Fun fact, the Mecca projection (Craig retroazimuthal, can use any center) is very popular in the Middle East. It's handy for prayers and hides Big Satan in a corner! Whatever makes you happy.

They have a point. Should politics centrally dictate the projection though? Leave it to each geography teacher etc.

Afaik it's not a mandate, just a recommendation.

Well, in France it might be a mandate, but they're nuts :-)

Honest question: why is it woke? Anyway, I prefer Spilhaus Projection:

It's woke because of the rhetoric about this being "fair" to Africans. Like Mercator was ongoing colonial oppression and racism.

Ok about the rhetoric. But having a woke rhetoric doesn't imply being woke itself, imo. Being anti-racism is not woke, even though it can have woke rhetorics.

Being opposed to racism is classic liberalism, which existed long before woke. So there's no problem :-)

Some quotes from The Guardian... This is what I mean by woke rhetoric, getting in the way of a good idea. > disproportionate cartographic representations, particularly those resulting from the Mercator projection, have had lasting cognitive, educational, cultural, geopolitical and socioeconomic effects, contributing to a drastic reduction in the perceived size of Africa and other regions of the world in the global collective imagination As if these maps caused poverty. > This discussion is not a political discussion [but] a scientific discussion, because there is scientific proof so we all have to accept the reality. As if Mercator was scientifically incorrect, rather than just optimizing for navigation (which we now use phones for and most people don't sail around the world anyway). > Historians and geographers have said for years that the Mercator projection is rooted in western stereotypes. Activists have echoed this, with some coining the term “cartographic colonialism”. > Some argue that the map has subtly shaped international power dynamics by minimising the physical presence of the global south and visually inflating northern hemisphere nations while shrinking equatorial regions. This is said to have reinforced systemic biases in international trade, development priorities and educational frameworks. > Supporters say it will help to reverse perceptions of Africa and decolonise global curriculums. > while signalling that Africa’s demographic, economic and geopolitical importance should no longer be viewed through inherited and distorted conventions Which again is nonsense: every projection from a sphere to a plane has distort *something*.

For example, if you self-identify as a rectangular state...

Ok. Call 'woke' the Guardian article. But that doesn't imply the idea of changing the preferred and suggested Projection is woke by itself.

Yes, that's exactly the point I was trying to make. The idea is fine, the woke narrative gets in the way.

Anyone build narratives about anything. People love them. They solidify already stablished ideas and self convictions in each group. The trick is judging the ideas by themselves, out of different narratives. This projection thing has many narratives about it, not just the woke one. GM! 🫂