Ele Willoughby

Precisely. Mercator projection is a terrible choice for a regional map but an excellent choice for plotting your transects at sea.

Exactly!

Very central I think! Even just Mercator’s life alone was shaped by turbulent history and he had a huge impact on history. You get art, history, math, geography, history of publishing and technology, exploration, philosophy, theology, international relations… and so on.

Literally terrifying to contemplate

It’s always struck me as an unreasonable complaint to hold the misuse of his projection against him. As a marine geophysicist using nautical charts it’s so clear how useful it is!

Oh! The Mercator Museum in nearby Sint-Nikolaas has a copy of this print in their collection.

Thank you! I’m glad his project of self-declared animal awareness days is a little respite from doomscrolling.

Someone on Mastodon has replied that Mercator doesn’t deserve to be celebrated, and I (with my doctorate in geophysics) should “get a globe and learn.” 😂

Grade-A mansplaining from a man who can’t be bothered to read a short thread to learn that Mercator’s projection is actually for navigation.

Bathypterois grallator - Wikipedia

Today the 12yo decided it’s Tripod Fish Awareness Day!

He says I’m not to call it the “fish on stilts” but it really does ‘stand’ like that on its three
extended rigid fin rays.

the explosion in exploration that came after his paradigm breaking world maps.

#geographer #geography #linocut #printmaking #mapart #maps #Mercator

you might be lead to over-estimate the size of the arctic archipelago and underestimate the immensity of the African continent, due to the ubiquity of this projection. But its goal was not to represent relative area (which it does poorly). However, his achievement was fundamental to

projection distorts the size and shape of large objects, as the scale increases from the Equator to the poles, where it becomes infinite.

The Mercator projection will be quite familiar to you. It is generally used as a sort of ‘default’ projection, even today. If you are Canadian, like me,

of its ability to represent lines of constant course, known as rhumb lines or loxodromes, as straight segments. While the linear scale is constant in all directions around any point, thus preserving the angles and the shapes of small objects (which makes the projection conformal), the Mercator

as an engraver. He produced beautiful world maps (a version of which is depicted in this print), globes, but his name has gone down in history for the Mercator Projection. The Mercator projection is a cylindrical map projection which became the standard map projection for nautical purposes because

Square linocut print of Mercator (with cap, large beard, lace collar and jacket in black) on his own map of the circular world in green.

Happy birthday to Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594) renown Flemish cartographer. 🧪🐡⚒️ #histsci

What made Mercator a great #cartographer, was in fact his abilities as a #mathematician -and like those of us scientists who feel compelled also to create art he was wasn’t hindered by his immense abilities 🧵

The 12yo wants me to announce pre-existing animal awareness days and let people know they aren’t his.

He didn’t declare World Rat Day, but they do make good pets, if you live outside Alberta. (They take their rat ban seriously.)

My small linocut print “Da shu: The Rat: The Big Mouse” shows a side view of a rat with some chatter (uncarved bits) and the Chinese character for rat, in black on white.

A throwback for World Rat Day from my collection of Chinese Zodiac prints.

minouette.etsy.com/listing/1260...

#Rat #WorldRatDay #ChineseZodiac #linocut #printmaking

Tardi G is a perfect name!

Anolis proboscis - Wikipedia

Today the 12yo has decided it’s Pinocchio Anole Awareness Day!

He says he imagines the lady anole sitting there, being normal, surrounded by males with increasingly improbably long noses shouting, “No, my nose is perfect!”

It’s World Wildlife Day but he says that’s too vague & so he’s claiming it.

@vexedmuddler.bsky.social

in “stink fights” by wafting their pheromone-soaked tails at opponents so you wouldn’t want them to plot against you.

I love the weird and wonderful terms of venery - the collective nouns for groups of animals (and other things). Some are evocative, some strange and obscure.

#linocut #printmaking

The ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) is a wet-nosed primate, endemic to Madagascar. It lives from the forest gallery to the scrub and is omnivorous but it is sadly endangered.

They live in large groups and are very social. They huddle for warmth not to conspire… but this is an animal which engages

My linocut print of a huddled group of ring-tailed lemurs looking suspiciously at the viewer. They are grey with black and white striped tails, black face and brown eyes. In black letters above it reads “A conspiracy” and in black and white striped letters below it reads “Lemurs.”

This linocut shows a conspiracy of lemurs in all senses of the words. 🧪🐡 The collective noun for a group of lemurs is a “conspiracy”. Isn’t that marvelous? These ring-tailed lemurs definitely appear to be up to something. Caught in the act of scheming. The word “lemurs” mimics their tails of course!

Xipholeptos notoides <p>A tiny squid species found in sheltered seagrass and rocky reef. It has small, rounded 'wings' at the top of the mantle and a more elongated body than the more charasmatic southern dumpling squid, ...

The 12yo has declared it Southern Pygmy Squid Awareness Day!

These smallest of cephalopods (with mantles only 2.5 cm or less) are found off Australia’s southern and eastern coast and are ridiculously cute.

I love public art!

It was legitimately really weird how quickly she went from saying how she knew nothing about bees, to ‘how dare you suggest anything other than honeybees are the solution.’

People want to help but have misconceptions which occasions they are really attached to.

I had a group art show about native bees and the museum invited an unrelated artist and we delicately explained that we didn’t want works about honeybees to confuse the issue.

The curator’s response? “So you want to KILL ALL THE Honeybees?!” (We said nothing of the sort.) So that was awkward.

Did you know that the bees that need saving are NOT honeybees?

Honeybees are the dairy cows of bees. People brought them over from Europe to make us honey.

The problem with honeybees, esp in resource-limited ecosystems (like hey! cities!) is that they compete with our native bees for food.

Spellcheck just tried to replace “grid of convex mirrors” with “frog of convex mirrors” and I am going to be thinking about that for a long time.

My spelling and proofreading for spelling skills are lacklustre at best and this is the kind of help I could really do without.

Detail of Chimera, Winter Stations on Woodbine Beach showing grid of convex mirrors in red plastic holders reflecting the beach

The simple structure had 12 round convex mirrors in a 3 x 4 grid on each of the 4 sides, with slight differences in mounting angle. So views were slightly distorted & combined a little unexpected & changed greatly with position. Very simple but intriguing.

#WinterStations #publicArt #Toronto