[HN Gopher] Mercator: Extreme
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       Mercator: Extreme
        
       Author : bschne
       Score  : 83 points
       Date   : 2025-01-21 19:00 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mrgris.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mrgris.com)
        
       | pvg wrote:
       | A Show HN thread in 2014
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7840059
        
         | NotAnOtter wrote:
         | Damn, still getting reposted a decade later lmao
        
           | pvg wrote:
           | You ain't seen nothin' yet!
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28982493
           | 
           | Some HN evergreens are about to hit voting age.
        
       | patternMachine wrote:
       | Essentially the plot of The Inverted World.
        
       | bangaladore wrote:
       | Not the same idea, but the same category. You can Drag countries
       | to different places on the Mercator projection to see how they
       | warp and change size.
       | 
       | Classic example is moving Greenland onto the US. Or Russia.
       | Russia isn't talked about much in this case, but its dramatic how
       | it changes.
       | 
       | https://www.thetruesize.com/
        
         | jvanderbot wrote:
         | Oh so the whole UK would fit in Texas, USA a couple times.
         | 
         | And Greenland is like CA, OR, WA, NV combined.
         | 
         | Good to know.
        
         | cluckindan wrote:
         | "We and our 727 technology partners ask you to consent..."
         | 
         | I would bet the billionaires in Trump's good boys club are in
         | it for the pardons they need after justice realizes what is
         | being done with everyone's personal data.
        
         | aylmao wrote:
         | Some very impressive ones to look at here:
         | 
         | - Colombia is about as tall as the USA's West Coast.
         | 
         | - Brazil is comparable to Canada.
         | 
         | - Indonesia is wider than Europe.
        
       | mkehrt wrote:
       | Is this really a Mercator projection? It doesn't appear to
       | maintain the invariant that lines of constant bearing are
       | straight lines.
       | 
       | If I pick a point somewhere in the middle of Manhattan, the top
       | point of Manhattan is somewhere near the top of the light colored
       | area and the bottom point of Manhattan nearish the bottom of the
       | light colored area. This means that if I draw straight lines on
       | the the map from San Francisco to these two points, the angle
       | between them is something like 30 degrees. They pass through very
       | roughly the top and bottom of Nevada. But there's no line of
       | constant bearing that passes from SF through the top of Nevada to
       | the top of Manhattan while at the same time one that passes
       | through the bottom of Nevada to the bottom of Manhattan.
       | 
       | This is all very wishy-washy, but it doesn't look right to me.
        
         | mbrubeck wrote:
         | "Lines of constant bearing" (or "rhumb lines") depend on the
         | choice of poles.
         | 
         | A rhumb line relative to true north looks straight on a
         | standard Mercator projection, but can look like a spiral on
         | another Mercator-style projection where the pole and center-
         | point have been swapped.
        
           | mkehrt wrote:
           | Oh, that's an interesting point. Maybe that's what's going
           | on. It's hard to picture such a line with a different pole.
        
       | fmajid wrote:
       | Remember that "The West Wing" episode where geographers petition
       | the White House chief of staff to replace the Mercator projection
       | with the more accurate and less Euro/US-centric Peters one? This
       | one looks designed to stroke the Yuge ego of one Donald J
       | Trump...
        
         | bschne wrote:
         | oh my god, today I learned
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY
        
       | jumperabg wrote:
       | This is information that a specific Earth community must not
       | access, it will cause flat out chaos!
        
       | michalc wrote:
       | I made something along these lines a while back too:
       | https://projections.charemza.name/
        
         | aylmao wrote:
         | I like the simplicity of yours!
        
       | bmenrigh wrote:
       | If you search for "90,0" and then use the change orientation
       | button to put the south pole on the bottom of the screen you can
       | recover the more familiar distorted map.
       | 
       | Other choices really do put into perspective how distorted this
       | projection is.
        
       | somishere wrote:
       | This is basically how my mind works. Mind projection.
        
       | nelblu wrote:
       | Incidentally a friend just shared this with me earlier today :
       | https://www.thetruesize.com/
        
       | Ajedi32 wrote:
       | Reminds me of bad map projection #45: Exterior Kansas[1].
       | 
       | [1]: https://xkcd.com/2951/
        
       | elil17 wrote:
       | This reminds me of "The View of the World from 9th Avenue":
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Ave...
        
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       (page generated 2025-01-21 23:00 UTC)