The U.S. was the only country to not support a United Nations resolution adjusting the appearance of Africa and other regions on world maps.
The body passed the “Correct the Map” initiative by a margin of 164 to one, with six nations abstaining from the vote.
The resolution, which was introduced by the West African country Togo, does not require the abandonment of the long-used Mercator projection. It instead encourages the use of equal-area projections that more accurately depict relative country sizes.
Yaryna Ferencevych, the deputy U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, said in a statement explaining the U.S.’s vote that this measure, “mocks the work and purpose of this institution.”
“Instead of focusing on genuine problems of international peace, prosperity, or good relations, this body is debating map projects from the 16th century, and their role in promoting reparations and ‘cognitive justice,’” she said.
It’s even dumber if that’s their reason to vote no.
The best option to achieve the apparently very important idea that UN should not be discussing this would be to vote yes. Get it over with and move along.
But nooooo. They must throw a tantrum protest vote so everyone can see how horrible it is that they were asked a question that means so little to them.
It seems like any time there’s a resolution in the UN that doesn’t totally suck the US votes against it, so, yeah. That checks out.
The real reason is probably because the gulf of Mexico is labeled the gulf of Mexico, it probably the first and only thing they looked for
All the sheep spouted,
“Only country in the world”,
And they believed it
That’s because they think being accurate to reality is “woke garbage”. Reality has such a liberal bias
What the hell does the US know abbot “international peace, prosperity, or good relations”?
“Instead of focusing on genuine problems of international peace, prosperity, or good relations, this body is debating map projects from the 16th century, and their role in promoting reparations and ‘cognitive justice,’” she said.
The strategy here seems to be to say the good thing in a mocking tone and hope enough people laugh and point with you.
America doesn’t want a precedent of paying reparations for all the damage its empire has done to ~25 generations of humans around the world.
Called it.
The moment I saw an example of how it tended to shrink the size of North America on the map, I KNEW is be waking up to a story about the Cheeto administration having a problem with it.
We probably wanted to rename every country “Not America” “Not America 2” etc
Some Americans are allergic to facts and reality.
Okay, America. You can go back to renaming bodies of water now.
Please don’t give them permission. I just want healthcare.
“Resolutions like this and the ideological agenda they promote, are barnacles on our work here, and the reason this institution is losing its credibility,” Ferencevych continued. “When the United Nations questions why it is losing legitimacy in the world, and is not taken seriously, time and again, we point to resolutions such as this.”
This administration is such a fucking embarrassment. What “ideological agenda”?
The cons are famous for accusing everyone else of having an ideological agenda, even as they are pushing an extremist one that is extremely unpopular.
Classic DARVO tactics. This is the group that thinks there is some ideological agenda and nefarious things are afoot to merely recognize that people (including gay and trans) have a right to exist. Of course, they don’t acknowledge their own efforts to crush the rights of those people as “ideological”.
US veto power on simple uncontroversial legislation/policy is what harms UN credibility. This is a simple ovalization of 2d map for greater accuracy of area, and even 16th century trade routes (pacific doesn’t matter).
US veto power on simple uncontroversial legislation/policy is what harms UN credibility.
Considering the US’ recent actions, I’m pretty sure that backfired.
There is a weird narrative where people pretend like there’s some conspiracy to make countries near the equator appear smaller on maps.
The reality is the Mercator projection was made for navigation purposes. The world is round and there is no projection of a globe on a 2D surface that will ever be accurate. No one is trying to kick people down by choosing one projection over the other because none of them are going to be accurate. All maps are made with the general assumption that people understand the world is actually round and they should account for that. This kind of debate edges on flat earth kinds of silliness where people are being deliberately ignorant about how maps work in favour of dumb conspiracy theories.
Sure it’s probably not worth opposing, but it’s also a bunch of silliness that isn’t worth proposing either. It is a sign the UN is disconnected from the actual problems of the world when they’re worried about fucking map projections. Is it going to be international law that we can’t use the Mercator maps for navigation, which is what they’re designed for? Does the UN even understand that for some people a map isn’t just a decoration to be put on a wall, but something that has a purpose?
There is a weird narrative where people pretend like there’s some conspiracy to make countries near the equator appear smaller on maps.
It doesn’t matter if there was a “conspiracy”. It’s inaccurate and therefore stupid to maintain.
The UN doing this doesn’t mean they’re not focusing much more intensely on other issues and anyone claiming that is a fucking moron.
The US being the only one opposing this makes the US the only one pushing some dumbass conspiracy theory.
It’s inaccurate and therefore stupid to maintain.
All 2 dimensional projections of a 3 dimensional object are inaccurate. This a bicycle shed kind of issue. “I like this map because it makes my country look bigger durrrrr.”
Look at the UN flag. It’s not Mercator, but it portrays Australia as being about twice as wide as Canada. That’s not accurate (Canada is about 1000 km wider than Australia), so does the UN flag need to change?
I’m from Canada and I don’t think it needs to change because I know that maps are flat and the world is not flat. If you’re worried about accuracy, you have to ban all flat maps and only allow globes.
The UN doing this doesn’t mean they’re not focusing much more intensely on other issues and anyone claiming that is a fucking moron.
People that don’t understand the concept of political capital and opportunity costs are morons.
The US being the only one opposing this makes the US the only one pushing some dumbass conspiracy theory.
Voting against it is kinda dumb, countries should’ve done as Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Estonia, etc. and just abstained because this is dumb shit that’s worth anyone’s time when there’s real problems in the world.
This is just the UN version of the Trump renaming Gulfs and Lakes.
Why aren’t we surprised. The country that still clings to Imperial instead of going Metric.
The metric system is French propaganda. Like the inscription on the statue of liberty
The U.S. has been on the metric standard since the late 1800s
Why the fuck would you make such a demonstrably false claim lol
It’s not false. Demonstrate how it’s false.
You made the claim it’s metric. Back that up outside NASA
Look at any nutrition facts.
I could use that to claim the same about the United Kingdom, despite imperial measurements still being used elsewhere.
Canada too. The countries themselves all have a killogram and have long since started using it. The population still doesn’t.
The U.K. has “stone” which is about the least meaningful unit for weight. I guess people hark on the U.S. because encyclopedias and other pre-internet things wrote something without actually caring like they typically did.
On the books. But not in practice.
Yeah kinda. All the units are now rational scales of the standard metric units (e.g. 1in ==2.54cm). The reason why USonians use the adjusted imperial units is due to how federalism made it difficult to get the populace to change over. The powerful fed is new to the last 50 years.
Things like nutrition facts are all in standard metric, along with the vast majority of federal laws.
Go into most science fields and they are all metric as well. I’ve worked in healthcare for the past decade plus and most important things are all metric.
Sure till they crash a space probe because of mixing up units.
Yeah it’s definitely used in all research I’m familiar with in the US. And I personally use cm over inches for every-day applications. But I’m not great with weights or liquids. Of either format. And I really struggle with Celsius.
USonians
Never heard that before, i like it
It was used to differ from “Americans” because it felt like that included the government. IDK.
I don’t blame you, it’s great!
I wish.
“We’ll approve it, but first you have to rename the continent ‘Africa of America’.”
(edit, I should probably put this here) /s
As is tradition
Seeing how terrified the white Christian Nationalists are of everybody else in the world, seeing graphically that they are a minority, would be upsetting. Must keep thinking that the USA is the biggest and best, regardless of all evidence.
