• Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
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      17 hours ago

      We we’re hit especially hard because they shrunk each island individually. Just the Canadian mainland looks the same size as the states.

      On the other hand, seeing Russia shrunk like that makes me think we could be bigger!

  • Xanthobilly@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    This explains my theory on why Trump wants Greenland. He doesn’t realize how small it actually is.

    • BigBenis@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      To be fair, it’s still at least 25% the size of the continental US, which isn’t insignificant. But that’s far from being about the same size as Africa as the projection depicts, not to mention only ~20% of it is even remotely hospitable.

  • db2@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    School fucked me up, it was jarring to learn the US and Australia are comparable in size. The maps always depicted it as a little island.

    • vateso5074@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      And, accordingly, how large Brazil actually is, which is not quite as distorted for its location touching the equator.

    • Bubbaonthebeach@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      Canada’s land area didn’t change. It’s still second only to Russia, I believe. It simply doesn’t show as 4x the size of some other countries in this map version.

  • ashenone@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    Is there a map that shows the more accurate sizes of these countries without the gaps?

  • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    How does the true size work on a 2D plane? Is it because we’re ignoring connecting landmasses that this gives a better approximation than a full globe 2D map?

    • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      Map projections always have inaccuracies, they make deliberate tradeoffs.

      The common Mercator projection allows the long and lat lines to be straight, but it means shapes near the poles get stretched.

      Some projections do a better job of accurately portraying shapes at the sacrifice of size.
      Some can do shape an size of landmass, but the oceans are distorted.
      Etc, all projections have compromises.

    • Starski@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Yes, as far as I’m aware at least, to keep them the same size with the same connections the locations of the geography would be warped compared to where they should be on a globe, that’s the benefit of a mercator map even though it warps the sizes.