• nawa@lemmy.world
    2 years

    Honestly I’m more surprised that the border with Belgium is longer than the border with Spain

    • ADTJ@feddit.uk
      2 years

      I think it’s just measuring the longest contiguous border.

      The border with Spain has Andorra in the middle

      • Troz@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2 years

        There isn’t a 2nd number on the east side of Andorra so I think the 623 is the total with Spain.

        • ADTJ@feddit.uk
          2 years

          Could be or it’s just counting the longest border they share

    • Lojcs@lemm.ee
      2 years

      No, because borders are made up by humans and humans can’t write down or even measure infinitely small

    • EddoWagt@feddit.nlEnglish
      2 years

      You’ll have to represent each border on the same scale, so no. Also, why are you being flagged as a bot?

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
      2 years

      Yes, but non-coastal borders become nice curves at a certain resolution just because they’re legally defined by points.

      Coastal borders are legally vague AFAIK, since they’re defined as a nautical mile from “the shore” or something like that, but when you’re already on the ocean a matter of a few meters tends not to matter.

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      2 years

      considers

      Well, they aren’t fractal, that’s for sure.

      It is true that we could make borders more-closely-map to physical features, and that would increase the length somewhat.

      And we can define borders however we want, so that’s up to us.

      But ultimately, matter is quantum, not continuous, so if we’re going to link the definition of a border to some function of physical reality, I don’t think that we can make a border arbitrarily long.

      • Bassman1805@lemmy.world
        2 years

        Coastlines are indeed fractals, and a similar argument could be made for any border defined by natural phenomena (so like, not the long straight US/Canada border).

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
        2 years

        Well, quantum mechanics is continuous, just in a way that often maps to discrete things when measured. I’m sure someone has written a research paper on quantum law, but I wonder if anyone who actually knows quantum mechanics has.

        • bunchberry@lemmy.world
          2 years

          It is only continuous because it is random, so prior to making a measurement, you describe it in terms of a probability distribution called the state vector. The bits 0 and 1 are discrete, but if I said it was random and asked you to describe it, you would assign it a probability between 0 and 1, and thus it suddenly becomes continuous. (Although, in quantum mechanics, probability amplitudes are complex-valued.) The continuous nature of it is really something epistemic and not ontological. We only observe qubits as either 0 or 1, with discrete values, never anything in between the two.

          • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
            2 years

            Sure, but if you measure if a particle is spin up or spin down in a fixed measurement basis, physically rotate the particle, and then measure again the amplitudes change continuously. You could also measure it in another basis, which themselves form a continuous family, and get a similarly logical answer (although not independently of the first one). I don’t know much about quantum field theory, but I do know that fields in it are continuous, just like they are in classical theories.

            All in all, while quantum logic is part of what makes it continuous, I think I’d still stand by that it is continuous.

    • M137@lemmy.world
      2 years

      Longest*

      How did you get that wrong when it’s correct in the title…?

      And what you’re talking about is not borders, it’s coasts. Borders are much more specific since they’re completely made up by us. They have very specific lengths.

      It’s actually impressive how much you got wrong in your comment. If I was in the same class as you, I would have worked hard to never be in the same group as you because it’s pretty certain you’ve failed to understand many other simple and obvious things. I’m almost curious about what other things you’ve misunderstood.

      • myfavouritename@lemmy.world
        2 years

        Yeah, you’re honestly way out of line here.

        Being correct is not a virtue. Other people are not impressed by how correct you are, or by how great a job you’ve done in correcting others.

        Knowing more than others is not a virtue. Literally everyone knows less about some things than others; there is no super genius that is right or most knowledgeable about everything. For that reason (and many others), lack of knowledge is not a good reason to treat someone poorly.

        You obviously care about the mechanics of clear communication. I believe that you can be better than this, that you can keep in mind why we communicate, not just how. You obviously know a lot about certain topics as well. I believe you can be better at how you demonstrate your knowledge. This time you showed off your knowledge to shame someone else. Maybe next time you could show off what you know by sharing it with someone in a helpful way.

        Then people really would be impressed.

      • xantoxis@lemmy.world
        2 years

        Wow, what the fuck happened to you to make you like this? It’s a post about a map.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2 years

        Wow, you’re an asshole. Many borders are (or were) defined by positions of natural features though, so no you’re wrong. They aren’t completely made up by us. They are made up, but based on nature.

    • leopold@lemmy.kde.social
      2 years

      The map only includes land borders. St Pierre and Miquelon are islands, so they have none. France has several small islands scattered around the world as legacy of the French Empire which are also absent from OP’s map for the same reason. Saint Martin on the center left is a notable exception, since it’s divided in two between France and the Netherlands.

  • someguy3@lemmy.world
    2 years

    Italy surprises me. Austria too, but I guess that juts in can really add up.

  • DrunkenPirate@feddit.orgEnglish
    2 years

    And France is the only one country that spans across all time zone on the globe.

      • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
        2 years

        They misspoke and bizarrely doubled down when corrected, but they are touching upon an interesting fun fact. That it’s always daytime somewhere in France.

      • roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2 years

        I didn’t realize French territory is so widespread.

        So if the U.K. ever complies with the UN and the ICJ and relinquishes control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, the sun will set on the British empire, but not on France.

        That’ll be funny as fuck and I hope France never misses an opportunity to point it out.

      • Skua@kbin.earth
        2 years

        It is in the most timezones of any country, so I expect that that’s the idea they were half-remembering

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
        2 years

        There’s pretty much nothing right along the international date line, regardless of country. If you’re trying to collect them all you better not care about +12 vs -12. As you can see your options are also limited for -1 and -2.

        Unrelatedly, I’m curious what the story is with Central vs. Mountain time in Nunavut. That’s quite the wasp-waist for such a vast, mostly empty area.

        • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
          2 years

          If you’re trying to collect them all you better not care about +12 vs -12.

          And thus it was that France invaded New Zealand’s Chatham Islands and the United States Minor Outlying Islands.

          • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
            2 years

            Instead of grabbing the Azores for UTC -1, France figured it would be easier to just annex all of Portugal. Brazil was reportedly grateful to no longer have a whole extra timezone for that one -2 island, and also glad to hear that they annexed Portugal.

      • DrunkenPirate@feddit.orgEnglish
        2 years

        If you‘re so picky, I‘ll as well. I wrote it spans across, not includes all.

        • groet@feddit.orgEnglish
          2 years

          But what does that mean? Does Australia span all timezones? Take its zone of UTC+9:30 and then go all the way around the globe to the east until you hit UTC+8 which is also Australia. Congrats you passed through all timezones and are in Australia again.

        • Eheran@lemmy.world
          2 years

          So you only need 2 areas in 2 time zones and boom you span all of them? How would you define “span” for something like this on a globe?

          • oleorun@real.lemmy.fanEnglish
            2 years

            Yeah, agreed. Span = bridge. It’s gotta be contiguous across all timezones. Otherwise it’s a fact that France exists in many timezones, but not all.

            Still an impressive graphic.