Maps are fun, so is food.

[BrotherMan]

[Miisa]

Maybe it is because his kind are like my people and use a comma.

[ceptimus]

Details: If “Did Not Vote” Had Been A Candidate In The 2016 US Presidential Election, It Would Have Won By a Landslide – Brilliant Maps

[Ensign Steve]

They need to break it down further, between apathetic and disenfranchised. I think apathetic would still win the country but I wouldn't be surprised to see disenfranchised coming close in, say, Georgia.

[Basset Hound]

Does Nevada still have 'None of the Above' on it's ballot?

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

What happens when you replace every official or co-official French speaking country with a picture of Kim Kardashian crying pic.twitter.com/vyGhK4rawA

— Terrible Maps (@TerribleMaps) May 27, 2017

[SR71]

This new breakdown of Trump’s approval rating will make you cringe — but also shows signs of hope – Alternet.org

colors

[ceptimus]

[Miisa]

Letter. The bane of my IT help desk existence.

[JoeP]

[erimir]

You know, the US is mostly on its own there (I guess it's more like North America), BUT I will say that at least our numbers make a bit more sense. Sure, 8.5" x 11" are somewhat random sounding numbers. But why is it 21 cm x 29.7 cm?

Why not round it up and use an even 30 cm length?

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

That turned out to be an interesting read:

Paper size - Wikipedia

The significant advantage of this system is its scaling: if a sheet with an aspect ratio of √2 is divided into two equal halves parallel to its shortest sides, then the halves will again have an aspect ratio of √2. Folded brochures of any size can be made by using sheets of the next larger size,

[JoeP]

Yes, it's exactly that: an A4 sheet folded in half is A5. An A4 sheet is the same size as A3 folded in half.

[ceptimus]

And A0 has an area of one square metre. There's a thread somewhere where I moan about how the system becomes less logical, IMO, for sheets larger than A0 - but that's mostly a philosophical moan as such sheets are hardly ever used.

The first place I worked, some of the older engineering drawings were on sheets of paper that were "double elephant" size. That was, and still is, an official paper size, maybe it's still used in some countries?

[erimir]

Ok, so I guess that √2 explanation makes sense.

You win again, metric system

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by erimir

You win again, metric system

* Except in areas shaded blue on map.

[ceptimus]

[Miisa]

Finally, the distance from everyone else we always wanted!

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by ceptimus

Has anyone tried a Mercator projection, but from the South Pole?

...and Google has an answer:
Mercator: Extreme

[ceptimus]

xkcd

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

The Literal Translation Of Every Country's Name, Mapped - Digg

...Little Castle?

[JoeP]

"Ice Land"

Central African Republic "Republic in the Centre of Africa"

[lisarea]

The references are here in a Google spreadsheet for anyone else who wants to look them up.

[JoeP]

Ah yes, I meant to post that after having had one or two questions.

Eg why just "LAND" for Finland? (Probably a slip, since the spreadsheet says "Land of the Finns", which is no more enlightening than "Land of the Svear" "Land of the Angles" etc)

Spain is ... a bit far-fetched.

And they've changed the one for New Zealand to the Māori name Aotearoa. But not with Wales, whose Welsh name Cymru means something like country of fellowmen (no one would call their own country country of foreigners.)

Actually they might also have done this for Finland: Suomi might mean 'land' or ground. Or people. From PIE *dʰéǵʰōm don'tchaknow.

[erimir]

Yeah, some of them are the etymologies of the English names, and others are origins of the name in the indigenous language.

The map often doesn't translate the names of the "tribes". Sweden is "land of the Svear", but "Svear" has its own etymology, which is something like "our people". So, the name means something like "land/realm/kingdom of our people".

Which is a pretty common sort of meaning for endonyms (also: the etymological roots of language names often mean something like "language" or "our speech").