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
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.
Great to see the United States being humiliated internationally again.
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?
It would be funny if they built their entire system on one projection.
Even Israel voted differently to the US, that’s way funnier than it should be
you must be kidding
And of course, nobody is surprised.
I’m more surprised that Russia voted Yes
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.”
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
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
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.
They wanted to rename Africa to New America.
This might be the first time in history Israel voted differently than the United States of America
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.
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.
Abstentions are also no
Abstentions means let the others decide.
Abstentions are explicitly neither yes nor no.
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.
I wonder if some people welcome trumps threats to leave nato and the UN. How many peices of logical legislation could pass without the US blocking them.
Well, NATO isn’t about legislation so much as mutual defense. And the UN’s resolutions have as much impact as individual countries permit, in many cases.
It’s often said that the real point of the UN and the security council veto power was to offer the world’s most powerful nations a way to come to a more permanent table and disagree, instead of war being the default threat.
I like that last paragraph.
And yeah, the UN resolutions don’t mean much. But it would still feel a little better if they could pass things that are reasonable without interference.
I guarantee you that Donny will make a freedom correct map of the world.
Made out of “gold” and sold to the highest bidders!
Magastan voted no.
yeahh I know africa is a lot bigger than we tought but what suprised me as indonesia its very big compared to old map
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 ."
Not eating glass is wOkE.
“Welp, I’m convinced.”
- GOP voters of 2026
IT GIVES MY HAIR A HEALTHY SHINE
“They’re shrinking Greenland, so that I’m less interested in it.” - Donald Trump, probably
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 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.
Did the US vote no, because they are smaller on new maps?
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”
