{"id":34295,"date":"2026-09-19T20:07:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T20:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/?p=34295"},"modified":"2026-09-21T20:10:50","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T20:10:50","slug":"mercator-launderings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/mercator-launderings\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercator Maunderings"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The map was never supposed to actually be the territory in question. You can see how quickly we got off track this morning with the commotion over the relative size of the world’s largest island. The projection we are used to is the one above on the left, and if has places like New York and London and Paris all in neat little colored blobs.<\/p>\n

So, some other areas closer to the poles are distended as you can see with the more accurate side-by-side comparison at the right.So, if you find yourself doing real estate deals in the northern latitudes, make sure you know what charts you are dealing with. Some things are larger than they appear, and vice versa. Like this view of where the new major military facilities are supposed to go. You can see there seems to be plenty of room!<\/p>\n

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With the right perspective, Greenland can grow enormous as world leaders prepare to travel to New York for the UN General Assembly meeting next week. Africa seems to shrink on the familiar classroom map, the two can appear almost ready for a Dance-Off between equals.<\/p>\n

They are not, since Africa covers roughly fourteen times Greenland\u2019s land area. It contains 54 nations, more than a billion people and much of the mineral wealth driving the century ahead. Greenland is strategically immense\u2014but geographically much smaller than the picture lodged in our heads.
\nThat is where cartography becomes policy.
\nand choke points not obvious on a flat depiction are quite different in clinging curves.<\/p>\n

The images we inherit shape the importance we assign, the threats we perceive and the decisions we consider reasonable. A projection designed for sixteenth-century navigation can still bend a twenty-first-century argument over territory, resources and power.<\/p>\n

Miles looked from the old Mercator map to the corrected silhouettes.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo,\u201d he said, \u201cthe first strategic distortion may happen before anyone starts talking next week in New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

The flatscreen continued to glow.<\/p>\n

Dance-Off: The map shows us where to look. It can also quietly tell us what to think.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The map was never supposed to actually be the territory in question. You can see how quickly we got off track this morning with the commotion over the relative size of the world’s largest island. The projection we are used to is the one above on the left, and if has places like New York […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34295"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34300,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34295\/revisions\/34300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}