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Mercator v Reality
(i.imgur.com)
With a human face
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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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Yeah, it’s actually a really great map for its purpose of navigation, which is a pretty damn important aspect of map usage. I’m tired of everyone shitting on it because of that scene in west wing.
It’s great for navigating at sea, but bad for looking at the world as a whole. Nowadays most people use maps for the latter; hence the complaints.
Sure, that’s why I qualified with “for its intended purpose”. It’s not a great classroom map but it is perhaps the most historically important projection. The problem is this idea of “Mercator bad” has entered public consciousness. For example, the start of this thread mentioned “how not-great the mercator is” without any such qualifications.
Maybe one day I’ll get a Cahill-Keyes projection on the wall. I think it’s useful to see how surface areas compare.
Which scene is that?
https://youtu.be/vVX-PrBRtTY?si=EJI98A0zZR6zkURc Im sure there were people who felt this way before this episode, but it really exploded in public consciousness afterward.
Internet people pretending to have never seen a globe at school so they can be outraged by Big Greenland.