I mean the problem with any projection of earth onto a 2d simplified shape surface is that it will be inherently distorted. The Mercator projection is scaled properly towards the equator but has to scale upwards more and more toward the poles to be able to fit the given area.
Even their own map, which for some reason isn’t shown in either the video or on the main page, isn’t accurate either. It’s better but is also warped in its own way, it would be nice if they had a little blurb that says something to that effect.
Here’s the actual map projection they are pushing for; https://equal-earth.com/equal-earth-projection.html
In color
We could also have made Mercator maps of varying position, but that might not center Europe.
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This is such a garbage take. There is no way to “show our world as it truly is” in two dimensions. I’m all about showing other projects and orientations. Classrooms should have “upside down” maps and Albert maps for example. But we should also teach that each projection has benefits and drawbacks. I was taught that decades ago. Have we stopped?
The way the world’s going, the next accepted projection will be depicted on the backs of four elephants atop a turtle.
Bring on the Wizzards
I do hope we get the luggage…
Wait a minute. I have seen this exact visual somewhere
Its the same take that’s applied to any party seen as a “status quo”. Your boss, the CEO, police, the state, movies, everything is “projected” to show something that it isn’t to subtly manipulate the basis of your decisions.
What? Map projections are not projected to manipulate you psychologically. They are projected to manipulate a three dimensional object onto a two dimensional surface.
I didn’t say they were made for that. They are used for it tho.
Africans: You know, 14th century mercator maps are horribly disproportionate over 1/2 the map and are the maps of reference for most online apps, software and textbooks. There are better projections that balance location for actual land mass, we should probably use those.
lemmy: garbage take.
There aren’t better maps. Only maps with different tradeoffs. ALL 2d maps of spheres are disproportionate.
No, there aren’t perfect maps. There ARE better maps.
Mercator’s one trick is north is always straight up, so it’s great for navigation with a compass. If you’re navigating the oceans on a ship, or even using GPS in your car, Mercator is GOAT because you don’t have to twist it as your drive to keep north up. Unfortunately, we default to Mercator just about everywhere in places where it really has disadvantages.
If you’re just looking at the map to locate things, or compare countries there are dozens of better maps and our decision to default to mercator for most uses us
99% of people dont know that there other projections. I dare you to ask people which map projection is their favorite.
Ideally yes we should stick to standard and make sure everyone knows thay there are many variants and none of them perfectly represent the sphere were on but thats not happening.
I don’t believe that 99% figure for a second. Unless geography is removed from all curricula worldwide. Even still, that ignorance would not signify what this movement implies. It is a useful map; end of story. If the movement were, “We should increase public knowledge of geography and how projections work,” fine. But it isn’t.
Faithfully projecting a globe onto a flat surface is impossible and all projections have to balance a number of compromises. Mercator retains compass directions and the shapes of land masses but entirely sacrifices relative scale between equatorial regions and polar regions. This makes it great for navigating a 17th century vessel. Other projections strike a different balance, like this one, and sacrifice compass direction and land mass shapes in order to perfectly retain scale. On this map, my little Arctic island looks like someone stepped on it.
IMO a balanced projection will compromise on all the nice properties a projection can have, and if that isn’t acceptable, then get a globe.
By signing the petition you take a stand against a false narrative that downplays Africa’s vast size and diversity as the second-largest continent, reducing its perceived importance in global politics and economics. You can correct the narrative.
I’ll be real here, I have no idea what these people are talking about. The way Africa looked on maps has never had any bearing on my or probably anyone’s thinking of how important the continent is in global politics or economics. If someone thinks “country/continent looks small so they must be unimportant,” they are either a child or a fool. Or both.
I somewhat agree, Africa never looked small imo. However Russia, Greenland, Canada etc are so comically oversized that it absolutely makes a difference imo.
Its a distorted representation of what the Earth looks like, and regardless of the way the sphere of our Earth is displayed on a 2D plane, it will always be distorted.
I don’t see any tangible benefit from changing what has already worked and is globally accepted for many decades. It seems kinda nitpicky, or like these people are clout chasing or something.
Worked for whom? The countries that are over-represented in the current map? Or the countries that started this petition?
Uhh… everybody.
If it was working for everyone, there would never be a widespread movement that got Mercator largely phased out of education.
It was working for everyone in navigation, where angles mattered. Which is why it became the most used map.
It was phased out in favour of maps showing area more correctly, because navigation w. maps became less important, not because “it didn’t work”.
The way Africa looked on maps has never had any bearing on my or probably anyone’s thinking of how important the country is in global politics or economics.
Africa isn’t a country though, it’s a continent with dozens of independent, distinct and diverse countries in it.
And one possible impact of the continent being represented much smaller than it really is, is people thinking of Africa as a single country.
I meant continent. My bad.
No worries - the general point still stands though I think 👍
The fact that you say Africa is a country kind of speaks against your argument here, wouldn’t you say?
I meant continent, it was a mistake.
Fair enough. Could’ve been a Freudian? Cause it looks so small?? 😀
Not a single link there to technical details about the projection.
You can get this with a few clicks
Equal Earth is an equal-area (equivalent) projection. Shapes, directions, angles, and distances are distorted and stretched north-south in tropical and mid-latitude areas. Nearer the poles, features are compressed in the north-south direction. Distortion values are symmetric across the equator and the central meridian.
and there’s a paper but the link requires access
Edit: I never said it was enough.
i think the best solution (besides globes which are impractical on screens/posters) is having no standard, expose kids in school to 3 or 4 different projections so they learn there’s no standard and all protections are as valid and all with drawbacks and advantages.
You’ve unlocked a weird memory. The Windows CD version of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego did exactly that. It had that map screen where you’d pick where to chase the bad guy, and they used different map projections. I can find screenshots of the game showcasing a Mercator, Robinson and Goode Homolosine projections. And it’s not different editions of the game, it would change between missions.
Yeah I had a Peters Projection map when I was young and there wasn’t any big deal over it, somehow I just assumed everyone did.
I don’t get it,
from my memory of geography class in 5th to 8th grade, in elementary, we extensively learned about all kinds of maps, and projections, so teaching kids 3-4 is huge downgrade.didn’t mean only teach 3-4, just to not regularly use one projection. use a handful so no one instinctively learns to accept one.
even though you learned a lot of maps, it’s likely most maps you used when not learning about different projections were the same.
Most likely, because I would guess that >90% of my up to date (after middle school) use of maps was highly localised to plaxe of interest.
Which doesn’t really show projection type (or brings relevance of it to surface).
The Mercator projection was great for navigating oceans, baring remain correct. There are thousands of other map projections that do a better job preserving size, shape, directions, and distances. Any projection will be a tradeoff between these.
As far as I know the Mercator projection has mostly fallen out of use in education, and I don’t think there’s any standard that requires it anywhere. So I’m not sure exactly what this is about.
I don’t think there’s any standard that requires it anywhere. So I’m not sure exactly what this is about.
Don’t give the right any ideas. They’ll be on about “geometric purity” or other such nonsense. Or anything but Mercator will just be “woke.”
“The woke liberal left wants to changes maps to make America smaller! Cause they hate America! We will stand against this liberal assault on American sovereinty with the new Trump Map, which shows the true size of America compared to every other country! Order your new Trump Map today for 399.98!”
Nah they all use the Azimuthal Equidistant Projection
yeah, most of the world already moved on from it, but its still being used in many texts and countries.
It’s a bit hard to find out where it actually originated from and who’s behind it. Judjing by their social media handlers, it’s a marketing agency Hello Makeda. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t trust marketing agencies to be good judges on geographical projects.
They are only using the cause to promote their brand social responsibility probably. In any case, the issue with the distorted view of the map that ideologically and politically benefited one side has been known for decades, and most of the countries that were colonies now use the correct one.
DYMAXION MAP OR GTFO
EDIT: details
It has less distortion of relative size of areas, most notably when compared to the Mercator projection; and less distortion of shapes of areas, notably when compared to the Gall–Peters projection. Other compromise projections attempt a similar trade-off.
More unusually, the Dymaxion map does not have any “right way up”. Fuller argued that in the universe there is no “up” and “down”, or “north” and “south”: only “in” and “out”.[9] Gravitational forces of the stars and planets created “in”, meaning “towards the gravitational center”, and “out”, meaning “away from the gravitational center”. He attributed the north-up-superior/south-down-inferior presentation of most other world maps to cultural bias.
This looks like when you see a weird, unflattering picture of a celebrity. Earth just woke up and hasn’t put its makeup on and you put it on blast like this
Why does the map on the website need that draggable divider when both versions show both types of projection?
I was wondering the same thing.
You can’t see the reduced size versions inside the originals? They’re outlined in a different color.
That’s what I’m saying, both versions show both outlines.
The coloring changes, but both show the same information.
Probably a very difficult thing to program? The color changing is a good workaround.
I just thought that it worked well with as a static image.
But maybe someone had a bit of fun doing that divider effect.
Yeah, that’s basically what I was thinking.
Firstly, I do think that projections which enlarge Europe and north America relative to the global south are a problem and every curriculum should include education about how this happens and what the world really looks like.
But also, kinda funny how this project is very specifically about fairness for Africa. Why not include south America in there too?
But also, kinda funny how this project is very specifically about fairness for Africa. Why not include south America in there too?
Have you looked at the projections in question?
Mercator enlarges everything closer to the poles while making everything closer to the equator smaller. It does not matter which continent it is, since it follows the same formula worldwide. That means, Europe, North America, Greenland, the south end of South America, South Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica are enlarged, and Central America, northern South America, most of Africa, India, South Asia and Ocenania are depicted smaller.
The Equal Earth projection makes sure that each square kilometer of land takes up the same space on the map, no matter where it is.
So this enlarges all regions closer to the equator (as listed above) and shrinks all that are closer to the poles.
So obviously it does benefit most regions of South America and frankly, I’m quite surprised that you’d think it wouldn’t.
In fact, it would be quite difficult to make a projection that would specifically enlarge Africa while shrinking South America. (Certainly possible, but difficult)
I was referring to the text at the bottom of the press release:
By signing the petition you take a stand against a false narrative that downplays Africa’s vast size and diversity as the second-largest continent, reducing its perceived importance in global politics and economics. You can correct the narrative.
It seems to single out Africa because this campaign is led by Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa. I just thought it was amusing that the campaign text mentions Africa repeatedly but only indirectly mentions south america when referring to the global south.
Well, if it’s a petition fielded by the African Union, you’d expect it to focus on Africa, wouldn’t you?
Where’s the outrage on political platforms made to benefit specific other regions?
Obligatory West Wing Gall-Peters Projection link
Mercator distorts landmass to fit the grid, so it is good for navigation, simply draw a straight line between two points and follow it. Also, the plea on that site is just…weird. Africa is not taken seriously because it is displayed too small on maps - what? It is a large, chunky continent that can be compressed without too much detail loss - Europe, not so much.
Maybe Greenland’s size on the projection is what got Trump all worked up. :P
Yes, but thats only for navigation. The map was chosen to be used as the standard in colonial time, because it brainwashed the colonies to believe that the people subjugating them were from great and big countries on the other side of the world. There would be a lot more revolts if people actually knew that they were being held captives by weak dudes from some small european piece of land that was only a fraction of the size of their country.
I’m in the one and only line of work where Mercator makes sense, and even I hate Mercator.
I like the AuthaGraph map myself, but I’m happy to see an equal area projection being proposed!
