• Dearth@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Every country looks distorted and warped based on your lifetime of experience looking at mercator projection. Every country looks warped and distorted when compared to globes. We learn geography on a flat surface which is inherently distorted because we live on a round surface

    • ysjet@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      Actually, fun fact, the entire point of the Mercator projection is that it DOES maintain shapes/angles, just not scale. It’s a nautical map, it’s for sailing. That’s why when you look at a mercator map and a globe, the countries look about the same, just potentially different sizes- because that’s literally the point of it.

      • Hugin@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        Not exactly it distorts shapes a lot. However if you pick point A on a coast and point B on a different coast the angle of the line is the heading you should sail to go from point A to point B.

        So yeah very useful as a nautical map if you want to navigate from place to place. Not accurate in shape though.