An example I saw in school is that (if I remember correctly) you can fit the continental US, Europe, and China all inside Africa with some room to spare (and maybe a couple other large things I'm forgetting!)
”We and our 727 technology partners ask you to consent…”
I would bet the billionaires in Trump’s good boys club are in it for the pardons they need after justice realizes what is being done with everyone’s personal data.
Is this really a Mercator projection? It doesn't appear to maintain the invariant that lines of constant bearing are straight lines.
If I pick a point somewhere in the middle of Manhattan, the top point of Manhattan is somewhere near the top of the light colored area and the bottom point of Manhattan nearish the bottom of the light colored area. This means that if I draw straight lines on the the map from San Francisco to these two points, the angle between them is something like 30 degrees. They pass through very roughly the top and bottom of Nevada. But there's no line of constant bearing that passes from SF through the top of Nevada to the top of Manhattan while at the same time one that passes through the bottom of Nevada to the bottom of Manhattan.
This is all very wishy-washy, but it doesn't look right to me.
"Lines of constant bearing" (or "rhumb lines") depend on the choice of poles.
A rhumb line relative to true north looks straight on a standard Mercator projection, but can look like a spiral on another Mercator-style projection where the pole and center-point have been swapped.
If you search for "90,0" and then use the change orientation button to put the south pole on the bottom of the screen you can recover the more familiar distorted map.
Other choices really do put into perspective how distorted this projection is.
Mexico City is great for this because it points you to the central square. You can see the avenues spiraling out of the square, some of which follow the same routes as the avenues that lead to the city-island of prehispanic times (Calzada de Tlalpan, for example).
Remember that "The West Wing" episode where geographers petition the White House chief of staff to replace the Mercator projection with the more accurate and less Euro/US-centric Peters one? This one looks designed to stroke the Yuge ego of one Donald J Trump...
Yes, a great and educational episode, which is exactly why it's fiction. Although I would expect anyone working at the White House to have seen an actual globe. Well, perhaps not this White House.
Not the same idea, but the same category. You can Drag countries to different places on the Mercator projection to see how they warp and change size.
Classic example is moving Greenland onto the US. Or Russia. Russia isn't talked about much in this case, but its dramatic how it changes.
https://www.thetruesize.com/
An example I saw in school is that (if I remember correctly) you can fit the continental US, Europe, and China all inside Africa with some room to spare (and maybe a couple other large things I'm forgetting!)
Some very impressive ones to look at here:
- Colombia is about as tall as the USA's West Coast.
- Brazil is comparable to Canada.
- Indonesia is wider than Europe.
Australia is also one that blows people's minds. Larger than Western and Central Europe combined.
Oh so the whole UK would fit in Texas, USA a couple times.
And Greenland is like CA, OR, WA, NV combined.
Good to know.
”We and our 727 technology partners ask you to consent…”
I would bet the billionaires in Trump’s good boys club are in it for the pardons they need after justice realizes what is being done with everyone’s personal data.
Is this really a Mercator projection? It doesn't appear to maintain the invariant that lines of constant bearing are straight lines.
If I pick a point somewhere in the middle of Manhattan, the top point of Manhattan is somewhere near the top of the light colored area and the bottom point of Manhattan nearish the bottom of the light colored area. This means that if I draw straight lines on the the map from San Francisco to these two points, the angle between them is something like 30 degrees. They pass through very roughly the top and bottom of Nevada. But there's no line of constant bearing that passes from SF through the top of Nevada to the top of Manhattan while at the same time one that passes through the bottom of Nevada to the bottom of Manhattan.
This is all very wishy-washy, but it doesn't look right to me.
"Lines of constant bearing" (or "rhumb lines") depend on the choice of poles.
A rhumb line relative to true north looks straight on a standard Mercator projection, but can look like a spiral on another Mercator-style projection where the pole and center-point have been swapped.
Oh, that's an interesting point. Maybe that's what's going on. It's hard to picture such a line with a different pole.
If you search for "90,0" and then use the change orientation button to put the south pole on the bottom of the screen you can recover the more familiar distorted map.
Other choices really do put into perspective how distorted this projection is.
This reminds me of "The View of the World from 9th Avenue": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Ave...
I made something along these lines a while back too: https://projections.charemza.name/
I like the simplicity of yours!
Mexico City is great for this because it points you to the central square. You can see the avenues spiraling out of the square, some of which follow the same routes as the avenues that lead to the city-island of prehispanic times (Calzada de Tlalpan, for example).
A Show HN thread in 2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7840059
Damn, still getting reposted a decade later lmao
You ain't seen nothin' yet!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28982493
Some HN evergreens are about to hit voting age.
Incidentally a friend just shared this with me earlier today : https://www.thetruesize.com/
Reminds me of bad map projection #45: Exterior Kansas[1].
[1]: https://xkcd.com/2951/
Essentially the plot of The Inverted World.
This is basically how my mind works. Mind projection.
I honestly wonder why I find this so skin-crawling and unsettling. Something about the distortion of a familiar shape.
Remember that "The West Wing" episode where geographers petition the White House chief of staff to replace the Mercator projection with the more accurate and less Euro/US-centric Peters one? This one looks designed to stroke the Yuge ego of one Donald J Trump...
I remember that episode well, and had cause recently (size of Greenland in the news) to show someone else the same thing.
In the Peter's projection the size of the US and especially Europe, become "smaller" relative to say the size of Africa.
It can be quite disconcerting to a person when their "place in the world" is challenged at such a fundamental level.
oh my god, today I learned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY
Yes, a great and educational episode, which is exactly why it's fiction. Although I would expect anyone working at the White House to have seen an actual globe. Well, perhaps not this White House.
> Well, perhaps not this White House.
Unbeliever!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Abdel_Fattah_el-Sisi,_K...
Okay, well, perhaps he has averted his gaze.
Brilliant fun. Do change the layers and orientation, to play with the suggested locations!
This is information that a specific Earth community must not access, it will cause flat out chaos!
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