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[–] 31 points 1 day ago (35 children)

It blows my mind just thinking this guy almost won the presidency of the second biggest country of the continent. Two days ago he was voting and lecturing about democracy.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 day ago (8 children)

    Ok. I can't figure out what you mean by "second biggest." At first I assumed you meant "America" as the continent, rather than "South America," since Brazil is the biggest country in the latter by quite a wide margin (it's about four times the size of Argentina). But Brazil is the third largest Pan-American country after Canada and the US. So, ok, you must have a different definition in mind. Second-largest in the Southern hemisphere, maybe? But Brazil is bigger than Australia, by a million square kilometers.

    Second-largest...uh...country with a large part of its mainland in UTC-3? (After Canada.) Second-largest country from which you can draw a direct line to Antarctica? (That one might be debatable, actually.) Second-largest country whose Northern border is closer to Canada than it is to its Southern border? (After the US, and yes, that's true.)

    I need answers!

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

    I was thinking about several things at the same time, but yeah, seems like I was also wrong in the most obvious one: area. However, it's not that far away from the USA, being Alaska the deciding factor. Second in population and GDP.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    That's a good point about excluding Alaska in the area calculation; Alaska is almost 18% of the land area of the US, so pulling it is significant.

    From the perspective of population, I honestly don't know why I didn't consider that when thinking through this originally. It seems so obvious in hindsight, lol.

    GDP is a little bit more complicated. By pure GDP, it looks like Brazil and Canada kind of flip back and forth depending on the year (right now Brazil is just barely above Canada); though if you look at per-capita GDP, Canada is way higher up the list.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 child)

    But I don't think they are flipping back and forward anymore. Canada is facing a trade crisis now that the new NAFTA is over, and Brazil, if the current political environment settles as it should, is facing a brilliant future in BRICS, also being a power in Rare Earths. In any case, you can consider both 2nd in GDP. Finally, sure, GDP per capita is a different beast, that's the whole struggle of our lives in the "global south".

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  • [–] -2 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    I'm pretty certain South Africa is bigger than Brazil perhaps at second biggest country in the Southern hemisphere?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 day ago

    Not even close. South Africa is like an eighth the size of Brazil. Australia is significantly bigger than South Africa, too, though slightly smaller than Brazil; and Angola, Peru, a good chunk of Congo, and Argentina are all (a) South of the Equator, (b) bigger than South Africa, and (c) smaller than Australia.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 day ago (25 children)

    Which country in South America is larger than Brasil?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (12 children)

    outside the US the Americas is usually considered a single continent. Not 2.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago (4 children)

    Most (maybe all?) European countries consider them to be two continents. Because they are.

    But even if we look at the Americas as a single continent, Brazil would only be the third largest country, because Canada would be second.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago (4 children)

    I've only spent a week of my life in that shithole country, and I've never heard of the Americas as a single continent.

    What about the seven summits?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)
  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    In Australia I consider Europe and Asia to be a single continent too.

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  • I actually go further personally. Afro-Eurasia is a single supercontinent. The Americas are a single continent. Oceania is one (Not just Australia but all the large islands out that way), and Antarctica. So I'd say we have 4. Then lots of subcontinents.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (1 child)

    What movies are distinction between a geographical definition of a continent and a political definition.

    The geographical definition of a continent puts large parts of China in Europe and that just doesn't seem right. It also means that New Zealand is its own continent all on its own.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (7 children)

    Perhaps they meant hemisphere...? Even then it'd be third though, I'm pretty sure...

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  • [–] 0 points 1 day ago (4 children)

    south america is in the "southern hemisphere though.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    There are four hemispheres; each colocated with halves of two others. There's a Northern and Southern hemisphere, yes, but there's also an Eastern and Western hemisphere; one from the Prime Meridian East to the Date Line, and the other from the Prime Meridian West to the Date Line.

    And actually, geographers talk about a third hemisphere delineation: the "Land Hemisphere" and the "Water Hemisphere." The "equator" of this hemispherical division is a circle that runs south from Baja California to just under Peru, curves across South America and across the Atlantic where it ducks under South Africa, then curves back North to skirt just below Vietnam and Japan before turning South again over the North Pacific. That might not sound like a hemisphere, but it is when you look at a globe; and the "Land Hemisphere," which is centered on France, contains 81% of Earth's land, while the "Water Hemisphere," which is centered just south of New Zealand, contains about 63% of Earth's water.

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