Africa

UN Votes to Enlarge Africa

Over 150 countries agree to a new default world map. One country took offense to that. Guess who?

Endeavorance

Endeavorance

— 7 min read
UN Votes to Enlarge Africa

I went back to grab something I left in a bush, but Stuff still Happened.

So, whats up?

UN Votes to Enlarge Africa

Maps. We use them to find places. Sometimes, the place we need to find is Africa. One problem: where is it? Actually, two problems: how big is it? I mean, generally it's about where Africa is and it's about the size of Africa, but how can we be sure?

We can't. Because Mercator.

Let's… back up a bit.

Gerardus Mercator was a Flemish cartographer who decided to make a map of everything in 1569. Unfortunately for Mercator—and for anyone who ever designed a 2d map—the Earth is not flat, and so a true representation of land masses can't easily be displayed on a nice piece of rectangular parchment. Enter projections: ways to manipulate the shape of land masses when designing maps to make a fair attempt at representing the surface of a 3d sphere on a 2d plane.

And so we got the Mercator projection, and it ended up becoming the de facto global standard map projection much to the chagrin of most geography and cartography nerds. The projection makes major adjustments to North America and Europe, getting more extreme towards the poles in an attempt to produce a map whose longitudes and latitudes correspond on the opposite side of the map. A noble goal perhaps, but not one that serves to best portray the world.

The Mercator projection, aligning longitude and latitude lines with each other at the edges of the map

So back to Africa. The Mercator projection's skewing of the continents makes for some curious outcomes. If you use it to estimate the relative size of continents, you would be led to believe that Africa is far smaller than it actually is, or that Greenland is far larger. These inaccuracies may seem trivial at first, but can cause real unconscious bias about the scale of countries.

The UN recently voted on a resolution to encourage the proliferation of the "Equal Earth" projection as the new standard, pushing for nations to consider using it for educational material, and for mapping service providers to consider adopting it as well. The Equal Earth projection places land masses at accurate relative size and distance, better representing the scale of our world.

The Equal Earth projection. Variants of the map are offered with different land masses at the center.

164 member states of the UN voted to adopt the Equal Earth projection, with six abstaining and a single "Nay" coming from—you guessed it—free country USA, where I guess we can't even accept the idea of using a more accurate world map because reasons.

Indeed, since the purpose of our current administration is to be as cartoonishly anti-everything as possible, our representation cried that the adoption of this map projection "cannot be separated from the much larger and more radical ideological project it belongs to"—presumably considering it to be unacceptable to display Africa (where Black people come from!!) as slightly larger than the United States (where white people come from!! or… wait…?)

Never mind that the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA adopted this exact map projection back in 2018.

Doesn't really matter though. And really, none of it "matters" since it's the UN. It passed, but this is not a binding resolution. It's just a worldwide agreement that maybe we try out this map instead. If you wanna.

Privately Influencing the Public for Profit

Hey, so what are your thoughts on corporate political consultancies and their outsized influence on global politics? Don't love it? Same.

McKinsey—an international consulting firm which describes itself as "People and AI powering growth"—recently had €65,000,000 seized by Belgian authorities relating to an investigation in France into possible money laundering and tax fraud by McKinsey. The amount is about 96% of the calculated missing tax value from French authorities.

Now, for my own wellbeing, I should note: McKinsey has not been found guilty of anything and this asset seizure is—according to French officials—part of a preliminary investigation. McKinsey maintains innocence and asserts they have a "commitment to complying with tax obligations."

The investigation follows on from a past inquiry from the French government into the growing role of private consulting firms in public policy work. During the investigation, officials uncovered that McKinsey had paid zero corporate income tax throughout most of the 2010's in France.

McKinsey operates in over 50 countries and is deeply tied to many of the largest brands and richest people in the world, as well as dozens of governments. This private agency essentially has the ear of a wide network of influential people. It's also the agency that Pete Buttigieg—seemingly a 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful—spent a few proud years of his career.

From McKinsey's website

This isn't the first big McKinsey controversy and it won't be the last. In 2021, McKinsey settled a massive lawsuit over their role in "turbocharging" sales of OxyContin by Purdue; the two companies playing key roles in the US opioid epidemic. They have also been aiding ICE since the Obama years and continuing on under Trump, trying to save money on their concentration camps ("detention centers" as ICE calls them) by making cuts to food and medical care, among other things.

So did they commit tax fraud? Who knows. Regardless of how that coin lands, maybe we should reconsider the value of shady private international networks of policy influence and alignment at the direction of the richest people in the world, rooted in a single country.

Just my two cents.

Grand Theft Grand Theft Auto

Grand Theft Auto 6 is coming out soon and there has been no shortage of bullshit swarming the upcoming release. Let's take a sec to talk about how the release of Grand Theft Auto 6 may result in Discord and Microsoft sharing thousands of users' data with Take Two, the publisher behind GTA.

GTA 6 Key Art. Note the trigger discipline. Safety first.

It starts dumb and gets dumber.

Grand Theft Auto 6 reached outrageous levels of hype, with fans going as far as to measure the literal oxygen content around developer Rockstar's headquarters in an attempt to predict when trailers would release.

Eventually, someone going by the handle "Cyberleek" started to leak videos of GTA 6 gameplay, claiming to have gotten a copy of the game files and threatening Rockstar with a list of demands, such as "no more digital preorders." Should they fail to comply, Cyberleek would release more content of the yet-unreleased game.

Rockstar decided to pivot and do a big "extended look" thing for GTA on Netflix, seemingly to undercut the leaks, but also just because the game's main marketing push is happening now. However, Cyberleek didn't stop. They went on to do the thing that any suddenly-famous Twitter user does in 2026: a cryptocurrency scam.

Cyberleek released a cryptocoin for people to buy into in order to do… something… and ultimately Cyberleek sold all their holdings for about a quarter of a million dollars and disappeared, tanking the value of the cryptocurrency in the process.

So now, we've got publisher Take Two seeking to bring down the hammer on Cyberleek, but given his anonymous nature they've chosen to unleash the lawyers, subpoenaing Discord and Microsoft for user information that could be related to the situation. YouTube and Twitter reportedly also received subpoenas.

For Discord, it amounts to "hand over any account information that interacted with this list of Discord servers," of which we have no information on what servers they're looking at. All in the name of delivering copyright law justice.

Solid trade, really: thousands of people's information handed over via sealed subpoena in exchange for maybe, possibly finding the identity of a guy who leaked video game footage on the internet.

But, y'know, car game vroom pew.

Judgement Day (but lil)

On this day in 1509, judgement came for Constantinople.

A massive earthquake of a magnitude around 7.2 rocked the Sea of Marmara. It struck Constantinople (not Istanbul), causing widespread chaos, damage, and thousands of deaths. Following the initial quake was about a month of aftershocks and a tsunami which eclipsed the town's walls.

The quake is referred to as "Minor Judgement Day" from the intensity of the damage. The name relates to the "Last Judgement" which interpretations of the Quran associate with a massive earthquake.

You can see it for yourself thanks to this excellent piece of artwork depicting the events of that day:

My evergreen status update

Shocking stuff. I mean, look, I know it was a tragedy, but the dudes just kinda blank-expression putting their hands in the air is objectively funny. Would be less funny if it were an actual photo, but hey. Tragedy plus time.

I honestly just relate to it so much though.

Here's the Weather

Source: VentuSky

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