this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
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Ew, everything at the equator is so skinny.
IRL Africa is about as wide as it's tall; it's as far from Benghazi to Cape Town as from the mouth of the Gambia to the tip of the Horn of Africa, but on this map it's around a 2:3 ratio.
Ironically, the most natural-looking part of this map is Europe. All other landmasses are either at a latitude that stretches the proportions or at a longitude that skews them.
Thanks I hate it already.
Well there is no way to preserve the scale of all land masses properly since you're projecting a 3D object onto a 2D plane. This projection at least partially addresses the issue of land masses near the poles being away to big than they actually are. I feel geographically Europe is in a position where the distortions are minimized, at least in the case of projections that don't have weird layouts.
Behrmann would make a lot more sense. The average person lives at 30 degrees latitude, and it works at all longitudes.
If you're in the 6% of the population that lives above 45 degrees latitude, I agree the distortion kind of sucks, so please look at the flag of the United Nations until you feel better.