Why is the US against, most US citizens have never even seen the world map. A map of just the US is all they need.
New Zealand has also taken issue with the Mercator map, with a tourism ad back in 2018 – featuring then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – joking that “New Zealand is disappearing off the world maps” due to its position in the bottom right-hand corner.
Mate, New Zealand isn’t even real. Don’t believe everything you see when watching lord of the rings. /jk
Great to see the United States being humiliated internationally again.
I mean it’s stupid but there’s so much more humiliation going on rn
this is the difference btw
to
What we had in school in the U.S.
The Robinson projection:
What many U.S. texts moved to after I left school.
The Winkel Triple Projection:
Apparently the Mercador map is what digital maps seem to use because the lines are 90 degrees so it makes it easier.
I’m sure that Google will quickly change their map projections from Pseudo-Mercator to Equal Earth projection as quickly as they changed the names of the bodies of water because President orange cheeto said so… right?.. Riiiight?
Web Mercator is a special kind of abomination, even down to the way the map is cropped to be exactly square. But it is probably the most suitable for navigation, as Mercator itself was designed specifically for it.
Buildings, streets and map features would be more distorted under Equal Earth projection than they already are with Web Mercator. Web Mercator also has the benefit that the cardinal directions are always straight respective to the XY grid, even though the Y direction is non linear.
There is no perfect way of flattening a 3D spheroid into a 2D map, sadly.
But at the scale of streets and building surely the type of map projections is such a mute point the earth might as well be flat.
Not actually, it depends on the projection.
The most noticeable visual distortion of a map projection at street level isn’t actually size and area, but angle. While Mercator and Web Mercator distort both size and area, angle remains the same. But projections like Equal Earth distort angle to keep area and size the same.
In practice, what this means is that with Web Mercator, you will see an intersection as 2 perpendicular lines crossing each other, leaving four 90° angles. But with Equal Earth, depending on the location, all those angles will be different, and the lines won’t be perfectly perpendicular.
(of course, Web Mercator also has this issue, because it uses a perfect sphere instead of a spheroid for the projection, but the very slight difference isn’t really noticeable, and using a spheroid is more compute-heavy)
Map navigation and satellite imagery are very specific cases where a Mercator or Mercator style projection are better suited, mainly because of the preservation of the angles. However, for any other case, Equal Earth is a very good projection, and I agree it should be used over Mercator. Especially in education.
I knew there was something amiss 😄
Well, your initial comment made you quite the hute.
It would be funny if they built their entire system on one projection.
you must be kidding
And of course, nobody is surprised.
I’m more surprised that Russia voted Yes
Russia doesn’t care because they’re big as fuck on any projection.
So is the US, but we voted no because we’re contrarian little pissbabies.
Russia’s been cozying up to Africa for a long time. And it was the AU which spearheaded this initiative.
Since Russia is actually very large, they’re probably thinking they’ll look even bigger than they already do!
Lmao the fucking irony:
The US, which voted against the resolution, slammed the text as an ideological exercise that it said undermined the UN’s credibility.
“This initiative is presented as an anodyne effort to update cartographic proportions,” said Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN. “The United States clearly sees it cannot be separated from the much larger and more radical ideological project it belongs to.”
Not even Israel voted with the US this time. Take this opportunity for reflection.
It’s because they don’t want the world to see it getting bigger as it starts annexing its neighbors’ land.
The new map projection makes land close to equator bigger and land closer to the north and south poles smaller.
Anyone who is not living under a rock knows what is happening and those who still approve genocide don’t give damn they are getting bigger.
The title:
Today, the United Nations voted to adopt a new world map that reflects countries’ true relative sizes
Haters, probably:
let’s still make this about us hating Israel - in comparison to how we hate the US
GJ for the UN. I hope it’ll make good progress in the long run for all of us. More accurate representation of the world - for more adequate and fair decisions and actions.
It’s a common pattern for the General Assembly that essentially all of the world votes together, and then the United States, Israel plus some tiny island nations votes together. This vote struck me as deviating from that pattern because the United States literally stands alone on this issue. Even the number of Abstentions is unusually low.
Ok, thanks for opening the prev.comment a bit more!
It is curious, indeed. 🖐️
Wow, the US government is so paranoid, because how the fuck in your right mind can you find a reason to think “everyone’s out to get me” because others want to edit a map? It’s also funny how they never specify what this “radical ideology” is, despite constantly complaining about it like a child would about their mother not getting them an ice cream.
The radical ideology is called the truth and America hates it. It undermines their precious lies.
Editing maps is only allowed for one person, as we all know /s
the wokes like it, so it is per definition bad
some times I feel like informing these people that woke people really enjoy breathing air and drinking water :l
I can’t make heads or tails of what point this word salad is actually intending to convey. It sounds like a toddler trying to argue because hes afraid try a new food on his plate.
Sometimes people with really stupid beliefs will dance around saying it clearly because on some level they know how stupid it sounds.
Guess they will soon not only have their own system of measuring distance, weight and temperature; but also their own system of displaying Earth. They want to live in their own version of reality i guess.
One where the United States is bigger than Russia.
Pardon?
When wereone where
This might be the first time in history Israel voted differently than the United States of America
I hate this fucking country
Who doesn’t?
“Nooo, don’t change the mirror to one that reflects things accurately! I like this one better because it makes me look taller, more muscular, and better-endowed!”
It isn’t more accurate than Mercator, it just preserves different features.
When flattening a map, there are 4 competing aspects of the globe you can try to preserve: shape, direction, area, and distance. You can’t preserve all 4 at once. You can try to min-max on 1 or 2 (e.g. Mercator preserves direction and shape since that’s what’s needed for sailing), or you can accept some distortions of all 4 in a compromise projection.
It all depends on the purpose of the map.
They wanted to rename Africa to New America.
My one question is why
Because they’re chauvinists on the way to fascism
Lmao “on the way”.
Shows Greenland’s real size?
trump thinks it’s the same size as the entire US.
Biggest is best?
Abstentions are also no
Abstentions means let the others decide.
Abstentions are explicitly neither yes nor no.
Even Israel voted differently to the US, that’s way funnier than it should be
The United States cast the sole vote against, dismissing the initiative as part of a “radical ideological project.”
“radical” lost all meaning in the US
It has. I am just hoping that once cheeto man is out of office that life in the US can progress back to something more recognizable again.
You need to flush the system of all his acolytes too.
I saw the US was against it an thought it had to be smth like this. Only americans can look at a problem like “you can’t project a 3D sphere onto a 2D plane” and think “waow this is a little too political for me” (I know I’m oversimplifying but u get the gist)
In other words, the reasons and explanations were too difficult for the American envoy to grasp.
Why do we always have to vote the dumbest possible way in these things?
"UN vote on whether we should eat glass: 99% against, US stands alone as In Favor ."
IT GIVES MY HAIR A HEALTHY SHINE
Not eating glass is wOkE.
“Welp, I’m convinced.”
- GOP voters of 2026
“They’re shrinking Greenland, so that I’m less interested in it.” - Donald Trump, probably
The Mercator map, which has been in common use since the 16th Century, has come in for criticism as it shows Africa as similar in size to Greenland, even though it is 14 times larger.
Critics say this leads to the development needs and potential for countries near the equator to be minimised.I think that’s got more to do with the systemic legacy of colonialism than with which world maps people look at.
It’s both/and.
Let’s say you’re trying to convince a populace of an unpopular war to invade, I dunno, Greenland. You want to convince the country of its massive land & untapped riches.
Which map would you use?
but look at how large Australia looks in the second, maybe that is an alternative place to look to invade - and they have rearearth minerals
You’d have to defeat the native emu population, though. Good luck with that
on the up side to that is Emu taste real nice, and I hear that the US is having a problem with beef
Kangaroo is good too. Very lean though, gotta add a little fat to it
My money is on the Emus.
We practically already give away all of our natural resources. Hell, we actually PAY for big companies to take it and sell it overseas, tax free. Because be are playing 5D chess
The Mercator projection is also a systemic legacy of colonialism, so doing away with it doesn’t hurt.
The Mercator projection is a legacy of people needing a world map in which local regions preserve accurate directions and proportional distances (i.e., people who need a map for navigation instead of a global dick-measuring contest).
No one uses a world map for navigation. Even when paper maps were still used, you would use it on a much smaller scale like a grid system. Even maritime maps would at largest only need to show an ocean.
It’s much easier to accurately represent directions and proportional distances when you’re not trying to fit the surface of a whole sphere onto one quadrilateral plane.
What? The projection matters on any scale and for navigational purposes will continue to use mercator projection on flat maps so there this decision doesn’t change anything.
It really doesn’t. On a ball as large as the earth, if you take a tiny section of it, it’s basically already flat. You don’t need to transform it mathematically to make it fit on a grid system.
Maybe you’ve never seen a map made for land navigation? They don’t need to distort terrain feature size to make everything line up directionally.
Maybe you’ve never seen a map made for land navigation?
Can you share one or the name of the projection used? I am having an harf time searching for it
Edit: i found that for air navigation they use Lambert Conformal Conic, for marine they use Mercator and for land i found nothing which makes sense (and probably it would be Mercator anyway)
A local coordinate system uses a false origin (0, 0 or other values) in an arbitrary location anywhere on earth. Local coordinate systems are often used for large-scale (small area) mapping. The false origin may or may not be aligned to a known real-world coordinate, but for the purpose of data capture, bearings and distances can be measured using the local coordinate system rather than global coordinates. Local coordinate systems are usually expressed in meters or feet.
Example:
https://slcprdpublicrecords.blob.core.windows.net/0001sjradmin/PDF/CB_1877_15_10045793.pdf
I want to contradict you slightly: people don’t use world maps for navigation, but most are still using a world map projection, just zoomed in. Most map services like Google maps, mapquest, etc use something called the Web Mercator at all levels of zoom, i think because of the challenge of needing to zoom in anywhere on the map. I am not an expert on why they use the web mercator though.
I didn’t say they don’t use projections, I just said they don’t use world maps. Localized maps are much easier to achieve accuracy of both distance and direction
Hence the clarification! They do use world map projections. I don’t think they have to, but do for efficiency? Not an expert.
In the times of GPS, global navigation isn’t reliant on this specific map projection. On a local level (City or State/Province level), where most navigation for non-experts is taking place, the chosen map projection doesn’t matter that much. The people who are navigating distances where these things become relevant (pilots and ship navigators) are also expert enough to deal with most map projections. But for global issues, a map projection that actually represents land masses as they are in reality matters a lot.
Edit: I am aware about issues regarding GPS jamming. The latest tests regarding quantum navigation (which uses differences in earths gravity fiels) were working very well, so if jamming becomes a very common issue, these systems will proliferate quickly.
On a local level (City or State/Province level), where most navigation for non-experts is taking place, the chosen map projection doesn’t matter that much.
Yes, it does, because on a local level you want real-world right angles to be right angles on the map, which Mercator does, but other projections might not…
Most navigation software doesn’t show the map from the top, but from behind looking forward, and it communicates turns and lanes to choose regardless if your angles are 90° / 95° / 85° or what map projection is used. If you are still using paper maps in your own city - welcome to the future.
Edit: And to top it off, the crossroads being 90° is a uniquely american thing - every city in europe has a naturally grown layout. Since the US doesn’t give a fuck about anyone else (as seen in the vote and their renaming stuff into <whatever> America) I also don’t give a fuck about what maps they use.
Edit 2: If you use your current position as the center of the projection, anything close enough to be relevant stays at 90° - or so close that i dare anyone to see the difference.
Most navigation software doesn’t show the map from the top, but from behind looking forward
only when navigating, not when looking at the map
Do you really think that the distortion over the short distance shown while navigating matters? I don’t know many drivers that actually use their geometry kit when using a navigation app.
I was making maps as an intern for the city government, and my biggest problem was that the Mercator made the city look much wider than it really was.
I’m not sure about the 90 degree angle thing, but i wanted to point out that navigation is only one reason someone might use a map, and then agree with you that using a projection centered near the local area is probably going to be best 9/10 times.
I seem to have upset some mercator afficionados. As you say, for everyday usage any type centered on you (or a bit in front of your position) will be close enough to reality that navigating will be fine. For city planning the true size of things also matter a lot, as you mentioned. Long distance navigation doesn’t use paper maps anymore except when GPS is jammed (which is not the norm if you aren’t near Iran or Ukraine currently), and we are already on the way to make quantum navigation for ships feasable. In the case of aircraft, if GPS is down, there are more than enough alternative ways to navigate (communication with flight control, ground based beacons and so on) and long distance road travel will in 99% of cases use high tier roads which tend to have signs indicating where they go, in addition to navigation software that could adjust map projection on the fly if needed (but it isn’t really needed, what you need is accurate lane and turn information, which is independent of what you see on the display).
I really don’t understand the hive mind in this case. Anyone having some input here where the issue lies? I haven’t touched a paper map where any of this stuff had mattered at least since the turn of the century.
Every map projection has some inaccuracies and thing that they’re good and bad at. The Mercator is good at preserving shape and distance, which used to be quite important for navigating around the world, which was important for colonization. Other maps have accurate size but inaccurate shapes. The Mercator projection isn’t the worst, but less suited for the needs of today. We should all probably just use globes. The UN should also use globes.
Good luck keeping a globe in the glove box.
Just gotta inflate it…
You still use paper maps while driving inside of your own country? Free navigation software is ubiquitous. Noone cares about the projection used there, as long as it signals turns and lanes correctly, and long distance most countries have something called “signs” which tell you where the road you are on goes.
Imagine ridiculing the skill of reading a map instead of offloading your entire cognitive self to a phone app.
Imagine being proud of skills which have become obsolete in the last century for the vast majority of uses. Reminds me of the people whining about the loss of cursive writing skills, and cursive at least makes writing long texts more hand-friendly. I can read and use maps (if i ever again wanted to) but they neither update, don’t fit neatly in my pocket, suffer from wear and tear (funnily enough they suffer from water damage a lot more than my smart phone, which i forgot i had in my swimwear - i was around 1 1/2 hours in the water, and after blowing some air in the USB-C port, everything was still working. Try that with a paper map, i dare you), don’t deliver context or images of the surroundings, do not have turn or lane info, completely miss important data like construction work or road blockages and are unable to provide you with traffic data.
Even for non-navigation stuff paper maps are wildly unpractical compared to the digital alternative. City planning, construction work and the likes all need easily updateable, versionable maps that do not distort the size of things like mercator.
Imagine starting arguing over a joke.
A globe cannot always be used so it’s best if we find a replacement for the Mercator projection, i do agree we need to use globes more often though
Mercator projection was favoured because it was useful for navigation due to preserving rhumb lines, representing them as straight lines on the map, and has been around for like 400 years.
Given that barely anyone does navigation like this any more it’s not that important to keep it as the default view for world maps that aren’t used for navigation such as a simple wall map. Web maps and the use of pseudomercator have definitely kept it relevant in modern times and as the most recognizable projection.
There isn’t much basis to say it’s used to “make colonial countries look bigger and Africa look smaller” except for people virtue signaling in blog posts over the last decade. If anything then it’s a psyop by Big Greenland.
As this post explains, you can just look at a globe if you want accurate size representation, because all map projections are distorted and there is always a tradeoff.
E: Oops I can see several people already explained this since refreshing the post.
it’s used to “make colonial countries look bigger and Africa look smaller”
I dont disagree, but I think if the case was opposite and a useful projection made the countries in power look smaller they wouldn’t have picked it as their favourite projection. The distortion is in favour of the (small) powerful countries, which may not have been the main reason but you can’t call it a happy coincidence either.
It is a coincidence though, in the sense that the Mercator projection by necessity inflates things near the poles relative to the equator.
The major powers at the time were countries like Britain, Spain, France, and Italy. Not Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Canada, which are inflated far more than the former.
The countries in power didn’t change much in size, but the countries they controlled did. I stand by my point, if this was the other way around and a useful projections shrank everything near the poles (and Africa looked much bigger on the map than it already is), those people would likely dislike that projection. They would ask themselves why it was so skewed, while now it was no issue. It is a coincidence that Mercator works that way, but it is no coincidence they liked this one so much.
Saying it was just handy is downplaying the strong sides of other projections. Take a look at maps from that period and see how many inaccuracies there are, because they had no satalite to check how right they were. Navigators weren’t stupid and they would easily understand how to navigate another projection if Mercator was disregarded for some reason.
Take a look at historic uniforms, the amount of jewelry etc; people have been vain since the beginning of time and have always cared about the looks of it. I honestly can’t imagine they would have been fine with a map were they seemed smaller than they actually were, i can easily imagine they would be glad to use a map that showed them bigger then they are.
The countries in power didn’t change much in size, but the countries they controlled did.
Sorry, but this is just a strange thing to say. The size of any place on a map can only be measured relative to other places on the map. “The countries in power didn’t change much in size” just doesn’t make any sense.
At the time when the Mercator projection was invented, we already had plenty of maps that gave a more accurate picture of the size of different land masses. The countries in power were actively colonising a lot of the world, so you better bet they would want to amplify their achievements.
The Mercator projection wasn’t “just handy”. It was literally the first widely used map projection that lat people sail across open seas and get where they wanted. That’s a life/death matter. It’s literally an integral part of the power of navigating the world seas.
The fact that it compresses the equator is directly a result of where the magnetic poles of the earth are aligned relative to the geography of the continents.
The countries in power didn’t change much in size, but the countries they controlled did.
Sorry, but this is just a strange thing to say. The size of any place on a map can only be measured relative to other places on the map. “The countries in power didn’t change much in size” just doesn’t make any sense.
What I meant with that is that the Mercator projection didn’t blow up a country like Spain as much as a country like Norway. I was responding to you, dismissing your claim the change in size is irrelevant because the countries in power weren’t close to the poles.
The major powers at the time were countries like Britain, Spain, France, and Italy. Not Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Canada, which are inflated far more than the former.
Again, The countries in power didn’t change much in size, but the countries they controlled did. As you point out, the size of a country is only relevant in relation to that of others.
People were sailing open waters long before the Mercator projection. What you’re saying just isn’t true. We’re not going to agree, so i won’t waste my time continuing this conversation.
This may or may not be true—in fact I’ll just assume that it’s true, fuck it—but I will say that it’s kind of like being asked to have an opinion on whether this person or that gets top billing on the theater marquee: is it going to be Rose & Krants or Krants & Rose? Which do you think, morally, is the superior option? I really, really don’t care.
And it bothers me a smidge that people do only because I feel like they’re being distracted by jangling keys. But oh well, whatever. Not my business, I guess.
I, for one, thought Africa had a smaller footprint that it has because of the maps in school and it made me think that it was less signifiant than it is. It doesn’t make sense, because a country could be very little but have billions of people in it for example. Nonetheless, I get the feeling. If I was from a country that suffered from colonialism and whatnot, I’d want a better projection of it on 2d maps. Simply because I know a chunk of people would better see my nation’s place in the world.
A country’s, or a continent’s, signifigance has nothing to do with it’s size, though.
I mean, if we wanted to make the nations of Africa or Greenland feel better, does it follow that we could make them appear bigger on the map than they actually are? Just move the mercator around such that Africa is along the top or bottom edge of the map where things are larger?
I am absolutely not saying that people having a better understanding of Africa is bad. I just don’t think that this is really how that happens.
I remember thinking that Russia seemed pretty big on the map, and yet still, I’ve never had to take Russian culture as a class in high school.
[edit] I’ll add one thing, though. This decision has clearly pissed the US government off, which is based and incredibly funny. I’ll support it to that end.
Depends what type of significance. Of course it’s more significant when it’s larger in size if you value things like farmland, natural resources, fishing, transportation, infrastructure, timezones, language, etc.
If you think the US is similar in size to Africa, like I thought, and you compare the 51 states to the 54 countries, you might think each African country is similar in area to a state in the USA and extrapolate to other beliefs accordingly. Maybe you think there is a greater cultural cohesion in the entire continent because people are closer to each other and so on. Turns out, there is more than 1.5 billion people in Africa. That is way more than in the US, but the size is really skewed in the Mercator.
I don’t understand your point about wanting to make Greenland feel better. The Equal Earth Projection is more accurate when looking at land area, so it’s not a question of making people feel better about the size of their country, more of a question of not having the Mercator projection contributing to people thinking less of our country, amongst other things, like just being more factual.
And like the other commenter said, Russia doesn’t really have this problem anyway, it’s very large in all our popular projections.
No corresponding maximization of development needs and potential for Greenland either.
Now we can finally standardize on the one truly equal projection: the Gall-Peters.
If everyone absolutely hates it, it’s a perfect compromise. :P
Magastan voted no.
I mean, the mercator map was meant for ship navigation, not as a geopolitical bat.
Exactly, which is why it really grinds my gears when people try to present the map as intentionally amplifying some countries at the expense of others. That’s not the point, it’s just a side effect of inventing the first map that could actually be used for long-distance navigation.
For the UN it makes complete sense to use a different projection.
How does an inaccurate map work in favor of long distance navigation? Genuinely curious because I fail to see any benefit.
The only advantage I see is you can read all the small countries on the map, which you may not be able to on more realistic maps.
The maps were very accurate in terms of latitude (north/south position) which meant ships could find a particular port or harbor even if they had only a rough idea of their longitude (east/west position) by sailing along the latitude lines until they hit land. How big it made a particular piece of land look was irrelevant.
It’s not well known, but maps started to become super-accurate in terms of longitude as well in the 1670s or thereabouts. Astronomers had observed that Jupiter had eclipses of its moons about a thousand times a year, and thanks to Isaac Newton and others they were able to predict the exact times (in Greenwich England) of these eclipses a few years in advance and publish them. Observers around the world with good telescopes could view these eclipses and note the time differences between their observations and the published Greenwich times and use this to precisely calculate their longitude. It was not really possible to do this reliably on board a sailing ship because of the difficulty of keeping a high-powered telescope trained on Jupiter on a pitching and rolling deck (although many attempts were made) so this led to accurate maps but still not fully accurate navigation until the perfection of ship’s clocks a century later.
The other thing is on the Mercator, if you measure from point A to point B, and it gives you a compass heading, this is the correct compass heading to use to navigate to point B from point A. This is not true unless a map is designed for this purpose.
It won’t necessarily be the shortest distance – to plot that out, it is best to use a globe and chart the arc of a great circle path, which is a straight line on the curved surface of the earth. But that path will have the compass changing all the time.
If you are navigating by compass, which ships and airplanes had to do more often way back when, the mercator was great.
Posting for the benefit of @AAA@feddit.org and anyone else who didn’t know.
Thanks a lot for the explanation. I had no idea, but now with that knowledge it’s quite obvious why and how it works with that kind of map.
Moral of the story: pretty much every decision is made for logical reasons. Sometimes the reasons are unclear, motivations are selfish, or circumstances later change such that the decision is no longer sound, but it’s very rare that “they’re just stupid” is the cause.
Didn’t think so, I just didn’t knew the reason. Therefore I asked.
Now I’m annoyed that I got downvoted for asking at all. What’s the moral there? Don’t ask questions?
The map is extremely accurate in the sense that a course plotted on the map can be followed by following a compass course. The same does not apply for earlier maps, or by far most modern maps that are designed to match real-world sizes.
The reason the Mercator projection became the standard is that it was, for a long time, the only map you could use to safely navigate long distances, especially across oceans.
I guarantee you that Donny will make a freedom correct map of the world.
Made out of “gold” and sold to the highest bidders!
Did the US vote no, because they are smaller on new maps?
Their stated reason boils down to “New map is woke”.
I hate this timeline.
Greenland is also much smaller in the new map. So in essence they shrunk his ambition down to the size of his little dingleberry and there was nothing he could do but whine.
Or because China looks bigger?
As I heard it, Africa is smaller on map than it should be. “It would be woke to fix that”
WHY did the USA vote against it
Racism and white supremacy. Typical.
Some critics of the Mercator projection suspect it has remained widely used because it enlarges and centers Europe, as well as other Western regions such as North America, perpetuating ideas of European superiority.
The UN resolution notes “with concern that this distortion contributes to minimizing the perceived sizes of Africa, Latin America and South Asia, and perpetuating an unbalanced view of the world.”
Because it makes them look smaller. Because reality.
Trump no like feel small :((
Because it would make Greenland look far smaller and uninteresting for Trump.
