• Kobibi@sh.itjust.works
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    13 days ago

    In what way? It inflates the size of areas as they get further away from the equator, resulting in Africa being portrayed as relatively much smaller than it is compared to Europe and North America

      • Jtotheb@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        Now I’m imagining a dick measuring contest where the men care more about whose is measured most accurately for some reason, rather than showing off how long their dick is

      • Kobibi@sh.itjust.works
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        13 days ago

        The center - east to west - is 0 degrees longitude, defined as the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. This does also go through West Africa

        The center - north to south - is 0 degrees latitude, defined as the equator.

        Because of this, Africa is central on the vast majority of world map projections including the Mercator and the Equal Earth.

        Accuracy is relative. The Mercator distorts areas bigger the further away they are from the equator. This exaggerates the size of the USA, Europe etc compared to Africa.

      • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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        12 days ago

        The big advantage is that the 180th meridian ends up in a very unpopulated part of the world. It is Chukotka Oblast and more importantly Fiji. For the current 0meridian style maps, that is two edges being without much population and not cutting too many continents.