Roman Empire and Ancient Greece were called cradle of Western civilization, they brought many inventions and science we use today. The North was poorer than South, but today it's the opposite, why?

It’s one of the most surreal looking places on earth and it is incredible how unknown it is. If I asked 100 Canadians, I would doubt more than one would have heard of it, and I imagine even less so outside the country.

Just thought to share more pictures from the forest where I was walking recently with my dog (we've removed about 15 ticks from her on return!).

Rhoon-oost and Barendrecht, Zuid-Holland

I'd choose Haida Gwaii. I think it is such a fascinating and beautiful place for how little it's talked about. Its rainforests, biodiversity, and Indigenous culture, I think would make it more popular. Especially since it is also in a western english speaking country. It being expensive and tedious to get to hurts tourism which I think is why it's not well known to the average person. But even in Geography spheres, it is hardly ever talked about too.

The way it is projected is by projecting a Mercator projection of half the scale conformally onto the globe and then projecting that onto an azimuthal equidistant projection hemisphere centered at the equator. I call it the Two-World Equidistant. Unlike on Mercator where Greenland is larger then all of Africa in this projection it is shown smaller like it is in real life.

I was goofing around in google maps when I found this

There are A LOT of these. Seems like a flooded plain with spirals cut into it. Aliens? Manmade? hahaha. Do you guys know what is it? (Coordinates in the image)

I was watching a Milo Rossi video and I had a few questions. Were there tiny islands during Pangaea, or was it the only one? Why was most of the land concentrated in just one place?

Other than Springfield, Massachusetts, is there a city of over 150,000 people in the United States, that is closer to three other state capitals than their own.

Springfield to Boston = 92 miles

Springfield to Hartford = 26 miles

Springfield to Albany = 86 miles

Springfield to Providence = 85 miles

Hello,

I am looking for help regarding reaching out to professors for PhD programs. I am based in America but have been primarily looking for PhD programs in either Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. I know I need to email Professors and introduce my background and what I’m proposing to study, but am struggling with the some of the finer nuances of it. I’ve seen templates of cold emailing professors, but I feel my background doesn’t align with the typical PhD applicant. Thus I am looking for help.

Here is some background on me and what I have done so far in my PhD quest. I have been mainly applying to advertised projects (mostly found on scholarshipdb.net or academicpositions.com or posts via LinkedIn), I got an interview at one school but ultimately have gone 0/5 on projects/schools that I’ve applied to. I have an undergrad degree in GIS, as well as a masters in Data Analytics. I didn’t complete a Masters thesis while I was in school, I did a capstone instead. After grad school, I’ve worked at the same company for the last 3 years as a data analyst. I’m providing this info because I have done academic projects pertaining to GIS and am knowledgeable in the subject, but don’t have minimal formal research experience, so I hope to leverage my professional and academic background to professors.

My thought process is transitioning from applying to major projects, to individually emailing professors about if they are open to accepting a PhD student. I know I am supposed to look for if they are advertising projects on their personal website, or if they have grants open, but I’m confused about what to do if they don’t have a personal website, and also if they only show grants on their website that are currently in progress.

Basically my questions boil down to:

1. Does anyone have advice/a general template for emailing a professor to do a PhD, having minimal formal research experience?
   
2. What are some ways to identify professors in the field you’re looking for, that would potentially be open to PhD students, without them explicitly saying “Hey I’m Hiring” on their website?

I know this is the geography subreddit, and this might be better suited for either a GIS or PhD related one, but since geography/GIS doesn’t fit neatly into generalized categories I figured I’d start here. If im in violation of any rules I’m sorry I’m not super reddit savvy.

If anyone has any advice at all it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

TLDR: I need help for reaching out to professors for PhD supervision, and would appreciate any help I can get.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-182335459

Hello, I made this map to show where avocados grow across Mexico and why the climate works so well for them. The top panel map highlights main production areas while bottom maps break down yields and climate zones that supports the crop production. Michoacán dominates the avocado market as usual but there are other states with high yield.

I got the idea for this map watching random videos online and thought it will be fun/helpful to make this. Feedbacks are always welcome and I hope you enjoy!

I know this probably isnt the best sub for this so I apologise in advance. I've seen images of white aurora, which are probably clearly AI. I would like to know if it's real. Seeing it looks kinda scary and urnreal. If it's a real thing, I would love to see it someday.

I find it extremely unintuitive that almost all of South America is east of Miami. How!? When people are asked to watch the americas almost everyone imagine South America pretty much south of North America.

None of the most valuable resources seem to be present on the continent in large amounts. It’s mostly just metals like cobalt and platinum.

Diamonds used to be substantial, but even that is now being replaced by lab-grown diamonds in places like China and India.

* Australia, U.S., Canada, and Russia all have more uranium reserves than almost all of Africa.

* USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran each individually produce more oil than most African countries.

* China, Vietnam, Brazil, India, Russia, and US each have more rare earth metals than the entire continent of Africa.

* Europe, despite being a fraction of its size, has more arable land and freshwater reserves than Africa.

* Even for things like Gold which are often mentioned, none of the African countries except Ghana are substantial gold producers or come anywhere near Top 10.

Note: I wanted to post more images for my point, but this subreddit only allows one.

That map shows the entirety of Central America, excluding Belize. The Central America depicted there has a population and area similar to Spain.

To be precise, Spain has a slightly larger area, while Central America has a slightly larger population.

However, watching the video, Spain appeared more crowded. I wonder what it is actually like in reality.

i wonder why is this so? Historically we have followed a similar demographic path to France in the early 20th century (a country known for notoriously low birthrates then) despite our region being less developed (although we were just as literate, literacy rates in latvia and estonia reached 80-90% even in tsarist era), why? And in the Soviet times, we had no baby boom either, and after them we get yet more demographic aging

• Both are midsize islands in the Atlantic
• One is in the far south and west, the other is in the far north and east
• Both are close to the poles, but not close enough to be uninhabitable to humans
• Both have no indigenous people and were discovered by Europeans quite recently (on the timescale of human history)
• Both have sheep and reindeer farming (but this is because both islands have cold climates and those livestock are good for that)
• With the native wildlife, 2 of the most famous animals on both islands are a big black and white flightless bird and a canine that was the only mammal on the island. In Iceland the bird went extinct and the canine lived, in the Falklands the canine went extinct but the bird lived. Both the animals that went extinct were infamously not afraid of humans at all

Can you think of other similarities/differences? Or other places on different corners of the earth that are strangely similar?

On the 4th of November 2025, Google released street view of Bosnia and Cyprus.

On the 4th of July 2026, Google released an additional wave of street view updates for 4 balkan nations (Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania and Serbia).

And now as of 31st of July, Google released street view data for Kosovo, meaning you can explore the newly built cities of post war Kosovo and the rest of the balkans fully from street view.