For every locality on Earth, how far is the nearest hospital? Naively, that's 437 billion great-circle distances. S2 cell indexing reduces it to a single integer range-join: build the index once, and the answer for every place on Earth comes back in seconds. The same primitive also resolves which country, region, and locality each hospital belongs to, in a single pass over one index.

NC families with disabled children press lawmakers to maintain funding as federal Medicaid cuts loom; Ex-residents of Chicago apartment building targeted in massive immigration raid seek millions in damages

Proposed ordinance would require licenses in all zoning districts, replace public hearings with administrative review

Looks like Boston TV channel WCVB’s Chronicle newsmagazine turned its attention to maps last week: there were profiles of Map Center owner Andrew Middleton, cartographer Andy Woodruff and the Leventhal Map Center, plus pieces on… More

I spent some time playing with the Open Data published by the City of Milan, aiming to visualize public transport coverage. While I managed to create a heatmap, I was left unsatisfied by the data presentation and format. The initiative is promising but could be dramatically improved by adopting modern standards like GeoJSON instead of Shapefiles and including simple preview capabilities.