They let New Zealand and Hawaii design the view of earth for the official flag.
(But also I look at this a lot and think about my ambition to sail across it. Radar, satellite phone, all the tech or not... that is a lot of big angry water.)
(But also... can you really claim to know the earth if you don't know anything about all of this?)
Picking a fight with the damn ocean: the *most* Homo sapiens thing ever.
My brother in christ that is literally the biggest single thing on the earth.
@futurebird Oh I very much have. ❤️ 🌊
https://www.stelliform.press/index.php/product/weird-fishes-by-rae-mariz/
@futurebird For Pasifika people this is the case: "for many Pacific Island peoples, the Ocean is a single living, moving, sacred entity and the bloodline of the people."
While most nations think of territories on land masses as home, for Pasifika the ocean is home as much as its islands are.
My family subsisted on the ocean's bounty; we worshipped gods and goddesses who were likewise the ocean (Nā-maka-o-Kahaʻi and Kanaloa) and of the ocean (Kamohoali’i and Ku'ula)
https://internationalfunders.org/security-briefs/indigenous-defenders-of-pacific-islands/#:~:text=The%20Oceanic%20world%20gave%20rise,ocean%20voyaging%20abilities%20and%20skills.
@futurebird If you want to freak people out about climate change, point out that a bucket of seawater removed from the ocean will start to smell _very_ strongly of dead fish after a few days, because seawater has half a million cells per milliliter in it which can't survive out of context:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK224740/
Which means the ocean is something that can die. Not the fish or crabs or clams, not the seaweed. The water.
@AVO8OHM @futurebird Seawater and blood have a surprising amount in common.
Blood has about 10x as many cells per milliliter as seawater, meaning seawater has 1/10 the cell density of blood.
@futurebird it’s fascinating to think how the land and ocean ended up* so clustered on Earth’s surface
*not that we’re really at the end.. just the end of the past movement
Stuff looks ke that make you realize what astounding sailors the Maori were. They navigated all of that just off of stars and current patterns.
@neurologo @futurebird I think I'm there too, just barely, at the top & at the left edge, judging by the shape of the coast north of Baja California. If not, I'm barely over the edge there.
The funny thing to me was how not-strange, how oddly familiar, this view of the earth became-& how quickly it did- once I saw what I was looking at.
@futurebird ah, yes
the Specific Ocean
@futurebird now THIS is the default map view of earth that i like to see. it puts things into their proper perspective.
i don't know much about the ocean, but i know enough to respect it, be in awe of it, and understand that it's much more powerful than us humans.
the ocean is not just "sitting" out there. it never stands still. it's always churning churning churning.
there are worlds within worlds (down to the tiniest scales) in the ocean. there are ecological relationships & cycles down there that have been going for a very very long time, and if humans do something to break them, it'll be a very very VERY long time before relationships like that re-emerge (if ever).
and the ocean is not just sitting *out there*. we are in relation to it in many ways, from the weather it creates, to the fish it gives, and the hurricanes it hurls at us.
human health is interdependent with the health of the ocean. the oceans are a soup of life and if the ocean dies, so do humans.
anyway, aloha from hawai'i island, where we know that we are but a tiny speck surrounded by ~the ocean~! 🤙🌞🌧️🌋🌊
From Alamogordo to Australia to Antarctica, it's an awesome angle of mostly agua, amiright?
@futurebird
I can (just) see my house from here! 😉
(Just to the left of Tasmania, bottom-left-ish of rim.)
Such a different perspective though. Love it.
I always liked Buckminster Fuller's Airocean World Map.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map#/media/File:Dymaxion_map_ocean2.png
@futurebird Now that the maps we interact with every day are electronic, this really is pretty close to the main view of the world we get from New Zealand. It’s easy to forget how large other landmasses are.
I grew up with British Mercator maps, and I wonder how much cultural change is occurring as our collective memory of those fades.
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