Why is Chile so long? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#41

Post by hammock » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 2:18 PM UTC

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #12

One of the most interesting drives in my life was Chile from the island of Chiloe to the Tatio Geysers in the Atacama. Just so many different climate zones, and all in relatively close proximity. Chiloe and Puerto Montt were damp, cold, and fog-shrouded in Summer (Jan-Feb), very similar to parts of the coastal pacific northwest. The area to its north, centered around the German-influenced town of Valdivia, was Califo…

>so many different climate zones, and all in relatively close proximity

Yes. Just mountain climbing in northern Patagonia (between Bariloche & Villarica, really only 100mi of north-south distance) became my favorite part of the world for your reason. In a single day (or two), we could walk in the dry, dusty bottom of a canyon dug out by glacier melt, cross through a humid jungle, rest on the shores of an alpine lake, pick your way across a massive rocky field of a'a lava, up a glacier and look down inside the caldera of an active volcano.

The only other place I have been that come close to having that amount of diversity of terrain in a limited area might be the Tetons/Yellowstone.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#42

Post by the_arun » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 2:21 PM UTC

_visgean wrote: post #5

mFixman wrote: post #4

Is there a name for this simple style of writing? It reminds me of the style of pop science books written in the late 19th and early 20th century. There's a nice charm in it, like it's trying not to be pretentiously complex.

honestly it feels like a powerpoint presentation in an article.

I also had fun reading the article & repeated question - why is Chile so long? and sharing another bit of twist. Nicely done.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#43

Post by fluoridation » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 2:21 PM UTC

cassepipe wrote: post #14

No excuse for not building one giant high speed multi-tracks train line from North to South then :)

Except that the people are not spread that far out that it makes economical sense.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#44

Post by js2 » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 2:24 PM UTC

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #12

One of the most interesting drives in my life was Chile from the island of Chiloe to the Tatio Geysers in the Atacama. Just so many different climate zones, and all in relatively close proximity. Chiloe and Puerto Montt were damp, cold, and fog-shrouded in Summer (Jan-Feb), very similar to parts of the coastal pacific northwest. The area to its north, centered around the German-influenced town of Valdivia, was Califo…

It's only partly in Chile, but regardless all of the scenery in A Long Way Up is breathtaking:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Way_Up

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#45

Post by throwup238 » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 2:24 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #39

throwup238 wrote: post #3

My key takeaway from this article is that the best place to go see the Milky Way is deep in the Amazon rainforest… where the tree cover is nearly 100% and there isn’t a single road for a hundred miles. That’s a neat collection of graphics. I’m curious how bespoke the creation process is for each graphic or if this is something everyone just does in ArcGis or similar. That last graphic about the Western US being the o…

> the two sides of the Rockies weren’t connected by a highway until the I70 over Glenwood Canyon was completed in 1992. US 40, 6, and 50 would like a word. They weren't connected by an interstate before that. But you said "highway". US 6 was a highway, and it ran through the exact same Glenwood Canyon.

Fair point about the exact terminology but those are tiny two lane roads with impassable grades for the majority of commercial traffic. The term highway has drifted in colloquial use (hence your use of the word “was”).

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#46

Post by Etheryte » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 2:25 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #37

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #12

One of the most interesting drives in my life was Chile from the island of Chiloe to the Tatio Geysers in the Atacama. Just so many different climate zones, and all in relatively close proximity. Chiloe and Puerto Montt were damp, cold, and fog-shrouded in Summer (Jan-Feb), very similar to parts of the coastal pacific northwest. The area to its north, centered around the German-influenced town of Valdivia, was Califo…

Torres del Paine in the south is pretty brutal to get to if you're not used to long flight but it is breathtaking. Definitely a bucket list trip if you enjoy nature and wildlife, hiking, etc.

It's nice, but unfortunately listed on nearly every tour guide of Chile, so these days it's flooded with tourists most of the time. You'll have a much better time seeing other places slightly off the beaten track.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#47

Post by hammock » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 2:25 PM UTC

mFixman wrote: post #4

Is there a name for this simple style of writing? It reminds me of the style of pop science books written in the late 19th and early 20th century. There's a nice charm in it, like it's trying not to be pretentiously complex.

The author Tomas Pueyo grew up in a family of filmmakers. For his Stanford MBA he specialized in behavioral psychology, design, storytelling, and scriptwriting. I have to imagine that has some influence on his writing

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#48

Post by posix86 » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 2:26 PM UTC

fluoridation wrote: post #10

How is the table of dialects constructed? It's obvious if two dialects are at 1, but what does it mean if they're at 0? They can't be mutually unintelligible, since that would make them different languages. I ask because the dialects spoken in Argentina and in Uruguay are practically identical, save for a few regional words. If the scale being used puts them at 0.35, then it makes me wonder about the usefulness of th…

> but what does it mean if they're at 0? They can't be mutually unintelligible, since that would make them different languages.

I think it might actually mean unintelligible. If you read on the term "dialect" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect it says in part:

> There is no universally accepted criterion for distinguishing two different languages from two dialects (i.e. varieties) of the same language.

The difference between language is more culturally and politically defined than linguistically; there are different langauges spoken in the world that have a fiar overlap and elligibility, and there are different dialects of the same "language" that are basically untelligable. It might be sensible to just consider all spoken systems to be "dialects" of each other, and comparing their similarity.

Not a linguist though.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#49

Post by tuzemec » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 2:30 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #37

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #12

One of the most interesting drives in my life was Chile from the island of Chiloe to the Tatio Geysers in the Atacama. Just so many different climate zones, and all in relatively close proximity. Chiloe and Puerto Montt were damp, cold, and fog-shrouded in Summer (Jan-Feb), very similar to parts of the coastal pacific northwest. The area to its north, centered around the German-influenced town of Valdivia, was Califo…

Torres del Paine in the south is pretty brutal to get to if you're not used to long flight but it is breathtaking. Definitely a bucket list trip if you enjoy nature and wildlife, hiking, etc.

Really enjoyed that. The views are surreal. Got lucky with the weather too.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#50

Post by jhbadger » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 2:31 PM UTC

fluoridation wrote: post #10

How is the table of dialects constructed? It's obvious if two dialects are at 1, but what does it mean if they're at 0? They can't be mutually unintelligible, since that would make them different languages. I ask because the dialects spoken in Argentina and in Uruguay are practically identical, save for a few regional words. If the scale being used puts them at 0.35, then it makes me wonder about the usefulness of th…

Dialects can mean very different things hence the old joke "a language is a dialect with its own army and navy", recognizing that the issue is really political rather than linguistic. Many Chinese dialects (like Mandarin and Cantonese) are considered dialects of the same "Chinese language" for political reasons but are mutually unintelligible, whereas Danish and Norwegian (the majority bokmal dialect anyway) are considered different languages even though they are pretty mutually intelligible because Norway and Denmark are different countries.

As for how the table of Spanish dialects was constructed, the figure gives the link to the paper it was from [1]. Basically they measured differences in dialects by giving pictures of an item (the example shown is a pinwheel) and asking what Spanish speakers from different places called that thing. Given hundreds of different concepts you can see how close Spanish dialects are to each other.

[1] https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/opli-2018-003...