Return of Horrible Educational Maps

Crazy Boris

Crazy Boris

Banned
Pretty much everything I could have said has already been said by other people (and probably a lot better than I could have said it since I’m trash at putting my thoughts into words), especially Epharkhos, who I think totally hits the nail on the head, and hits it so hard it goes straight through the wood and out the other side. I’m willing to bet that the entire Mercator argument stems from a desire to feel morally superior over something that at the end of the day doesn’t matter, it’s an ego thing basically, stemming from a combination of an unhealthy obsession with politics to the point where you see it everywhere and a mindset of “I’m always right and everyone else is wrong”.
 
FriendlyGhost

FriendlyGhost

Everyone, can we please calm this down a bit? There are rights and wrongs on both sides of this argument discussion, as there are in almost all discussions. If you want to continue this, can you please do so in a Chat thread, rather than here? Thank you.
 

Help

FriendlyGhost said:
Everyone, can we please calm this down a bit? There are rights and wrongs on both sides of this argument discussion, as there are in almost all discussions. If you want to continue this, can you please do so in a Chat thread, rather than here? Thank you.
Click to expand...
You're right, my bad.
 

BrobDingnag

Miranda Brawner said:
One of the many ugly things about systemic racism is that people can perpetuate it without necessarily having any sort of hateful agenda. Bias can be reinforced through absent-mindedness.
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We’re talking about a map made in 1583. A discussion of the historicity of biological and sociological race preference is beyond the purview of not only this thread, but this entire website. It is a bad, disgusting joke to claim that Mercator is a racist map projection, or even that a map projection can be “racist.” That’s a statement of fact, and it’s all that anyone here has said. We’re making fun–not of racism, nor of anti-racism–but of a funny claim, based in extemporaneous bias. I don’t think anyone here has taken any “sides” to this discussion whatsoever. This thread exists to make fun of bad maps–whether in error, in poor construction, or in poor context. That’s what that image was. That’s all.
 
Linbot

Linbot

Miranda Brawner said:
I think it's very likely that bias has influenced the map projections that people choose to display. Regardless if whether the map was first designed with that in mind, racism likely is a factor in why many people and governments saw it as a good map projection in recent centuries. Sometimes the effect is conscious, sometimes unconscious, but the result is that the choice of projection conveys a message of what parts of the world the author (and the displayer) think are more worthy of being displayed. And considering how entrenched racism is throughout the systems we live in, I think it's justified to view the mercator projection as a colonial tool that seeks to minimize some people and elevate others.
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"Very likely"? I mean, there's no actual evidence for it. The mercator projection became standard because it was easier to use for navigation, and before satellites existed, navigation was how maps were made. If all the colonialism was done by people from Central Africa and not Europe, we would still probably be using the mercator projection. Furthermore, yes, Europe is distorted to be larger than it is, but there are similarly distorted places that I don't think anyone in the west considers to be racially superior, like Mongolia and China.
 
BlazingRoman

BlazingRoman

What... is this conversation I just witnessed? I feel like I'm losing braincells by the second
Let's just move on using this monstrosity:
1618350085435.png

Edit: oh god i actually bothered to read the inciting post in detail and I wanna comment on the part with the classmates so bad because, just.... WHEN WOULD THAT EVER HAPPEN??? Unless this specific scenario happened to this person, I simply can't take that scenario seriously at all. I would continue but I just wanna move on at this point.
 
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Aghasverov

Aghasverov

BlazingRoman said:
What... is this conversation I just witnessed? I feel like I'm losing braincells by the second
Let's just move on using this monstrosity:
View attachment 642310
Edit: oh god i actually bothered to read the inciting post in detail and I wanna comment on the part with the classmates so bad because, just.... WHEN WOULD THAT EVER HAPPEN??? Unless this specific scenario happened to this person, I simply can't take that scenario seriously at all. I would continue but I just wanna move on at this point.
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I'm not sure which is worse, the ginormous lettering or the piss-yellow oceans... the pain upstairs it makes my eyeballs ache :p
 
Crazy Boris

Crazy Boris

Banned
Aghasverov said:
I'm not sure which is worse, the ginormous lettering or the piss-yellow oceans... the pain upstairs it makes my eyeballs ache :p
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If you invert the colors the ocean goes blue, but the alphabet soup all over Europe, the Caribbean, and west Africa is still a pain, and a lot of bordering countries are the same color which is just weird
 
Aghasverov

Aghasverov

Crazy Boris said:
If you invert the colors the ocean goes blue, but the alphabet soup all over Europe, the Caribbean, and west Africa is still a pain, and a lot of bordering countries are the same color which is just weird
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I didn't even notice the whole contiguous-countries-with-the-same-colour thing until you pointed it out, the rest of the map was so horrid... at 1st, I thought they were trying to adhere to the "four colour theorem", but forgot that it had rules :p Then I noticed they actually used five colours which makes it even less excusable :D
 

naraht

BlazingRoman said:
What... is this conversation I just witnessed? I feel like I'm losing braincells by the second
Let's just move on using this monstrosity:
View attachment 642310
Edit: oh god i actually bothered to read the inciting post in detail and I wanna comment on the part with the classmates so bad because, just.... WHEN WOULD THAT EVER HAPPEN??? Unless this specific scenario happened to this person, I simply can't take that scenario seriously at all. I would continue but I just wanna move on at this point.
Click to expand...
I *think* that the colors are assigned based on the English spelling of the Country name.
The bright greens all have English names beginning with A, B, or C (And Possibly) D. Canada, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, China Etc.
Dark Red are I (India), J (Japan), K (Korea) , L (Libya)and M (Mongolia, Madagascar, etc.)
Cyan includes N (Norway) P (Papau New Guinea) and R (Russia) (andthe beginnings of the S with Saudi Arabia)
Dark Blue is S (Sweden), T (Turkmenistan), U (Uruguay), V (Venezuela), etc.

The only country that doesn't seem to fit is Egypt, which should not be the Dark Blue of the STUV countries.

Randy

There is only one country that is out of place in coloring: Egypt. It should *not* be dark blue like the
 
Miranda Brawner

Miranda Brawner

FancyHat said:
Now, I won't claim to know what @Miranda Brawner is thinking, but I'm pretty sure I read the same post as you and it doesn't imply that. What I got from it was that she's suggesting the use of the Mercator projection could be received as a, for lack of a better word, microaggression, regardless of the intentions behind its use or its creation; and that we shouldn't dismiss those feelings out of hand but try to work towards a solution.

(snip)
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Yes, exactly. Thank you for understanding.
 
Aghasverov

Aghasverov

naraht said:
I *think* that the colors are assigned based on the English spelling of the Country name.
The bright greens all have English names beginning with A, B, or C (And Possibly) D. Canada, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, China Etc.
Dark Red are I (India), J (Japan), K (Korea) , L (Libya)and M (Mongolia, Madagascar, etc.)
Cyan includes N (Norway) P (Papau New Guinea) and R (Russia) (andthe beginnings of the S with Saudi Arabia)
Dark Blue is S (Sweden), T (Turkmenistan), U (Uruguay), V (Venezuela), etc.

The only country that doesn't seem to fit is Egypt, which should not be the Dark Blue of the STUV countries.

Randy

There is only one country that is out of place in coloring: Egypt. It should *not* be dark blue like the
Click to expand...
How the HELL did you figure this out? :p
 
Gokbay

Gokbay

naraht said:
I *think* that the colors are assigned based on the English spelling of the Country name.
The bright greens all have English names beginning with A, B, or C (And Possibly) D. Canada, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, China Etc.
Dark Red are I (India), J (Japan), K (Korea) , L (Libya)and M (Mongolia, Madagascar, etc.)
Cyan includes N (Norway) P (Papau New Guinea) and R (Russia) (andthe beginnings of the S with Saudi Arabia)
Dark Blue is S (Sweden), T (Turkmenistan), U (Uruguay), V (Venezuela), etc.

The only country that doesn't seem to fit is Egypt, which should not be the Dark Blue of the STUV countries.

Randy

There is only one country that is out of place in coloring: Egypt. It should *not* be dark blue like the
Click to expand...

Assuming they used Burma for Myanmar it still makes sense but Denmark seems to be orange/bright red.
D, E, F, G (Denmark, Ecuador, France, Finland, Germany, Greenland, Greece)

I don't know why the Congos are in this Color tho.

Maybe the C is divided based on the second letter?
Edit: or 3rd. Colombia is in green.
 
Comte de Dordogne

Comte de Dordogne

BlazingRoman said:
What... is this conversation I just witnessed? I feel like I'm losing braincells by the second
Let's just move on using this monstrosity:
View attachment 642310
Edit: oh god i actually bothered to read the inciting post in detail and I wanna comment on the part with the classmates so bad because, just.... WHEN WOULD THAT EVER HAPPEN??? Unless this specific scenario happened to this person, I simply can't take that scenario seriously at all. I would continue but I just wanna move on at this point.
Click to expand...
Ending an irrelevant debate by using such a horror is called an terrorist attack.

Aghasverov said:
How the HELL did you figure this out? :p
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He is not human, that's why. 😛
 
Aghasverov

Aghasverov

BlazingRoman said:
What... is this conversation I just witnessed? I feel like I'm losing braincells by the second
Let's just move on using this monstrosity:
View attachment 642310
Edit: oh god i actually bothered to read the inciting post in detail and I wanna comment on the part with the classmates so bad because, just.... WHEN WOULD THAT EVER HAPPEN??? Unless this specific scenario happened to this person, I simply can't take that scenario seriously at all. I would continue but I just wanna move on at this point.
Click to expand...
The great thing about this little exercise in optical shock therapy is that, in all the subsequent posts, nobody commented on the choice of projection x'D
It was a weapon of mass distraction! :D
 
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