I do not care about your opinion on an article you haven’t read
My point here has never been defending the article. It’s that you shouldn’t make wrong assumptions based on headlines and comment based on those. It’s bad form
This is an interview with Sanders’ chief campaign strategist about his new book dissecting the 2016 primary. If you don’t care about it then fine, whatever. But you’re clearly commenting on what you imagine the article is, not what it actually is
The article is really about how the situation informs the current landscape and strategy for 2026 and 2028, but I guess you didn’t read it before commenting
You could pick any day in the last 200 years and say that [US President] was trying to [do something to foreign nation]. It means nothing
It says it is used. But it’s not the map this thread is talking about. It’s not the map the UN is replacing. It’s not the map in the thumbnail. It’s not the original Mercator map. Its not the most widely used map projection.
It’s used in specific situations yes
(Well, we do sometimes but it’s not the map in question)
The projection we use is just the Mercator. Horizontally, it’s called a Transverse Mercator
It’s not the Reverse Mercator… I’m not sure what that is
Do you mean Transverse Mercator? Although it’s not that either
The center - east to west - is 0 degrees longitude, defined as the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. This does also go through West Africa
The center - north to south - is 0 degrees latitude, defined as the equator.
Because of this, Africa is central on the vast majority of world map projections including the Mercator and the Equal Earth.
Accuracy is relative. The Mercator distorts areas bigger the further away they are from the equator. This exaggerates the size of the USA, Europe etc compared to Africa.
In what way? It inflates the size of areas as they get further away from the equator, resulting in Africa being portrayed as relatively much smaller than it is compared to Europe and North America
I don’t know? That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the UN using it not for navigation in 2026
As a neurodivergent map person, I’m over-aware of the difficulties of map projection. And I agree that simply calling this new projection ‘accurate’ is misleading
But at the same time, the use of the Mercator as the standard default map in situations that have nothing to do with ocean navigation for literally hundreds of years is absolutely a reflection of the relative power of the Global North, and can’t be dismissed as ‘nonsense about colonialism’
It’s a subset of people that overlaps with gamers in a big way. See: gamergate
Why now? Because Prop 40 is on the ballot on November 3rd. Its not a coincidence that it ties into the midterms - it’s the same ballot
Its an opinion piece by ‘the director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy’ - someone who’s whole thing is the tension between corporate and progressive Democrats, and wealth inequality. Not some random journalist ‘tipped off’ about prop 40 by a Russian