This is exceedingly cool:
What is this
This is a map of every person counted by the 2010 US and 2011 Canadian censuses. The map has 341,817,095 dots - one for each person.
Why?
I wanted an image of human settlement patterns unmediated by proxies like city boundaries, arterial roads, state lines, &c. Also, it was an interesting challenge.
Who is responsible for this?
The US and Canadian censuses, mostly. I made the map. I'm Brandon Martin-Anderson.
Kieran Huggins came to the rescue with spare server capacity and technical advice once this took off.
Unfortunately, I can't quite pick myself out of the crowd...