[My usual FB shtick: negative intro, positive pointer.] The word ‘mapping’ has been kicking around for decades, and it’s largely devolved into meaning “a small group of people struggling with technology to recycle some 1950s idea without realizing it.” So I spend less and less time tuning in to map-based projects. But this one is something (and visually interesting in part because they sidestepped the ooh-aah “luminous city” trope). This map of “Communist Party membership and support 1920–1948” is really eye-opening because the patterns of distribution aren’t statistical abstractions — they’re material histories of expansion. People forget just how red the US was before the Cold War (and a lot of that ‘anger’ out there is exacerbated by being misnamed). (Via [JD]], maybe?)