I don't think that's the true size. You'll find all those countries are actually a lot bigger than presented on that map and scaled down to fit on a screen
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
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You don't know how big my screen is.
What is this map, a territory for ants?
It needs to be at least 3 times bigger then this
How much do you wanna bet Trump wouldn't be so gung ho on Greenland if he saw this map? He probably thinks he is going to double the size of America.
Can they spot grrenland on the map tho?
Trump handlers want the resources. Trump wants it because his ego is inflated by mercator projection.
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Yes, but blue (Mercator) preserves direction and shape, which were all that really mattered for navigation by sea, so Mercator was a fantastic projection for centuries.
And we still use it today for smaller scale areas, since it does a remarkably good job at preserving all 4 features (shape, area, distance, and direction) close to the map origin line. Universal Transverse Mercator is a system that has 60 zones of Mercator turned sideways.
The reason it's Transverse is because, unlike lattitude depending on a defined equator, longitude has an arbitrary meridian, so by turning the map sideways we can move the distortion point, and any map area that doesn't stray too far East or West will be very accurate.
Think of trying to map something like Chile or Florida, where the area of interest is pretty far North to South, but not East to West.
Show this map to Trump. He will not want Greenland anymore.
Acquiring Greenland would move the USA up 2 places in the list of largest countries (past Canada and China). That's probably why he wants it.
He just wants it ti deflect from the Epstein Files.
He wants to embed himself in the history as some kind of victor. It's his sick phantasy to be presented in history books as a hero. That's why he is doing everything he can to irreversibly leave his legacy wherever he can. That's why he's building the Epstein ballroom. That's why he renames buildings and places after himself. That's why he wants to create new colonies. He's a narcissist.
It is quick becoming a very important strategic hub in the Arctic due to shipping lanes opening up due to global heating. Greenland is also continuously opening up to natural resource extraction as ice disappears, and they have vast quantities of a lot of very valuable shit under the ground that keeps getting easier to access for the same reason, like rare earth elements, oil, natural gas, copper, gold, zinc, uranium, lithium, tungsten, the list goes on...
Controlling and exploiting that land is a major strategic interest for all the big (and small) powers. That's why he wants it, and everyone else too. Fuck his fat fucking ass though.
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This is why Trump wants Greenland so bad. He sees it, and says "It's big, I want it. Get it for me!" and gets all Veruca Salt about it.
All because he doesn't understand what a Mercator Projection is, on account of he beat up some nerd to do his homework that day, like every day.
A lot of conservatives have wanted Greenland for a long time as some throwback to US imperialism and very outdated cold-war era defensive posturing.
Stephen Miller threw the idea at Trump and wormtongued it as some idea that claiming the country would be some monument to Trump's legacy that would outlive all the scandals, and that's all the old turd wants, he just wants adoration and cheering crowds, that's his entire ethical framework.
What does Miller want from it? No idea, he's utterly, inhumanly insane. He's just literally an Elliot Rodgers in a suit who managed to get way too much power.
The Dems need to make a major case out of PeeWee Himmler for the Midterms. Expose him, and add him to the list of horrors that we are running against.
I feel strongly part of why he's even more "shrieky" and unhinged than normal is because the GOP broadly has NO plan right now for when Trump keels over. They tried so desperately hard to parade JD Vance around to get him ready to take the reigns, but so far MAGA haaates him, he talks like a politician, he has all that inhuman proceduralism that made people embrace Trump's open hatred and malice.
So Miller is slowly realizing once Trump dies, which could be any moment, that he's going to potentially face charges, and all the comparisons to people who met their end on a rope are likely dancing around in the back of that huge, empty skull.
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I'll add that we use the mercator projection because it preserves shapes but not scale. There's other projections that preserve scale but not shapes.
None of those preserve the shape of Antarctica!
Not to start any shit, but the Robinson Projection looks pretty nice.
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This post didn't need to include an ad for x-dot-com.
Damn Indonesia is huge.
If I have to shower in gym class I want the mercator-projection showers.
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I need a Mercator Projection in my pants.
That close to your equator, wouldn't it have the opposite of the intended effect?
I only know that it helicopters in the opposite direction when you cross the equator.
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The oceans are huge.
Hmm, so the Mercator projection makes things look larger than they are? I think I've got an idea for another use for it... 😏
Is that it?
Slightly enlarging something that is microscopic doesn't change much.
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There also an interactive version of this, also a bunch of copies (not sure if this is the original, but i believe so): https://thetruesize.com/
Brazil could be the world's superpower but they have other priorities.
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Why is the difference only extremely pronounced in the northern hemisphere? If I understand the math behind the projection correctly, the equator should be true scale, and things should vary more the further north AND south you go.
This image shows the extreme southern latitudes to be almost equal to their true area. Is the image wrong, or am I misunderstanding something about the projection?
This map is clipping a good chunk of the Southern Hemisphere. When you include it, you also notice the same distortion:
Note how it looks like Antarctica (14*10⁶km²) is 1/4~1/5 of the globe, even if it's actually smaller than South America (18*10⁶km²).
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Antarctica is missing, which skews it heavily towards north
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