• chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    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.

  • Anna@lemmy.ml
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    4 hours ago

    Maybe show this to taco trump and he’ll realize Greenland is small and level it be.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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    7 hours ago

    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.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      A lot of conservatives have wanted Greenland for a long time as some throwback to US imperialism and very outdated cold-war era defensive posturing.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.

      • RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world
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        41 minutes ago

        wormtongued

        I don’t want people associating Stephen Miller with a Brad Dourif character.

        Mr. Dourif is a saint, and mensch, and doesn’t deserve that smoke.

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
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          34 minutes ago

          The good news is Dourif is such a good actor and played such an iconic character in that role, that I doubt anyone is going to connect him to the apt-term that is already spreading through public lexicon.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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        53 minutes ago

        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.

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
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          42 minutes ago

          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.

  • scala@lemmy.ml
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    5 hours ago

    Anyone know of a 2D map print of true size? All I’ve found print wise is Mercator or other such variations.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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        1 hour ago

        Equal area projections usually preserve straight and perpendicular meridians and parallels. That’s neutral but then there’s the political decision of what latitude gets the correct aspect ratio. And Gall-Peters is not anti-colonialist if representing Africa correctly was your goal.

        • scala@lemmy.ml
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          25 minutes ago

          Essentially this. A true sized projection, it can be in any “cut” of the globe as long as all the continents are true to size.

    • Denixen@feddit.nu
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      4 hours ago

      Let me know if I understand correctly. You want a true to life sized map of earth? 😳

      • Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca
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        4 hours ago

        They want a 2d map of earth but with every continent to true size at scale, rather than Mercator projection where the northern hemisphere is expanded to increase their importance over the southern hemisphere.

        • snapoff@sh.itjust.works
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          2 hours ago

          Mercator wasn’t created in order to increase importance of the northern hemisphere, but to allow for directional rhumb lines to be drawn for shipping. For its intended purpose of navigation, it does an excellent job.

          • Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca
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            9 minutes ago

            It may not be the intended purpose but I certainly does change how the world is seen by everyone using it to warp the mind’s eye to how the world actually physically is.

            Edit: Does it do an excellent job for navigational purposes if you are shipping from Japan to Brazil or it it only excellent for shipping from the northern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere?

    • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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      4 hours ago

      I don’t know what you mean by “other such variations”, but maybe you are looking for a map with something like the Mollweide projection? That’s a bit of distortion in shape but trying to keep areas real.

      • scala@lemmy.ml
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        27 minutes ago

        No, because Africa is larger than Asia, and this shows Asia as massive.

  • Denixen@feddit.nu
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    4 hours ago

    Africa is fucking vast! I always knew that,but looking at mercator maps puts it in perspective. You could comfortably fit Russia into it, the worlds largest country by are 😳

  • observes_depths@aussie.zone
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    13 hours ago

    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.

    • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      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.

      • tomiant@piefed.social
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        15 hours ago

        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.

        • foo@feddit.uk
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          5 hours ago

          The dissonance with Trump is astonishing. The Arctic is recently becoming more important strategically due to ice disappearing, and yet he’s one of the biggest and most stubborn climate change deniers.

        • Opisek@piefed.blahaj.zone
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          13 hours ago

          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.

  • Rachel@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    14 hours ago

    How can it be the true size if it’s still a projection on a 2d surface? I thought could only see the true size on a 3d globe.

    • vithigar@lemmy.ca
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      13 hours ago

      True size is possible just fine on a 2D surface. For both too large and too small to be even possible there must exist some transitional point where the size is correct.

      You cannot have both the size and shape correct at the same time. Having the correct size means distorting the shape, and vise versa. One or the other can be correct, but never both.

      • Rachel@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        13 hours ago

        Also I just noticed that the borders no longer line up and it looks like there is ocean in between which isn’t the case. So I shows the size more accurately but is not useable as a map really.