Oceanfront Property

If you’re into this whole “climate change threatens coastal ecosystems” thing (and you should be, because, you know, science and all that), Climate Central has an interactive map that shows how sea-level rise could affect coastal areas.

Here’s Houston, Texas with a one-foot rise in sea levels:

Screen Shot 2016-04-08 at 1.08.09 PM

And here it is with a ten-foot rise: Continue reading

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Texas Is Bigger than…

You may have seen a meme (the idea kind of meme, not the image macro kind) going around comparing states of the northeastern U.S. to urban areas of Texas, like this one showing that Connecticut is about the same size as Houston:

Via The Bull / Facebook

Via The Bull / Facebook

(h/t G)

I found a site (MAPfrappe) that lets you do this by tracing outlines on the map, then dragging them around for comparison’s sake. It even adjusts your outline to account for the Mercator projection. I used it to make an outline of Oahu to show that it’s about the same size as Austin, but then wondered why I spent time doing that when I could have traced Texas in order to compare it to other places around the world.

You can use my outline to compare Texas around the world, too, but here are a few comparisons: Continue reading

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We Will Be Assimilated

I’m not sure if “Space Station Earth” looks more like the Death Star (as Gizmodo‘s Darren Orf thinks) or like the Earth a few centuries after the Borg take over. Here’s its take on downtown Austin:

(I took a screen capture in case the map doesn’t embed.)

Regardless, Mapbox Studio seems like a pretty awesome website.

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The History of the United States in One GIF

Animated U.S. history

Click to embiggen.

From a set posted by dayyad to Imgur.

The GIF only covers the time period from 1789 to the present, so it leaves out a lot of colonies and (going further back) nations, but there’s only so much you can pack into one animated GIF.

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