From xkcd, a look at what your favorite map projection says about you. Strange geographies: Ransom Riggs on beautiful, alien Iceland. Atlas Obscura visits New Iceland, a settlement in Manitoba established in 1875; Tristan da Cunha, the world's most remote permanent settlement; and the Republic of Molossia, the smallest country in the world. From National Geographic, a look at the ten least crowded places in the world. Researchers flying over West Antarctica were at the right place at the right time, spotting an actively growing rift that they expect will spawn an iceberg about 10 times the size of Manhattan. Why not build your own island country? An interview with Eric Klien, whose effort to create a seastead called the Atlantis Project in the early 90s fizzled out due to lack of interest. David Brin on seasteading and some problems on the way to Castle Sovereign. Sometimes, fascinating maps are resistant to exegesis — maybe because all they need to explain is right there, in the image itself. A not-so-straight story: The American-Canadian border, famously said to run straight across the 49th parallel for hundreds of miles, actually zigzags. It’s complicated: Haley Sweetland Edwards on 5 puzzling international borders. Haley Sweetland Edwards on 7 giant fences dividing good neighbors. Martin W. Lewis on contested French islands and sea-space in the western Indian Ocean. Here is the website with sample chapters from The New Atlas of World History: Global Events at a Glance. Two sunken islands almost at the site of Tasmania have been discovered in the Indian Ocean west of the Australian city of Perth. Herman Sorgel’s Atlantropa is the craziest, most megalomaniacal scheme from the 20th century you never heard of.
