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The Dayak people of Indonesia and Malaysia celebrate their heritage with an annual festival on June 1 every year that includes this intricate layer cake https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kek-lapis-sarawak
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The Muslim holiday of Ramadan is celebrated, in part, by fasting between sunrise and sunset. This year, Ramadan falls in April and May, making the sunrise-to-sunset period longer -- in some cases, substantially longer -- in northern locations. This geo-graphic shows the current fasting time in a sampling of world cities. www.statista.com/chart/17874/ramadan-daily-fasting-hours-selected-cities
The massive Hindu festival of Kumbh Mela is held on a 12-year cycle and attracts tens of millions of pilgrims, making Kumbh Mela the world's largest peaceful gathering. This year, Indian authorities will be struggling to balance a new surge of COVID infections with an estimated 150 million people expected to travel to and from Haridwar, in northern India, for the Kumbh Mela festivities that began earlier this month will continue into late April. (Biggest crowds are expected on April 12, April 14, April 21, and April 27.) www.financialexpress.com/lifestyle/travel-tourism/kumbh-mela-coronavirus-hardiwar-kumbha-meal-covid-updates-uttarkhand-tirath-singh-rawat-kumbh-shahi-snan-dates/2217214/
A recent study finds that how Americans view older people varies with the state. States in the South and Northeast, for example, have more negative attitudes toward old people than states in the Pacific Northwest and Rockies. New Jersey was found to have the highest levels of bias against older people. (Map from www.wsj.com/articles/worried-about-ageism-where-you-live-matters-11612198542.)
What will happen to the partially built wall on the U.S.-Mexico border? This article from Bloomberg CityLab discusses the actual construction -- of the 450 miles of wall completed during the Trump administration, only 80 miles were barriers erected where none existed previously, with the remaining 370 miles being upgrades to pre-existing walls -- the native and wildlife communities threatened by a physical barrier, and options for high-tech virtual fencing: www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-21/what-will-become-of-donald-trump-s-border-wall
Today is part of Pongal, a three- or four-day Hindu harvest festival celebrated in South India (particularly in Tamil parts of the country). One of the foods traditionally associated with Pongal is a rice and jaggery dish. Jaggery is not unlike brown sugar, usually made from sugarcane (as shown in this video) or palm sap: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikvAfQYYmV8
I can't speak to the accuracy or prevalence of these international Christmas traditions, but they are fun to read about nonetheless (and perhaps will spur dinner conversation and/or a web quest or two): www.ibtimes.com/christmas-trivia-facts-around-world-15-funny-interesting-traditions-other-countries-2217076
This geo-graphic, based on a survey of more than 28,000 people in 14 countries last April, compares people's views, by country, on COVID and climate change as a serious threat: the green bars show the percentage of respondents who agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, "In the long term, climate change is as serious a crisis as Covid-19 is." (The red bars show the percentage of respondents who disagreed or strongly disagreed with the same statement.) [from www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2020-04/earth-day-2020-ipsos.pdf]
The recent discovery and subsequent disappearance of a metal column in the Utah desert brings to mind this article about other (actual) archaeological mysteries in the United States, including the Big Horn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming, the Blythe Intaglios in California, the Miami Circle in Florida, and the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio. www.atlasobscura.com/articles/american-ancients-ten-united-states-archaeological-mysteries
This map from The New York Times shows the proportion of Americans, by county, who were planning on eating Thanksgiving dinner with people outside their own household. (The darker the color, the higher the proportion of people who planned on celebrating Thanksgiving with people outside their household.) Nationally, surveys suggest slightly more than 1/4 of Americans were planning on eating Thanksgiving with people outside their own household this year. For county-specific data, click on the link and mouse over each county: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/24/upshot/thanksgiving-dinner-survey.html
Diwali, the Hindu holiday often referred to as the festival of lights, starts on Saturday. India is one of only two Hindu-majority countries. (The other is Nepal.) In northern India, at the edge of the Thar Desert, the city of Jodhpur is known as the blue city because of the azure pigment used on hundreds (thousands?) of Jodhpur's houses: www.tripsavvy.com/top-attractions-in-jodhpur-1539658
This map, based on Census data, considers the percentage of adults in each state who have at least a bachelor's degree. Nationally, an average of 30.9% of adults have at least a bachelor's degree. (The states in blue, red, and white have education rates above this national average; the states in yellow, green, and peach have education rates below this national average.)  Halloween is in a week, but there won't be much trick-or-treating in many parts of the country this year because of concerns about COVID-19 transmission. This map, based on candy industry sales data, shows the most popular kind of Halloween candy, by state, last year: www.candyindustry.com/ext/resources/eNews/2019/HalloweenCandyMap.jpg
A new addition to a series of petroglyphs created between 1500 and 2500 years ago and known collectively as the Nazca Lines was recently discovered in the Nazca Desert near the Pacific coast south of Lima, Peru. A giant cat, similar to those depicted in Paracas textiles from 2200 years ago, joins a spider, hummingbird, and dozens of other images. www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-54593295
Following decades of declining birth rates, Japan's population is shrinking, particularly in rural areas. To stimulate rural tourism, many regions have developed "soft cream" (not unlike soft serve ice cream) that features regional flavors, from lavender and matcha to blue honeysuckle and squid ink: www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-soft-cream-japan
This map, from The New York Times and based on satellite data analyzed by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, shows the locations of Muslim mosques and shrines destroyed (in red) or significantly damaged (in yellow) in the Uighur-majority Xinjiang province of northwest China over the last decade. ASPI found that roughly 8,500 mosques have been destroyed in Xinjiang in just the past three years, as the Chinese government has accelerated its efforts to eradicate Uighur culture, including Uighur religious traditions, and eliminate Uighur social gatherings. (from www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/25/world/asia/xinjiang-china-religious-site.html)
Education at all levels is in flux this year. This geo-graphic compares how much various OECD countries spent on education as a percentage of GDP in 2017: www.statista.com/chart/15434/the-countries-spending-the-most-on-education
Create art, experiment with geometry, and learn a bit of cultural geography while using this very online cool mosaic tile simulator from the Qatar Foundation International. (Here is a tile pattern I made :-) tilemaker.teachalmasdar.com/tile?68157) tilemaker.teachalmasdar.com/  This photo essay from Aramco World features the subway system of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. Beginning in 1964, when Uzbekistan was still a Soviet republic, the Tashkent metro was designed to feature grand public art telling the story of Uzbekistan, with each station relating a different "chapter" of the story. www.aramcoworld.com/Home/Articles/Tashkent-s-Underground-Masterpieces
The Mapping Police Violence project has assembled an impressive array of geographic data on police violence in the U.S. For example, police in 8 of America's 100 largest cities, including Reno, Oklahoma City, Anaheim, and St. Louis, kill black men at a higher rate than the U.S. murder rate. And that killings by police are increasing in rural and suburban areas but decreasing in urban areas. One can compare data by state, check the records of specific departments, and more. mappingpoliceviolence.org/
This map, from Storygardenz, attempts to place some of the Western world's most famous stories in their geographical context (from www.storygardenz.com/about).
Reader's Digest magazine ran a statistically unreliable but nevertheless fun experiment: 12 wallets were "dropped" in each of 16 cities around the world. Each wallet contained a family photo, a name with cell phone number, business cards, and the equivalent of $50 in local currency. The wallets were "dropped" on sidewalks, in parks, and near shopping malls. This map shows what fraction of the 12 wallets were returned in each of the test cities: https://www.earthlymission.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/TheLostWalletExperiment.jpg
Openness to new people and ideas (or not) has played an important role in the economic rise and fall of geographic regions, be they countries, empires, or subsets thereof. This article from MIT Technology Review looks at the "nice person's" Silicon Valley and Canada's bid to attract talented immigrants who perhaps otherwise would have been headed to the U.S. www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/17/1003314/toronto-would-like-to-be-seen-as-the-nice-persons-silicon-valley-if-thats-not-too-much-trouble
Myanmar, the site of a fatal jade mine landslide last week, produces an estimated 70% of the world's high-end jade. "Jade" actually refers to both jadeite and the less intensely colored mineral nephrite. Both jadeite and nephrite tend to be found near current or ancient tectonic plate subduction zones. This map shows the world's known jadeite and nephrite deposits: assets.answersingenesis.org/img/articles/am/v11/n4/gems-circle-of-fire.gif
Different countries have different approaches to policing. This geo-graphic shows, in alphabetically order, the 18 nations that do not routinely arm their police. www.statista.com/chart/10601/where-are-the-worlds-unarmed-police-officers
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