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This map will let you look at the world a little differently — and a lot more accurately.

Here's a map of the Earth.

Photo via Keio University Graduate School of Media and Governance Narukawa Laboratory.

It might look weird, but it's actually one of the most accurate world maps ever created.

Every continent, country, and ocean on this map is drawn to be proportionally accurate. It's as close as possible, size-wise, to the real thing.


The map was designed by Japanese architect and artist Hajime Narukawa, who just won a Good Design Award — one of the most prestigious design awards on the planet.

Speaking of the planet...

This map addresses a problem cartographers have been scratching their heads over for centuries: How exactly do you make an accurate map of the world?

You see, despite what some conspiracy theorists on YouTube think, the Earth is definitely a sphere. So unfolding it and printing it on a flat piece of paper is inherently difficult. It's a geometrical conundrum that will inevitably lead to inaccuracies.

It's like trying to make a square donut. You can pull it off, but it's going to look a little weird.

For hundreds of years, the answer has been this:

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

It's known as the "Mercator Projection." You may recognize it from your fourth grade classroom. Since it's invention in the 1500s, it's been the go-to standard for navigators, educators, diner placemat makers, and map enthusiasts.

It works pretty well for navigation but it's not without its problems. For example, Greenland looks to be a lot bigger than the United States when, in reality, you could comfortably fit Greenland into the U.S. about four times.

This cool interactive map shows the same "real size" effect for other countries around the world.

Narukawa's map takes a new approach. It unfolds the globe in a way that more accurately represents each landmass.

To do it, he divided the Earth into 96 regions. Then he mapped those regions onto a pyramid or tetrahedron. Unfold the tetrahedron and you get a flat rectangle that maintains (as close as possible) all the appropriate size and distance ratios.

Math! Photo via AuthaGraph, Keio University Graduate School of Media and Governance Narukawa Laboratory.

There's even a version you can print out and re-fold into a spherical globe.

Photo via Keio University Graduate School of Media and Governance Narukawa Laboratory.

It's not perfect, but it's a beautiful design that gives us a fresh, new, and more accurate perspective of our planet. And aside from eating a square donut, how often do you get to look at the world in an entirely new way?

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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An English doctor named Edward Jenner took incredible risks to try to rid his world of smallpox. Because of his efforts and the efforts of scientists like him, the only thing between deadly diseases like the ones below and extinction are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Don't be that parent.

Unfortunately, because of the misinformation from the anti-vaccination movement, some of these diseases have trended up in a really bad way over the past several years.

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A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

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Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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