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The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

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Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#81

Post by bawolff »

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.

UNGA votes are non binding symbolic grandstanding. This vote does not mean the world agreed to it. its more like the world agreed to think about it.

Will countries actually change their map projections? That has yet to be seen. Maybe they will, maybe they won't That has yet to be seen.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#84

Post by scotty79 »

bawolff wrote: post #82
scotty79 wrote: post #78

Since we are moving away from print and towards screens, shouldn't we be just using actual globes?

Screens are still 2D objects requiring projections.

yeah, but when people are free to spin and zoom the virtual globe they understand perfectly how the projection relates to the real object, which they don't when it comes to maps

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#85

Post by bawolff »

dgellow wrote: post #4
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…

The main difference is that the UN didn’t force anything and isn’t unilaterally deciding what projection to use. The countries decided together to use a new default when showing the world map, that’s it. You can still use whatever projection you want, nothing will happen to you. > it's purely symbolic and changes nothing geopolitically. That’s literally what the UN is for. The UN isn’t a supranational organization fi…

> The UN isn’t a supranational organization fixing conflicts.

The UN's explicit purpose is to try and prevent conflict. One of the requirements to join is to renounce the right to use force in international relations except in self-defense.

They do that in a number of ways. One of those is to have these types of symbolic votes. The hope is that by having where everyone stands out in the open, whether on silly things or serious things, it will reduce conflict. Does it work? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Obviously world peace hasn't been achieved. It probably never will be. Nonetheless, that is the goal of the UN. They want to try to fix conflicts.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#87

Post by dnautics »

hn993302 wrote: post #64
dnautics wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many tasks where Mercator would be more useful than an equal-area projection. What sort of tasks besides a size measuring contest is an equal area projection good for?

Besides size, there's distance. Like it's annoying how UK and France look much further apart than they actually are, and every sea/air route appears to not take the shortest path. I'd be fine with this change if it weren't about trying to make Africa look more important. They're just fixing a misleading map.

What's the task here?

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#88

Post by WillAdams »

flexagoon wrote: post #16
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #6

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.

Well, we should use Mercator for its intended purpose (only), which is to accurately show/determine angles for navigation....

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#90

Post by bmandale »

morepork wrote: post #74
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.

The mercator projection has neither a top nor a bottom, it extends infinitely upwards and downwards. Hence all visualizations of it cut it off at some arbitrary point. Making antarctica humorously large does nothing besides make a point.
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