this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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Today I learned

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[–] Greg@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 year ago (10 children)

I’m not sure you know what learned means. You’ve missed literally dozens of other countries.

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[–] Ledivin@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

...what? Clearly also included on that map are China, Russia, Canada, and Greenland, at a minimum - I'm sure there are more.

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[–] diverging@piefed.social 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What about New Zealand, Palau, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Tuvalu, and Brunei?

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] diverging@piefed.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is an incredibly arbitrary definition, but still would seem to only rule out New Zealand. As far as I can tell 100% of the landmasses of Palau, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Tuvalu, and Brunei are opposite another landmass.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

Very true, though I went with the larger countries since I thought they'd be more recognizable and didn't want to fit every single island into the title

[–] huquad@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And here I thought you'd get lava instead

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

gotta dig harder to get past the lava

[–] huquad@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Only reason someone would realistically dig that deep is to restart the core.

[–] Azarova@hexbear.net 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does this mean Looney Toons canonically takes place in either Chile or Argentina because of the digging straight to China?

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

I believe so

[–] huf@hexbear.net 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

jakarta is a country? new zealand is not a country? vietnam counts even though not all of vietnam maps to a landmass on the other side?

this is extremely confused.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sorry, finding an interactive map with simple country borders is surprisingly difficult. I tried OSM and Google and just wrote down the names I saw. My geography of southeast asia is obviously bad.

Suggest a better title, and I'll happily change

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd argue that at least half of New Zealand isn't covered.

I do agree that vietnam shouldn't be in that list, but Cambodia should?

[–] huf@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i dont see why political borders matter for this at all.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Fun? Otherwise hard to measure overlap of anything unless I start referring to topographic features / biomes / ecoregions which are less widely understood

[–] BellaDonna@mujico.org 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Am I stupid? If you can tunnel down and hit those other countries, than the opposite should be true, the countries you can drill down to are the same you drill down to from the other side, so that would include Canada and Southeast Asia according to this very map.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The definition I'm using is something like: "more than 80% of a country's landmass is covered by a landmass on the other side"

So china has parts where you hit land, but most of it hits ocean, and so it's not on the list.

[–] racketlauncher831@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

80%? Why this ramdom number? Why not use 1 sigma, 2 sigma or any other terms with more statistical meaning?

And in a previous comment you implied 100% by saying "random point". Here, I made a screenshot of it.

https://lemmy.ml/comment/19474993

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because Im using rough visual metrics on an image, and not precise numerical analysis on GDAL? Jesus H.

[–] rockyTron@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

That was definitely my intent apparently, I thank you

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ironic how US kids cartoons commonly portray "digging to China" as something americans can hypothetically do, to the point where a good portion of American adults just assume it to be true. Yet the only place where that's possible is South America.

Usually the people debunking the notion focus on the fact that the Earth is molten in the center so you can't dig all the way through it in the same way you can't dig to the ocean floor from the surface (which is reasonable don't get me wrong), but they rarely mention the fact that China is not actually on the opposite side of the Earth to the US.

This isn't a political comment. I just find it interesting that this is something literally anyone can disprove with a dollar store globe but no one bothers to do it and instead just assume the cartoons for children are factual.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I also love how Japan, barely just barely scratches the coast of Brazil.

In the anime Darker Than Black, one of the plot points is a Heaven and Hell Gate centered around Tokyo and Brazil, with the implication that one is the antipode of the other. But they're not!

The only place where Japan overlaps Brazil is the tiny Kagoshima prefecture

[–] Redcuban1959@hexbear.net 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Brazil also has the largest Japanese population outside of Japan

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Probably due to the expressway joining them through the earth's core.

[–] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pretty fucked up that they displaced so many subterranean lizard people to build it.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Eh those Morlocks have been farming us for years, about time they got some pushback

[–] Lemmygradwontallowme@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hawaii, though not a country, you can def another land mass

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Oh wow yeah, Hawaii is weirdly one of the few that would hit Africa haha

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Other countries like China and Colombia have partial coverage in some regions.

The Greenland and Antartica antipodes don't really count imo

[–] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why not though? I could tunnel to antarctica throigh greenland.

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