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Why is Chile so long?

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

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Re: Why is Chile so long?

#61

Post by fullstop »

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…

> 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.

Check out Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_Springs_State_Park

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#62

Post by arachnid92 »

ShaggyStyle wrote: post #58

All of this is just because Chile is the best country of Chile... if you know what I mean ;-)

Somo el mejor país de Chile hmno.

As a Chilean living in the US, seeing this on HN made my day - it’s not often the rest of the world (outside of South America) remembers we exist.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#63

Post by flobosg »

cassepipe wrote: post #14

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

In the 2000s the Chilean state railway company was involved in a huge corruption scandal as well as bad administrative practices. It’s been slowly recovering, but rail services in Chile still leave a lot to be desired.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#64

Post by AnimalMuppet »

throwup238 wrote: post #45
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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”).

Yes, they were two lane roads. But no, they did not have impassable grades. Neither Loveland nor Berthoud Pass were easy, especially in winter, but they did in fact carry lots of commercial traffic (though I would think twice about sending an oversized load over them). In fact, to this day the old two-lane road of US 6 over Loveland Pass is used to keep hazardous material out of the I-70 tunnels.

I mean, I remember around 1968-69, before they finished building Interstate 80 up Echo Canyon, and that tiny two-lane road had to take all the commercial traffic that there was on "the main street of North America".

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#65

Post by drroots23 »

Etheryte wrote: post #46
pc86 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

During the summer months yeah, but I've been there last year during the end season and, although there are still lots of tourists, it's not overwhelming and some of the hikes were pretty chill.

Going straight to the Torres themselves will usually be crowded (depending on the time of the day). But some of the other hikes less so. I've done the W Circuit (a multi-day trek) and during some days I barely saw another hiker.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#66

Post by rob74 »

On the difference of Chilean Spanish to other "dialects":

> It’s the farthest region from Spain, so the least communicated to the rest of the empire, and hence the one that drifted the most from the homeland.

Er... if you look at the table (https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_...), Chile has quite a lot of red, but actually its Spanish is closer to the Spanish from Spain than that of other South American countries. So it looks like those have drifted further from "standard" Spanish, while Chile hasn't as much?

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#67

Post by edouard-harris »

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.

It's roughly in the style of a children's picture book. That's the same style the best startup pitch decks are written in.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#68

Post by dheera »

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…

I travelled to Chile earlier this year and visited Atacama and Torres de Paine.

The thing that boggled my mind was that you can't drive between the two without a very long detour through Argentina. Chile has literally no road linking the northern part with the southernmost part without going outside the country.

It is also mind boggling that rail is not more popular there. A long, slim country is ideal for high speed rail.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#69

Post by jhbadger »

fluoridation wrote: post #57
jhbadger wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cons…

Okay, so the article is wrong for using that bit of data for the argument. It doesn't tell you much about how well two people from two different places will understand each other. If two people are in the same place and one says to the other "¿me das la veleta?", but the other would have called the object "molinete", chances are they could probably understand what the other person is saying. What makes different dial…

True, but that's like saying a British person wouldn't be confused by the phrase "the trunk of my car" said by an American even if they would would say "the boot of my car" themselves. The fact still remains than "trunk" is US dialect and "boot" is British, and that the dialects are different.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#70

Post by TremendousJudge »

seu wrote: post #53

It completely ignores the influence of the indigenous languages in the "dialect" or variation of Spanish, which is actually a much better explainer than "distance from spain".

I don't think that's a good hypothesis, because in that case, other countries with a huge colonized population such as Mexico or Perú would have less intelligible dialects as well.
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