Its reach exceeds its grasp, but what a concept to reach for. Truly distilling seven years of a life into a single couple‐hour documentary is obviously impossible, let alone seven years of fourteen lives, yet in trying it gets partway there, and later episodes get even more interesting by acknowledging the limitations. A phenomenal series.
I don’t think it’s trying to distill life in the way you say. It’s the opposite. It’s impossibly thin slices of lives, the length of a conversation at a bus stop, which accrete meaning over the episodes.
You are constantly reminded of what you only know because of earlier episodes, and how much goes unsaid.
It’s something only empathy can make sense of and it challenges the viewer to empathize across time and culture.
The class resonances mean it’s a different experience when watched as a British person too.
No, they came from a range of schools. In fact, the premise of the first documentary, before it became a series, was that where children end up in life can be predicted from the social class they started in. But the series outgrew that simplistic idea very quickly.
> I mean it also accurately depicts relative land mass sizes?
At the cost of distorting shapes and distances.
> compared to Mercator
The UN resolution compared Equal Earth to Mercator, a comparison Equal Earth easily wins in many circumstances. But the comparison should not be to Mercator, but to other widely used projections that do a better job of minimizing distortions generally, such as Winkel Tripel.
The UN resolution is explicit that Equal Earth was chosen specifically for “social justice”–type reasons.
For the purposes of an organization concerned with the demography of actual people, what is the value Winkel Tripel is bringing at the scales it would be used in general application?
Because if you have a specific application then you choose the correct projection for the application.
But if you're just showing a world map, then what's important?
For the UN I'd say relative land mass size is a pretty relevant measure since that's where people live, and where environmental policy takes effect at the level of nation states it deals with.
And it's also the change you can actually pass in a highly subjective area: a slightly different projection no one wants to vote for isn't a viable option in the first place.
> The word "equal" has been used in maths since centuries without any baggage at all. …
> I think it is actually you now that tries to impose this load onto the term, not the original name givers of the projection.
Certainly “equal” is a perfectly normal word used normally in all sorts of circumstances, including equal‐area map projections. That said, while I wouldn’t call it “baggage,” it’s impossible to separate the Equal Earth projection from the context in which it was created: the previous most notorious equal‐area projection, Gall–Peters, was heavily pushed (both when it was popularized in the 1970s and when it regained a surge of popularity in the 2010s/2020s) by promoting the idea that use of non‐equal‐area projections causes westerners to subconsciously internalize feelings of superiority over the poor oppressed Global South based on the distorted size of their home countries on a map. This idea is, shall we say, controversial and not universally accepted. But if you read the original UN resolution that was voted on, it’s clear that the UN representatives believe it (or say they believe it, anyway).
In that context, it seems absolutely clear that the name “Equal Earth” was a very intentional double entendre by the authors of the projection. I don’t fault the authors for coming up with such a catchy name, but I feel strongly it’s important to push back against the false idea that establishing use of equal‐area projections is some meaningful act of restorative social justice.
> I don't get why people say this / focus on Africa in this conversation.
Because the resolution specifically talks about the supposed injustice Mercator has perpetrated upon Africa over the centuries, and loudly trumpets that adopting Equal Earth is an act of reparation toward Africa.
“Noting the proclamation by the African Union of 2025 as the year of “Justice
for Africans and people of African descent through reparations”, and decision
Assembly/AU/Dec.942 (XXXIX), adopted by the Assembly of Heads of State and
Government of the African Union in February 2026 in Addis Ababa, endorsing the
period 2026–2035 as a decade of action dedicated to justice for Africans and people
of African descent through reparations,”
“Noting with satisfaction the adoption by the African Union of the Equal Earth
cartographic projection, which more accurately represents the sizes of all continents,
particularly Africa,”
“Convinced that correcting cartographic distortions of continental sizes
constitutes an act of cognitive justice and memorial reparation, understood as
promoting accurate geographical knowledge, as well as historical truth, education and
awareness-raising, and promotes mutual understanding among peoples,”
“Affirms that cartographic distortions of continental sizes inherited from
history have cognitive, educational, cultural, geopolitical and socioeconomic impacts
and constitute historical biases, the correction of which will promote recognition,
justice and development, particularly with regard to the African continent;”
“Recognizes that the Mercator projection, widely used around the world,
particularly distorts, from the perspective of area representation, continental masses
located far from the equator, resulting in a proportional shrinkage of Africa and other
regions;”
It’s silly that the UN chose to prioritize equal area over all other aspects of a map projection, but if we must use an equal‐area projection, I’m glad they chose this one. Gall–Peters is just hideous and it’s awful that it’s as widely adopted as it is. I hope Equal Earth replaces Gall–Peters everywhere.
> This is a very US-centric (and maybe Canada) thing though?
If what you say about “the rest of the world” using other messaging apps is true, then yeah, it probably is North America–centric. So what? Are you agreeing with the OP who didn’t see any point and advocated that GrapheneOS “totally ignore RCS”?
GrapheneOS already supports WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, Snapchat, and LINE. What’s wrong with improving OS support for another widely used alternative, that for all its faults is mostly better than still another widely used alternative (SMS/MMS)?
There’s a thread on the GrapheneOS forum titled “Using RCS with Google Messages on GrapheneOS” with 2,192 posts in it. Clearly there’s a lot of interest in using RCS on GrapheneOS!
Are you agreeing with the OP who didn’t see any point and advocated that GrapheneOS “totally ignore RCS”
No. I think it is useful for GrapheneOS to work on this, the US is a substantial user base.
The comment I reacted to:
iPhone users very often don't want to have SMS/MMS users in their group chats.
I think it is useful to qualify that, because a lot of people from the US are under all kinds of false beliefs like: green bubble anxiety is universal, Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro do not support physical SIMs (Pixels support physical SIM in other regions), etc. (I could go on for a while.)
These misunderstandings repeatedly show up over and over again and discussions, so I think it is worth being specific. In this case most iPhone users worldwide do not even think about SMS/MMS users in their chat, because they do not even rely on iMessage as their primary messaging app.
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