The map library

:thinking: I’m guessing that, in Florida, they aren’t counting the collapse of gypsum stacks to be a “landslide”?

And I’m also guessing that a collapse of the Thwaites Glacier, causing inundation, isn’t a “landslide” either.

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Made me think of this,

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Labrador is pretty but full of black flies. Honestly I wouldn’t connect to it either.

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Yes. Its refusal to move is quite odd. Who would want to remain incontinent?

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New map for the library:

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Making me blush

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I was explaining to my kids the other day that there are more people in the city called Tokyo than there are in Australia. They couldn’t quite process what that would look like.

I mean, by most standards Sydney is a big city with 5 million people. On a clear day we can faintly see downtown from high on a hill on the edge of the metro region. And we’ve been up Centrepoint Tower and had a look around. So the scale of Sydney is huge but still makes sense. When I told them “more than seven Sydnies” they just stopped. “Nope. Not getting it.”

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It really is mind-bending. When you take a train into Tokyo from any direction, you start seeing all these huge skyscrapers everywhere, and you think, “Wow, this is Tokyo!” But you’re actually just getting into the main suburbs, and Tokyo is still half an hour away. If you don’t know the station names, you wouldn’t even know when you cross into Tokyo.

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I think it gets even mind-bending with these facts:

  • Japan and California are almost the same size (by land mass)
  • Some 77% of Japan is uninhabitable/undeveloped
  • Tokyo is about the same size as LA county
  • The entire population of California is about the same as the population of Tokyo
  • Japan is about 4% of the size of the US by land mass
  • Japan’s population is about 40% smaller than the US

I don’t know what that all means other than in Japan there’s a shitload of people on a very small amount of habitable land without many natural resources. It’s no surprise that the Japanese are so innovative around making the most of small spaces and avoiding wasteful behavior.

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I had to travel to Hiroshima area and a manager wanted to know if I could swing by Sapporo while I was there, as if it was just down the road. He had absolutely no idea how large the country is. A bit like asking if I can swing by New Orleans while I’m in Chicago

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10 out of 10 for anyone who got the “move” part. It was hard for me to produce. Bonus points for anyone who got the preceding sentence.

All the big cities on the coastal plains make it easy to forget how mountainous and forested Japan is. It’s fun to Zoom out on Google Maps with the satellite imagery and the topographical maps.

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