this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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[–] veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago

This is like that one American Dallas county commissioner, William Price, getting offended it's called Black Hole.

The notion that projections perpetuate some racial agenda is exactly the pseudo-intellectual victimhood that takes away oxygen in the room for actual issues to be addressed.

[–] FE80@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

This is truly the concern of our time.

[–] Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

We should encourage the use of more globes to represent world maps.

Like, seriously. Almost all maps are viewed on a computer screen, all computers easily have the ability to display a sphere and rotate it

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Kinda hard to fit a globe inside a school book, or any book

[–] Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It's kinda easy to have globes in school though. Doesn't need one per student.

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[–] ysjet@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I'm going to be honest, this just looks utterly useless for any country that isn't south africa, and ESPECIALLY useless for any country in the northern hemisphere.

Like, yes, sure, you've made all the country's areas roughly equal, but also every single country that isn't south africa is a distorted, warped mess that looks nothing like its actual shape.

Look at parts of europe- every country is a COMPLETELY USELESS shape. Three quarters of them have been turned into diagonal lines. How the fuck is that useful? Europe is the worst area in that regard, but by no means the only one.

It makes it literally useless as a map.

[–] Dearth@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Every country looks distorted and warped based on your lifetime of experience looking at mercator projection. Every country looks warped and distorted when compared to globes. We learn geography on a flat surface which is inherently distorted because we live on a round surface

[–] ysjet@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Actually, fun fact, the entire point of the Mercator projection is that it DOES maintain shapes/angles, just not scale. It's a nautical map, it's for sailing. That's why when you look at a mercator map and a globe, the countries look about the same, just potentially different sizes- because that's literally the point of it.

[–] Hugin@lemmy.world 0 points 23 hours ago

Not exactly it distorts shapes a lot. However if you pick point A on a coast and point B on a different coast the angle of the line is the heading you should sail to go from point A to point B.

So yeah very useful as a nautical map if you want to navigate from place to place. Not accurate in shape though.

[–] devnev@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Who actually uses it as a map though? It's usually only seen briefly in apps, or in various symbols, or on a classroom wall. As a symbol, having the rights sizes would be a significant improvement. In an app, people will zoom in anyway, so at least they'd passively see the correct proportions when zooming out, instead of getting a false impression. In a classroom, it would seem all that more importantly to not give false impressions to kids.

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[–] NaibofTabr 120 points 3 days ago (6 children)
[–] Star@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago

Damn the Goode called me tf out

I feel like it's missing a style I don't know the name of but can describe. Basically a map made up of 4-6 parts depending on it they want the north and south poles wherein it shows the earth at 4 different point roughly broken up by continents, Europe and Africa, Asia and parts of Oceania, Oceania, and North and South America.

[–] PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Robinson always looked the best to me

[–] PixxlMan@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What brand are your running shoes?

Brooks…the most basic of basic bitch running shoes…..

[–] leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 days ago

Dymaxion.

Waterman is nice and all, but I don't like the way it splits Australia and New Zealand, or how it puts Antarctica in a separate bit like Alaska in USA maps.

Dymaxion offers a nice continuous view of all the continents, and can still be folded into a sufficiently spherical globe-like thingy.

It'd be nice to have an alternative version that made the oceans continuous, though, for people who like ships and stuff.

[–] blackjam_alex@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 17 points 2 days ago

1000041971

I've heard they're very comfortable but they do look weird

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

As a Dvorak user, why not dymaxion

[–] Opisek@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Dvorak users, assemble!

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago (3 children)

The simple fact is no map projection will be perfect or do anyone "justice".

You're flattening out a sphere to a flat rectangle. A lot of compromises have to be made. So go with the one that functions best for navigation.

[–] troglodyke@lemmy.federate.cc 3 points 1 day ago

Some projections are better than others. The Mercator projection at least has a use case that justifies its creation. This map has no purpose other than a political one.

Everyone with a cursory knowledge of maps knows there are inherent issues protecting a 3d object into a 2d surface. That's fine because some projections are useful

[–] joel_feila@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Well a rectangle gives you easy direction, true north is always up. But you can map very accurate maps that are not rectangle. They just make navigation a bitch

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[–] kopasz7@sh.itjust.works 84 points 3 days ago (10 children)

“It’s [the Mercator projection] the world’s longest misinformation and disinformation campaign, and it just simply has to stop.”

No matter how we cut it though, all 2D projections will have some kind of distortion. They opted to preserve area, while the Mercator preserves angles. Arguably it is less important today to preserve angles, as we have automatic navigation systems. There are some alternatives that also preserve the area: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/The-Equal-Earth-compared-to-similar-equal-area-pseudocylindrical-projections.png

[–] QuarterSwede@lemmy.world 25 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Right. What people need to understand that any globe put on a flat surface will be distorted. Their proposal is just as distorted as the Mercator, just in area vs angles as you stated.

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[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 2 days ago

It's not a damn campaign. Activists never seem to be good at nuance.

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[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago

Gerrymappering.

[–] Fleur_@aussie.zone 4 points 2 days ago

Me when someone calls my pp smol

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