I bet you can even find some that are the correct oblate spheroid.
Many of us have seen images like this: https://www.asu.cas.cz/~bezdek/vyzkum/rotating_3d_globe/figu... which are effective at showing the shape and gravitational anomalies but is wildly exaggerated on the height axis. Visualizing to scale would look indistinguishable from sphere.
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It seems clear that the problems of African developement can be fixed by topping the evil cadre of cartographers that keep it down. On the other hand, Africa has an obvious advantage by coming first in alphabetical order.
We have the technology to fix this: all maps should be dynamic, using a planar projection centred on the viewer’s coordinates. It will embiggen all local geography while omitting distant lands. We’ll call this approach the Egocentric Cartographic Model.
1) straight lines in reality are straight lines on the map. Which enables the following: measure an angle on the map and walk in that direction to get to a destination (e.g. compared to THAT mountaintop, go 30degrees to it's right and walk in a straight line, to get to your destination)
In all other map types (including an actual globe I might add), you have to walk a curve. A "geodesic".
2) straight lines in reality are straight lines on the map. So walking a straight line actually gets you where the line on the map is going (meaning you don't need those absurdly huge compasses to construct ellipses to approximate your path on the map that you see in certain old paintings or in some movies)
But of course, the only reason someone might want these properties on maps is ego. That's the only thing.
secondcoming•5mo ago
AIUI the important word here is ‘nagivation’. If you use the other projections for navigation you’re going to have a bad time.
immibis•5mo ago
spwa4•5mo ago
Maps like Mercator are the only square maps where if you measure an angle to a destination where you stand and on the map, and then follow the resulting angle in a straight line, you actually get where you're going. This is especially important for ships, as they travel long distances, and the longer the distance, the more wrong other maps will lead you.
But politicians, of course, declare that ego is more important.
I love what most local maps do in atlasses these days. They use local projections, and for anything up to the size of, say, the state of New York (or smaller) that will have very, very close to the properties of a globe. This does of course show that atlasses try to be practical and produce useful maps. Not ego-based maps.