Well, the underlying thinking "only people I directly voted for can do things" is wrong. I guess you never directly voted for your minister of economy, or? In many countries people don't directly vote for the prime minister, chancellor etc.
The key term some people never learned in school is "direct democracy" vs. "indirect democracy".
Even many clubs, e.g. in Germany the ADAC, have systems where people vote for an assembly (or, in politics: a parliament). And then the assembly vote fot ehri CO (or, in politics, for their chancellor). Now, it can happen that this chancellor together with 26 other head of states is a member of the Europen Council (EUCO, one of the 7 bodies of the EU, what btw most people all the time intermingle). And that this EUCO now votes on their president.
In your logic, this presidency of the EUCO is then null and void. Because not directly elected by citizens of the EU.
In my logic, I realize that this position is removed from the people, but it still done by a democratic process. A multi-stage process, but still democratic. And that it still has some bearing.
Asking for the whole world population having an election on e.g. the UN Secretary General --- under the implication that only this would give representation --- is bogus.
I'm Canadian. Canada represents me. They voted on this. That's how the world works. Sometimes my government is not the one I voted for and my interests are not represented, or sometimes my interests are not the majority in my country. That's life.
No one is forcing you to use the new map, you can keep your old map. No one will arrest you for it. Enjoy!
One can still note a poor decision based on its merits.
An equal area projection map is obviously valuable. But it's practically asinine to pick a projection that distorts land features when there are several equal area projections that do not.
Further, Ukraine had to abstain from this vote because they shoehorned in something ridiculous considering the official position of the UN members that Crimea is Ukraine [1], and Crimea is depicted as outside of Ukraine.
I have no idea if there are other hidden yet important changes, since there is hardly any commentary apart from size and shape.
No, the resolution doesn't include a map, it's purely about which projection to use so obviously it doesn't mention any land borders.
As best I can tell the Ukrainian ambassador saw the example map made by the Equal Earth creator in 2014 with its somewhat questionable choice in colouring Crimea and saw an opportunity for virtue signalling. Or maybe he really thought the vote was about that specific political map from 2014.
I'm partial to the Goode Homolosine projection, next is whatever NatGeo standardized on. Of course, the best is an actual globe --but decent sized ones are too expensive and the beach ball ones are just not very well made.
I like the aesthetics of Robinson, but it gives you the worst of both worlds: it's neither conformal like Mercator nor equal-area for honest data visualization. It's essentially a spline fit over 38 arbitrary numbers chosen to look nice, whereas Equal Earth accomplishes true equal area with a clean, 4-coefficient polynomial.
Equal Earth is basically Robinson with a more straightforward formula and accurate areas.
Tbh, I don't see the use case for Robinson when Winkel-Tripel exists. For almost all use cases where you need a political world map, Winkel-Tripel is the better choice.
Equal earth also has its uses, it's a neat and clean map, but has more distortion in shape, which might be undesirable.
Why would the world feel the need to compromise when all UN countries, except for one agree on the projection. The solution is simply to ignore the minority, especially if it has a government that itself has always refused to compromise with others.
It's a GA resolution. Vanuatu gets the same vote as India. No actually consequential global decisions could ever be made this way, so it's no wonder it's mostly used for symbolic votes like this one.
No one needs a compromise. The world (except the US) agreed to use this new map together. It's not a conflict.
Mercator already did compromise on area and length to have "rhumb lines" (used for navigation, but also direction finding) be straight.
Other map projections (we have hundreds!) compromise on other things to improve on others. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projections
So yes, we definitely NEED compromise and not some strongman that says, due to limited knowledge "it is how it is, forever".
To say that "the world agreed" on something based on a General Assembly resolution is an interesting claim, if rather bold.
Is there any other way that the world could officially agree on something?
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Representing a 3D sphere-like surface on a 2d plane definitionally requires compromise.
UNGA votes are non binding symbolic grandstanding. This vote does not mean the world agreed to it. its more like the world agreed to think about it.
Will countries actually change their map projections? That has yet to be seen. Maybe they will, maybe they won't That has yet to be seen.
The whole world thought about it and everyone except the US said “good idea!”
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Somebody who does not represent anybody "agreed" - not us.
Well, the underlying thinking "only people I directly voted for can do things" is wrong. I guess you never directly voted for your minister of economy, or? In many countries people don't directly vote for the prime minister, chancellor etc.
The key term some people never learned in school is "direct democracy" vs. "indirect democracy".
Even many clubs, e.g. in Germany the ADAC, have systems where people vote for an assembly (or, in politics: a parliament). And then the assembly vote fot ehri CO (or, in politics, for their chancellor). Now, it can happen that this chancellor together with 26 other head of states is a member of the Europen Council (EUCO, one of the 7 bodies of the EU, what btw most people all the time intermingle). And that this EUCO now votes on their president.
In your logic, this presidency of the EUCO is then null and void. Because not directly elected by citizens of the EU.
In my logic, I realize that this position is removed from the people, but it still done by a democratic process. A multi-stage process, but still democratic. And that it still has some bearing.
Asking for the whole world population having an election on e.g. the UN Secretary General --- under the implication that only this would give representation --- is bogus.
1 reply →
I'm Canadian. Canada represents me. They voted on this. That's how the world works. Sometimes my government is not the one I voted for and my interests are not represented, or sometimes my interests are not the majority in my country. That's life.
No one is forcing you to use the new map, you can keep your old map. No one will arrest you for it. Enjoy!
2 replies →
One can still note a poor decision based on its merits.
An equal area projection map is obviously valuable. But it's practically asinine to pick a projection that distorts land features when there are several equal area projections that do not.
Further, Ukraine had to abstain from this vote because they shoehorned in something ridiculous considering the official position of the UN members that Crimea is Ukraine [1], and Crimea is depicted as outside of Ukraine.
I have no idea if there are other hidden yet important changes, since there is hardly any commentary apart from size and shape.
[1] https://ukraine-war-analytics.com/history/international-reco...
No, the resolution doesn't include a map, it's purely about which projection to use so obviously it doesn't mention any land borders.
As best I can tell the Ukrainian ambassador saw the example map made by the Equal Earth creator in 2014 with its somewhat questionable choice in colouring Crimea and saw an opportunity for virtue signalling. Or maybe he really thought the vote was about that specific political map from 2014.
"The world" is not represented by the UN General Assembly. Did you vote for your representative?
The UN does not dictate which map you or your government or your school or Google uses.
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I didn't vote for a foreign minister of my country, but his job is to represent my country, including in UN. This is fine.
Here's an image I made to show the difference between Robinson and Equal Earth:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comparison_of_Equal_...
Whichever you prefer, what matters is that we should all just stop using Mercator.
Well, we should use Mercator for its intended purpose (only), which is to accurately show/determine angles for navigation....
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Why? Mercator is useful and familiar to billions of people.
“Robinson projection” makes me think of Canadian fasteners.
I'm partial to the Goode Homolosine projection, next is whatever NatGeo standardized on. Of course, the best is an actual globe --but decent sized ones are too expensive and the beach ball ones are just not very well made.
I could’ve sworn that Robinson had already replaced Mercator by the ‘90s, so I was surprised to see defenders of the latter.
That is the best one, no idea why its not standard.
https://xkcd.com/977/
I have a Waterman on my wall :)
cool - you want to grab a coffee some time?
I like the aesthetics of Robinson, but it gives you the worst of both worlds: it's neither conformal like Mercator nor equal-area for honest data visualization. It's essentially a spline fit over 38 arbitrary numbers chosen to look nice, whereas Equal Earth accomplishes true equal area with a clean, 4-coefficient polynomial.
Equal Earth is basically Robinson with a more straightforward formula and accurate areas.
Tbh, I don't see the use case for Robinson when Winkel-Tripel exists. For almost all use cases where you need a political world map, Winkel-Tripel is the better choice.
Equal earth also has its uses, it's a neat and clean map, but has more distortion in shape, which might be undesirable.
Why would the world feel the need to compromise when all UN countries, except for one agree on the projection. The solution is simply to ignore the minority, especially if it has a government that itself has always refused to compromise with others.
It's a GA resolution. Vanuatu gets the same vote as India. No actually consequential global decisions could ever be made this way, so it's no wonder it's mostly used for symbolic votes like this one.
When are all these countries planning to switch over to the new map?