We study infinitesimal and asymptotic properties of geodesics (i.e., isometric images of intervals) in Carnot groups equipped with arbitrary sub-Finsler metrics. We show that tangents of geodesics are geodesics in some groups of lower nilpotency step. Namely, every blowup curve of every geodesic in every Carnot group is still a geodesic in the group modulo its last layer. With the same approach, we also show that blowdown curves of geodesics in sub-Riemannian Carnot groups are contained in subgroups of lower rank. This latter result can be extended to rough geodesics.

We show that any continuous open surjection from a complete metric space to another metric space can be restricted to a surjection for which the domain has the same density character as the target. This improves a recent result of Aron, Jaramillo and Le Donne.

The purpose of this note is to record a consequence, for general metric spaces, of a recent result of David Bate. We prove the following fact: Let $X$ be a compact metric space of topological dimension $n$. Suppose that the $n$-dimensional Hausdorff measure of $X$, $H^n(X)$, is finite. Suppose further that the lower $n$-density of the measure $H^n(X)$ is positive, $H^n(X)$-almost everywhere in $X$. Then $X$ contains an $n$-rectifiable subset of positive $H^n(X)$-measure. Moreover, the assumption on the lower density is unnecessary if one uses recently announced results of Csörnyei-Jones.