Why does the map on the website need that draggable divider when both versions show both types of projection?
I was wondering the same thing.
You can’t see the reduced size versions inside the originals? They’re outlined in a different color.
That’s what I’m saying, both versions show both outlines.
The coloring changes, but both show the same information.
Probably a very difficult thing to program? The color changing is a good workaround.
I just thought that it worked well with as a static image.
But maybe someone had a bit of fun doing that divider effect.
Yeah, that’s basically what I was thinking.
it’s still a very strange design
Just want to point out… their “equal” and “correct” map is missing New Zealand…
You mean the homepage infographic? Thats not the map. If you click download you can get accurate full maps based on this projection.
Why don’t they just put the actual map on their site? The video and slider map make usa canada and mexico look like islands…
There’s a big “Download” url: https://equal-earth.com/ here’s the standard english one https://www.equal-earth.com/Equal-Earth-Map-0.jpg
(Maps missing New Zealand is a meme)
This is such a garbage take. There is no way to “show our world as it truly is” in two dimensions. I’m all about showing other projects and orientations. Classrooms should have “upside down” maps and Albert maps for example. But we should also teach that each projection has benefits and drawbacks. I was taught that decades ago. Have we stopped?
The way the world’s going, the next accepted projection will be depicted on the backs of four elephants atop a turtle.
Bring on the Wizzards
I do hope we get the luggage…
Wait a minute. I have seen this exact visual somewhere
Its the same take that’s applied to any party seen as a “status quo”. Your boss, the CEO, police, the state, movies, everything is “projected” to show something that it isn’t to subtly manipulate the basis of your decisions.
What? Map projections are not projected to manipulate you psychologically. They are projected to manipulate a three dimensional object onto a two dimensional surface.
I didn’t say they were made for that. They are used for it tho.
99% of people dont know that there other projections. I dare you to ask people which map projection is their favorite.
Ideally yes we should stick to standard and make sure everyone knows thay there are many variants and none of them perfectly represent the sphere were on but thats not happening.
I don’t believe that 99% figure for a second. Unless geography is removed from all curricula worldwide. Even still, that ignorance would not signify what this movement implies. It is a useful map; end of story. If the movement were, “We should increase public knowledge of geography and how projections work,” fine. But it isn’t.
Africans: You know, 14th century mercator maps are horribly disproportionate over 1/2 the map and are the maps of reference for most online apps, software and textbooks. There are better projections that balance location for actual land mass, we should probably use those.
lemmy: garbage take.
There aren’t better maps. Only maps with different tradeoffs. ALL 2d maps of spheres are disproportionate.
There absolutely are better maps for specific purposes. Or do you think this map would be no better or worse for the purpose of teaching school children?
Oh boy! Are you serious? Let me be more precise, in case. There aren’t actual projections that are better in all cases than the Mercator projection. There are maps that are better in given cases. ALL maps have trade offs. The one you shared, included. It certainly benefits from the humor of pointing out why this is an issue in the first place.
in all cases I think the part tripping you up
We can do better with teaching, news and infographics than a map that is just designed for ship navigation.
It’s like you’d run over a dozen kids in the trolly problem rather than a geriatric because there’s no perfect solution.
No, there aren’t perfect maps. There ARE better maps.
Mercator’s one trick is north is always straight up, so it’s great for navigation with a compass. If you’re navigating the oceans on a ship, or even using GPS in your car, Mercator is GOAT because you don’t have to twist it as your drive to keep north up. Unfortunately, we default to Mercator just about everywhere in places where it really has disadvantages.
If you’re just looking at the map to locate things, or compare countries there are dozens of better maps and our decision to default to mercator for most uses us
It’s a bit hard to find out where it actually originated from and who’s behind it. Judjing by their social media handlers, it’s a marketing agency Hello Makeda. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t trust marketing agencies to be good judges on geographical projects.
They are only using the cause to promote their brand social responsibility probably. In any case, the issue with the distorted view of the map that ideologically and politically benefited one side has been known for decades, and most of the countries that were colonies now use the correct one.
Since this article gave you everything except the one thing you want to see, here’s what the Equal Earth projection looks like
Yes, it is an awful website with an awful promotion video. Sizing the countries down but not connecting them and not showing you the world map as it would look like in total is absolutely not furthering the cause. I’m so mad I’m not sure I even want to sign the petition to be honest. Granted, my school atlas did not have the mercator projection.
What really disappoints me about that site is the button that reads “Download the Correct Map”. They destroyed all their credibility with one word.
Oh God I didn’t even notice that, you’re absolutely right. Or, dare I say, you are correct.
Yeh, I mean I can see how using Mercator is subconsciously strengthening colonialist thinking, but to imply that the angles-stable area-distorted map that was much more convenient for naval navigation, was specifically chosen to misrepresent the size of the global south is borderline paranoid.
Damn Russia is still that big? I thought the distortion played a large part in its size on the original map.
Yeah, but now it’s tiny compared to Antarctica
Pfft. Antarctica is but a few islands in an ice-sheet trench coat. If the ice sheets melted, it would remain uninhabited except for some stalwart rancher folk.
you need to tag nudity as NSFW
Greenland’s not that big is it?
Yes it’s still quite big, but not nearly as big as Australia (as Mercator would suggest). On a globe it is quite obvious, but who has a globe at home in 2025…
I do.
This will never happen as long as Big Greenland pulls the strings of power in the cartography world.
And they’re very big. Have you looked at a map lately? Do you expect tiny little Africa to stand up to that?
It’s time the U.S. deals with big Greenland once and for Oil.
i think the best solution (besides globes which are impractical on screens/posters) is having no standard, expose kids in school to 3 or 4 different projections so they learn there’s no standard and all protections are as valid and all with drawbacks and advantages.
I don’t get it,
from my memory of geography class in 5th to 8th grade, in elementary, we extensively learned about all kinds of maps, and projections, so teaching kids 3-4 is huge downgrade.didn’t mean only teach 3-4, just to not regularly use one projection. use a handful so no one instinctively learns to accept one.
even though you learned a lot of maps, it’s likely most maps you used when not learning about different projections were the same.
Most likely, because I would guess that >90% of my up to date (after middle school) use of maps was highly localised to plaxe of interest.
Which doesn’t really show projection type (or brings relevance of it to surface).
You’ve unlocked a weird memory. The Windows CD version of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego did exactly that. It had that map screen where you’d pick where to chase the bad guy, and they used different map projections. I can find screenshots of the game showcasing a Mercator, Robinson and Goode Homolosine projections. And it’s not different editions of the game, it would change between missions.
Yeah I had a Peters Projection map when I was young and there wasn’t any big deal over it, somehow I just assumed everyone did.
Mercator distorts landmass to fit the grid, so it is good for navigation, simply draw a straight line between two points and follow it. Also, the plea on that site is just…weird. Africa is not taken seriously because it is displayed too small on maps - what? It is a large, chunky continent that can be compressed without too much detail loss - Europe, not so much.
Maybe Greenland’s size on the projection is what got Trump all worked up. :P
Yes, but thats only for navigation. The map was chosen to be used as the standard in colonial time, because it brainwashed the colonies to believe that the people subjugating them were from great and big countries on the other side of the world. There would be a lot more revolts if people actually knew that they were being held captives by weak dudes from some small european piece of land that was only a fraction of the size of their country.
I mean the problem with any projection of earth onto a 2d simplified shape surface is that it will be inherently distorted. The Mercator projection is scaled properly towards the equator but has to scale upwards more and more toward the poles to be able to fit the given area.
Even their own map, which for some reason isn’t shown in either the video or on the main page, isn’t accurate either. It’s better but is also warped in its own way, it would be nice if they had a little blurb that says something to that effect.
Here’s the actual map projection they are pushing for; https://equal-earth.com/equal-earth-projection.html
Fuck that. Let’s go for the euler spiral.
It seems like the kind of thing that would give rise to the
~Earth movementThe Tildearth Society
Tildearth desktop wallpaper
Hey this is great. Is there a1440p version?
I just threw it together for a joke, I could try to make a high res one after work tonight if I rememeber
I would actually use this, great idea
A society predominantly attended by hobbits.
On linux tilde also represent home. Can have cute double meaning.
I hope someone travels Antarctic to Alaska on this map
I mean, I’m not exactly thrilled about it erasing my country… Did a cartographer from New Zealand make this as an act of revenge? 🤔
Which country? It seems to all be there. It might be cut in half or upside down, but it’s all there.
Oh wait, there it is! I was too disoriented to spot it, Denmark 😄
Wait, what the hell did Denmark do to New Zealand?
Idunno, maybe they want to go on a bicycling holiday and resent how far away we are 🤷
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In color
We could also have made Mercator maps of varying position, but that might not center Europe.
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Whatever map that uses Eurasia rather than pretend Europe is it’s own continent is fine by me
It’s now trivial, in 2025, to depict the world as a 3D shape, this is coming a few decades after it matters, imo.
still not as aesthetic as Waterman butterfly projection
(and relevant XKCD)
I didn’t think I’d ever have a favourite map but here we are.
That projection shows how vast the Pacific is
It’s almost two entire sections, with just a little of North America, Asia, and Antarctica. And then some on four others. It’s obvious from a glance, no other body of water or land mass comes anywhere near that.
And if you still don’t think that’s vast enough, maybe a lifetime of bad projections have given you a distorted view of the Pacific’s size. Mercator and Mercator like projections definitely make the Pacific look much too large near the poles.
Came here to make sure that xkcd got posted. Well done.
The Mercator projection was great for navigating oceans, baring remain correct. There are thousands of other map projections that do a better job preserving size, shape, directions, and distances. Any projection will be a tradeoff between these.
As far as I know the Mercator projection has mostly fallen out of use in education, and I don’t think there’s any standard that requires it anywhere. So I’m not sure exactly what this is about.
I don’t think there’s any standard that requires it anywhere. So I’m not sure exactly what this is about.
Don’t give the right any ideas. They’ll be on about “geometric purity” or other such nonsense. Or anything but Mercator will just be “woke.”
“The woke liberal left wants to changes maps to make America smaller! Cause they hate America! We will stand against this liberal assault on American sovereinty with the new Trump Map, which shows the true size of America compared to every other country! Order your new Trump Map today for 399.98!”
Nah they all use the Azimuthal Equidistant Projection
yeah, most of the world already moved on from it, but its still being used in many texts and countries.
Faithfully projecting a globe onto a flat surface is impossible and all projections have to balance a number of compromises. Mercator retains compass directions and the shapes of land masses but entirely sacrifices relative scale between equatorial regions and polar regions. This makes it great for navigating a 17th century vessel. Other projections strike a different balance, like this one, and sacrifice compass direction and land mass shapes in order to perfectly retain scale. On this map, my little Arctic island looks like someone stepped on it.
IMO a balanced projection will compromise on all the nice properties a projection can have, and if that isn’t acceptable, then get a globe.
By signing the petition you take a stand against a false narrative that downplays Africa’s vast size and diversity as the second-largest continent, reducing its perceived importance in global politics and economics. You can correct the narrative.
I’ll be real here, I have no idea what these people are talking about. The way Africa looked on maps has never had any bearing on my or probably anyone’s thinking of how important the continent is in global politics or economics. If someone thinks “country/continent looks small so they must be unimportant,” they are either a child or a fool. Or both.
I somewhat agree, Africa never looked small imo. However Russia, Greenland, Canada etc are so comically oversized that it absolutely makes a difference imo.
Its a distorted representation of what the Earth looks like, and regardless of the way the sphere of our Earth is displayed on a 2D plane, it will always be distorted.
I don’t see any tangible benefit from changing what has already worked and is globally accepted for many decades. It seems kinda nitpicky, or like these people are clout chasing or something.
Worked for whom? The countries that are over-represented in the current map? Or the countries that started this petition?
Uhh… everybody.
If it was working for everyone, there would never be a widespread movement that got Mercator largely phased out of education.
It was working for everyone in navigation, where angles mattered. Which is why it became the most used map.
It was phased out in favour of maps showing area more correctly, because navigation w. maps became less important, not because “it didn’t work”.
The way Africa looked on maps has never had any bearing on my or probably anyone’s thinking of how important the country is in global politics or economics.
Africa isn’t a country though, it’s a continent with dozens of independent, distinct and diverse countries in it.
And one possible impact of the continent being represented much smaller than it really is, is people thinking of Africa as a single country.
I meant continent. My bad.
No worries - the general point still stands though I think 👍
The fact that you say Africa is a country kind of speaks against your argument here, wouldn’t you say?
I meant continent, it was a mistake.
Fair enough. Could’ve been a Freudian? Cause it looks so small?? 😀
it’s a pretty common talking point. and he people most likely to look at maps nowadays are indeed children.
it’s a pretty common talking point.
Not common enough, apparently.
I have never in my life ever heard anyone equate the size of a country on a map to its importance to global politics and economics. And I am old enough to remember when you had to hang up the phone before you could use the internet.
let me rephase; it’s a pretty common talking point when discussing map projections. has been since the 50s.
This is a subconscious thing, not an explicit belief.
