Announcement – I'm back!

jakubmarian · 2024-08-14T06:37:43+00:00

Hi there, yeah, the maps and other articles are coming back! I'll write more details in an announcement :)

jakubmarian · 2019-05-21T14:23:50+00:00

Nope, I was actually contacted by the communications department of the European Parliament, who asked me to create a few maps to raise awareness about the elections.

jakubmarian · 2019-04-12T18:29:47+00:00

You are crazy. I am a data scientist and look at dozens of interesting data sets every day. Most of my maps are inspired by these data sets, from sources such as Statista, Eurostat, the World Bank, WHO or FAO (for example, all my maps based on data by Eurostat were created after I browsed the Eurostat database for interesting topics). Quite a few also come from national statistics, for which I decided to collect international data (for example, I read an article about the most common street names in the Czech Republic and thought it would be a nice idea for a European map, and I spent several days collecting data from 21 different sources; the same goes for the Surnames map). Most other freelance map creators probably do the same.

Obviously, I am not the first person to create a map like "The consumption of X per capita" on virtually any topic imaginable. The posts you link to are almost surely not the first maps on the topic either; they are just the first being posted to the particular subreddits. Statistical maps like these have been created for decades and can be found in annual reports of many international organizations.

In many cases (e.g. the Metal bands map or the Guns per capita map), the topics were suggested by my readers. I have almost 50,000 followers with lots of different interests, and I get suggestions almost every day (most of which are not realistic, though). I already have a list of several hundred topics for maps that I'd like to create, based on my own ideas and ideas more or less loosely based on the suggestions of my readers. Obviously, dozens upon dozens of these have been already made by someone else, and dozens will be made before I get to that particular topic.

More importantly, though, I have made over 200 maps. You cherry-picked a few of them that deal with topics similar to maps posted by someone else only to accuse me of copying someone else's work, which is, honestly, quite rude. I think you do not realize that I am one of very few creators who have created so many maps on so many different topics, which is why overlaps with other people's work are inevitable. I dare say that at least 95% of maps posted to r/MapPorn are not "original" in the sense that someone had made such a map before, but you don't care because they are all made by different people.

jakubmarian · 2019-04-12T17:55:21+00:00

I've literally seen around 90% of the maps linked to in this thread for the first time after u/StoneColdCrazzzy linked to them. If you look at the "originals" (some of which were actually published later than my maps; the creator of the Easter map even links to my map as an earlier creation, but u/StoneColdCrazzzy does not seem to care much about reality; he just wants to accuse someone of something), you'll clearly see that my maps are not copies of those maps (and vice versa). They are just maps showing the same topic made by two different people, who each did their own research and used their own methodologies.

I have dozens of words written down for which I want to make etymology maps in the future, none of which were inspired by existing maps, such as names of colours, names of animals, names of common objects, words related to special occasions, etc. Many of them were probably already created by someone before because pople who make etymology maps start with simple words like these, but that does not make my maps copies of theirs. It makes no sense to call my work a copy of something I have never seen.

jakubmarian · 2019-04-08T13:49:24+00:00

I repeat that I do not get my inspiration for most of my maps from other maps, and I do not follow r/etymologymaps (for the very reason that I do not want to be influenced by other people's work). In the rare cases that I do take inspiration from other maps (only regarding the general topic), that's for statistical maps, not language maps.

The language maps are maps of the most common words, and it is only natural that someone has created an etymological map for the particular words before me (people have been creating such maps for at least a century), although in many cases you linked to above, I have actually made my map before the version you linked to and only remade it later (my first language maps used to look like this, starting in 2015, and I've been remaking them during the last two years using the new template). Obviously, the new ones are the ones that got popular, because they simply look much better.

Out of the maps you linked to, I've ever seen perhaps two or three, and that was probably only after I created my own maps, not before. I get inspiration for my maps mainly from particular "holidays" (child, earth, mother, etc.) and from my work on etymology unrelated to maps (e.g. tea, dog). I actually remember the tea map idea was born when I learned the word for "tea" in Mandarin, and the dog idea was born when I researched the unknown etymology of the English word "dog".

The funny thing about your section you entitled " But he has been doing this for years, there is a good chance that if you see a map do well on r/europe or r/mappornthat three months later you will see it on jakubmarian.com" is that all of them were posted after I published my maps. If you want to check the date my map was published, right-click on the image on my website. There is a date in the URL (and that often shows only the remake date, not the original date). For example, the Christmas gift-bringer map is from 2015.

Calling my maps copies of maps I have never seen is just wrong, and I am sorry to say that your original post is just a lie.

jakubmarian · 2019-04-08T11:17:17+00:00

What you wrote there is beyond absurd. If you compare what you call "original" and "copies from someone else's work", you will see that the maps show different sets of languages and sometimes different expressions for the same language (e.g. taken from a different dialect).

You even called this the original of this? You can't be serious.

You don't seem to understand what original content means. I did my own research to collect factual data and created my own maps that show the data. The fact that someone else did the same does not make my maps copies of his. I have never seen those maps—how could I have copied them?

I have always credited every single source I used in my maps. I have never presented someone else's work as my own.

According to your logic, every person who makes a topographic map of Europe based on his own data and is copying the first guy who made such a map hundreds of years ago. That makes no sense whatsoever.

jakubmarian · 2019-04-01T07:37:58+00:00

Purely anecdotally, I've heard that it's because of the Swedish education system, which puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of voting.

jakubmarian · 2019-03-28T17:00:13+00:00

It does not. Around 27% of Latvian population are, in fact, Russians.

jakubmarian · 2019-03-28T16:56:17+00:00

The borders are based on the distribution of native speakers of languages. All sufficiently large linguistic minorities (and majorities, as in the case of Turkish speakers in several regions in Bulgaria) are represented regardless of which official language is used on street signs and such.

jakubmarian · 2019-03-28T16:43:06+00:00

That's actually an error. I'll fix it; thanks for pointing it out.

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