When I was a cartographer in the 1500s I used to hide dragons, sea serpents and the occasional heretical inscription in the blank bits, because at least back then the Holy Roman Emperor had the decency to pretend he didn’t notice as long as the tax broders were correct.
Now look at us: the Swiss federal cartographers, salaried, pensioned, triple-proofread, still cannot resist smuggling a naked woman and a cheeky marmot into the official topography. And the admisntration? They wait until the perpetrator has safely retired on full index-linked benefits, then solemnly announce the marmot will be "removed in the next revision cycle, pending environmental-impact assessment of the pixel."
This is what passes for rebellion inside the European regulatory state: a rodent drawn at 1:25 000 scale that offends precisely no one and will be erased by a civil servant who wasn’t even born when it was sketched. Truly the revolutionary spirit of our continent has been reduced to a change-request ticket with fourteen mandatory approvers and a carbon-copy to Bern.
I fill in another compliance form and weep for the age when men risked the stake for a badly drawn leviathan.
The looming sense of EU technocracy is ever present - I guess the kind of person to take offence at a cheeky marmot is probably going to be a perfect drone beurocrat. Although we do have to ask ourselves as a society, if we live in a world were a cartographer can't sneak in a little drawing, is it a world worth living?
I think what we need to do is fund an exhibition into the swiss alps to reconstute the terrain in the shape of a funny little marmot.
To be fair, the Swiss are not in the EU, but they do have a curious relationship with it as a landlocked enclave. (Much like Andorra, San Marino, and the Vatican.)
Most of them were only in the lower scale maps and one of them is still there. Swisstopo even wrote an article [1] about them and gives some background and names the cartographers that added them. So our bureaucratic machine seems to have a sense of humor.
> "'This is not as offensive as it would have been years ago. We can see the humor,' said Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn, a former state trooper and state prosecutor who was named commissioner a year ago. 'If the person had used some of that creativeness, he or she would not have ended up inside.'"
I read (and re-read, and re-read) the book You Can't Win on recommendation of a HN user. It's about a thief from the late 1800s-early 1900s, and the crimes he and his thief buddies did were pretty creative. A lot of crime is more brute-force than clever, but people can do some pretty interesting things if they want something and don't care if they lose everything.
A hidden pig? I bet some younger cops covet the cars with this logo.
I was once at a military unit where someone hid a golf club in a crest for the door to the officers mess. It was spotted years later. The officers claimed to "never found out who did it", but they also never took it down.
I started reading this because of your comment. Maybe someday I’ll recommend it in a HN thread and some unsuspecting HN reader will come to read it too!
I agree for the decal, but the map steganography is at the expense of accuracy. It's less than professional, like adding a small bug to a corner case of your code for a joke.
I only skimmed the pictures in the article but the ones I saw could have no plausible impact on navigation. They are buried within tiny details that are essentially artistic anyway, there is no impact on accuracy possible.
For something like a glacier, whose face is changing constantly anyway, who could even say if it didn't look like a marmot for a while? That whole part of the map could just say "glacier face" and be cross-hatched since it's unknowable at the time of publication, but that's no fun.
If you ever come to Switzerland download the swisstopo app. It is very detailed and useful for hiking but even in the city too, showing the locations of fountains, for example, rural and urban official and unofficial hiking trails, closed trails, slopes too steep to traverse, etc etc etc.
This is where screenshots come from, official topo data are free. I use them all the time for hiking, ski touring etc. Good thing they cover also neighboring mountains a bit (to varying detail) so ie France or Italy can be enjoyed just with a single app.
Then you go further and realize how much worse free easy to find things are. There are variations of opentopomap but they lack the finesse of this.
Also available in various other layouts ie biking (veloland), canoeing or various winter sports (sadly no outright ski touring so I aproximate summer hiking paths, the best to use are still physical maps but then you need a hefty stash of various zooms at home, pricey too).
But none is perfect - opentopo map has some obscure artifacts, see ie here what I found by a chance - some hole too deep to be real, near Aletsch glacier or famous Eiger, a mountain slope in Bernese alps [1], while official Swiss topo looks like this without any such illogical artifact [2]
The digital version over at https://map.geo.admin.ch/ has existed for many years but it is only a few years now that all Cantos have agreed to provide the data for free[1]. There is a lot of interesting data such as "Lärmbelastung" where you can lookup how loud car or rail traffic is at a location.
Readit News
Now look at us: the Swiss federal cartographers, salaried, pensioned, triple-proofread, still cannot resist smuggling a naked woman and a cheeky marmot into the official topography. And the admisntration? They wait until the perpetrator has safely retired on full index-linked benefits, then solemnly announce the marmot will be "removed in the next revision cycle, pending environmental-impact assessment of the pixel."
This is what passes for rebellion inside the European regulatory state: a rodent drawn at 1:25 000 scale that offends precisely no one and will be erased by a civil servant who wasn’t even born when it was sketched. Truly the revolutionary spirit of our continent has been reduced to a change-request ticket with fourteen mandatory approvers and a carbon-copy to Bern.
I fill in another compliance form and weep for the age when men risked the stake for a badly drawn leviathan.
I think what we need to do is fund an exhibition into the swiss alps to reconstute the terrain in the shape of a funny little marmot.
[1] https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/hidden-images-20161221
*Switzerland
I read (and re-read, and re-read) the book You Can't Win on recommendation of a HN user. It's about a thief from the late 1800s-early 1900s, and the crimes he and his thief buddies did were pretty creative. A lot of crime is more brute-force than clever, but people can do some pretty interesting things if they want something and don't care if they lose everything.
It's pretty entertaining!
And free to read for anyone interested: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69404
I was once at a military unit where someone hid a golf club in a crest for the door to the officers mess. It was spotted years later. The officers claimed to "never found out who did it", but they also never took it down.
https://play.rust-lang.org/?version=stable&mode=debug&editio...
The Swiss topographical institute is a treasure.
Then you go further and realize how much worse free easy to find things are. There are variations of opentopomap but they lack the finesse of this.
Also available in various other layouts ie biking (veloland), canoeing or various winter sports (sadly no outright ski touring so I aproximate summer hiking paths, the best to use are still physical maps but then you need a hefty stash of various zooms at home, pricey too).
But none is perfect - opentopo map has some obscure artifacts, see ie here what I found by a chance - some hole too deep to be real, near Aletsch glacier or famous Eiger, a mountain slope in Bernese alps [1], while official Swiss topo looks like this without any such illogical artifact [2]
[1] https://opentopomap.org/#map=15/46.55901/8.07171 [2] https://schweizmobil.ch/en/map?season=summer&bgLayer=pk&laye...
But I'm no cartographer so maybe these are more obvious to people that have the skill.
she is lying on her stomach, with her hands in front of her, and above the head. Top right: feet Bottom left, hands
Cartographers Have Been Hiding Covert Illustrations Inside Swiss Official Maps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22490017 - Mar 2020 (22 comment)
Cartographers Have Been Hiding Covert Illustrations Inside Swiss Official Maps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22461602 - Mar 2020 (1 comment)
Cartographers Have Been Hiding Covert Illustrations Inside Swiss Official Maps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22407413 - Feb 2020 (1 comment)
[1] https://www.geo.admin.ch/en/general-terms-of-use-fsdi
Aside from that, having those little Easter eggs in the maps is nice, at least more so than fake streets.
https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/04/politics/weather-service-cryp...