Looks like a circuit board: Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.... The capital city as seen from the ISS. Photo taken by Russian Oleg Kononenko on the manned space station always orbiting Earth.

submitted by In-the-clouds from (hostux.pics)

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[–]In-the-clouds[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Source: https://t.me/roscosmos_gk/12105

Location on the map shows the nation of Turkmenistan borders Iran and Afghanistan. It is separated from Russia by the Caspian Sea. It also borders Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, nations I rarely hear anything about.

[–]neolib 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Government - Unitary presidential republic under a totalitarian hereditary dictatorship

Internet access is filtered and websites to which the government objects are blocked. Blocked websites include opposition news media, YouTube, many social media including Facebook, and encrypted communications applications. Use of virtual private networks to circumvent censorship is prohibited.

As of 27 January 2021, Turkmenistan reported an estimated 1,265,794 internet users or roughly 21% of the total population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkmenistan

[–]In-the-clouds[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

That's a low adoption rate of internet use. Only 21%. Compare that with this source that says 85% of Americans use the internet every day.

The wikipedia page had this statistic for Turkmenistan:

93% Islam

The battle is spiritual, with every effort being made to remove all remembrance of the act of salvation by Jesus Christ. Soon, the whole world will be like Turkmenistan, with no freedom of communication and everything censored, as everyone will be forced to worship the image of the beast, or be killed.

[–]neolib 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Here's another interesting tidbit about Turkmenistan I forgot to include (also from that Wiki entry):

President Niyazov wrote his own religious text, published in separate volumes in 2001 and 2004, entitled the Ruhnama ("Book of the Soul"). The Turkmenbashy regime required that the book, which formed the basis of the educational system in Turkmenistan, be given equal status with the Quran (mosques were required to display the two books side by side). The book was heavily promoted as part of the former president's personality cult, and knowledge of the Ruhnama was required even for obtaining a driver's license. Quotations from the Ruhnama are inscribed on the walls of the Türkmenbaşy Ruhy Mosque, which many Muslims consider sacrilegious.

So it was something resembling a state-size cult - Niyazov died since though, and a new ruler is more sane it seems.