Shacked to a corpse! Europe where is your NVIDIA, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, OpenAI, SpaceX ... You have high power cost, high electric cost, high taxes; What fertile soil!
I think your mistake is that you think im American.
I am Canadian. So when I look at the EU I ask what is in it for me?
And from Canada's perspective it is not "high".
I mean if Canada was joining America this might be relevant (debatable).
But look at how kick ass Canada is. We have euro lifestyle while still not being Americans.
So again, I dont know if you understand this perhaps you dont know or understand other things.
I don't get why people say this / focus on Africa in this conversation. I've never thought Africa was small and was taught about the Berlin Conference, etc in school.
All the large continents are near the equator and hence the relative size of Africa, Australia, North/South America, Asia is not affected much by the projection. Antarctica is big too, even though wildly exaggerated by Mercator.
If anything, it makes more sense to say people don't realize how small UK/Europe is.
> 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;”
I for one am disappointed that it took 500 years for people to acknowledge that the most important consideration when choosing a map is its emotional impact on the people of Africa.
Continents are in truesizeof btw. Asia is much bigger than Africa, North America is only a little smaller. When you account for the Sahara Desert of course, there is more usable land in North America.
Just drag South America or Australia onto Africa and tell me it changed more than a few percent in size. Barely perceptible.
North America is not 21.3 but 24.7e^6 m^3 according to google, so the ratio is 4:3. Asia to Africa is 3:2
Arable in your stats just means cultivated, it isn't a measure of the natural productivity. People in Africa work poorer lands due to necessity.
North America has more non-desert land than Africa and produces 3x as much food. Asia nearly 10x food production. Europe 2x. Antarctica has no non-desert land and Australia has very little. Asia has the most by a long way. This lines up pretty well with each continent's historical economic significance.
Regarding 'small Africa' conspiracy - I have never not been told that Africa is a huge continent. Documentaries, podcasts, TED talks, movies, Top Gear, books, atlases (they all have multiple projections btw), globes, video games. Five weeks in a balloon? I may have consumed well over 100 hours of media romanticizing the vast scale of Africa. Colonialists had no reason to conceal it either - selling big Africa investment (exploitation) opportunities was their business model
This is a Mandela effect moment for me. Or maybe it's an American education thing?
No its just people lying. I remember being told 30 years ago that a flat map and a globe make countries look different since a kid asked why continenents looked different when we were looking at a globe
I think you are a bit confused about the world so let me help you out.
Most of Canada is difficult to live in. There are multiple geographic issues (cold/less sun). This is why a vast majority of Canadians live very close to the US border. So while Canada looks like a very large country it is in fact rather small when it comes to habitable space. You are probably not aware of how miserable the east coast is.
Next Canada is a poor country. The richest part of Canada is that part that sells the oil. The rest of Canada is poorer than the poorest US state. Canada GDP capital is not doing well. Mostly going down. Not a good trend. Food inflation etc. On top of that housing in Canada is very expensive. Canada has no ability to expand.
Canada has virtually no companies. All our companies are either banks or like mining companies. No tech and soon no manufacturing. Taxes in Canada are very high but they mostly go into a giant black hole of corruption.
Trudeau wasnt really in charge of the country. He is literally a nepobaby Carney was his adviser for years. The cabinet of Trudeau actually has some of the same people. This is continuity of the same group of elite.
Canada finds it very difficult to grow which is why all the new immigrants ended up in the large cities. These cities are poor and corrupt so they cant grow either. So everything ends up super crowded.
Now focusing on the rather silly things you have said:
" But you'd never believe it, the criticism is that this is too many people, and not many people criticise this "Iniative" as having an unambitious goal"
Were people criticizing it for lack of ambition if not then this is just a red herring. Ambition does not make a project or idea good.
"you would admit that that the past is not the future before making that argument. "
I mean all argumentation and prediction relies on looking at the past and trying to guess how the future will turn out.
In conclusion:
Try to understand the nature of the world in a more clear fashion. Look around you. Look at data. Avoid the rhetoric and the politics.
Most of that rant is not about data, it is a set of value judgments which which I do not agree. For some people the economy is everything and you're one of those people. Luckily for society not everyone is like you.
Thanks, but as I said I do not share your value judgments about what is and is not important in this matter so this data is not relevant to my consideration of the matter.
“If only we could create a realtime propaganda, command and control system with a user manual that says no bad person should ever use this for ill intent”.
Nope, the pure evil award goes to Stephen Harper. He literally auctioned off and trashed decades of paper scientific research reports to get rid of all of those pesky climate statistics.
Not to rain on your parade about known ties to extremist organizations but I would count Carney's contacts more extreme - and certainly more believable - than those Poilievre might be accused of having (which would those be?). I'd rather not have a globalist banker leading my country, fortunately I'm not a Canadian. I considered moving there in 2002 but I moved to Sweden instead and count my blessings ever since.
Low balling it is about 10 billion a year CAD in electricity.
That is assuming full uptime which is not realistic. It is also going to take several years before these projects complete.
I think the ROI is better than 5% even if you include a variety of factors.
Of course if the budgets go >> 70 billion then likely it is a poor investment.
Clarification. None of the silicon valley elite were ever "normies". I would guess most of them come from the top > %1 of society. This is just a rival elite not a non-elite.
They started with nothing, in a garage! An unused three-car garage next to their parents' mansion. While living at home, without having to pay for basic things like food. And with a $100k loan from the other guy's parents. And with daddy's business contacts being the first customers, and being the angel investors. Absolutely nothing, all their own hard work!
This is a naive take. Sure they had wealth, but multiplying wealth to the scale some of those people do is no easy feat. I am not defending them, just trying to state a fact.
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