Fake Views

As one might expect, I've been using the spike in interest in Greenland to draw attention to its distorted size on the oft used Mercator projection. I'm not saying fact checkers should take those posts down. We have to give the slow folks a role. I'm happy to see interest in geography, but seriously... really? A Mercator in 2025? What school did you go to?

I'm fine with all these mental exercises around borders turning fluid, Canada becoming a state even before Puerto Rico. Other groups are talking about selling off Florida to Cuba (how much ya want?), or Texas to Mexico (free!), now that the ball has started rolling, and it's OK to buy and sell in a virtual space of the imagination. I feel like we're gambling those Valve "skins" (textures).

I'm fine with this kind of mental exercise precisely because it empowers the human imagination, which is the source of these kinds of things (nations) in the first place. We're clearly in a time of shifting borders wherein nations come and go, as well as gerrymander. 

No one agrees on the maps of West Asia or East Europe anymore. That data layer has gotten rather corrupted, which in turn makes the concept of "citizenship" more difficult to get clear on.

What we do see is the geography of our playing board, in terms of its physical features, versus what the human ethnicities project. The ethnic projections are still important, on many levels, and have to do with self organization, operating as a group. That's something humans are not spontaneously any good at. They need enculturation and education, to customize their outward behavior.

How is mandatory conscription not slavery? A government that people want to support only need provide myriad opportunities for public service. Maybe you're on UBI and regard your government service as volunteer work. So much the better. Those of independent means are much harder to bribe or sway with the promise of funds.

They say "money talks" and say "rich and powerful" as if those two go together, but a lot of the time what talks is not the money but the perceptions it may assist in creating. Or not. Perceptions spread like wildfire without needing a big push from the sponsors sometimes.