An American Mosaic

Yesterday’s New York Times showed a big map on the front cover with several pages of other maps from U.S. census data. An American Mosaic shows how people identify their ancestry. 

Image via New York Times - I’ve manipulated it to add the legend. 

There are maps that accompany the article as well as an interactive map where you can find dig deeply into any area of the country. Here is greater Atlanta with a census tract in the southeast part of the city highlighted.

Here is the colorful southern California mosaic with a “Mexican” Santa Catalina Island.

One interesting aspect of the interactive algorithm is how when you’re zoomed way out the less common ethnicities show up,

but then disappear as you zoom in favoring the more common ones.

I have not fully taken the time to appreciate all of these yet. I would like to point out the map that annoys me though.

How do descendants of the British Isles get to be called “American”? Perhaps they self identify as such but so do I. My ancestors came here to escape persecution in Eastern Europe and were happy to shed their Russian or Ukrainian or Polish identities to consider themselves American. People from the British Isles were not the first ones here if anyone need reminding of that. Anyway I’ll get off my soapbox and end with this map from the article showing the national origins as they were in 1776. Enjoy exploring here.

U.S. Map Mislabels Every African Country

 At a global AIDS conference the U.S. State Department showed this map of Africa. 

-map via Reuters, reformatted to better fit the page.

Every country is incorrectly located and indicated with ridiculous shapes. Nigeria, where the US has troops deployed is shown in the middle of the Sahara desert and about twice its actual size. 

The Reuters article mentions a visible artificial intelligence watermark indicating it was made with OpenAI. It does bear similarities with other AI-generated maps, particularly the bulbous Ghana-Côte d’Ivoire mashup that points to southwestern Africa and the Cameroon dot going nowhere. The color scheme is awful too. A perfect example of bad AI meeting geographic illiteracy in an incompetent, uncaring government. 

Where is Jimothy?

At a recent meeting, it came up that someone was looking at mapping Jimothy. As someone who is blissfully unaware of most social media trends, my first question was who? Obviously the next question was, is there a map? Of course there is!

For those as unaware as I was Jimothy is a raccoon with an unverified spinal condition who roams around Seattle and stares back at people until they’re uncomfortable. He’s had songs, tattoos and memes in his honor. Next week he will be celebrated at a Seattle Mariners game. Here he is napping in the Ballard area.

The problem with this site is that there are only 4 sightings reported and all on the same week. However, you can add your own.

I have an additional sighting; at the weather desk.

Finally here is an updated Seattle neighborhood map from Jill Avey on LinkedIn.

Mapping Illegal Dump Sites

Way back in 1990 I went to Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia) to volunteer for a mapping project. We mapped illegal dump sites in the Krka River valley. Unfortunately I don’t have any of those maps now, but here in Philadelphia they are doing a similar citizen mapping initiative as documented in the Inquirer.

Participants gathered at an event last week to mark up paper maps just like we did 36 years ago. Here is a better look at one of the maps.

-via Philadelphia Inquirer

The event was organized by the Trash Academy who also keep an interactive digital map of these sites with clickable content.

Here’s the citywide picture.

From their web page:

“Earning it the title of ‘Filthadelphia’, the trash and litter that defaces the streets of our city is an apt metaphor for the systematic devaluation of underserved communities.”

Illustrated Mapmaking Contest - 2026

 The Osher Map Library in Portland, Maine recently posted their 2026 Illustrated Mapmaking Competition results. These are maps made by school children in Maine in the 4th-6th grade range. First prize went to The Broken Islands by Jacob S., a 6th grader at Brunswick Junior High School.

Most of these maps are of fantasy lands, some from literature and other purely made up. I don’t have a strong familiarity with today’s children’s literature or movies so I am probably missing some of the references. Here are some of my favorites from the honorable mentions.

Rough Ridge Mountain Bike Trails by Foster B. of Montville.

Ipad Isles by Aster B. of Brunswick

I love how apps such as the weather and health are classified as boring.

The Land of Three Colors by Erin Q. of Brunswick (a town very well represented here)

This is really three color palettes but I’m not going to get too uptight about that.

Pine Tree State by Darcy Q. also of Brunswick.

An actual place! Nicely done!

Finally, just in time for lunch, Pizza Island by Katie Cahoon of York.

You can see all of the maps here.

Cancer Maps

Dr. Jospeh Fraumeni, a pioneering researcher of epidemiology, died a couple of weeks ago. Among his achievements were the first maps of cancer deaths in the United States. Here are two early maps.

These maps eventually became an atlas of cancer mortality published by the National Cancer Institute. You can see the entire atlas here but be warned, it’s huge and may take a long time to load.

The atlas maps begin with overall maps, broken down by race and gender before breaking them down further by types of cancer.

There is a bias in that there are many more maps showing white people than black and no other races (or genders) are accounted for. Anyway it is interesting to see the male/female contrasts here-above is white male, below white female.

One difference that really stands out is “cancer alley” in Louisiana. Are males contracting cancer at work, where presumably there are fewer females employed in these chemical industries? Similar disparities appear in coastal parts of Georgia, the Carolinas and Texas. Here are the maps for blacks. Notice the they do not have the finer county breakdown, nor is there data for the earlier 1950-69 time period.

All of these maps show a similar pattern of lower rates in the southeast and southwest. You can see more, including interactive and story maps at gis.cancer.gov. Here is a sample from the urban-rural disparity story map. I manipulated this image slightly so the legend and map appear together.

This quote from the gis.cancer site summarizes Dr Fraumeni's ideas that led to developing these maps. “The spatial context in which people live is an important factor in cancer etiology and outcomes influencing a person’s risk of developing cancer, accessibility and quality of preventive and treatment services, and quality of life after surviving cancer.“

Skpe a Scientist

Skype a Scientist is an organization that matches scientists with classrooms across the United States. Their annual United States of Science Challenge seeks to fill a certain number of classrooms in each state with donations. This map is a bit, ummm, unscientific maybe but it shows empty bubbles as classrooms waiting to be matched (?)

I’m not sure what the Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty is doing inside two of the three Wyoming bubbles, or for that matter why Wyoming only has three bubbles. He’s also hiding in small bubbles in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Also, the colors only seem to exist as some kind of regional differentiation. Most states appear to be full but there are still opportunities within most regions of the country.