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The UN challenges five centuries of cartography
- hn993302 1mo ago[flagged]
- AlexandrB 1mo agoWhat'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 eumorphic[2] because it doesn't distort the east and westmost polar regions quite as badly. The value of a geographic projection is in its utility for the task at hand, not whether it flatters the correct countries. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42549687 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42549687 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boggs_eumorphic_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boggs_eumorphic_projection
- dgellow 1mo agoThe 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 fixing conflicts. It’s a forum for countries to discuss and agree on things, in practice that means mostly symbolic decisions pass. Which is fine, symbols and defaults matter
- Muromec 1mo ago>The UN isn’t a supranational organization fixing conflicts. It kinda is, it also have powers to authorize invasions. Not that any of this works in practice, but that's what is for.
- hn993302 1mo agoHuh, I didn't know it was actually used, but apparently they did it a few times like the Gulf War
- hn993302 1mo agoTrump didn't unilaterally decide what the rest of the world calls two bodies of water, only the US
- bigstrat2003 1mo agoHe doesn't even have the power to unilaterally declare what the US calls it. Names of geographic features are established by popular usage, not governments.
- inemesitaffia 1mo ago>established by popular usage, not governments. This is straight up wrong.
- bawolff 1mo ago> 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.
- SiempreViernes 1mo agoIt aims at peace yes, but importantly it is an inter-national organisation, meaning it lives beside nations and doesn't have any formal power over them. In some cases the individual treaties negotiated at the UN result in the UN having some formal influence over member nations, but even then the concrete commitments are usually very limited. For examy the Paris agreement basically just says you have to make a few reports, with peer pressure being most of the enforcement. In contrast the EU is (partially) a supernational organisation: in some fields the EU holds formal power over what happens in the member nations (because the member nations changed their national law to give EU that power).
- bawolff 1mo agoWe are getting a bit nit picky here, but formally it has all sorts of de jure powers (via the security council), just de facto not really. But from a practical perspective you are mostly right, although i think its important not to underestimate the soft power the UN has on behind the scenes things, which people significantly under estimate.
- neuronexmachina 1mo ago> 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 Africa. > The value of a geographic projection is in its utility for the task at hand Other than maritime navigation, I can't think of many tasks where Mercator would be more useful than an equal-area projection.
- jubilanti 1mo agoI'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.
- tekla 1mo ago> This has clearly influenced geopolitics Citation needed. This feels like the entire hubub from leftists about how schools use the normal map because of racism and not because its actually useful. Of course they were lying the entire time.
- dnautics 1mo ago> 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?
- hn993302 1mo agoBesides 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.
- erxam 1mo agoIt'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.
- sb057 1mo ago>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.
- EA-3167 1mo agoYeah… the US condemnations of the Axis powers is what really turned the tide, joining into the war later was really a post-script right?
- neuronexmachina 1mo agoCounterpoint: the Cold War was pretty much all about geopolitical symbols, e.g. the Berlin Wall, nuclear deterrence, the Space Race, counting Olympic medals.
- tekla 1mo ago> Berlin Wall, nuclear deterrence, the Space Race, counting Olympic medals I'm sure the guns trained on people trying to cross the Berlin wall to the west was just a "symbol", or the nuclear tests to prove that superpowers could kill everyone, or the people who died during the space race to send someone to the Moon. Olympics, sure whatever. Yes, a nonbinding UN resolution that does a stupid thing that no one has to care about is a symbol, just one no one cares about because its nonbinding.
- poncho_romero 1mo agoTo some people the Berlin Wall was an immediate and terrible factor in their lives. But to most people in the world, it was a symbol of oppression rather than a physical manifestation of it.
- Muromec 1mo agoExcept the part where had to lift an old mainframe from that frozen shithole with a helicopter under fire. And like 10 different proxy wars that are still going on.
- frieseke 1mo agoThe UN is a body that is intended to facilitate global cooperation. This symbolic change better represents the body's members and updates an incorrect visualization, which leads to better cooperation and representation. Trump's renaming changes serve his own whims and selfish ego, they perform the opposite effect and hinder global cooperation.
- antonvs 1mo agoHappily Trump’s actions probably help global cooperation for all countries that’s aren’t the US.
- josephcsible 1mo agoThere's nothing incorrect about the Mercator projection, unless your definition of incorrect covers every flat map and calls only globes correct. Every flat map projection has to make some compromises.
- lukeschlather 1mo agoFor the purposes I use world maps for, correct relative sizing is the paramount thing I'm looking for in a projection. I generally use it to give me a rough idea of distances. Boggs seems inferior, at a glance I have no idea how far it is from NYC to London, for example. I feel like Mercator is similarly bad in terms of distances being uniform. What do you use maps for where Boggs is superior?
- rkagerer 1mo agoIt's great they want to find a projection that better represents the real geography, but at the end of the day you're still trying to unwrap a sphere onto a rectangle. Personally I feel the schools mentioned here would get better mileage out of buying (more) old fashioned globes, and encouraging the kids to learn geography that way.
- kspacewalk2 1mo agoRobinson projection is a good enough, boring compromise, if the UN was interested in that.
- tensor 1mo agoNo one needs a compromise. The world (except the US) agreed to use this new map together. It's not a conflict.
- mdp2021 1mo agoSomebody who does not represent anybody "agreed" - not us.
- tensor 1mo agoI'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!
- andsoitis 1mo agoBy when is Canada going to be using the new map?
- holgerschurig 1mo agoThis question is nonsensical. Canada is not ONE identity. It's millions of people, hundred thousands of companies and organizations. Go and ask them individually. Also, the UN voted to use this map for itself and suggested (!) that others should use it. It never said that everyone has to use that map. It actually said that this voting is "non-binding".
- holgerschurig 1mo ago
- GolfPopper 1mo agoObligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/977/ https://xkcd.com/977/
- ButlerianJihad 1mo agoOh, it's not often we get an entire category of XKCD comics: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Bad_Map_Projections https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Bad_Map_... I'm partial to https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2256:_Bad_Map_Projection:_South_America https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2256:_Bad_Map_Pro...
- jshprentz 1mo agoA cartographer ranked nine xkcd map projections[1]. He reverse engineered several and remade them with R. [1] https://geospatialstuff.com/posts/2025/05/16/xkcd-bad-projections-ranked https://geospatialstuff.com/posts/2025/05/16/xkcd-bad-projec...
- jsLavaGoat 1mo ago80% of the human population lives in the northern hemisphere, but closer to the equator.
- lordloki 1mo ago"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
- steanne 1mo agowhy the /s? https://mapdesign.icaci.org/2014/02/mapcarte-38365-mcarthurs-universal-corrective-map-of-the-world-stuart-mcarthur-1979/ https://mapdesign.icaci.org/2014/02/mapcarte-38365-mcarthurs...
- chrisra 1mo agoI 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.
- varispeed 1mo ago[flagged]
- pphysch 1mo agoWho is taking it seriously? The unipolarists clearly don't, and the multipolarists have been busy building alternatives for the past couple decades.
- Muromec 1mo agoWell, unfortunately it's clubs of corrupt drunkards farting in chairs all the way down to 9-member housing association. The difference is in how much power each club is allowed to have and advertise at any given moment.
- simonw 1mo agoI 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 https://tools.simonwillison.net/equal-earth
- gumby 1mo agoVery nice!
- morepork 1mo agoPeople 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.
- bmandale 1mo agoThe 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.
- MichaelRo 1mo agoI stopped reading at "vibe-coded".
- imp0cat 1mo agoIt's kinda obvious when you see the username, isn't it? But still, it's not a red flag in this particular example.
- mlaretallack 1mo agoVery cool, Its interesting to see what happens to Antarctica.
- decimalenough 1mo agoIt's kind of funny how the colonial convenience of having the 0 longitude line pass through Greenwich, UK ends up making Africa the most prominent place on the world map, since the centerpoint (0,0) is just off the African coast. This was true with Mercator as well, but Equal Earth emphasizes just how huge the African continent actually is.
- gumby 1mo agoFor a while, France had its own prime meridian with 0 degrees passing of course through Paris: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_meridian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_meridian
- globular-toast 1mo agoIt still does. I have one going through my house too. The problem is nobody else knows or cares about those meridians. It's quite fortunate the US didn't invent its own, what with its zeal for being different. We're quite lucky to still have just the one.
- gumby 1mo agoDon’t give them ideas!
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- hn993302 1mo agoYeah, the prime meridian selection is the actually colonial part of the Mercator map. It's not like they were trying to make Europe look big, but they were trying to make London central.
- jameshart 1mo ago
- frmersdog 1mo agoOh, this is just getting started when it comes to upsetting traditionalists. I'd wager that the majority of map-reading happens on a screen these days, using software maps that can be rotated without changing the relative orientation of the labels. ...So why is it "Sub-Saharan Africa"? Why not "Super-Saharan Africa"? "Dexterous-Saharan Africa"? "Sinister-Saharan Africa?" It's all just convention (that just happens to favor Eurocentric notions). "Free your mind." -Morpheus
- LeFantome 1mo agoTime to rename Mercator the “Map of America”.
- mdp2021 1mo agoThe 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.)
- 4lx87 1mo agoDon't give the lying-felon-in-chief any ideas.
- bentley 1mo agoGS50 would be a better choice.
- samizdis 1mo agoFor quite a few years, and because I don't have a globe, I've turned to MapFight [0] to get a good idea of size/area comparisons for countries, significant geographic features and for historical lands/empires. [0] https://www.mapfight.xyz/ https://www.mapfight.xyz/
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- JdeBP 1mo agoI 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 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. (-:
- hn993302 1mo agoEven computer maps at the time like Google Earth had distortion around the poles, as if they were pieced together in slices. So that combined with the globe caps are why I never really knew what they looked like as a kid.
- alterom 1mo ago> 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. "I had toy globes which, unlike actual globes, covered up significant chunks of Earth, so actual globes are bad" Solid logic, mate.
- jbaber 1mo agoThat's why I got my kids $1 inflatable globes. You can see the poles just fine.
- seszett 1mo agoHonestly it's so difficult to find a map that satisfies all of one's requirements for teaching kids if you're a bit rigorous. I might be asking bit too much but I want Antarctica to be shown correctly, I want all microstates to be shown, I want all the "(UK)" and "(FR)" mentions for overseas territories to be there, ideally Taipei to be shown as a capital, etc, and that's only what I care about, I'm sure there are dozens of other details I don't think of that are wrong on most maps. I ended up making my own world map with d3 (that was 10 years ago, I don't know what I would use today) and print it at a print shop. I printed a dymaxion map (with ocean blue for the gaps) and another more "normal" projection though I don't actually remember which one, with Antarctica as an insert. It wasn't even expensive, and in addition I was able to put all the names in both French and Dutch. You might assume that in Belgium, it would at least be possible to find bilingual maps but no, if you can find one that's not in English you're already lucky.
- kevin_thibedeau 1mo ago[flagged]
- Geonode 1mo ago[flagged]
- rmunn 1mo agoA 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.
- xyzelement 1mo agoAs 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.
- politician 1mo agoI'd love to hear from the folks that downvoted this carefully neutral observation.
- antonvs 1mo agoBecause it’s focusing purely on how big continents “look” without even mentioning the issue of actual size. That is not, in any credible sense, “carefully neutral”.
- politician 1mo agoThe entire point of the new projection was to reflect the relative size of the landmasses more accurately.
- jeroenhd 1mo agoI don't think "European children will look at the map and feel less significant" is a carefully neutral observation. It's an assumption that European children feel superiority because their country is slightly bigger. If anything, I expect the accurate sizes set the stage for feeling superiority over their ancestors colonizing huge lands while coming from tiny countries. If we're talking about kids, they should just get taught this type of geography using a globe. You can get an accurate (enough) inflatable globe for like 3 euros, including shipping.
- qwerty_clicks 1mo ago[flagged]
- scotty79 1mo agoSince we are moving away from print and towards screens, shouldn't we be just using actual globes?
- bawolff 1mo agoScreens are still 2D objects requiring projections.
- scotty79 1mo agoyeah, 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
- jameshart 1mo agoWith computer generated maps, you can just always use a minimally distorting conical or polar projection centered on the exact point you’re focusing on. That also happens to be broadly what you would get looking straight down at the earth from above that point, which seems like it would also be the least confusing option.
- snowwrestler 1mo agoYes. Specially, touch enabled screens with dynamically rendered graphics. The Google Maps app on my iPhone at one point years ago switched to having a globe as its base, like Google Earth. It was great. Then Google switched it back to Mercator. But you can scroll infinitely to the left or right, so its base is actually now “Mercator rolled into a tube.” Somehow that’s even worse!
- bawolff 1mo agoI feel like people are making more of a fuss about this then it is. The UNGA isn't a body that controls what maps its member states use. They can make the recommendation of course, but it has yet to be seen if anyone follows it.
- exabrial 1mo agoYeah, that's my thoughts as well. The answer is literally in the article: > Mercator useful for sailing This is the only correct answer, and everything else is unscientific nonsense. It hasn't been replaced because... it just hasn't. Mercator + knots + nautical miles is a system that is extremely useful for navigation. Since we aren't sailing ships around a whole lot anymore, a lot of teachers forget to mention the relationship between the three. I imagine that was more common knowledge back in the day. That being said, I do like the new proposed projection for how we use maps today. I think another useful tool would simply be overlay maps.
- edoceo 1mo agoWhy not just use KM? We should reduce the number of units of measure in 2026.
- ViewTrick1002 1mo agoBecause nautical miles is an angle measurement which then happens to be 1852 meters when you break it down.
- brainwad 1mo agoAnd only 1852m at sea level; since it's an angular distance it's a bit longer in the air and a bit shorter underwater (~ 29 cm per km of elevation change).
- everybodyknows 1mo agoA nautical mile is roughly one minute of latitude. Every blue-water sailor has heard "a minute's a mile" -- although that's hardly even half-correct.
- maxglute 1mo agoNow rotate it 90 degrees like T and O map.
- theanonymousone 1mo agoI came across AuthaGraph projection some time ago and got hooked to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AuthaGraph_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AuthaGraph_projection A version of it including political borders my desktop wallpaper for a long time, until I decided to not change default wallpaper on my new devices anymore.
- alehlopeh 1mo agoCalling it Equal Earth was a bad move. The word “equal” has tons of baggage. Why not call it something less incendiary like Actual Earth or something? What ever happened to being pragmatic?
- notpushkin 1mo agoIt’s been called Equal Earth since 2018. The word “equal” here (likely?) refers to the fact it’s an equal-area projection, although it could be politically charged.
- holgerschurig 1mo agoThat's such a weird statement. The word "equal" has been used in maths since centuries without any baggage at all. And since a projection (how to project the surface of a sphere onto a flat surface) is a mathematical undertaking it's perfectly fine to think in mathematical terms. I think it is actually you now that tries to impose this load onto the term, not the original name givers of the projection. Also, this "this is loaded, let's use something else" is puny. Decades ago, "fat" was loaded. So people used "strong" --- which is IMHO blatantly wrong. But hey, people still said it derogatory, so it was burned in that context. Then it became "big". But the derogatory use stayed, so that term is now also burned in that context. And then "obese" is now used ... guess how long it takes still that word is burned, too. Seldom do people realize that they shouldn't fight the wording, but the derogatory use. But instead they attack the words. The situation stays as is, but word after word becomes taboo. How nonsensical! Also observe how I wrote "in that context". I talked about "fat", "big" and "strong" in context of body mass. But then some SJW come and declare these words to be bad in any context. Eventually we can't fish a big fish anymore ... because some idiots hijacked the meaning of "big". Loading up completely normal words is IMHO nonsense. In conclusion, Equal Earth is, to me, a very fine name.
- bentley 1mo ago> The word "equal" has been used in maths since centuries without any baggage at all. … > I think it is actually you now that tries to impose this load onto the term, not the original name givers of the projection. Certainly “equal” is a perfectly normal word used normally in all sorts of circumstances, including equal‐area map projections. That said, while I wouldn’t call it “baggage,” it’s impossible to separate the Equal Earth projection from the context in which it was created: the previous most notorious equal‐area projection, Gall–Peters, was heavily pushed (both when it was popularized in the 1970s and when it regained a surge of popularity in the 2010s/2020s) by promoting the idea that use of non‐equal‐area projections causes westerners to subconsciously internalize feelings of superiority over the poor oppressed Global South based on the distorted size of their home countries on a map. This idea is, shall we say, controversial and not universally accepted. But if you read the original UN resolution that was voted on, it’s clear that the UN representatives believe it (or say they believe it, anyway). In that context, it seems absolutely clear that the name “Equal Earth” was a very intentional double entendre by the authors of the projection. I don’t fault the authors for coming up with such a catchy name, but I feel strongly it’s important to push back against the false idea that establishing use of equal‐area projections is some meaningful act of restorative social justice.
- emmelaich 1mo agoMercator is fine. Or if you want something flat use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boggs_eumorphic_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boggs_eumorphic_projection. Or buy a globe FFS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections
- petermcneeley 1mo agoYa people have no idea how big Africa truly is Here is the UK in Africa: https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTAyODQ3Nzg.NTkyNDI2Nw*MjQwOTA0NTU(MTU2NTI5NTU'MQ~!GB*Nzc3MjA5Ng.MzM4MDI2OTk)NA https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTAyODQ3Nzg.NTkyNDI2Nw*... Note of course this includes Scotland! The traditional English are basically a dot.
- holgerschurig 1mo agoAnd people have no idea how diverse the cultures in Africa are.
- cineticdaffodil 1mo ago[dead]
- skew-aberration 1mo agoI don't get why people say this / focus on Africa in this conversation. I've never thought Africa was small and was taught about the Berlin Conference, etc in school. All the large continents are near the equator and hence the relative size of Africa, Australia, North/South America, Asia is not affected much by the projection. Antarctica is big too, even though wildly exaggerated by Mercator. If anything, it makes more sense to say people don't realize how small UK/Europe is.
- poulpy123 1mo agoBecause they imply racism and colonialism
- marcusverus 1mo agoI for one am disappointed that it took 500 years for people to acknowledge that the most important consideration when choosing a map is its emotional impact on the people of Africa.
- riffraff 1mo ago
- golly_ned 1mo ago[dead]
- andsoitis 1mo agoA more interesting change would be to flip maps “upside down”. The “north is up” convention isn’t a real thing.
- marcus_holmes 1mo agoI ponder whether, if the poles flipped and we survived that relatively intact, there would be a sudden enthusiasm for "South is up".
- flohofwoe 1mo agoAFAIK in the past there were all sorts of 'up' conventions, for instance medieval European maps sometimes put East up, because Jerusalem is in the East. Ancient mediterranean maps often were South up, as well as maps of Islamic cartoghraphers. There were also Roman road maps which were entirely schematic, more like our modern public transport maps (e.g. such maps only cared about how locations were connected by roads and their distances, but not about any geographical mapping)
- allknowingfrog 1mo agoI was taught somewhere along the way that the term "Orient" for the East comes from the idea that maps were once oriented in that direction.
- thaumasiotes 1mo agoPut it out of your mind. The term "Orient" comes from the fact that the sun rises in the East; the Latin word (oriens) literally means "rising". This is also why the contrasting term is "Occident" (meaning "falling"), but that word is less well known today.
- allknowingfrog 29d agoWikipedia confirms your explanation and I have no reason to doubt it. Wyoming has the Occidental Hotel, which introduced me to the term, but I never made the connection that its a simple pair of Latin antonyms. I'll correct this in my mental list of "fun facts".
- saaaaaam 1mo agoIt’s West Wing coming true again. “Give me $200 and it’s done!” https://youtu.be/QMlp8BeBJgg https://youtu.be/QMlp8BeBJgg
- JuniperMesos 1mo agoI never had the impression that the Mercator projection, or indeed any particular world map projection out of the dozens in common use, had any kind of official status that needed to be removed. It seems obvious to me that different map projections have different tradeoffs, and that any particular publisher of a world map can and does use whichever one makes sense for the information they're trying to convey.
- c048 1mo agoThis was also exactly what I was taught in school when I was 10 years old. We also saw examples of other maps from other parts in the world that put their location front and center. That this map is a derivative of "a decolonization map", should be clear to anyone that this is just political posturing and not anything of actual use.
- TitaRusell 1mo agoAt least they're not renaming any lakes.
- XorNot 1mo agoI mean it also accurately depicts relative land mass sizes? For the purposes of the UN that seems fairly relevant compared to Mercator which is a good map if you're actually navigating a coast line but atrocious if you're trying to gauge how big the territory you're talking about actually is.
- shevy-java 1mo ago> The UN endorsed a resolution to promote maps that accurately reflect the true size of continents, dethroning the 500-year-old Mercator projection in the process. That project was always silly really. That the USA is turning into the number #1 rogue country is also problematic. Trump is damaging everything here.
- cbeach 1mo ago> That the USA is turning into the number #1 rogue country is also problematic. Trump is damaging everything here Only in the minds of the far left is "Trump damaging everything", or is the US "the #1 rogue country" Personally I support reindustrialisation, reinstating secure borders, and taking down totalitarian regimes that killed thousands of innocent people
- modzu 1mo agohave we renamed the world america yet?
- holgerschurig 1mo agoWeird title. Cargography constantly challenged itself. Look at some of the possible projections at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projections They all compromise on something to enhance something else. You simply can't map the surface of a 3d shere (approximation of the earths globe) onto a 2d flat surface. And so we have projections galore. And anyway was (and is) always free to use whatever fits best.
- tialaramex 1mo agoAnd the article text does a pretty good job (to me as a layman who was aware Dymaxion existed but doesn't spend much time thinking about this) of illustrating, just the title seems to be for a much more reactionary nonsense article.
- throw0101a 1mo ago> You simply can't map the surface of a 3d shere (approximation of the earths globe) onto a 2d flat surface. This would be an easier problem to solve if Flat Earthers were right. (semi-/s)
- Byvrsakjo10 1mo agoI agree cartography has always been challenging itself, it is possible the size of most nations have been miscalculated.
- tialaramex 1mo ago> it is possible the size of most nations have been miscalculated Huh? Are you a Flat Earth believer? We can literally see the countries from space. The problem wasn't that we don't know how big they are but that, as your parent explains, it is not possible to have a flat map which accurately depicts a (roughly) spherical terrain. A flat map has to be "wrong" in some sense and this change picks a map which made a trade off that favours accurate size (e.g. ratio between size of Greenland and Africa)
- ChucklsTheBeard 1mo ago
- goodcanadian 1mo agoDecades ago, when I was a child, I viewed the Mercator projection as old fashioned and stupid. In fact, I rarely saw it. Most maps were Robinson's projection (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_projection). It baffles me that anyone still uses Mercator projection for any serious purpose.
- culi 1mo agoRobinson was a pretty decent compromise map but still has significant distortion far away from the equator. It is less distorted than Mercator but still tries to present a pleasing view of the world. Mercator is still preferred for navigation because it preserves angles (that's why Google Maps uses it). Neither Robinson nor Equal Earth are great for preserving angles. I think it's appropriate for the United Nations to adopt a map that seeks to preserve landmass sizes over Mercator which is only useful for navigation. I think Robinson is a compromise that doesn't perfectly maintain angles nor accurately reflects sizes but lands somewhere between the two "extremes"
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- like_any_other 1mo ago> It baffles me that anyone still uses Mercator projection for any serious purpose. The article is just strawmaning our past, as is fashionable. Ironically the same author published an article warning against misinformation just a week prior: https://www.not-ship.com/normalize-debunking-each-other/ https://www.not-ship.com/normalize-debunking-each-other/
- gchadwick 1mo ago> It baffles me that anyone still uses Mercator projection for any serious purpose. Tell me you've never done any serious navigation off a map or chart without telling me...
- goodcanadian 1mo agoHa. I have, and it probably was Mercator or something close to it . . . I probably should have clarified that I meant world maps (or continent scale, at least) where I would argue it's a pretty shit projection even for navigation purposes.
- flohofwoe 1mo agoI would really like to know which parts of the world use Mercator projection on their standard school wall maps. At least in Germany (and both former East and West) it certainly isn't in use since at least the 1950s (and probably much earlier), but instead a projection type that maps land masses closer to their actual relative sizes. Mercator is extremely rare and only used in very specialized professional maps (e.g. for navigation), but certainly not as the popular map projection in education. Also don't schools use physical globes anymore? This whole drama sounds like it's about a century late to the party tbh.
- RamblingCTO 1mo agoThe comments overwhelmingly say: mercator isn't really in use. So what is this weird "decolonization" push then? Virtue signalling? I see it a lot from US-based people nowadays. Seems like a weird fetish as a European.
- WelkinFolk 1mo agoI don't think this is a US only thing. Even in India, where I'm from, everyone I've spoken to or know tends to like this change.
- flohofwoe 1mo agoYeah but does the Indian education system actually use Mercator projection on their wall maps and geography learning material? E.g. how much is the average Indian citizen actually confronted with highly distorted map projections in their daily life (unless their professional job is involved with navigating ships of course where Mercator projections makes sense). From my side of the world (Europe), this whole "Mercator projection is associated with colonialism" drama seems to have originated a couple of years ago in the US and was mostly amplified by artificial social media outrage.
- philipallstar 1mo agoIt's from longer ago than that. There was a West Wing "big block of cheese" episode that made it out to be a white supremacy issue, when the map is really just a useful map for navigation.
- WelkinFolk 1mo agoAt least from my own experience, the map used the most throughout school was the Mercator projection. When I first discovered that Greenland and Canada were not really that big during one of my many wikipedia tours as a kid, I was incredibly disappointed.
- GJim 1mo ago
- amadeuspagel 1mo ago> Mercator is the most-widely used projection (Google Maps uses it, for one), but it was created in 1569 during the age of exploration. It's mostly good for sea navigation. Any straight line drawn on the map represents a constant compass bearing. It's also good for knowing how much daylight you get somewhere or whether someone there is likely to be awake right now.
- tialaramex 1mo ago> It's also good for knowing how much daylight you get somewhere or whether someone there is likely to be awake right now. The former is correlated with distance from the Equator (and knowledge of the seasons) but surely other than Dymaxion all the maps we care about do have an Equator and North->South ? The latter is correlated with Longitude, and again other than Dymaxion surely all these maps will be the same in that respect ? Particularly in practice with Artificial Light humans tend to live by the clock, which is thus dependent on local "time zones" and not strictly East-West position.
- amadeuspagel 1mo agoHumans don't live by the clock. People in Spain and Poland aren't awake at the same time, merely because they live in the same timezone.
- masswerk 1mo agoGoode homolosine projection, which enjoyed some popularity in the "Space Age", deserves a mention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goode_homolosine_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goode_homolosine_projection
- jhbadger 1mo agoYeah -- I remember in old (1960s) TV shows and movies the headquarters of organizations would always have a map like that, often huge on one wall. It makes sense -- why not just peel the Earth like an orange and flatten it out?
- tokai 1mo agoReally should be the default institutional projection.
- mrguyorama 1mo agoI loved this one as a kid in first grade because it just makes it so clear and obvious what the problem even is! I didn't need diagrams pretending to inflate a balloon in a cylinder, or an animate gif warping from globe to flat. Just, oh of course, like an orange peel!
- perilunar 1mo agoI always thought the Goode homolosine was kind of ugly and 'lumpy' at the edges. The similar Boggs eumorphic projection is really nice though.
- masswerk 1mo agoFor reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boggs_eumorphic_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boggs_eumorphic_projection
- nelox 1mo agoNow Africa looks even more enticing
- ketzu 1mo agoI wonder how many people can reliably identify a Mercator projection when they see a map. My personal belief is that many people think map they have seen are Mercator projections when they are not and that "Mercator" is for most a synonym with "the normal world map I am used to", even though it (likely?) isn't. Based on some quick search the atlas I used in school in Germany mostly used winkel-tripel projection (or the eckert IV). Does my memory remember the map accurate enough to determine that now? Hell no.
- fedeb95 1mo agoWe are in 2026: why not a rotating globe?
- masswerk 1mo agoIsn't this more like a 1997 website, though? ;-) (I.e., all the webpages with a rotating globe with "News" spelled around it in the fashion of the animated Universal logo, embedded as an animated GIF [GIF89a].)
- thaumasiotes 1mo agoThe point is to be seen fighting, not to have accurate maps.
- jillesvangurp 1mo agoGoogle maps solves this neatly by just projecting the world map on a sphere when you zoom out. On desktop at least. It seems on mobile they use a 2D Mercator projection. But they just don't allow you to zoom out all the way, which is a bit weird. At least on my Pixel phone.
- fedeb95 1mo agoIn order to understand why this is pushed, consider that maps through history rarely have been only a tool for the technician. Maps usually conveyed a lot of social information, take a look at medieval ones to understand the point. This explains why the UN is making such an otherwise stupid resolution from a mathematical point of view.
- madmulita 1mo agoIt should read "UN, tired of so much success, attacks the real problems"
- cbeach 1mo ago'decolonize the curriculum' says it all. This is the left doing what they always do: finding supposed victims and oppressors, and acting (loudly and publicly) as white knight saviours. Doesn't matter if the victims asked for their help or not, or even if the issue is real. This is a performative act of virtue by the left. Nothing more. The UN is 1-country-1-vote, which means Western liberal market economies are in the minority. As an organisation it structurally favours the economic-distributional and collectivist economies. The New International Economic Order (UNGA, 1974), the New World Information and Communication Order at UNESCO, the 2024 Global Principles for Information Integrity and the Global Digital Compact are ideological, and all about global redistribution of wealth and international control of media flows. The UN is not an organisation that exists to promote the values of freedom and equality of opportunity that underpin constitutions like the US.
- perrygeo 1mo agoYes mercator distorts size at high latitudes. But it preserves angles which is more important for many (most?) mapping applications. Literally no one is using a mercator projection to determine size at the continental scale. We use mercator for navigation and for local maps. It keeps everything at right angles. Roads that run N-S look like vertical lines. If something is to the lower-left, that's south-west. These characteristics make it ideal for most maps. The UN has only one mapping application - to equitably portray the world's country boundaries. In the larger space of potential maps, this is pretty niche. As a result, they need a niche projection.
- perilunar 1mo ago> We use mercator for navigation and for local maps Nautical charts use Mercator projection, but aviation charts typically use the Lambert conformal conic projection (LCC). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert_conformal_conic_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert_conformal_conic_projec... To quote the article: "Pilots use aeronautical charts based on LCC because a straight line ... approximates a great-circle route between endpoints for typical flight distances"
- cwmoore 1mo agoWe all knew the UN emblem already has a world map, right? Right? https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emblem_of_the_United_Nations.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emblem_of_the_United...