3 ms·

North America is very affected, Mercator makes it look as big or bigger than Africa when it's actually quite smaller.

skew-aberration 16d ago
Continents are in truesizeof btw. Asia is much bigger than Africa, North America is only a little smaller. When you account for the Sahara Desert of course, there is more usable land in North America.
- structwafel 16d ago
  https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/b359009a-d35d-47af-aca2-fd6a5bc71980/content https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/b35... Figure 10 shows that Africa has more Arable land than North America. And I wouldn't call 29.6 <> 21.3 a little smaller, Africa is 39% bigger than North America.
  - skew-aberration 16d ago
    Downvotes? Just drag South America or Australia onto Africa and tell me it changed more than a few percent in size. Barely perceptible. North America is not 21.3 but 24.7e^6 m^3 according to google, so the ratio is 4:3. Asia to Africa is 3:2 Arable in your stats just means cultivated, it isn't a measure of the natural productivity. People in Africa work poorer lands due to necessity. North America has more non-desert land than Africa and produces 3x as much food. Asia nearly 10x food production. Europe 2x. Antarctica has no non-desert land and Australia has very little. Asia has the most by a long way. This lines up pretty well with each continent's historical economic significance. Regarding 'small Africa' conspiracy - I have never not been told that Africa is a huge continent. Documentaries, podcasts, TED talks, movies, Top Gear, books, atlases (they all have multiple projections btw), globes, video games. Five weeks in a balloon? I may have consumed well over 100 hours of media romanticizing the vast scale of Africa. Colonialists had no reason to conceal it either - selling big Africa investment (exploitation) opportunities was their business model This is a Mandela effect moment for me. Or maybe it's an American education thing?
    - tekla 16d ago
      No its just people lying. I remember being told 30 years ago that a flat map and a globe make countries look different since a kid asked why continenents looked different when we were looking at a globe

Continents are in truesizeof btw. Asia is much bigger than Africa, North America is only a little smaller. When you account for the Sahara Desert of course, there is more usable land in North America.

structwafel 16d ago
https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/b359009a-d35d-47af-aca2-fd6a5bc71980/content https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/b35... Figure 10 shows that Africa has more Arable land than North America. And I wouldn't call 29.6 <> 21.3 a little smaller, Africa is 39% bigger than North America.
- skew-aberration 16d ago
  Downvotes? Just drag South America or Australia onto Africa and tell me it changed more than a few percent in size. Barely perceptible. North America is not 21.3 but 24.7e^6 m^3 according to google, so the ratio is 4:3. Asia to Africa is 3:2 Arable in your stats just means cultivated, it isn't a measure of the natural productivity. People in Africa work poorer lands due to necessity. North America has more non-desert land than Africa and produces 3x as much food. Asia nearly 10x food production. Europe 2x. Antarctica has no non-desert land and Australia has very little. Asia has the most by a long way. This lines up pretty well with each continent's historical economic significance. Regarding 'small Africa' conspiracy - I have never not been told that Africa is a huge continent. Documentaries, podcasts, TED talks, movies, Top Gear, books, atlases (they all have multiple projections btw), globes, video games. Five weeks in a balloon? I may have consumed well over 100 hours of media romanticizing the vast scale of Africa. Colonialists had no reason to conceal it either - selling big Africa investment (exploitation) opportunities was their business model This is a Mandela effect moment for me. Or maybe it's an American education thing?
  - tekla 16d ago
    No its just people lying. I remember being told 30 years ago that a flat map and a globe make countries look different since a kid asked why continenents looked different when we were looking at a globe