To be clear, this is a comment on a hero graphic—not an actual graphic representing data. Nevertheless, it does represent the borders of states within the United States. Most obviously, because there is not a giant state called Mosquita occupying the centre of the United States.
(Fun fact: there is a Mosquito Coast located in Central America. Today it forms the eastern coast of Nicaragua and part of Honduras. I had a lot more written here, but it became more a post about colonial-era history of Central America than about this map.)
My gripe here was how water boundaries were treated. You can see in the original above, we have dashed lines demarcating the borders between US states separated by water, e.g. Illinois and Michigan. They also demarcate the border between the United States and Canada, e.g., the Juan de Fuca Strait between Washington and Vancouver Island. But what about separating Long Island and Connecticut. Similarly, Delaware Bay is blank. And Chesapeake Bay admittedly has a line across it, but it is a solid line whereas the established design uses dashed lines.
I quickly edited the map to highlight some of the needs with orange. lines Nothing crazy but just minor irritations in this design. Kind of like mosquitos. Just a little annoying.
The rest of the article contains no other maps or data visualisation of which to speak. It is basically a listicle with ten states with lots of mosquitos. I quietly had hoped there would be more data visualisation here, alas, no.
I wonder if the designer had a Midwestern bias
Credit for the piece goes to Razvan Prunea.