There is a lot of money to be made these days on creating brain-training apps and software and other such things. Pseudo-science companies selling daily games to increase your memory and brain power flourished in the last 10 or 20 years based on little-to-no scientific evidence. Many of the largest offending companies settled lawsuits from the FTC.

Regardless of brain training claims, games are often known for facilitating brain activity, learning, and cognition broadly. There is an argument to be made that all learning is done via “play” – which games definitely fall into.

I enjoy brain-teaser games. So does my whole family. I’m pretty sure they haven’t turned anyone here into a genius. They certainly haven’t improved my memory – it’s horrible. But damn if brain games, word games, logic games, and other types of activities aren’t fun!

So National Train Your Brain Day got me thinking. Earlier this year, Ken created a global Sudoku map for Sudoku Day. It was so very cool!

I wondered: can Web Mapper create a series of geography and cartography related brain teasers? (I mean, I knew it could, but I wanted to see what it would do.)

The results are shared here.

Not bad! It’s no NYT Puzzle Collection yet. But the foundations are definitely there. Five puzzles from a vacuous and open three sentence prompt. I can live with that. Though, it’s still nowhere near Ken’s awesome Sudoku puzzle from earlier – the inspiration. 🙂

View Carto-Brain Teasers here

Web Mapper Prompt

Farmers get short shrift.

They still drive a significant part of the world economy – particularly the US one. And literally none of us would be alive today without them. This is particularly true of those who choose to live in cities. People in cities may have a lot of money, but they don’t actually have food. They buy it. And without farmers, there is no food to buy.

Don’t get me wrong: cities are great – they have museums and theaters and decent restaurants and stuff… but a great majority of the people living in cities would starve pretty quickly without “flyover country” farmers.

In fact, this was born out on a large scale just 75 years ago. If I recall correctly from my seminar at UMD in 1997, this is what Mao Zedong and the Communists did to the Chinese Nationalist Party.

The Mao Doctrine – secure the countryside and have the enemy retreat into cities – crushed the more powerful Nationalists who had superior weaponry. The Nationalists did have boats, though. And today… the Nationalists find themselves surrounded by fishing boats – the Mao Doctrine at sea?

But I digress… I’m focusing on the PLA’s military strategy here to emphasize the importance of farmers to everyone living in a city.

Thank you, farmers. And enjoy your day. You deserve it. Without you, the world would all be hangry – or worse.

View map here

Web Mapper Prompt

Casimir Pulaski… that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long, long… well, ever.

And guess what? I’m now hooked. There are a bunch of international and national days to celebrate today, but they all seemed kind of like we’ve been there and done them this year before. Naturally, Casimir Pulaski Day stood out in the list…

I don’t want to ruin this for you, because it’s literally a story map – though not a branded StoryMap – and I assure you the story is more interesting and better than Digger – so I’m not just avoiding spoilers to make you view the map as the producers of that movie did. (So I’ve been told, as no one has actually gone to see that film yet, according to the news, including me.)

What I will say is this… his story is incredible! He’s one of only eight ever Honorary American Citizens. His exploits bridged two revolutions and two continents. He played a key role in helping the American insubordinates (i.e., colonies) defeat the British. And he was so important and famous in American history, even though I had never heard of him – though, I’m not very American-centered in my interests, as you may have noticed – that the citizenship was bestowed on him in 2009! And the day was granted to him by Congressional act in 1929! I mean… that’s some serious longevity. Most Americans don’t know who was President in 1929. Imagine being honored by a government more than 150 years after you crossed the sea and helped them out. It’s wild!

Hopefully reading the map, you’ll understand why. Yes, this one requires reading. Though, I included images and some smooth gliding across a globe (or Mercator if you prefer) map to give it some sizzle. Also, you could try asking an LLM to visit the site, read it, and shorten it for you. Though, I can’t promise my father-in-law’s old laptop, on which the map is running, won’t blow up if you do. So be it. I say go for it! Let’s experiment with how much LLM scraping Rolf’s 8GB of RAM can take! 😉

Now, how was the map made? With my trusty GPT tools – that I”m spending all my spare time trying to turn into non-GPT tools by December 11. That’s coming along too.

First, I used Spatial Data Maker/Creator (I have trouble remembering the names of people, much less the AI tools I create 😉 to do some exhaustive research on this Polish-American hero. It took quite a while. One reason ChatGPT is getting rid of my GPTs is because they don’t charge for tokens while using them. I pinged them for plenty with this request. Hahahaha…

As an aside: we are moving out of the wild-west, Napster and bit-torrent phase of LLMs into the 99-cent a song buy music era. It’s about to get a lot more expensive – temporarily. Eventually, I imagine, once enough data-centers are built and perhaps after the AI bubble explodes, leaving only two or three major players left, we will roll into the streaming LLM era. Anyway, the Claude Cowork racket and ChatGPT Codex/Work bit… sure, it adds some quirky fun new features, but it’s just a way to allow these companies to start charging for things they were essentially providing for free to people that were paying $20 a month for $10,000 worth of tokens… At least, that’s my conspiratorial view. I could be as wrong as my neighbor who thinks the UN is plotting to take over the US, though. So take it or leave it. And… long live #Napster! Limewire… not so much. 🙁

Then I used the Web Mapper GPT to create the map. Yes.

I also used a new tool I’ve been developing on the side called TileStyler. It’s not ready for prime time yet, but it’s getting close.

Essentially it lets you design vector or PNG map tile styles from prompt for all the major tile providers. I’ve been using MapTiler tiles recently, because:

1. It’s an intuitive and robust ecosystem.
2. I met some of their team in Brno, and they were super kind.
3. Their cartographer, Petra, gave an epic talk at EuroCarto about map tile styling that I keep thinking about.
4. They’ve been kind enough to allow me to experiment with LLMs using their tilesets for the #365DaysOfMaps challenge. Thanks, Jiri!

So why not! The goal of this campaign is to be software agnostic and show that prompt cartography works across the board.

TileStyler created the basemap style for MapTiler. It’s supposed to be a bit antiquarian and not show too many modern things, because… the 1700s were different. Still working on font perfection in TileStyler, but it does the job well enough to use it today.

And honestly… this was the map I figured I would spend the last amount of time on this week. It’s Sunday – a day few people even look at these maps. I have an affinity for Leif Erickson – though, his story turned out to be less epic in reality than it had been in my mind. And this guy’s story… I mean… it’s insane. If people are pining for a sequel to the Hamilton musical – which would be difficult, because (spoiler) he dies in the play – then Casimir Pulaski could be the person.

I hope you enjoy this map as much as I enjoyed learning about this person and creating it. Thank you, Casimir Pulaski. And thank you everyone who read this far. Have a great day. 🙂

View map here

Web Mapper Prompt

Happy World Day against the Death Penalty!

First of all, I want to commend the organizers of this day for leaving no ambiguity about what is supposed to be celebrated today.

Seriously, it’s really a good thing to be against certain things, but most of marketing behind a majority of these days is opposed to the word “against”. They often end up with horrible titles… like “World Octopod Eating Day”, which you may be excused for thinking means you should celebrate eating octopus, but would likely — since as far as I’m aware, the day does not yet exist — be a day against eating octopus.

So today we have an against! Hip-hip-hooray! Enough with this “everything has to be a thumbs-up,” rah-rah crap! The world is full of bad things. Resist!

And that is why I chose it. I love being against things. I’m generally anti-establishment – to a fault. I even encourage my kids to break my own rules… leading to confusion and consternation all around. But I digress… there is no need to go into my lack of parenting skills.

This day gained particular prominence in my mind given the Untied States of America [sic] Secretary of War [sic] announced that he is going to “let” Americans watch the murder of a former US soldier who himself murdered a bunch of people.

This reminded me of when I went and watched Starship Troopers in the theater in Pecs, Hungary, back in 1998 with a cadre of British, German, Austrian, and Hungarian friends. We couldn’t stop talking about how ludicrous and comical it was. Absurd: live executions as reality television in a modern society? Hahaha…

But those were the Clinton years. These are the Trump ones. And so it is happening, I guess. Because… yeah, humans! [sigh]

So here is a map showing the counts of everyone that has been officially killed by any state government in the last 20 years – and with question marks for those countries that are killing thousands or hundreds and not reporting or being transparent. There is some data on why they were murdered – often drug related offenses.

And really, that’s all I have to say on the matter. Happy World Day against the Death Penalty!

This was a very fast map. Like… 15 minutes and most of that was waiting for it to collect and create the datasets (like 10). Simply a dataset creation and very short mapping prompt and done.

It’s Friday. I have to go play the Star War Deckbuilding Game at my friend’s house. I’m playing the Empire. Wait a second… 😮

Enjoy your World Day against the Death Penalty. Or as we say around here: have a nice Saturday.

View Map Here

Web Mapper GPT Prompt

Leif Erikson is very popular where I grew up. Minnesota was settled by Scandinavians. There were still Swedish, Norwegian, and even Finnish – verdict is still out if its part of Scandinavia, I know – newspapers in Duluth through World War II.

My home town has a Leif Erikson Park and a Leif Erikson replica knorr boat. We often ate lutefisk for special occasions regularly, which seems absurd in hindsight, since no one actually enjoyed it. My surname was Norwegian for foothill before I changed it. There were Swedish Lutheran churches and Norwegian Lutheran churches in the same town. And the Finns… they had their own town up north – Finland.

All of this is to say, when I saw what today represents, I got excited. I knew several Leifs in school – a more common name than Sven but not quite as popular as Bjorn. To be able to map the great Viking explorer… it’s an honor. My grandma would be proud. Seriously.

Leif holds an unprecedented place in my mind due to years of banal Viking-ism and passive indoctrination. Thus, imagine my surprise once I realized how minimal Leif’s exploits were (distance wise) compared to the Polynesians, etc. Admittedly, the waters of the North Atlantic and North Sea are definitely more unforgiving if you go overboard or get too wet. But the distances on an orthographic projection (and globe) look far more paltry than they do represented on a Mercator or Equal Earth projection. (Yeah, Equal Earth is earning its 15-minutes of fame right now, but it’s still a projection; all projections fail even their most fervent adherents at some point. Never marry a projection – metaphorically.)

No styling. No anything really. I asked my Data Creator agent to find Leif’s famous stops and rough coordinates. I asked Web Mapper to create the map. And I entered a free Mapbox token code to get the globe to show a dark base map.

The whole affair took about 10 minutes. And it’s good enough, because playoff baseball is on tonight, and honestly, little else matters in my life right now. I’m more addicted to baseball right now than the Wallander series earlier this year. And don’t even ask about the watching the Vikings… I gave up on that franchise a long time ago.

But I’ll never give up on the OG Viking – Leif Erikson.

So happy Leif Erikson Day everyone! If it weren’t for him and his fellow Norse raiders, the Irish wouldn’t have red hair, English wouldn’t have such diverse wording, and Iceland would have trees. Skol!!!

View map here

Original Web Mapper Prompt

Can you please create a 3D globe map that is locked to norhtern Europe the arctic area and north American for panning controls, etc. I would like it to show Leif Erikson’s travels over time. Dashed or dotted line progression between points. A forward and back button and consistently place info window (bottom on mobile). Please use Viking-esque/Nordic-esque (but readable) fonts and Viking-themed colors (not Minnesota Vikings but traditional colors.

No animations. Just forward and backward, beginning with the earliest.

Is it possible to add this to a MapLibre globe? Does TileMapper allow for global projections, because then I’ll add one of my styles from there. Thanks!

Today celebrates octopods. I do love octopods. I mean, they scare me too. I saw the movie Popeye in theaters as a young lad in the 1980s, and I was terrified of octopods for years afterward. Then I read a great New Yorker article about them, and I liked them again.

In sum: octopods get a bad rap. They have traditionally been used on maps – and elsewhere – to symbolize scary things. They aren’t scary; they are wicked smart! (I highly recommend the Netflix documentary “My otcopus teacher.” Amazing film!)

So naturally, I’m disinclined to go out of my way to disparage octopods. They already have an unearned reputation for being associated with bad things. Tainting people against octopods is one of the last things I would ever want to do…

But unfortunately, even though it’s last, it’s apparently still on the list. Let me explain….

Originally, I thought I’d make a global map of octopod sightings and locations using this gargantuan dataset my data agent found online. But after I downloaded over 100,000 sightings my python script – or the data server? – crapped out and since I’m exhausted and running out of time… another octopod as villain map is still available on the list.

But… I am at least tying it into other things. That makes it okay, right?

There was a film called Blackfish – another great documentary if you want to become depressed about the depravity of humans – I watched maybe 14 years ago… and there is the Bubonic Plague in the news today, which is often referred to as “black death,” even though it results in white spots in the lungs when x-rayed.

And so I thought: I can make one of those octopods as villain maps representing the potential contemporary outbreak of the black plague, which Russia is assuring me is not the black plague at all but just an unknown respiratory ailment that happened to kill an otherwise healthy 28-year old working at a black plague center. I mean… that makes about as much sense as a lot of the stuff the US government spouts these days, so… who am I to doubt, right?

So in sum:

• Octopods are not bad. They’re actually really smart and awesome. I love them! (Though, lobsters do not. So they aren’t bad for humans. They are for some sea life, however.)
• Blackfish is a great movie, that has nothing to do with octopods at all. Octopods aren’t fish. Orcas aren’t either, but blackfish is about orcas. But if you watch the movie it makes sense metaphorically.
• Black plague, and really – most likely – all types of plague, is bad for humans. I doubt it really impacts lobsters that much, but since I am in solidarity with lobsters (this week), I decided to represent black plague –which is very bad for humans with a 100% fatality rate when not treated immediately – as an evil (from the perspective of a lobster) octopod colored black like the plague and also metaphorically representing a black sheep, I suppose… though, there are no white sheep plagues, so to speak, and I actually really, really, really love all sheep. (I highliy recommend the film The Sheep Detective, which is not a documentary but you’d be mistaken for thinking it was one. Amazing!)

Without further ado, digression, or explanation – because only people that are truly guilty find the need to overly defend their decisions, though by no means am I implying that am guilty of anything here, of course, I’m just saying if I were guilty of laziness, last-minute slap-dashedry, well then I would probably try to over explain the folly of the map I’m about to present, but fortunately that is simply not the case here today – here is the World Octopus Day map.

P.S. I know the map isn’t completely accurate. It’s a pictorial representation of a nightmare scenario where a giant octopod in a hazmat suit gets into a plague lab in Irkutsk (of RISK fame!) and starts hurling the black plague globally. For those that are confused, it’s true: there aren’t really octopods in Central Asia, but I have seen one in a hazmat suit at a rave, I think, once.

Click to see full size version

Original ChatGPT Prompt from Phone