It preserved rhumb lines.
Search for "equal-area" in the list of map projections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections
You can see that any translation from 3D sphere to 2D plane will always create a tradeoff of geometry somewhere. E.g. Distorted shapes and lines, torn oceans, etc.
I used to say "No human being who has ever lived has made a consequential decision because 'Greenland big brah' and people just need to get over it."
But given the current administration, I...
Wars are won with tanks^W drones, not by measuring the area in a map. Laypeople may be confused, but when a government decides to invade another country or add some economical penalty, they know the real data like real-world-surface, GDP, number of weapons, ...
But why do countries rotate to the left as you drag them north and rotate to the right as you drag them south?
But there is still a real rotation - look at wyoming or colorado for a perfect rectangle. My guess is the div element isn't quite centered - perhaps too much padding on the right edge, causing the center point to be off to the right. So when it bows you get the rotation bias
This explains much of the current global political situation.
The largest surprise for me (besides the massive size of Africa and South America of course) was that Australia has roughly the same area as the entire US. Somehow I had always imagined it smaller.
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_munic%C3%ADpios_do_Br...
Is the use of Mercator in schools common, globally? Based on what I've read on the internet it's common in the US, but I have no idea about other countries. In Finland I think I only ever saw Robinson or Winkel-tripel type compromise projections. Mercator was maybe used as an example of how projections distort things.
I don't think I've ever seen a Mercator map of the world printed out, though. Is that seriously a thing? It looks completely ridiculous. Every poster I've seen has been a more rectangular projection like Robinson.
Edit: I just noticed that Google Maps on Firefox and Chrome is indeed 3D, but on Safari it is 2D Mercator.
You don't see that in Australia either: we don't use miles, and we don't call it 'gas'. Typically it would be "No fuel next X km"
The first bit came after one day when I skipped a servo and then it was over half my remaining fuel further along the road, I hadn't seen another and I realised "well I can't go back. Shit."
The second bit got expanded to two jerry cans after I had to use one because even though I made it to the servo in rural FNQ, it was 5.15pm and they were already closed. Thankfully that day the extra 20l got me to Port Douglas.
We do still have a few remnants of the imperial system - "90 mile straight" on the Nullabor comes to mind. The longest straight road in Aus, or maybe the world I don't know. When you're already suffering brainrot on your multi-day Nullabor drive, the announcement that you're not even going to have to turn the steering wheel for over an hour is... well it didn't fill me with joy!
Longyearbyen is a pathological example but it's quite easy to end up thinking a city in the UK is ~1.75 linearly and ~3x by area compared to one on the equator using this site.
I've been using _TrueSizeOf_ for years...
That's how I proved that the actual size of Australia is approximately 90% of the area of the globe. Who knew the mercator projection could be so confusing! :)
Weird that back isn't restoring the state. Just stays the same for me.
Interestingly and perhaps surprisingly, from a mathematical perspective you absolutely can. In fact, manifolds[0] are defined in terms of local coordinate charts. :-)
Geologically or geographically, there are 7 continents:
Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia, North America, South America, and the mostly-sunken Zealandia.
Since 1973, at least 69 sovereign states have been created or altered! That's not even counting states that have had multiple changes to their territory in that time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_da... -> sort by date of latest territorial change
I first discovered this about three months ago in a reddit comment under 'r/geography', and I still, from time to time, use it and enjoy it. Back then, I posted it here in HN, but zero traction!
Anyway, for those interested in previous discussions, here we are:
(2020), 556 points, 266 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25104787
(2017), 193 points, 66 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13327973
(2019), 155 points, 49 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20898538
(2015), 105 points, 36 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182024
It turns out that even when put in the middle of Africa, Russia is still massive. And even without the projection, Greenland is not small either, which, in a sense, makes Denmark the largest European country by far.
A combination of Europe being generally close to the pole, so the projection makes it look big, and the large number of small countries and fine geographical features, giving it a high concentration of details.
And why is the shrinking considered a misrepresentation, but the enlargement of high latitudes apparently not?
The globe isn't symmetric when it comes to these terms. They don't refer to the actual two hemispheres, split at the equator. The "south" contains the equator and the "north" ends way before the equator.
> And why is the shrinking considered a misrepresentation, but the enlargement of high latitudes apparently not?
Because being overrepresented (looking bigger) is typically an advantage. Both are misrepresentations but the direction matters. Some of this is only a real problem if geographical area and population are correlated. Which, at least in broad strokes, is true here.
I failed to make you question the terminology, obviously.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...
It looks like each drag-n-drop changes the history. I had to click the back button about 10 times to get back to HN.
17,098,246 km2 vs 17,840,000 km2 (95.8%)
jmclnx•9mo ago