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Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: July 3rd, 2024
  • Just pointing out the ridiculousness of getting petty and insulting about the way other people define time scales because you don’t agree. There is no objective truth here, just subjective opinions. ALL of those opinions and methods have flaws, especially your beloved “everyone should just use UTC”. There is no such thing as “correct” here, so putting that word in your map’s title and using “right” and “wrong” in this discussion is just naive.

  • This map really brings home how awful this projection is for this map’s purpose and how awful most projections really are near the poles. Greenland isn’t that big. I know this map is Plate Carree, not Mercator, but the size issue of an equirectangular projection is really similar when comparing longitude and size for the entire globe from pole to equator. 15 degrees of longitude for a timezone stops making sense that close to the poles. Greenland would mostly fit in the central time zone of the United States for example. Given its sparse population, dividing it up into 3 timezones seems unnecessary.

  • It says “not to scale”, which in the world of mapping means very specifically that the scale is inconsistent. An exaggerated vertical scale would not include the disclaimer for “not to scale” and is very common, as I already said. It’s common for maps showing vertical reliefs like profiles or cross sections to have a horizontal scale of something like 1:20 while the vertical dimension has a scale of 1:5 or 1:10, which would still be considered “to scale”. If you still can’t fit everything on a single sheet, you can add a break line or a jog to indicate a discontinuity, but the map would still be “to scale”. This map is “not to scale” because it says so, so the only real information we should be able to glean from it are the connections between things; size, angles, and lengths as are meaningless because that’s what “not to scale” is specifically warning us about.

  • Why bother making this at all if it’s not to scale? Sure, nobody expects the horizontal scale to be the same as the vertical scale. Vertical exaggeration is common when displaying profiles or cross sections, but those are generally still considered to be at a particular scale. But, if the vertical scale isn’t consistent, then what even is the point of the graphic? Just list some numbers in a table. Putting this in graphical form without a consistent scale is just lying and lazy.