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The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

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Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#72

Post by rmunn »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #69

[flagged]

A reminder of the guidelines: "Eschew flamebait. [...] Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."

It's good to have political opinions. But please don't use HN as a place to try to pick a fight with people who might disagree.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#73

Post by xyzelement »

As the article says, all protections have some distortions and it's just a matter of which ones you chose.

It's totally reasonable and rational for the African association of cartographer to push for this change - it makes their continent look bigger. At the margin, their children can look at the map and feel more significant.

On the flip side, this particular map makes Europe look smaller. So it means that at the margin, European children will look at the map and feel less significant.

It doesn't shock me that the US voted against it. I am surprised that others voted for it, and diminished themselves.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#74

Post by morepork »

simonw wrote: post #34

I vibe-coded up an animated transition between Mercator and Equal Earth (using D3) the other day, if anyone's interested in that comparison: https://tools.simonwillison.net/equal-earth

People say Russia, Canada and Greenland look big in the Mercator projection, but what they miss is it makes Antarctica enormous, your app shows it nicely. So much so that many maps just cut off the bottom otherwise it looks a bit silly, but then the equator isn't in the middle.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#75

Post by sgc »

tensor wrote: post #8
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #6

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.

One can still note a poor decision based on its merits.

An equal area projection map is obviously valuable. But it's practically asinine to pick a projection that distorts land features when there are several equal area projections that do not.

Further, Ukraine had to abstain from this vote because they shoehorned in something ridiculous considering the official position of the UN members that Crimea is Ukraine [1], and Crimea is depicted as outside of Ukraine.

I have no idea if there are other hidden yet important changes, since there is hardly any commentary apart from size and shape.

[1] https://ukraine-war-analytics.com/history/international-reco...

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#76

Post by rmunn »

neuronexmachina wrote: post #7
AlexandrB wrote: post #3

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…

> Other than maritime navigation, I can't think of many tasks where Mercator would be more useful than an equal-area projection.

Precisely why, I suspect, the US voted against the change. (One of the reasons, at least) I mean, gee, I wonder why the country with the world's largest navy* would prefer maps where you can draw a line on the map between two points and it's the actual compass direction? (Give or take a bit of weirdness near the poles, where the difference between the Earth's rotational pole and its magnetic pole actually matters in a way it doesn't matter below the polar circles).

It's just a symbolic vote, of course, and nobody's navy is going to stop using the so-useful-for-maritime-navigation Mercator just because of this UN vote. But still, I would bet that factored into the reasoning. How much? Who knows, I certainly couldn't say. Except to suspect that it was a non-trivial factor.

* Largest by tonnage — China and Russia have more total ships, with the US in third place by ship count, but the US has nearly half the number of aircraft carriers in the entire world, 11 out of a total of 23, and aircraft carriers are some of the heaviest ships out there. Numbers are from https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/largest-n...

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#79

Post by politician »

xyzelement wrote: post #73

As the article says, all protections have some distortions and it's just a matter of which ones you chose. It's totally reasonable and rational for the African association of cartographer to push for this change - it makes their continent look bigger. At the margin, their children can look at the map and feel more significant. On the flip side, this particular map makes Europe look smaller. So it means that at the ma…

I'd love to hear from the folks that downvoted this carefully neutral observation.
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