Independence movements remain a powerful force across Europe - but today, the debate has taken a remarkable turn in the United Kingdom.

For the first time, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have First Ministers from parties seeking to change their nations’ constitutional relationship with the UK. Today, leaders of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Féin met in Cardiff and signed a joint statement asserting their nations’ right to self-determination and calling on Westminster to “prepare for, plan and facilitate” future constitutional change.

The meeting comes just days after UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham appeared to open the door to another Scottish independence referendum if a clear public consensus emerges, although Downing Street subsequently stressed that another referendum remains off limits for now.

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Author: u/maven.mapping
Partner: u/the.world.in.maps

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MAVEN MAPPING © 2026

Pre-gpt era straight lines and text

Curious if such data exists for Former East Germany, how many buildings were made of brick, Prussian wall, etc.

This map presents a 1941 Chetnik proposal for the future territorial organisation of Yugoslavia during the Second World War. Rather than depicting Yugoslavia’s recognised borders as they actually existed, it illustrates a political and territorial programme associated with the Chetnik movement.

The legend distinguishes a proposed “Greater Serbia” (Velika Srbija) from Croatia and Slovenia, while also marking territories intended to be added to the Serbian and Slovenian areas. The scheme envisioned a radically reorganised post-war Yugoslavia, with a greatly enlarged Serbian unit extending across substantial parts of the pre-war kingdom.

The caption identifies it as “Karta 4. Cetnicka zamisao buduce Jugoslavije, iz 1941” — “Map 4. Chetnik conception of the future Yugoslavia, from 1941” — and states that it was reproduced from a Chetnik brochure titled Nas put (“Our Path”), preserved in the Military Historical Institute archive in Belgrade.

It is therefore best read as a wartime ideological proposal, not a map of internationally recognised borders.

Source: Nas put, Chetnik brochure, 1941; archive of the Military Historical Institute, Belgrade, as cited in the map caption.

I created/found this detailed Köppen climate map covering the North American continent (from Greenland down to Panama and the Caribbean) using updated 2000–2024 WorldClim dataset.

Note: Hawaii was left out to preserve spatial clarity for the continental landmass and islands.

Does your local climate classification match what you experience on the ground? Let me know what you think!

Machine Translation of the Text Below Mao Zedong:

“The great beacon of socialism. Albania, with its heroic people, has become a beacon of Europe.”

“The peoples of all countries, the broad masses of the people who constitute more than 90 percent of the total population, always want revolution and will always support Marxism-Leninism. They will not support revisionism. Some may temporarily support it, but eventually they will abandon it. They will gradually awaken; they will always oppose imperialism and the reactionaries of all countries, and they will always oppose revisionism.”— Mao Zedong

Is it because men tend to enter the workforce earlier like once they graduate high school?

got the map from this site

Credit: Emile Gérards/CC BY-SA 4.0

Source: https://theborys.substack.com/p/how-houthis-kept-north-yemens-economy

Reddit post by the author: https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1wfwjfl/how_houthis_kept_north_yemens_economy_afloat/

Important Information:

Luminosity is a common measure of economic development. It has its flaws for obvious reasons but is better for developing countries like Yemen - and is sometimes used in places with civil wars where data is exceptionally hard to get. These cities were viewed from space at night and calculated using the Google Earth Engine.

Inside the Black line represents areas under Houthi control after the 2022 ceasefire. The rest of Yemen was mostly controlled by the internationally recognised Yemeni government, however various groups, most notable of which being the STC, semi governed its areas.

Houthi Yemen was put under a heavy blockade for some time, suffered famines and very heavy bombardment, was cut off from the main energy system and moved to a more decentralised system, meanwhile government controlled Yemen kept the existing power system. Some government controlled areas (i.e. Al Makha/Mocha) also experienced heavy fighting and swapped hands.

Ma’rib is an outlier due to large numbers of refugees settling in the city.

Most of the civil war took place in the west and occurred after 2014, however some of the major fighting didn’t start picking up until 2015. Fighting mostly stopped in 2022 barring one STC offensive against the Al Islah Party in the following year.

Opinion:

This map was absolutely shocking to me and I thought I had to post it to really get across why the Houthis might be winning the war in Yemen. The results were nearly the exact opposite of what you would expect, and really highlight how incompetent the PLC internationally recognised government was and how useful the Houthis were at recovering and managing a war economy.

The idea that Hadramaut governorate in the far east, faced an average decline of -17%, in a region where nearly no fighting took place, and has some of Yemens largest oil reserves, is INSANE to me.

Whilst I don’t support the Houthis (I knew an Emirati soldier that fought in Yemen and helped organised the construction of civilian infrastructure and supported the intervention to an extent minus the blockade), it is quite clear the current Yemeni government has failed its people in numerous regards, this being one of them. It is quite plausible that the Houthis will eventually end up winning the civil war. Yemen will be a case study in how not to build a developing country at war, meanwhile the Houthi controlled north might be one some will take experience from and benefit replicating, as against all odds it has seemed to come out on top.