Live data from Hacker News

The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

not-ship.com

51–60 of 324 posts

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#51

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

Here's an image I made to show the difference between Robinson and Equal Earth: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comparison_of_Equal_... Whichever you prefer, what matters is that we should all just stop using Mercator.

[flagged]

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#53

"And since we often, without thinking, use size as a proxy for importance or power, this subtly reinforces a sense of northern superiority over the global south." We also use position as a proxy for importance or power, so perhaps they should flip the map over as well. /s

I think a "reversed" south-at-the-top is a good idea to at least be aware of. I don't think it makes sense to reverse it since it just flips the problem, but it is (very slightly?) unlucky for the southern hemisphere.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#54

Time to rename Mercator the “Map of America”.

The distortions in maps with non orthogonal axes are evident already looking at Europe (though with centering at Greenwich). So, not just the "Map of America (of the Americas)" or "Map of Australia"... The compromises are just everywhere. Of course.

(Yes, I get what you meant. I am just suggesting other angles.)

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#55
post #17
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Symbols are arguably the most important aspect of geopolitics.

Yeah… the US condemnations of the Axis powers is what really turned the tide, joining into the war later was really a post-script right?

Nazi were big on symbols. And very good in their use of them for propaganda. Yes, they played role in getting support for their project.

And allies were engaged in that too.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#56
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.

To say that "the world agreed" on something based on a General Assembly resolution is an interesting claim, if rather bold.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#57

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

Here's an image I made to show the difference between Robinson and Equal Earth: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comparison_of_Equal_... Whichever you prefer, what matters is that we should all just stop using Mercator.

[deleted]

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#58
post #9

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

Why would the world feel the need to compromise when all UN countries, except for one agree on the projection. The solution is simply to ignore the minority, especially if it has a government that itself has always refused to compromise with others.

It's a GA resolution. Vanuatu gets the same vote as India. No actually consequential global decisions could ever be made this way, so it's no wonder it's mostly used for symbolic votes like this one.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#59
I read the article thinking that it was not going to mention Dymaxion. Articles like this rarely do. The BBC has an article on the U.N. resolution (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly5r60v4mro), and it does not.

And then right at the bottom it went and mentioned Dymaxion.

Dymaxion is one of the few projections that actually shows Antarctica with something resembling its actual shape. Interestingly, to counter the people who say that the best thing to learn from is an actual globe, a couple of children's globes of the world that I had as a child had large metal caps around the axle that obscured most of Antarctica.

Any decent atlas uses a variety of projections, of course. The tatty, second-hand, older-than-I-am atlas that I had at school was already on to Interrupted Mollweide's Homolographic by page 3. (-:

Post reply on HN