• CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Acquiring Greenland would move the USA up 2 places in the list of largest countries (past Canada and China). That’s probably why he wants it.

      • tomiant@piefed.socialBanned from community
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        2 months ago

        It is quick becoming a very important strategic hub in the Arctic due to shipping lanes opening up due to global heating. Greenland is also continuously opening up to natural resource extraction as ice disappears, and they have vast quantities of a lot of very valuable shit under the ground that keeps getting easier to access for the same reason, like rare earth elements, oil, natural gas, copper, gold, zinc, uranium, lithium, tungsten, the list goes on…

        Controlling and exploiting that land is a major strategic interest for all the big (and small) powers. That’s why he wants it, and everyone else too. Fuck his fat fucking ass though.

        • Opisek@piefed.blahaj.zone
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          2 months ago

          He wants to embed himself in the history as some kind of victor. It’s his sick phantasy to be presented in history books as a hero. That’s why he is doing everything he can to irreversibly leave his legacy wherever he can. That’s why he’s building the Epstein ballroom. That’s why he renames buildings and places after himself. That’s why he wants to create new colonies. He’s a narcissist.

  • ZpbkPEcaHhIveqdR@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I don’t think that’s the true size. You’ll find all those countries are actually a lot bigger than presented on that map and scaled down to fit on a screen

  • observes_depths@aussie.zone
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    2 months ago

    I’ll add that we use the mercator projection because it preserves shapes but not scale. There’s other projections that preserve scale but not shapes.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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    2 months ago

    This is why Trump wants Greenland so bad. He sees it, and says “It’s big, I want it. Get it for me!” and gets all Veruca Salt about it.

    All because he doesn’t understand what a Mercator Projection is, on account of he beat up some nerd to do his homework that day, like every day.

  • Pyr@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    How much do you wanna bet Trump wouldn’t be so gung ho on Greenland if he saw this map? He probably thinks he is going to double the size of America.

  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Yes, but blue (Mercator) preserves direction and shape, which were all that really mattered for navigation by sea, so Mercator was a fantastic projection for centuries.

    And we still use it today for smaller scale areas, since it does a remarkably good job at preserving all 4 features (shape, area, distance, and direction) close to the map origin line. Universal Transverse Mercator is a system that has 60 zones of Mercator turned sideways.

    The reason it’s Transverse is because, unlike lattitude depending on a defined equator, longitude has an arbitrary meridian, so by turning the map sideways we can move the distortion point, and any map area that doesn’t stray too far East or West will be very accurate.

    Think of trying to map something like Chile or Florida, where the area of interest is pretty far North to South, but not East to West.

  • scala@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Anyone know of a 2D map print of true size? All I’ve found print wise is Mercator or other such variations.

  • Rachel@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 months ago

    How can it be the true size if it’s still a projection on a 2d surface? I thought could only see the true size on a 3d globe.

    • vithigar@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      True size is possible just fine on a 2D surface. For both too large and too small to be even possible there must exist some transitional point where the size is correct.

      You cannot have both the size and shape correct at the same time. Having the correct size means distorting the shape, and vise versa. One or the other can be correct, but never both.

      • Rachel@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 months ago

        Also I just noticed that the borders no longer line up and it looks like there is ocean in between which isn’t the case. So I shows the size more accurately but is not useable as a map really.