Alt text: “The Mercator projection drastically distorts the size of almost every area of land except a small ring around the North and South Poles.”
This one is peak Dad Joke. I’m impressed.
I’m dumb AF please explain
The Earth is a sphere, which means there’s no easy way to project it onto a flat surface. One of the methods used to project the Earth’s surface on the map results in certain places (such as Greenland) to be stretched to huge sizes, sometimes appearing as big as Africa (look up “Mercator map”). The joke here is that while we expect him to make a comment about the map’s projection, he instead comments on how Greenland on the physical map is only a few inches, as opposed to its actual size.
So yeah, subverted expectations, peak Dad joke
It’s that time for the West Wing Gail-Peters Projection Map scene