When I went to Chile I was about to undertake a cross-country move across the US. Everybody I spoke to in Santiago couldn't imagine a country where you can drive a massive distance like that and move from one major metropolis to another. At the time, I thought they were just reflecting on the fact that Chile is a country where 40% of all people live in one metro area, so there isn't another huge metro area to move to.
Looking at those maps, I understand their incredulity. Because of the shape of Chile, you can drive a similar distance and basically cover the entire country, rural, urban, and suburban. It's both a large country and a small one at the same time.
The Concepción metro area is 1 million people, Valparaíso/Viña as well. Chileans love to point out that there isn't much outside of Santiago but it's not really true.
My first ever look at the states was out the window of a plane flying to NYC from the Bahamas at night. Straight up the east coast. Mind blowing. To my eyes it was one enormous city without any meaningful separation all the way. I was expecting to be surprised by the scale of the usa and yet it was way beyond what i could imagine.
That is a really nice bit of information communication. Hat's off! I feel like I learned a lot and that always makes me happy.
One quibble. At the end it mentions why Mexico's west was of interest to the Spanish, but neglects possibly the most important part - it was where the Spanish galleons from the Philippines first landed after the grueling trip across the Pacific as detailed beautifully in Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle".
I'm also wondering if the Andes are steeper than the Rocky mountains? Some quick Googling suggests that might be the case but I'm not getting a definitive answer.
Gradual elevation is certainly easier to build roads across than a cliff, and might be another reason there's less east-west divide in North America.
My key takeaway from this article is that the best place to go see the Milky Way is deep in the Amazon rainforest… where the tree cover is nearly 100% and there isn’t a single road for a hundred miles.
That’s a neat collection of graphics. I’m curious how bespoke the creation process is for each graphic or if this is something everyone just does in ArcGis or similar.
That last graphic about the Western US being the only other candidate is interesting because the two sides of the Rockies weren’t connected by a highway until the I70 over Glenwood Canyon was completed in 1992. Before its completion, the western and eastern halves of Colorado were practically different states and it took the interstate highway project half a century to get there because the terrain was so challenging.
Rather, go to Atacama, in Chile. It's a desert with pretty transparent air and little to no clouds, far from anywhere, and easier to traverse than a forest.
It's also rather closer to the South pole, so not as hot as Amazon.
The most amazing sky I’ve ever seen was when I arrived in Urubichá in Guarayos region of Bolivia in 1998 before the electricity arrived in the area. I traveled by bus to visit my friend’s childhood home. The bus only went to the big city an hour away so I road in the back of a jeep the rest of the way, at night. I remember vividly not understanding what this super-bright light was in the sky. I know now it was either Venus or Jupiter, but it looked artificial because it was so much brighter than I was used to seeing.
> My key takeaway from this article is that the best place to go see the Milky Way is deep in the Amazon rainforest… where the tree cover is nearly 100% and there isn’t a single road for a hundred miles.
The problem with your takeaway is that you a) won't be able to realistically get deep into the amazon rainforest and b) the tree canopy would cover all of the sky ;)
I think the graphics have numerous sources and mostly/entirely aren't made by the post author. There are five different styles in the first six map images!
You should have very dry air for the best place, which I guess with all that Amazon rainforest thing, would not be your best option. Chile has the one of the driest deserts in the world.
I love these maps, it’s an awesome collection! I make data vis maps for my day job and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that each of these are completely bespoke, made by different people, using a unique technique - python, hand drawing, ArcGIS, Blender, and even R can be used to make these, and I usually use deck.gl
They’re fun to make combining design, data, graphics programming, and lots of fiddling to get the tools to do what you want!
Not really, that would probably be the north of Chile on the Atacama desert, there's a reason why the Extremely Large Telescope, Giant Magellan Telescope and Vera C. Rubin are being built there.
The sky from the top of Mauna Kea is ridiculous, and it's pretty easy to get there: fly to the big island of Hawaii, then sign up for the tour, I think it's less than $100. The milky way is stunning.
My nomination for night sky viewing: Ölgii in western Mongolia (was there for the golden eagle festival). Clear desert sky, accessible by airplane, not a tiny town either.
How is the table of dialects constructed? It's obvious if two dialects are at 1, but what does it mean if they're at 0? They can't be mutually unintelligible, since that would make them different languages. I ask because the dialects spoken in Argentina and in Uruguay are practically identical, save for a few regional words. If the scale being used puts them at 0.35, then it makes me wonder about the usefulness of the scale.
Dialects can mean very different things hence the old joke "a language is a dialect with its own army and navy", recognizing that the issue is really political rather than linguistic. Many Chinese dialects (like Mandarin and Cantonese) are considered dialects of the same "Chinese language" for political reasons but are mutually unintelligible, whereas Danish and Norwegian (the majority bokmal dialect anyway) are considered different languages even though they are pretty mutually intelligible because Norway and Denmark are different countries.
As for how the table of Spanish dialects was constructed, the figure gives the link to the paper it was from [1]. Basically they measured differences in dialects by giving pictures of an item (the example shown is a pinwheel) and asking what Spanish speakers from different places called that thing. Given hundreds of different concepts you can see how close Spanish dialects are to each other.
> There is no universally accepted criterion for distinguishing two different languages from two dialects (i.e. varieties) of the same language.
The difference between language is more culturally and politically defined than linguistically; there are different langauges spoken in the world that have a fiar overlap and elligibility, and there are different dialects of the same "language" that are basically untelligable. It might be sensible to just consider all spoken systems to be "dialects" of each other, and comparing their similarity.
I agree. Argentine and Uruguayan Spanish are very close. I'd expect to have seen .85 or so. Argentine and Chilean Spanish are not that far apart either -- or at least they weren't 30 years ago.
I have no idea. Also there is no standard spanish even in Spain. Like Andalucian spanish and Domenican spanish have a lot in common but vary greatly with other forms of spanish.
Yeah, I was wondering about these two countries myself. Also it was very strange to see the Peru and Cuba correlation, those two dialects are nothing alike.
The article mentions it, but I only learned recently that Bolivia did not used to be landlocked. Chile took Bolivia's coastline somewhat recently (late 1800s/early 1900s).
> The dispute began in 1879, when Chile invaded the Antofagasta port city on its northern border with Bolivia as part of a dispute over taxes. Within four years Chileans had redrawn the map of South America by taking almost 50,000 square miles of Bolivian territory, including its 250-mile coastline on the southern Pacific Ocean. Bolivia accepted this loss in 1904, when it signed a peace treaty with Chile in return for a promise of the “fullest and freest” commercial access to port.
One of the most interesting drives in my life was Chile from the island of Chiloe to the Tatio Geysers in the Atacama. Just so many different climate zones, and all in relatively close proximity.
Chiloe and Puerto Montt were damp, cold, and fog-shrouded in Summer (Jan-Feb), very similar to parts of the coastal pacific northwest.
The area to its north, centered around the German-influenced town of Valdivia, was California-like. Very temperate in Summer, and very green. Lots of pastures and rivers.
The region becomes progressively more "Mediterranean" as you move further north; one gradually sees fewer pastures and woodlands, more vineyards, olive trees, and fruit orchards. Santiago is on the far northern end of this Mediterranean zone. The great wine regions are generally to the south and west of that capital city.
A few hours north of Santiago and all is desert -- but it's a fairly live desert, with all sorts of succulent plants and many types of flower. Most of the road traffic in these parts comes from copper miners and their work trucks.
Continue north and you're in a dry, mostly empty, moonscape. Antofagasta and Calama are nice enough towns, though, and the interesting drive from the former to the latter takes just two hours but sees you rise from sea level to +2000m. It's such a gentle and relentless slope that you barely notice it. Nothing at all like driving in the Alps.
I broke something in my rental car when I continued to the geysers at +4000m, but it was worth it.
It reminds me of the style of pop science books written in the late 19th and early 20th century. There's a nice charm in it, like it's trying not to be pretentiously complex.
Another interesting fact about Chile is: no compass is needed. The mountains show where the East is. If the East is to your right you are facing North, otherwise you are facing South.
On the difference of Chilean Spanish to other "dialects":
> It’s the farthest region from Spain, so the least communicated to the rest of the empire, and hence the one that drifted the most from the homeland.
Er... if you look at the table (https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_...), Chile has quite a lot of red, but actually its Spanish is closer to the Spanish from Spain than that of other South American countries. So it looks like those have drifted further from "standard" Spanish, while Chile hasn't as much?
The Chilean Spanish portion of the article made me laugh. I'm a Spanish speaker and the Spanish I speak is closer to Mexican Spanish. I could not for the life of me understand Chileans I met in Canada. Brings back funny memories of 2001 for me.
It completely ignores the influence of the indigenous languages in the "dialect" or variation of Spanish, which is actually a much better explainer than "distance from spain".
Off topic, but that correlation matrix of "Spanish similarity" seems a bit odd. I'm from Argentina, and the spanish in Uruguay sounds practically the same. At least A LOT MORE similar than Cuban or Paraguay as it shows there.
The Atacama Desert is so dry NASA uses it to stimulate Mars.
Wikipedia also lists five (!) observatories (one under construction, to be home to the Extremely Large Telescope), including the Very Large Telescope (built), ALMA (built), and others.[1]
It's basically as close as you can get to space while being on the ground on Earth.
[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Desert#Astronomical_observatories
[+] [-] throw4847285|1 year ago|reply
Looking at those maps, I understand their incredulity. Because of the shape of Chile, you can drive a similar distance and basically cover the entire country, rural, urban, and suburban. It's both a large country and a small one at the same time.
[+] [-] aeyes|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] harry8|1 year ago|reply
My first ever look at the states was out the window of a plane flying to NYC from the Bahamas at night. Straight up the east coast. Mind blowing. To my eyes it was one enormous city without any meaningful separation all the way. I was expecting to be surprised by the scale of the usa and yet it was way beyond what i could imagine.
Others won’t share that definition.
[+] [-] 29athrowaway|1 year ago|reply
You can learn more here https://elsemieni.net/megavision/
[Cerveza Cristal theme]
[+] [-] Izikiel43|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bwanab|1 year ago|reply
One quibble. At the end it mentions why Mexico's west was of interest to the Spanish, but neglects possibly the most important part - it was where the Spanish galleons from the Philippines first landed after the grueling trip across the Pacific as detailed beautifully in Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle".
[+] [-] idontwantthis|1 year ago|reply
Samurai were documented as guards on galleons brought to Mexico. It needs to be a movie.
[+] [-] causal|1 year ago|reply
Gradual elevation is certainly easier to build roads across than a cliff, and might be another reason there's less east-west divide in North America.
[+] [-] sprobertson|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] throwup238|1 year ago|reply
That’s a neat collection of graphics. I’m curious how bespoke the creation process is for each graphic or if this is something everyone just does in ArcGis or similar.
That last graphic about the Western US being the only other candidate is interesting because the two sides of the Rockies weren’t connected by a highway until the I70 over Glenwood Canyon was completed in 1992. Before its completion, the western and eastern halves of Colorado were practically different states and it took the interstate highway project half a century to get there because the terrain was so challenging.
[+] [-] nine_k|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] grecy|1 year ago|reply
Without a shadow of a doubt, the interior of Australia is STAGGERINGLY the best for stargazing. It's not even close.
This was a single 8 second exposure. [1] and I'm not a great photographer. The milky way was so bright it kept me awake in my tent.
[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/CersLuLBfCz/
[+] [-] guidoism|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|1 year ago|reply
US 40, 6, and 50 would like a word.
They weren't connected by an interstate before that. But you said "highway". US 6 was a highway, and it ran through the exact same Glenwood Canyon.
[+] [-] fullstop|1 year ago|reply
Check out Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_Springs_State_Park
[+] [-] tambourine_man|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] FinnKuhn|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jprete|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] garof|1 year ago|reply
For the North American peeps, check out the western part of the US.
*edit: and forecasts https://www.cleardarksky.com/csk/
[+] [-] dbacar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] EdwardDiego|1 year ago|reply
We have zero snakes and very few dangerous spiders and you'd have to try very hard to find them, they're rather shy.
Also, we make great coffee and beer.
[+] [-] pininja|1 year ago|reply
They’re fun to make combining design, data, graphics programming, and lots of fiddling to get the tools to do what you want!
[+] [-] w4der|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] TechDebtDevin|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tylermw|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gcanyon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mapmeld|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] fluoridation|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jhbadger|1 year ago|reply
As for how the table of Spanish dialects was constructed, the figure gives the link to the paper it was from [1]. Basically they measured differences in dialects by giving pictures of an item (the example shown is a pinwheel) and asking what Spanish speakers from different places called that thing. Given hundreds of different concepts you can see how close Spanish dialects are to each other.
[1] https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/opli-2018-003...
[+] [-] posix86|1 year ago|reply
I think it might actually mean unintelligible. If you read on the term "dialect" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect it says in part:
> There is no universally accepted criterion for distinguishing two different languages from two dialects (i.e. varieties) of the same language.
The difference between language is more culturally and politically defined than linguistically; there are different langauges spoken in the world that have a fiar overlap and elligibility, and there are different dialects of the same "language" that are basically untelligable. It might be sensible to just consider all spoken systems to be "dialects" of each other, and comparing their similarity.
Not a linguist though.
[+] [-] cryptonector|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] prmoustache|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cdelsolar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kragen|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] eatonphil|1 year ago|reply
> The dispute began in 1879, when Chile invaded the Antofagasta port city on its northern border with Bolivia as part of a dispute over taxes. Within four years Chileans had redrawn the map of South America by taking almost 50,000 square miles of Bolivian territory, including its 250-mile coastline on the southern Pacific Ocean. Bolivia accepted this loss in 1904, when it signed a peace treaty with Chile in return for a promise of the “fullest and freest” commercial access to port.
https://time.com/5413887/bolivia-chile-pacific/
[+] [-] Perroboc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] A_D_E_P_T|1 year ago|reply
Chiloe and Puerto Montt were damp, cold, and fog-shrouded in Summer (Jan-Feb), very similar to parts of the coastal pacific northwest.
The area to its north, centered around the German-influenced town of Valdivia, was California-like. Very temperate in Summer, and very green. Lots of pastures and rivers.
The region becomes progressively more "Mediterranean" as you move further north; one gradually sees fewer pastures and woodlands, more vineyards, olive trees, and fruit orchards. Santiago is on the far northern end of this Mediterranean zone. The great wine regions are generally to the south and west of that capital city.
A few hours north of Santiago and all is desert -- but it's a fairly live desert, with all sorts of succulent plants and many types of flower. Most of the road traffic in these parts comes from copper miners and their work trucks.
Continue north and you're in a dry, mostly empty, moonscape. Antofagasta and Calama are nice enough towns, though, and the interesting drive from the former to the latter takes just two hours but sees you rise from sea level to +2000m. It's such a gentle and relentless slope that you barely notice it. Nothing at all like driving in the Alps.
I broke something in my rental car when I continued to the geysers at +4000m, but it was worth it.
[+] [-] mFixman|1 year ago|reply
It reminds me of the style of pop science books written in the late 19th and early 20th century. There's a nice charm in it, like it's trying not to be pretentiously complex.
[+] [-] 29athrowaway|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] eps|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rob74|1 year ago|reply
> It’s the farthest region from Spain, so the least communicated to the rest of the empire, and hence the one that drifted the most from the homeland.
Er... if you look at the table (https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_...), Chile has quite a lot of red, but actually its Spanish is closer to the Spanish from Spain than that of other South American countries. So it looks like those have drifted further from "standard" Spanish, while Chile hasn't as much?
[+] [-] ShaggyStyle|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] racl101|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gosukiwi|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] ferrantim|1 year ago|reply