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The world map is changing: The UN has backed replacing the 500-year-old Mercator projection with the accurate Equal Earth projection (thelemmy.club)
submitted 3 days ago by to c/interestingasfuck@lemmy.world
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[–] 36 points 3 days ago (10 children)

Canada (without the various arctic islands) is considerably smaller than the contiguous (sans Alaska and Hawaii) US.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago (7 children)

    We're repeatedly told in school and all throughout our media that Canada is the "second largest land mass in the world". Is that not true?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago*

    Yes it is, but you have to include all of those islands, in particular Baffin island. If you just look at the contiguous land masses, the US is bigger, which is why it looks bigger on this projection. If you dragged all those islands together into Canada, then Canada would look slightly bigger, because it is slightly bigger.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago (4 children)

    Land mass or country? Because the Americas make us the second largest land mass with Eurasia and Africa because the largest.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (3 children)

    Isn't Africa connected to Eurasia? So we have the Americas and AfroEurasia plus some islands. Which is why "continents" has no meaning and is another social construct unless you divide them in a way that makes zero sense to anyone who isn't a geologist.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    We should divide the continents in:

    Continents: the actual land, so we have the Americas (i'd count them as one as they are almost one), AfroEuroAsia

    Sub continents: their definition is cultural so we have north and south america, Africa, Europe, Asia and Oceania

    Don't take anything too seriously, i thought about this on two feets around 2 years ago and forgot about that until now

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago

    I know at the end of the day it doesn't really matter, but it always rubbed me the wrong way when Europeans claim that The Americas are one continent because it's one connected landmass, but somehow Europe is it's own continent. North/South America at least came from different super continents and only recently collided. Europe (minus the Balkans) and Asia (minus Arabian and Indian peninsulas) have been together since at least Pangaea.

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