Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is Chile so long?

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 468 posts

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#341

Post by noduerme »

nox101 wrote: post #332
SkyPuncher wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my book, 1M people is when a city starts to become a “proper” city. It’ll host major events, invest in public transit (beyond bus), have extensive infrastructure, have extremely thorough airport service, likely have many walkable neighborhoods, and generally feel like a city. Under 1M and the city center tends to be very small with most people driving from the suburbs.

We're talking metro area, not city. If the city is 1M, it's metro area is likely 1.5 to 3 million. If the metro area is 1m then the city is probably 750k to 350k people. The post above said "The Concepción metro area is 1 million people" which means the city itself is much smaller. In fact, Wikipedia says it's 200k people, 1m metro area

Just a quibble about the metro to city population ratio... I think it's usually a lot higher than 1.5 or 3 to 1. Portland where I live has a population of around 650k (city) and 2.6M (metro). So about 4:1. And it's one of the less spread out metro areas in the US. The LA metro has about 18.5M and the city itself about 4M. Chicago is also about 4:1. NYC is the exception at closer to 2.5:1.

Just having grown up in LA (the city), I think there's a cognitive bias in these places against recognizing just how freakin large they are when you live there. There are large corners of my home metro area I've never been to at all, whose people I would almost never interact with... and I say that as a former taxi driver! Of course, taxi driving in LA was always balkanized so you'd need separate licenses to pick up in this or that suburb... very Snow Crash-like even in the 90s.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#342

Post by collinrapp »

sprobertson wrote: post #330
bwanab wrote: post #135

That is a really nice bit of information communication. Hat's off! I feel like I learned a lot and that always makes me happy. One quibble. At the end it mentions why Mexico's west was of interest to the Spanish, but neglects possibly the most important part - it was where the Spanish galleons from the Philippines first landed after the grueling trip across the Pacific as detailed beautifully in Neal Stephenson's "Ba…

I feel like I learned everything except the question in the title. I still don't know why it's long, just a lot of facts about how long it is.

Did you miss this early in the article? Or did you just not find it convincing?

> Chile is so long because of the Andes. Here's a map of elevation in South America.

> You can't easily pass these mountains, and the tiny sliver of land to their west is Chile.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#343

Post by Barrin92 »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #280
nox101 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is 1 million people a lot? I lived most of my life in metro areas of 15-30 million. when I finally ventured out and saw so many famous places at 1.5 million or less and how I could drive in and then back out of their downtowns in just a few blocks I was kind of shocked on how small most places are

In my book, 1M people is when a city starts to become a “proper” city. It’ll host major events, invest in public transit (beyond bus), have extensive infrastructure, have extremely thorough airport service, likely have many walkable neighborhoods, and generally feel like a city. Under 1M and the city center tends to be very small with most people driving from the suburbs.

>Under 1M and the city center tends to be very small with most people driving from the suburbs.

That's a very US or modern Asian city view. In my corner of the world, the Rhine-Ruhr area and the Franco/German/Benelux region almost all cities are [1]https://t0.gstatic.com/licensed-image?q=tbn:ANd9GcR5dl_qfSco...

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#344

Post by com2kid »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #324
nox101 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is 1 million people a lot? I lived most of my life in metro areas of 15-30 million. when I finally ventured out and saw so many famous places at 1.5 million or less and how I could drive in and then back out of their downtowns in just a few blocks I was kind of shocked on how small most places are

Jesus. What a post. 15-30 million? Where? There aren't that many on the planet.

Traveling around China, their sense of scale it pretty much 10x what America's is.

1 million is barely a city, around 5 million and you are a 2nd tier city, hit 8+ million and you are a "real city".

Meanwhile people in America are arguing that they are worried their "100k town is going to add 5000 people and become an urban hellscape!"

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#345

Post by usr1106 »

eps wrote: post #301
guidoism wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most amazing sky I’ve ever seen was when I arrived in Urubichá in Guarayos region of Bolivia in 1998 before the electricity arrived in the area. I traveled by bus to visit my friend’s childhood home. The bus only went to the big city an hour away so I road in the back of a jeep the rest of the way, at night. I remember vividly not understanding what this super-bright light was in the sky. I know now it was either…

Venus always appears near the sun (hence the "morning star" moniker).

If it's near the sun you cannot see it in the middle of the night (except in polar areas during summer). But why only morning and not evening?

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#346

Post by graeme »

nox101 wrote: post #335
graeme wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are only 26 areas in the world which are 15-30 million. They have about 550 million people, or about 7% of the world's population. 1 million is fairly large, especially in the context of Chile. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities

Looking at that list there are probably 100s of "metro areas" with > 1m Look at the UN 2019 population estimates and sort by it. The last 10 areas are 5.49m, 5.49m, 5.38m, 5.38, 5.30m, 5.21m, 5.16m, 5.09m, 5.05m, 5.02m Given how curves like this usually go there's an extremely long tail to get to 1m Concepcion has only ~200k people with <1m metro. Looking at a map of the city and with only 200k people it doesn't seem…

A fair point. This list has 468 above 1 million and I think that's the urban boundaries and not metro

I hadn't actually googled concepcion, 200,000 in the urban area is quite small. It would be interesting to somehow workout the percentile of population living in a larger/smaller place.

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

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#347

Post by khazhoux »

svcphr wrote: post #305
kragen wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, literally the only difference i can think of is 'contigo' (which is 'con vos' in argentina)

People from both countries can speak a version of Spanish that is mutually intelligible. But if you go into a high school (or even listen to adults that are being very casual) then it'd sound wildly different. I speak Chilean Spanish. Distinctive characteristics include no use of vos; the "tú" conjugation is often "-ai" (cómo estai?) or "-i" (qué teni allí?); saying weón every sentence; using "po" for emphasis (sí po…

Q: How many meanings does "weón" have?

A: Yes

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#348

Post by [deleted] »

nox101 wrote: post #272
aeyes wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Concepción metro area is 1 million people, Valparaíso/Viña as well. Chileans love to point out that there isn't much outside of Santiago but it's not really true.

is 1 million people a lot? I lived most of my life in metro areas of 15-30 million. when I finally ventured out and saw so many famous places at 1.5 million or less and how I could drive in and then back out of their downtowns in just a few blocks I was kind of shocked on how small most places are

[deleted]

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#349

Post by sidcool »

I was in Santiago for a month last year. It's a beautiful city and people are very friendly. I could not visit the desert in the north, but have heard wonderful stories about it. I really wish I am able to go there again.

Also, I had no idea Chile is sooo long.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#350

Post by khazhoux »

pvaldes wrote: post #289
onionisafruit wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to translate it for us? gpt says “The dude, dude dude”

"weon" is a corruption of the word "huevón", that means literally "big egg". Is a polysemic word, but when used as adjective means "somebody with big balls"; by extension "somebody that spends the day sitting on their own testicles, unable to carry them" So a huevón is "a lazy lad", "a douchebad" or simply "a dude" (colloquially and vulgar, but also playful if applied to a close friend). The word is a minefield, some…

I think the most similar word/phrase in English is "son of a bitch"

It can be an angry insult, a demeaning adjective, a term of endearment, an expression of surprise or bewilderment, ...

Post reply on HN