Who likes looking at maps?

[ursus arctos]

I think that would be the case

Brazil is roughly 4400 km north-south, Chile about 4270

[Balderdasha]

Chile to Canada is probably just a smidge further than North Chile to South Chile.

[Greenlander]

I was wondering if it might be true for China across Asia if you take it from east to west.

[Balderdasha]

I was wondering if it might be true for China across Asia if you take it from east to west.

Ooh, that would be interesting. China's "longer" North to South (5,500km) than it is East to West (5,000km).

It's only 4,600km from China's Westernmost point to Greece.

[Ginger Yellow]

Longread on videogame mapmaking

[San Bernardhinault]

I was wondering if it might be true for China across Asia if you take it from east to west.

I don't think it is true.

A quick test using the Measure Distance tool on Google Maps gives me this approximate info:

The distance from where the Amur river and Ussuri river near Khabarovsk meet in the east to the Kyrgyz/Tajik/Chinese (let's call it KTC for brevity) tri-point in the west seems to be about 3000 miles.

It's less far from that western edge of China to any other country in the west of Asia. 2000ish miles is Israel, Lebanon and Palestine is about the maximum.

But remember we also have to test the distance from the westernmost - not easternmost - point in China to all the countries in the east and south.

The Maldives and Sri Lanka are a little over 2000 miles to the KTC tripoint, so that's fine. The northern tip of Sumatra is 2700 miles so Indonesia fits. Taiwan is 2900 miles.

But I find these failures of the test:

- Japan's closest island appears to be 3040 miles (I may have missed outlying islands) from KTC
- Phillipines are 3120 miles
- Brunei is 3500 miles from KTC
and the biggest outlier that means that even errors in my very rough estimation aren't going to make up the difference
- Timor Leste is 4700 miles away.

[San Bernardhinault]

Couple of notes:

It is true for China and every country on the Asian landmass, and only fails for islands, so if you were a particular kind of annoying pedant about continents only being the continental landmass you might still want to make the claim.

It is not true for Russia

- with the caveat that we're deliberately increasing the width of Russia by including European Russia

- partly because the shortest distance east and west in Russia follows a great circle over the north pole at about 4000 miles - if you followed a cartographic straight line in latitude it's nearer to 5500 miles.

- Brunei (at 6000 miles) and Timor Leste (at 7000) miles still screw us under any definitions

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://twitter.com/xruiztru/status/1766865778609922093?t=ZfZ7bDupQYGt1c_uA8tAiA&s=19

I'm slightly surprised but not totally.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Figure 3, about one-third of the way down the page: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...dandwales/2023

Have we got a statistics thread?

[Ginger Yellow]

Vietnam, if that's what it is, is surprising. The others not so much. I assume the US one is a military base or maybe a university?

[ursus arctos]

The larger US one is Rammstein/Kaiserslautern, and the one in Bavaria is the garrisons in and around Grafen

[San Bernardhinault]

The Luxembourgeois in Bremerhaven is a surprise to me.

[ad hoc]

What's the Bulgaria bit? Leipzig? (and are they Bulgarian Bulgarians or Bulgaria-born Turks?)

[ursus arctos]

I was wondering that as well

The map raises as many questions as it answers, particularly given the small scale

The underlying data would be very interesting,

I'm also in the dark as to how they are classifying people. Only citizens? Anyone with a "migrationshintergrund"?

[caja-dglh]

I think it might be this

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://twitter.com/ChicagoTafia/status/1774122683862577461?t=UI47yDm-chbnp_iRTS8Ugw&s=19

[Ginger Yellow]

Is that the "standard" way to represent the US with hexagonal states? It's really messing with my head (Utah has a coast! Kentucky is in the Mid West!).

[ursus arctos]

I'm not sure there is a standard presentation.

This alternative was the first few Google results

https://www.presentationgo.com/prese...google-slides/

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Is that the "standard" way to represent the US with hexagonal states? It's really messing with my head (Utah has a coast! Kentucky is in the Mid West!).

I would see the layout more as implying "Utah has a border with Mexico". But also, "none of North Carolina, Virginia or Maryland has a coast". But that kind of thing is inevitable with that kind of representation..

Edit: mind you, I think it was pretty unnecessary to imply that Utah has a border with Mexico (or a coast) whilst New Mexico doesn't. Edit: and Oklahoma does.

[Discordant Resonance]

Technically, my village is in the French Guyana sliver, just before the boundary with Guyana, but you'd have to cross the Dingle Peninsula to begin your voyage :

[S. aureus]

I am quite surprised at how small the US sliver is.

[ursus arctos]

I'm surprised it exists at all, given Canada's grography

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

I also found the thinness of the US sliver really surprising, but it makes perfect sense when I (a) look at an atlas and note how NE-SW the US East Coast is slanted (until it turns for Florida) and (b) think about the "great circle" basis that they presumably used for the computation, which means that the "straight line" from Ireland will be coming in to the US coast at an even more N-S oriented direction than a straight line on a page of a typical atlas map projection would be.

In short, I wonder if the whole of the US sliver is attributable to Florida alone. Possibly just the southern portion of Florida's Atlantic coast.

[ursus arctos]

Could be the Ourter Banks

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

On the 'great circle direct route thing' I'm flying from London to Toronto on Saturday and I'm not sure we'll be flying over either Ireland or the USA. Wasn't that why that ill-fated plane bound for the USA that time ended up in Lockerbie?