this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
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Mildly Interesting

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Today, the United Nations voted to adopt a new world map that reflects countries’ true relative sizes (programming.dev)
submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by Orwi@programming.dev to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
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https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/04/world/un-vote-new-world-map-intl-scli

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[–] zpiritual@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

What? The projection matters on any scale and for navigational purposes will continue to use mercator projection on flat maps so there this decision doesn't change anything.

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It really doesn't. On a ball as large as the earth, if you take a tiny section of it, it's basically already flat. You don't need to transform it mathematically to make it fit on a grid system.

Maybe you've never seen a map made for land navigation? They don't need to distort terrain feature size to make everything line up directionally.

[–] Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it 0 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Maybe you've never seen a map made for land navigation?

Can you share one or the name of the projection used? I am having an harf time searching for it

Edit: i found that for air navigation they use Lambert Conformal Conic, for marine they use Mercator and for land i found nothing which makes sense (and probably it would be Mercator anyway)

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

https://doc.esri.com/en/arcgis-pro/latest/help/mapping/properties/coordinate-systems-and-projections.html

A local coordinate system uses a false origin (0, 0 or other values) in an arbitrary location anywhere on earth. Local coordinate systems are often used for large-scale (small area) mapping. The false origin may or may not be aligned to a known real-world coordinate, but for the purpose of data capture, bearings and distances can be measured using the local coordinate system rather than global coordinates. Local coordinate systems are usually expressed in meters or feet.

Example:

https://slcprdpublicrecords.blob.core.windows.net/0001sjradmin/PDF/CB_1877_15_10045793.pdf

[–] Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it 0 points 5 days ago

Nice, thanks