
The True Size Of - slowhand09
https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTU3MTkyODM.NDYxNDQ2Mw*MzQzMzc4NjE(MzE1NDI2OA~!CONTIGUOUS_US*MTAwMjQwNzU.MjUwMjM1MTc(MTc1)MA~!IN*NTI2NDA1MQ.Nzg2MzQyMQ)MQ~!CN*OTkyMTY5Nw.NzMxNDcwNQ(MjI1)Mg
======
mstade
As a Swede, it was mind blowing to see that California is nearly the same size
area wise, but about four times larger in population. Plenty of room for us to
grow still!

Also interesting to see both Russia and USA fit inside of Africa, more or
less.[1] I always thought Russia was much bigger.

[1]:
[https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTY2NjQzMjQ.MTYzNzcxMQ*...](https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTY2NjQzMjQ.MTYzNzcxMQ*Mzc2NTY1Nw\(Mzc2NTY1Nw~!CONTIGUOUS_US*MTQ0NzM0Mjk.MjU4NjcwODY\)MTA~!RU*Nzk3NjE2NQ.OTEyNDc4OQ\)MTE)

~~~
vinceguidry
You can rotate with the compass widget on the bottom-left

[https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTQ3MzgzMTY.MjQzMTI1Nw*...](https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTQ3MzgzMTY.MjQzMTI1Nw*MzI2Mzc2NzM\(NjU4Njg5MQ~!CONTIGUOUS_US*MTMzNDI0OTY.MjU5MDcwODA\(NzI\)MTA~!RU*Nzk3NjE2NQ.OTEyNDc4OQ\)MTE)

~~~
mstade
I was looking for a way to do this, thanks! :o)

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saagarjha
Warning: this utterly destroyed by navigation history.

~~~
makeset
It made me discover that you can select a range in Chrome history by Shift-
clicking the end.

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cyberferret
I like that you can compare individual US states to various countries, but it
would love to be able to compare individual Australia states as well (Hint: I
live in AU). It was interesting to see that Alaska is about the size of
Western Australia.

Having always heard that we can fit 20 United Kingdoms in the Northern
Territory (the state, oh, all right, territory, where I live), I wanted to
check that out for myself against the UK and other countries.

~~~
mkl
According to Wikipedia, the UK is 242,495 km², and Northern Territory is
1,420,970 km², so you can only fit it 5.86 times. The whole of Australia is
7,692,024 km², so you can fit the UK 31.7 times in that.

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dang
Thread from 2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13327973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13327973)

2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182024](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182024)

~~~
m10i
This is a bit off-topic, but one aspect (among many others) of HN that I
really appreciate is that there aren't any snide remarks pointing out how this
is a repost (I'm not suggesting that's what you're doing); no one here cares.
If you've seen it before, great, perhaps you could contribute to the
conversation in this current thread based off your learnings the last time
around. If you haven't seen it before, here you go. I hope it always stays
this way.

~~~
Stratoscope
Dan (dang) is one of the mods here and a chill dude, so you won't see many
snide remarks from him. :-)

In fact it's encouraged to post links to previous discussions. It doesn't mean
"you shouldn't have posted this duplicate", it means (or should mean) "if you
find this interesting, you may find these previous discussions interesting
too."

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forinti
I did something like this as a joke some time ago, but I used the outline of a
Brazilian municipality (Alegrete) and wrote a parody of Saramago's "Jangada de
Pedra" (The Stone Raft).

[http://alquerubim.blogspot.com/2011/07/jangada-de-
pasto.html](http://alquerubim.blogspot.com/2011/07/jangada-de-pasto.html)

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farisjarrah
I think I broke Canada.... I dragged it all the way to the South Pole and it
exploded to the size of the whole world.

~~~
saagarjha
There probably should be a check so you can’t drag a country below 90°.

~~~
yorwba
There's no wall at the South Pole, so dragging a country across should just
make it come back on the other side. That's actually what's happening here,
except that the color ends up on the wrong side of the outline.

My guess is that the drawing code tries to correct the orientation of its
input to avoid drawing shapes inside-out, which fails when the outline
stretches across the full width of the map.

~~~
programmer_dude
You can't fool me round-earther. /s

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wyclif
My 8-year old son told me about this site. It's the first site I've ever
discovered based on my kid's word-of-mouth. He's crazy about geography and
loves to compare the area of different countries and make trick questions out
of the comparison: "Daddy, which is bigger, the Philippines or the state of
Arizona?" (Answer: they're almost the same size)

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kccqzy
Just don't use inappropriate map projections. Problem solved.

Any respectable map publisher would use something like Winkel-Tripel or
Robinson for a map of the world.

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layoutIfNeeded
Any respectable publisher includes _multiple_ projections of the world in
their atlas, with an explanation section describing each at the beginning
(i.e. which one is angle-preserving, which one is area-preserving, etc).

It’s beyond me why people seem to be baffled by the area distortion of the
Mercator projection - is this not taught in high school geography classes in
the USA?

~~~
seniorivn
Knowing that it is area distortion projection and overcoming your prejudice if
you've never seen anything else isn't the same thing. For example European
people have a feeling that something is wrong with the map when Europe
portrait as small as it actually is.

~~~
layoutIfNeeded
>if you've never seen anything else

Which is pretty strange, considering most classrooms and even homes have a
globe laying around.

Maybe I’m just severely overestimating the scientific knowledge of the average
person.

~~~
frutiger
I would hazard a guess that people’s intuition with shapes on a flat surface
works better than their intuition on a curved surface, even though a globe is
physically available.

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pixelmonkey
The one that really shocked me was typing "Russia" and then dragging Russia
over the United States.

~~~
franky47
Finding out that Russia is just as wide as Africa is tall was a nice surprise
as well.

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Yuval_Halevi
I used to play with this site like a year ago when I was traveling.

It's funny to see we always assumed some countries are much smaller/larger
than what they are only because we got used to the structure of the
traditional map

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escapecharacter
I wish I could compare municipalities. I just moved Toronto -> New York and
it's been fun to wrap my head around a new urbanscape.

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greenpizza13
This is really useful and interesting. Thank you!

