Eh, too much talk about how map projections are the tools of the evil colonialists/developed nations. The Mercator projection became widespread because "of its ability to represent lines of constant course as straight segments that conserve the angles with the meridians", not because it exaggerates areas towards the poles for political European supremacy reasons. North is consistently depicted as up (not only in European maps but around the world) probably because the stars including the north star Polaris are "up" from our point of view. Maps are centered in the GMT meridian because the Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean on earth and thus the most logical point for the break.<p>No need to make <i>everything</i> a struggle about "race". Make scientific arguments or credible social arguments, but don't just assume off the bat everything is "<i>problematic</i>" and make even patently scientific decisions attributable to malice and oppression. It doesn't help.
Azimuthal equidistant projections are really something else, especially in this globalized age of air travel. For example, did you know Sydney, Seattle, and Rio de Janeiro are all about 12000 km from Dubai in three different, but beautifully evenly spaced directions [1]?<p>And that plotting the different combinations of these city pairs from Seattle [2], Sydney [3], and Rio [4] gets almost the same result, except that the shortest distance between Australia and South America is about 1500 km longer and crosses over Antarctica?<p>[1] <a href="http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=DXB-SYD%0D%0ADXB-SEA%0D%0ADXB-GIG&MS=bm&MP=a&DU=km" rel="nofollow">http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=DXB-SYD%0D%0ADXB-SEA%0D%0ADXB-G...</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=SEA-SYD%0D%0ASEA-DXB%0D%0ASEA-GIG&MS=bm&MP=a&DU=km" rel="nofollow">http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=SEA-SYD%0D%0ASEA-DXB%0D%0ASEA-G...</a>
[3] <a href="http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=SYD-SEA%0D%0ASYD-DXB%0D%0ASYD-GIG&MS=bm&MP=a&DU=km" rel="nofollow">http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=SYD-SEA%0D%0ASYD-DXB%0D%0ASYD-G...</a>
[4] <a href="http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=GIG-SEA%0D%0AGIG-DXB%0D%0AGIG-SYD&MS=bm&MP=a&DU=km" rel="nofollow">http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=GIG-SEA%0D%0AGIG-DXB%0D%0AGIG-S...</a>
South up is fine. This article lost me when they suggested east up, west up, or "any compass bearing". That's not how planets work.<p>Anyways, VR/AR globes will solve these problems pretty quickly.
All of these articles imply that Mercator projection is widely used at least somewhere. Is it true though? In Ex-USSR majority of maps are(were) proportional, probably Robinson projection, in schools and in daily life.
why is China so large in the voter turnout map?<p>I realize I actually know very little about the political process in China<p>are there regular elections there? what are they voting on? I perceive that you're not voting for any politicians from opposition parties to the official communist party, am I wrong? are you voting on who gets to control the party apparatus within the communist party? who is that vote actually open to?
Boston public schools recently announced that they will shift to using world maps based on the Peters projection,<p>Why not teach them both maps, or, rather, teach them that it's hard to represent the world in 2D space. O.o get them looking at maps from all angles and configurations.
I'm starting to develop an instinctive "roll eyes up" reaction to whenever I see the expression "problematic" written unironically.<p>I'm all for better map projections, but there's zero need for the author's moral grandstanding in the article.
any title with the word 'change' in it suggesting that after reading the article is going to have a marked impact on my life usually has the direct opposite effect. I thought a clickbait wasn't really a thing on HN?