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The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

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Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#21
post #8

Robinson projection is a good enough, boring compromise, if the UN was interested in that.

No one needs a compromise. The world (except the US) agreed to use this new map together. It's not a conflict.

Representing a 3D sphere-like surface on a 2d plane definitionally requires compromise.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#23
post #14
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one needs a compromise. The world (except the US) agreed to use this new map together. It's not a conflict.

Somebody who does not represent anybody "agreed" - not us.

I'm Canadian. Canada represents me. They voted on this. That's how the world works. Sometimes my government is not the one I voted for and my interests are not represented, or sometimes my interests are not the majority in my country. That's life.

No one is forcing you to use the new map, you can keep your old map. No one will arrest you for it. Enjoy!

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#25
post #18
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the most pressing issue in the world, but long-term, maps do shape conceptions about the world that we don't personally know. So it might be symbolic, but symbols are powerful.

That must be why we all live in awe and fear of giant, mighty Greenland.

The fact that Greenland looks so big and impressive in a Mercator map has probably influenced Trump's obsession with taking it on some level.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#27

Robinson projection is a good enough, boring compromise, if the UN was interested in that.

I like the aesthetics of Robinson, but it gives you the worst of both worlds: it's neither conformal like Mercator nor equal-area for honest data visualization. It's essentially a spline fit over 38 arbitrary numbers chosen to look nice, whereas Equal Earth accomplishes true equal area with a clean, 4-coefficient polynomial.

Equal Earth is basically Robinson with a more straightforward formula and accurate areas.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#28
post #8

Robinson projection is a good enough, boring compromise, if the UN was interested in that.

No one needs a compromise. The world (except the US) agreed to use this new map together. It's not a conflict.

"The world" is not represented by the UN General Assembly. Did you vote for your representative?

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#30

What's the material difference between this and Trump's "my button is bigger"[1] nonsense or the renaming of various bodies of water? I know the UN claims that "Correcting cartographic distortions of continental sizes constitutes an act of cognitive justice and memorial reparation." but it's purely symbolic and changes nothing geopolitically. My personal favourite equal-area projection is something like Boggs eumorph…

> I know the UN claims that "Correcting cartographic distortions of continental sizes constitutes an act of cognitive justice and memorial reparation." but it's purely symbolic and changes nothing geopolitically. This is kind of personally embarrassing, but due to seeing Mercator maps all the time growing up it wasn't until later in life that I realized that Greenland isn't actually a gigantic landmass the size of Af…

I'd bet a lot of money that Trump and all the others pushing for a U.S. "liberation" of Greenland also think it is a similar size to Africa, not 1/14th the size.

Africa is 14x larger, but near the same size on the maps our leaders have grown up with for 80+ years.

This has clearly influenced geopolitics. Which is the point of the UN. Which is just a container for what the countries of the world want to agree on. When the UN "doesn't work" for some thing it is because the countries of the world don't want to work together for that thing.

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