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

421–430 of 468 posts

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#421

Post by causal »

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'm also wondering if the Andes are steeper than the Rocky mountains? Some quick Googling suggests that might be the case but I'm not getting a definitive answer.

Gradual elevation is certainly easier to build roads across than a cliff, and might be another reason there's less east-west divide in North America.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#422

Post by borjaMarti »

jviotti wrote: post #401

From the post: "You see how red Chilean Spanish is? It means it’s quite different. In the beginning of Grad School, I could understand all my Hispanic classmates, but I had a hard time understanding the Chileans!" As a native Spanish speaker, I find this quite interesting. For me, Chileans are within the category of "easy to understand" while I might struggle a bit understanding some accents that the article qualifie…

What I find even more amusing is that one of the hypotheses for why Chilean is so different is that "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.", and when you check the graph it's one of the closest Spanishes to Spanish Spanish ^^

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#423

Post by throw4847285 »

harry8 wrote: post #385
throw4847285 wrote: post #25

When I went to Chile I was about to undertake a cross-country move across the US. Everybody I spoke to in Santiago couldn't imagine a country where you can drive a massive distance like that and move from one major metropolis to another. At the time, I thought they were just reflecting on the fact that Chile is a country where 40% of all people live in one metro area, so there isn't another huge metro area to move to…

City size is all definitional. My first ever look at the states was out the window of a plane flying to NYC from the Bahamas at night. Straight up the east coast. Mind blowing. To my eyes it was one enormous city without any meaningful separation all the way. I was expecting to be surprised by the scale of the usa and yet it was way beyond what i could imagine. Others won’t share that definition.

We're not that far off from Judge Dredd's Mega-City One!

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#424

Post by TylerE »

pooper wrote: post #388
acjohnson55 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived in Baltimore, it's juuust far enough from DC to not be a twin city.

Just out of curiosity, how far is far enough? As a thought experiment, would a shinkansen running every six minutes change this?

I think it's less about distance and more about culture. DC and Baltimore are vastly different in culture, recreational activities, industries, demographics, etc. People don't live downtown in one and work in the other. The commute would kill you. Average income in DC is nearly double what it is in Baltimore.

Like, imagine SF and Oakland, but with an extra 30 miles in between.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#425

Post by massysett »

jfengel wrote: post #406
pooper wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of curiosity, how far is far enough? As a thought experiment, would a shinkansen running every six minutes change this?

Instead of a shinkasen running every six minutes, we get a low-speed train that runs about once an hour, and only during working hours. If you work past 8 PM you're going to have to find another way home. I don't really know what's far enough, but culturally they consider themselves entirely distinct. People from one almost never work in the other; the trains that do exist are for bringing people from the suburbs. Ev…

None of what’s in this comment or others reflects my experience at all. I work in DC and have had many colleagues who live in downtown Baltimore and Baltimore suburbs, even suburbs north of Baltimore. They have been Orioles fans. Some have driven, others take commuter rail. I live in a suburb that is closer to DC but the commuter pattern on the highway reflects traffic flow to the Baltimore area in the morning and away from it in the evening. My wife and I work in downtown DC and we live closer to DC than Baltimore, but we routinely attend cultural and recreational events in Baltimore and of course fly from the Baltimore airport. We had memberships in the National Aquarium (in Baltimore) and have taken our kids to the Maryland Zoo. They have never been to the National Zoo in DC.

Baltimore and DC are absolutely one metro, just like Dallas/Fort Worth and Minneapolis/Saint Paul. That two cities have distinct identities doesn’t mean they aren’t one metro.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#426

Post by whythre »

tvaughan wrote: post #399
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.

There isn’t. Especially in the south. Floods, fires, and killer bears. It’s like The Purge, but every day. Don’t come.

I would like to hear more about the killer bears, please

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#427

Post by Phrodo_00 »

colimbarna wrote: post #359
Phrodo_00 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than any of that, it's influenced by Mapuzungun in a way other countries just aren't exposed - Argentina's Conquest of the Dessert was more brutal, and is the only other modern country where Mapuche land was.

Desert, n, stress on the first syllable, means a place without much rain, but it comes from the notion of being deserted so sometimes it just means an unpopulated area. To desert, v, stress on the second syllable, means to leave/abandon something. Desert, n, stress on the second syllable, is what you deserve "he got his just deserts" Dessert, n, stress on the second syllable, is a sweet course of a meal that follows…

Thanks, I don't normally make this kind of phonetic mistake. Didn't even notice.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#428

Post by Phrodo_00 »

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #338
Phrodo_00 wrote: post #141

> Far south: too cold for another country Chile has an Antarctic claim going all the way to the pole. If you consider that, it's impossible to go further south If you don't, then we still just run out of land in the Continent. Note that the neighbour competition also applies to Tierra del Fuego, as we've had tensions with Argentina through history over the control of Magallanes Channel.

Chileans also believe they own the moon. Source: I lived there Better source: https://www.marcachile.cl/en/interesting-facts-about-chile-a...

Not a lot of people actually believe that Chile owns it, but it's true that our national registry allowed a guy to register it as his land (he needed to be a land owner to enter a club). It's used as a fun fact by most.

The Antarctic claim is taken seriously, though. It comes from The Treaty of Tordesillas

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#429

Post by helpfulContrib »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #326
grecy wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in rural Australia. We had Japanese exchange students in High School, and the teachers stayed in our house (Mum & Dad were teachers). Even though I was only ~15, I have a very strong memory of the 50, 60 and 70 year old Japanese people staying outside until all hours stargazing. They had never seen stars before.

> They had never seen stars before. What? Even in a large park in Tokyo, you can see stars. What a silly comment.

[dead]

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#430

Post by lazide »

collinrapp wrote: post #342
sprobertson wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Basically, going eastwest is nearly impossible at scale, so moving an army is not going to happen if there is any resistance.

And going northsouth is so easy, that anyone doing it could likely cover the whole country pretty quick. So odds are, if there were two countries in that area, there would be just one pretty quickly.

Definitely one of those ‘geography defines the culture and the borders’ situations.

Post reply on HN