Mercator ↔ Equal Earth
- ID
- 22211
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 08 Sep 2026, 12:24 AM
- Fetched
- 08 Sep 2026, 6:28 AM
- Provider
- Simon Willison
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/7/equal-earth/
- Source URL
- https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/
Summary
- Score
- 5.0
- Created
- 08 Sep 2026, 6:29 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- vibe_codersdevelopers
What happened
Simon Willison used GPT-6 Astra (medium) in ChatGPT Work to build an interactive D3 visualization that animates between Mercator and Equal Earth map projections via a slider. The Equal Earth projection was recently voted on at the UN, prompting the experiment.
Why it matters
A concrete example of using a frontier LLM to scaffold a working interactive D3 visualization from a curiosity-driven prompt — useful as a vibe-coding reference for how far current models can get with geospatial tooling without manual D3 expertise.
Discussion angle
How well do current frontier models handle niche library code like D3 projections out of the box, and what does that mean for developers who previously needed specialized geospatial knowledge?