaps in the near future HR departments will need to incorporate LLM agents in addition to humans to make the numbers look better.

Original Web Mapper GPT Prompt

## Intent

Create a skeptical and somewhat cynical map concerning the celebration of world human talent acquisition day. I would ilke to show the number of layoffs in the tech and white-collar job sector by country since January 2023.

It should highlight the chum and turmoil of being in computer programming, tech, or any white collar work these days. The goal is to highlight for people that they need to reskill and upskill into prompt cartography. It’s about all tech workers, but the metaphor is for contemporary cartographers.

## Audience

It will be shared on social media, including LinkedIn, Bluesky, Twitter, and will also be written about in a blogpost on www.mapdesign.icaci.org. Professional cartographers, people who like maps, and academics will view this.

## Data description

The datasets I am sharing are three-fold.

First: I have white-collar and tech layoffs by country since 2023.
Second: I have totals for most states – states that are missing should be represented as null.
Finally, I have a list of companies with their headquarter countries and their total layoffs. This may make an interesting dataset. I would really like an interactive chart by field, etc (e.g., healthcare, tech, etc.), and that data is available therein. Perhaps an interactive tree map that, when someone clicks on a block in the tree map a new tree map is shown with company names comprising the layoffs in that section? Use your imagination.

## Preferred stylistic choices

I would like this map to follow the attached style schema: saturated_alpine_editorial_webmap_schema.md

## Guardrails

– Do not imply the future is rosy.
– Tongue-in-cheek dystopian (bright colors but the language says the opposite)
– Cast shade (but subtly) at HR departments and the idea of replacing humans with human talent… instead, imply the future is LLM-talent based.

## Other comments

I would like you to be creative. These datasets are very cool and they are real. But I want it to be a bit satirical, because the day of celebration is ridiculous. And it should be dark, because the day reminds many that their current role is going to change in the near future, no matter how talented they are.

When I was a teenager living overseas – in Hungary and China, among other random places – all I did was spend all day writing letters. I wrote my friends back home to hear about the latest music I was missing out on, to describe how there was no public toilet paper in Hungarian bathrooms, or to explain what sea slug tasted like to my friends in land-locked Minnesota. I wrote hella lot of letters. Many were 8-10 pages long.

Actual letters. With paper. And pens. And envelopes. And stamps?! The ones you licked, didn’t just stick.

I don’t know how many post-office lines I stood in while in China and Hungary. The Posta was almost a daily stop in 1993 and 1994. Most of the mail I received in Beijing, back in 1991, was pre-opened and read. It always cracked me up thinking of a PLA English translator deciphering 8th-grade humor from my friends back home. “Nathan and Bruno got into a fight after school at the Rock. Nathan looked nervous but caught Bruno on the chin early. It drew blood. But this enraged Bruno. He charged at Nathan and brought him down to the ground. They clawed at each other and threw elbows before a teacher showed up and I took off with a bunch of others.” That’s paraphrasing one letter to me from a friend Darren while I was in China. This was pre-internet. These communiques were riveting! I won’t mention what I wrote back – it was much worse. What happens in the Polish Embassy at teenage pool parties stays in the Polish Embassy. 😉

For years, I had friends scattered around the world, and getting mail was genuinely exciting. You’d check the mailbox and occasionally there would be something in it that had crossed an ocean specifically for you. Pretty amazing, really. Phone calls?! Get serious. Calling my friend Sam in New Zealand would have been about $2 a minute – or $36 in contemporary dollars (estimated).

Now? I have to practically force myself to sit down and write anyone a letter longhand. I have done it in the last year. I tend to type them now, though, on my typewriter. My handwriting has deteriorated into something between cartographic annotation and a medical prescription, and after about half a page my hand starts wondering what it did to deserve this. Typing still feels authentic – typewriter buttons are heavy! – and it still requires finding an envelope, postage, and mailbox. (More difficult every year.) I like knowing that there is only a single copy of what I have written and sent. If the person keeps it, it’s truly valuable – information that can be destroyed at a moment’s notice or used to bring me down my political career someday. (Oh wait… this blog has already done that? Okay… well…)

I do miss those simpler times of letter writing. But Would I go back? Absolutely not.

First of all, I’m not a teenager anymore. I don’t have hours and hours to write letters. I suppose I would if I didn’t have a “smart” phone and streaming services, but I do, so I would rather be lonely watching lowest common denominator programming, apparently, than writing a friend a thought-out and fun letter. I guess that says a lot about how the world has changed, and I with it, over the past 20 years. Wow… kind of sad. But it’s true! After all, I have to finish the Smallville television series, which I missed while writing letters decades ago.

Letter writing was a lot like film photography (cue my map from a couple of weeks ago): wonderfully tangible, deliberate, and romantic in hindsight – but also expensive in time, travel, and money. You needed paper, envelopes, stamps, a mailbox or post office, and patience. Sometimes lots of patience. I would write my mom in the US from Hungary, know it would take at least seven days for the letter to arrive, and then another day or two for my mum to have time to compose a letter back, and another seven days for the latter to return. It was a 16-18 day communication circle. I try to imagine my 17-year old daughter putting up with that today… if I don’t text back within a couple of hours, it’s insulting. Digital communication is objectively easier but has also caused a lot more stress – for everyone.

I realized about a month ago that my kids don’t even really know how to send a letter. Literally: they’ve never had to do it. That kind of shocked me. Coupled with the fact that Denmark (often a trend-setter when it comes to efficiency) just got rid of the ability to send letters via post, it’s safe to assume the end of analog letter writing is nigh. In other words, like using a phone book, I won’t bother teaching my kids how to navigate the postal system unless they ask.

So for International Letter Writing Day, I decided to explore a small but fundamental part of the analog letter-writing ritual: what does it actually cost to mail a letter domestically? How does this vary around the world?

I used Spatial Data Creator to compile the dataset and make it as I wanted. I then used Web Mapper to create a map of it.

The map shows domestic postage costs where I could find reasonably usable data, keeps countries without data visible, and lets you explore the price distribution interactively.

To give it that antiquarian feel, and to appear more analog than the map really is, I also used the early-twentieth century German school atlas map style. Very minimalist and square. And perfectly analog for the theme. The histogram is kind of neat. The topic is fun. And it’s a map.

Maybe after looking at it I’ll write someone a letter. Right after I finish Smallville…

View early twentieth-century German school-atlas inspired map design here

Original Prompt

Hi. For International Letter Writing Day, I thought it would be fun to create a map of the average or normal cost to send a letter domestically in every country where data was readily available.

Attached is a dataset I have. Can you please use the attached style sheet to produce an interactive map, with an old-school German School Atlas-inspired interactive histogram or information chart somewhere on the map, that allows users to select countries based on the average cost and shows distribution of costs, etc.

Please visualize cost differences on the map. On mobile devices you may exclude the interactive chart/diagram, but it must be present on desktop. Also, please omit subtitles, etc.

Title the map: Domestic Postage Costs around the World

In the sources modal, please mention Cartographer: Ian Muehlenhaus, and also include a link to the map provenance file.

Do not use “Legend” as the title of any legend. Be creative and have fun vcisualizing this. Do not let the user zoom out into space. Allow the user to zoom in on the map to see more detail at a resonable level – not all the way to a neighborhood, naturally.

Choose an appropriate API for thematic visualization.

Thank you!

Audience: general global public.

P.S. Many countries are missing data. Don’t omit them completely. Make them appear neutral somehow, using the style-guide as a reference. Thanks.

This may just be the most exciting day of the year. National Diatomaceous Earth Day is the definition of “barn burner.”

To celebrate the day, I decided to intentionally design a map as stoic as the topic itself. After all, we wouldn’t want our enthusiasm for diatomaceous earths to cloud our cartographic judgment.

I used an LLM to discover that the USGS has a robust US dataset that contains US diatomaceous data. I then asked Spatial Data Creator GPT to fetch it for me. It instead provided me a python script that stripped out the useful diatomaceous earth stuff from the larger USGS dataset, and had it download to my preferred folder.

I then used Web Mapper to plot it with my Swiss topographic-inspired design style.

It’s a just-the-facts map. Happy Diatomaceous Earth Day, everyone. Try to curb your enthusiasm. It’s just another day of days.

View Map Here

Original Prompt

I would like to make a map to celebrate National Diatomaceous Earth Day (U.S.) – Recognizes the natural sedimentary rock material.

Can you please take the attached dataset and create a minimalist web map (HTML, CSS, etc.), with state outlines as well, of Diatomaceious sediment across the US.

The map is for public consumption and is kind of a joke, since the day is so ludicrous. The joke is that we are are going to present this map seriously and solemnly. No subtitles. No exciting legends or descriptions of what the rock is. Just a straightup web map of the data.

Please use the attached style schema for inspiration.

This one is a little darker than most of my daily maps. And that’s saying something coming on the heels of Anti-Nuclear Testing Day!

The map shows documented state detention sites around the world associated with enforced disappearance, political imprisonment, forced reeducation, secret detention, and other forms of confinement in which people may be held without anything resembling a normal criminal process. (Given the last phrasing, I added a special bonus layer you can turn on or off too.)

I wanted the map to feel oppressive without becoming theatrical about the people represented by it. So not nuclear explosion discomfort; just cold, calculated discomfort. Thus, I used the 1940s German propaganda style found on promptcartogrpahy.com. It felt fitting. Black and gray geography, restricted colors, bright reds and yellows, hard typography, and very little decoration. The visual language of mid-twentieth-century fascism repurposed to emphasize the horrors of contemporary fascism.

The main map isn’t tiled; it was an intentional decision. Clicking a site, however, will open up a contemporary aerial imagery of the actual camp location. You can zoom in on it and explore the horror from above.

I particularly like this bit. I’ve been looking at a lot of camps today. A point on a world map is abstract. Mechanical. It dehumanizes the situation. A satellite image of a compound, road, fence line, or collection of buildings is less so. You can see where the horror is taking place. You can imagine… and imagining is what induces feeling.

The bonus: an optional layer of ICE detention centers in the United States.

They are not presented as equivalent to North Korean political prison camps, Chinese reeducation facilities, secret prisons, or former US disappearance sites. That distinction does matter, in my mind.

I decided to include them as a reminder that mass, arguably unjust, detention can also occur in plain sight, through ordinary-looking institutions and administrative systems. The facilities are real. The terror inflicted in my state by ICE was real. Turn them on or leave them off of this map. They exist.

The country chart lets you isolate groups of sites, which is particularly useful in places where many facilities overlap geographically.

I hope you are as intrigued exploring these sites as I have been. It’s been fascinating to peruse the dataset. It’s difficult to look at some of them without wondering who is there right now, or who once was.

View Map Here

Original Web Mapper GPT Prompt

Intent

Create a melodramatic map highlighting known disappearance camps around the world – state-based camps designed to disappear, reeducate, or detain people against their will, often without having committed an official or known crime.

Audience

American and western social media visitors; left-wing advocates; anti-communist advocates; school teachers; educators; web surfers

Data description

The dataset comes from Spatial Data Maker GPT which aquired it from reputable sites. I will provided a data provenance file.

Preferred stylistic choices

I will attach a style schema to follow. Definitely dark. Probably film noir or 1940s German Propaganda Map style. Black, grays, and bright warm colors (yellow, reds) to symbolize danger.

Continue reading →

I reviewed Ian Muehlenhaus’s author archive across the #365DaysOfMaps run, including posts from January through August 2026 and the late-2025 material available on the Commission site. The recurring voice is informal, first-person, candid about process, occasionally self-deprecating, willing to make an argument with a map, and usually ends by exposing the original prompt rather than pretending the result emerged fully formed. (Map Design)

The World, Tested

Nuclear testing is a pretty bleak topic. So naturally, I decided not to make a cheerful map about it.

Admittedly, there are already plenty of maps that carefully catalogue nuclear tests, provide filters, charts, timelines, exact yields, technical explanations, and enough interface widgets to keep a GIS analyst occupied for an afternoon. I didn’t want to create another one of those.

I wanted the map to feel unpleasant.

The result is a dark Equal Earth world map that slowly accumulates the scars of nuclear testing from 1945 onward. When a test occurs, the timeline stops. The location flashes white-yellow, a proportional circle expands outward, the world physically shudders a little, and a low boom rolls through the browser. Then the circle collapses into a small, glowing, pulsating dot that remains behind.

And then it happens again. And again. And again.

The quiet periods move quickly—because watching 12 uneventful months crawl past is not particularly enlightening—but when testing accelerates, the map forces you to sit through every explosion. By the height of the Cold War, there isn’t much sitting around.

I combined the primary historical nuclear-testing dataset with a separate dataset of North Korean tests from 2006–2017. I also had Web Mapper generate the boom/thunder audio synthetically in the browser. There’s now a faint seismograph-like clicking underneath everything as well. It’s almost ignorable. Almost being the key word there.

What I like most is that the map really isn’t about extracting values from a dataset. Sure, the information is there. But the point is cumulative repetition: flash, boom, scar. Flash, boom, scar. Data is emotionless. Booms reverberate through you.

Maps make arguments. This one argues through atmosphere (pun intended).

Is it the best map of the year? Nope.

Is it one of the better ones thematically – i.e., tying the map to the day? Perhaps. It takes a while, but it’s kind of fun to keep playing in the background while rifling through health insurance copay bills.

View Map Here

Original Prompt

Intent

Create a morose and macabre portrait of nuclear testing over the years. I want this to be emotionally compelling and artisitc, not data-focused.

Audience

Social media distribution; anti-nuclear groups; citizens worried about radiation, nuclear power, nuclear testing; school groups; anti-nuclear proliferation groups and orgs

Data description

Data shows nuclear testing over time, including lots of scientific data about magnitude, etc. I am only really interested in date, magnitude, country testing, and location. The other information is fine to include in a CSV download available in sources, but no need to highlight it on the map.

Preferred stylistic choices

Somber, glitch electronica with entire map rumbling and sound of distant thunder at volume in proportion to magnitude of the test rumbling over the glitch electronica background. Dark, minimalist base map, equal earth projection. Animated and non-stop map on a loop. Month and Year in browser window corner. Months and years speed up until right before it flips to month of test, then play each test at normal speed in a row in that month (some months have more than one) before speeding up to showing one month a second again.

Animations. Bright yellow or white flash on dark background with boom/thunder sounds and an animated proportional circle growing fairly quickly – all tests sized in proportion to blast magnitude. (Smallest circle is 10px.)

Continue reading →

I really like comics, but I never got that into them. I never really read them much – other than Archies and the Platoon series as a kid. (Also, some stray Asterix and Obelix graphic novels in German that my parents had brought home after living in West Germany in the 1970s.)

I still dig graphic novels, though. And I like the idea of comics – the collectors and community surrounding them – even though I’ll never collect them myself.

So this day looked like a fun day to make a map for. And I wanted to create a map that might actually show some interesting data about comics and comic books, etc. But I had no idea what type of datasets existed.

So I used the Spatial Data Maker GPT on webmapgpt.com to help me find and create some datasets. Turns out, there is a lot of data available on self-reported comic book publishing by country.

Today’s map is not exhaustive. It only maps self-reported publishers, etc., but it is real data, snagged from the Library of Congress database. And it was compiled and given reliability ratings using one of my assistants. And right there, this capability is pretty darn cool. Navigating unseen and unvisited data portals via natural language is one of the most rewarding things about the prompt cartography workflow in my mind.

In this map, you can explore which countries have more comic book series per person than others. Or which country has more individual issues. The results may surprise you – check out Iceland and the Scandinavian countries. Other results are perhaps a bit less surprising – Japan. 🙂

I created an entire new map style using Map Styler GPT found at webmapgpt.com too. It’s now available for you to use when making comic book maps in the future. Just go to the Prompt Cartography website.

Happy International Read a Comic in Public Day!

View Map Here

Original Web Mapper GPT Prompt

Hi. International Read Comics in Public Places Day is coming up on Friday. I would like to make a map for the public that highlights which countries are producing a lot of comics per capita. Obviously, the dataset is limited to self-reporting entities, and it’s not completely authoritative, but it is reliable. Can you come up with some global map ideas for celebrating this day based off of the attached dataset and dataset metadata/description below about how it is compiled and where it came from? Please come up with 2-4 ideas and the pros and cons of each and we will iterate from there. Thanks!

Happy National Petroleum Day.

Was this designed before or after fracking, I wonder?

There was a geopolitical benefit to fracking: it reduced US dependence on Middle Eastern crude, which today…

Is probably a win the US will take, right? Even with all the negatives concerning fracking, particularly because it feels like the US is mostly losing at most everything else these days. At least, that’s the vibe I get living in a largely German household a stone’s throw from Ontario, which is threatening to turn off our electricity right now.

So what do I map to celebrate petroleum? There are so many options!

I could have made a map of oil fields in the US; or petroleum yields by county and state; or oil-tanker train explosions in rural Minnesota and Wisconsin towns; or average American household annual petroleum consumption; or profit margins of US petroleum companies this past year; or all the wars the US has instigated (and mostly lost or, at best, muddled) dealing with the control of oil… The idea list was extensive.

But then I recalled something that happened six months ago. And I knew this map was already done.

Six months or so ago, I was in my workspace admiring some Soviet propaganda maps I had just put up. I had received them from my former colleague at UW-La Crosse, Ryan. He lived in the US Embassy in Moscow in the early and mid-1980s as a kid, because his dad worked there at the time. (Yeah, if I were a betting man, I’d put money on his dad being CIA too, but Ryan said he honestly has no idea.)

Anyway, while living in Moscow, Ryan saw these awesome anti-American posters for sale in the markets. So he bought a bunch of them for like 10 or 20 cents each when he was a kid, because he thought they were wicked cool. He told me he hung them up in his embassy bedroom. Alas, when he left for another job in Hawaii from UW-La Crosse, he gifted me these posters because he knew I studied propaganda maps, etc. Ryan, thanks again. I’m very grateful!

Below is one of my personal favorite Soviet posters.
For those that aren’t up on 1980s geopolitics, it’s Ronald Reagan in a cowboy hat with fingertips shaped like missiles attempting to claw at Guatemala. A great big strong worker’s hand and forearm reaches down and grabs Ronnie’s wrist.

I just LOVE this map! I wanted to put it up in our house, but the German contingent outvoted me, so it is in the garage above the workbench.

Which is why… the week the “very short” Iran war began, I was zoning out after making one of these daily maps in my shop. As I stared at the drills and saws on my workbench, I glanced up at this poster. And just like that… my brain made the cognitive connection:

Central America is essentially shaped like the Persian Gulf.

Bang! That was it. I woke up fast! Grabbed my phone…

What if…?! Would it?! Could it?!

I snapped a picture of the Soviet map, opened ChatGPT on the device, and asked it to create a propaganda poster very similar to the one in the picture, but not copying it exactly, because there is still copyright on old Soviet artwork made by the people somehow… but to copy the spirt and overall style… shifting it to the Persian Gulf, replacing Reagan with Pete Hegseth, because I assumed Sam Altman wouldn’t want to tick the President off by letting anyone disparage him, and eventually I asked it to change the color to a more symbolically relevant Islamic-green than the blue on the original map.

The first stab was good. But then… I decided to try and replace Hegseth with another president. And this is what I wound up with.

I was never planning on sharing it, because well, I didn’t really want to feel the wrath of pro-war or pro-Trump Americans. Nor do I want people thinking I side with Iran. (I take no sides in this conflict.)

Where I live, I’m surrounded by what can, at best, be described as fervently pro-Trump neighbors. I get along with my neighbors; I have no reason to stir the pot with political imagery.

But I really enjoy this map for its satirical and rhetorical value. By jove, the Soviets knew visual rhetoric; they wore it well.

Since the US is ridiculous enough to have a National Petroleum Day, I figured it’s a good time to show how well ChatGPT can be prompted to design fairly decent spin-off propaganda maps for satirical purposes. In other words: why sit on this gem any longer?!

Some people say propaganda maps are unethical. I disagree. The best are satirical and political-cartoonish. They don’t hide behind half-truths. Their overt bias is refreshing and, I imagine but I haven’t seen any science backing this up, may actually make people trust the message more. Just like people that swear are more trustworthy; I feel as though propaganda maps don’t commit the sin of omission. They don’t hide what they are, and that makes them downright refreshing.

So that’s what today’s map is. It uses a historical propaganda piece to summarize the Iran War today, on National Petroleum Day. And there you have it… today’s map, made six months ago, and inspired by a map that came out in 1982 from Leningrad Publishing House #17.

Happy National Petroleum Day, USA!

Note: hands are not drawn to scale.

View Map as Larger Image Here

Original ChatGPT Prompt (with an attached Soviet Poster photo)

Photography was once a skill, and now, one might argue, it’s not.

Photoshop-like apps and digital photography have ruined photography forever. Photography used to require skill – training and years of experience. Now, any lazy person can take a picture. In fact, even an LLM can!

Developing film was once a borderline sacred ritual and art form. People spent hours in the dark, inhaling (likely) toxic chemicals, missing meals with loved ones, sloshing film paper back and forth in some chemicals. (In hindsight, I mourn for all those clothespin workers who are also probably out of work with the demise of darkrooms. So sad…)

Ever since the rise of digital cameras in the late 1990s and early 2000s, coupled with the pox of social media and photo-library storage sites, we have been drowning in digital photo slop. People take horrible pictures and… gasp… share them! It’s an abomination. Lowest-common-denominator bullsh*t! People have come to accept bad digital slop photos as acceptable. What are we to do?!

Photography training programs have dried up. Professional photographers that once raked in $5000 to take shots of a youth sports league must now compete with that overly friendly “soccer mom” who volunteers to take team pictures for free! (Gasp!) And those moms don’t even use proper lighting – they don’t use any lighting! Instead, they click an “AI Effects” button on their phone to make the photo look as though they used proper lighting!

Can you believe this?! Years of skill building destroyed by one latte-wielding mother who thinks she’s the next Life Magazine photographer… Wait, magazines don’t exist anymore either? Blasted! Where was the EU with its regulations when you needed it?! If only they had been together enough to label internet magazines and news media as substandard, derivative slop with tags and watermarks sooner. The world would be a much better place today. (Sigh.)

Today, to celebrate World Photography Day, I thought it would be fun to remember just how miserable and guild-protected an experience photography was for almost everyone who was not privileged or wealthy enough to be trained in professional cartography or own their own basement chemical plant. Analog photography sucked for most people – required buying film, loading it, taking random shots, dropping film off, waiting to see if any pictures were any good, and realizing most were rubbish.

It was super expensive. The process required three separate trips minimum, before the advent of one-hour photography. This was detrimental for the environment, because transportation is carbon – in most cases. Moreover, the film itself and processing costs meant that pictures might cost a buck each – even if they stunk.

The processing and camera equipment was even more expensive. It was often difficult to operate.

Finally, the dials and metrics on the camera themselves were also fiddly, inconsistent, and often required a degree in calculus to interpret. After a senior class in photography and years of looking at 35mm cameras, I still can’t quite remember what that damn “f” symbol means. Whatever… I don’t need to anymore.

Yes, there is still a place for professional photography. I can’t deny that. Skilled photography looks amazing and elicits emotion.

But no… it’s not that valuable a skill. It’s hard to make a living in photography unless you are a relative of a Hollywood producer, perhaps. And quite frankly, life is much better for a vast majority of people who are no longer dependent on overpriced photography.

True, there is now a TON of digital photo slop out there. Including 99% of the photos in anyone’s digital library, presumably. But that’s okay, because not everything has to be good in this world. To quote a grad school favorite band of mine, Le Tigre: “Mediocrity rules, man.” A good enough photo is all you need to never forget what your aunt’s rhubarb pie looked like after a fox found it at the family picnic.

Today’s map shows the remaining places you can develop 35mm film. Why? Because it’s a metaphor for what many of us in professional cartography and academic cartography are experiencing and can’t stop right now. A watershed transition within the capitalist market.

There aren’t many places left to get your 35mm film developed. The biggest ones are in existence because they process the rolls that Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens contract out to them. And of course, there are a few boutique, artsy joints, and that is a good thing. But compared to the 1990s even… they are beyond endangered. They are at extinction level.

For fun, I also included a list of photography competitions for 35mm and analog photography. Just in case anyone out there still uses film cameras, you can send your film to get processed at one of these locations, and then you can submit your photos to a contest. It’s not a way to make a living, necessarily, but it might pay for a night out if you win. One contest offers the top 5 winners $20 each! And another offers you $100 in free microbrewery beer too – but only if you win.

You get the point. Technology continues to evolve. In fact, humans evolve with technology. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Humans would almost certainly be extinct without technology. And so it goes…

You either adapt with technology or… I guess if you’re good at photography, you can still drink lots of beer?

Happy World Photography Day!

View Map Here

Initial Web Mapper Prompt

Intended Audiece

35mm and dark-room/analog photographers and connosieurs who want to potentially enter a photo competition.

Map Purpose

Highlight two things: the remaining (known) places to purchase and develop 35mm film across the US. And: highlight and promote the remaining 35mm or analog film only photography competitions in the US.

Datasets

• Excel file of competitions with addresses, lat/lon of location, URLs, etc. Sheet to use == Competitions
• Excel file of processing centers left. Sheet to use == Active 35mm Labs

Data Design

• It would be cool to create a searchable reference map or one that filters by state, etc., for photo processing places.
• Coupled with this, a layer showing all relevant competitions and pertinent information about the competition and hyperlinks to more details etc.

Off-the-Wall Idea

I don’t have a map design schema for this, but I would love, love, love it if you could come up with a “film negative” type representation of the map. Obviously, we will need US states (hopefully D3 with Albers Equal Area and Alaska and Hawaii below the southeastern US). But then have everything look like a film negative, with the glare, etc.

Pop ups should be quite square, border radius of 2px or so. Type face should be analog… kind of 1980s IBM typewriter or clear, print letter handwriting font. Please try to differentiate competitions from processing centers somehow (shape, etc.).

Make this look like a negative map that still needs to be processed in a dark room 1970s/early 1980s cartography darkroom style. Just interactive.

Title should be floating in the upper left over the map on laptop. On mobile phone, have it across the top with no background and US a bit below that.

Don’t use a hamburger icon but insttead, write “Sources” and have a box drawn around it.

In the sources modal, please describe what the map shows, mention Cartographer: [Ian Muehlenhaus](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianmule)
Mention the map is part of the [#365DaysOfMaps Contest](https://mapdesign.icaci.org) and celebrates National Photography Day.
Please provide dataset sources, if available, APIs used, and [Web Mapper NLGIS Suite](https://www.webmapgpt.com).

Make sure the popups are scrollable and entirely visible on mobile and that they come fromt the bottom. On desktop/laptops, please have the pop up appear next to the point that is clicked.

DO NOT INCLUDE THE DEFAULT BROWSER BLUE RECTANGLE FOCUS/ACTIVE SHAPE. I hate it. Thanks. Highlight hovered or selected objects some other way. Thanks!

Happy Non-Profit Day.

I’m not entirely sure why we are celebrating non-profit organizations. It’s kind of like celebrating Government Agency Day, or Corporation Day…

I know we often presume non-profits are for causes of importance, but very often they are created as a way to avoid paying taxes via donation or to commit fraud, just like corporations and shell companies are. Just do a simple Google Gemini search for controversial non-profits and you’ll find that a common ruse is to collect money for one thing and then spend it on another – like promoting religion or paying for your director’s yacht. Moreover, there are so many non-profits, it would be hard for many people to agree to celebrate them all. (The day is akin to celebrating Political Party Day – and who knows, that one may still be coming!)

My skepticism of (many, not all) non-profits aside, it is a day to celebrate and the alternatives were worse.

So I made something.

I admit, given my lethargy on the topic, I wrote perhaps the least inspired and worst user prompt of the year so far. I was tired and well… the topic wasn’t particularly inspiring. So the map’s lack of energy and usefulness is due to me, not the LLM. Somedays are dog days.

Nonetheless, I was still impressed with what Web Mapper was able to pull off with such a nondescript (and downright abysmal) user prompt.

I was vaguely interested in how many registered non-profits there are by state and also where the biggest ones are in the US.

I created the datasets in Spatial Data Maker and then had Web Mapper create thedashboard-like visualization of it. (I used one of Prompt Cartography’s free map design schemas.)

Happy Non-Profit Day! And that was a wrap!

View Map Here

Initial Web Mapper Prompt

Hi. Please create a map of the United States showing different attributes about non-profits therein based off of the data found in the attached Excel spreadsheet.

Equal area, please. Thank you. I’m attaching a style guide for you to consider using.