Permanently Deleted

  • AlexandairBabeuf [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    imperialism. there are in fact three continents.

    afroeurasia, america & antarctica. australia is the largest island. man-made canals do not make separate landmasses.

    reject multicontinental theory! uphold contiguous landmass thought! :ranmao:

  • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    There's a book related to this topic called The Myth of Continents.

    It's about the history of how we arrived at the prevailing continental schema (and its variants). The tldr is eurocentrism

  • emizeko [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    It’s just racism isn’t it

    yes

    also what is the point of the label "continent" really. how big does an island have to be

    • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      It has to orbit the sun earth; it must have enough gravity momentum to have a sufficiently round shape; it must have everything in its orbital tectonic path subordinate to its own gravity.

      Otherwise it is not a continent. In our lifetimes we have had to revise our number of continents from 7 to 6. Many old-timers are still salty about this simply because they learned it the old way.

  • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Continents aren't real, they're just a thing humans made up. Nature doesn't really care and so any satisfying model is going to have weird exceptions and inconsistencies.

    Were the particular set of exceptions and inconsistencies used for any <10 continent models chosen based on racism though? Probably.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      There are plates, like geological continents. If you do that India, and the Arabian peninsula are their own continents, "Europe" is everything north of India except the most Eastern parts of Russia which are on the North American continent.

      Here's a map

      • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        Yeah, but then if you accept some model of tectonic plates = continents, the tip of the baja peninsula, central america, and like the bottom 5 miles of chile are their own continents.

        But even what makes up a plate is ambiguous. There's boundaries within the "plates" that just get lumped together instead of divided because they don't want 100 plates.

    • huf [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      but very old racism, from the eastern mediterranean.

      basically, europe is greece, asia is turkey, africa is egypt.

      and then people discovered where the coasts go and kept the categorization because greece is le epic foundation of western culture.

    • steve5487 [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      not quite most russians live in europe and they can be repurposed into Asiatic hordes in a pinch

  • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    There are 8 continents according to me, and I’m correct. North America, South America, Africa, Australasia, Eurasia, India, Arabia, Antarctica. Large landmasses that roughly line up with continental plates.

    Specifically though, there is no reasonable definition by which Europe is a continent and India and Arabia aren’t.

    • canthisObeunbroken [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I know you're trying to show off how woke you are but you can't argue that fucking arabia is a continent and not europe. continents are a social construct anyway.

      • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        Arabia has its own continental plate, and is surrounded by water on most sides, with only a small connection to Africa and a moderate connection to Eurasia.

        “Europe” is just an Asian peninsula, with no clear idea of where it starts and ends.

        • Vncredleader [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Let's just say it ends at the Alps. That'll piss off most countries I feel

          • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            No large landmass. The largest island in the Caribbean is Cuba at 42,000mi, which is smaller than not just the UK, but En*land specifically. If someone really wanted to make the case that Cuba is a continent I’d hear them out but it seems like a stretch to me

            • AcidSmiley [she/her]
              ·
              3 years ago

              If someone really wanted to make the case that Cuba is a continent I’d hear them out

              Well, you see ... takes big puff from cigar :fidel-cool:

              Here's a picture of the Caribean continental plate. crickets start chirping outside the embassy

              Here's a NSFV picture of England, represented as the likeness of Queen Elizabeth II of House Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha. cricket noise intensifies

              As you can see, Cuba is not even on the Caribean plate. Surprising, huh? :fidel-wut: crickets start chirping the guitar solo from November Rain

              If Cuba isn't even Caribean, and if you can't spell Caribean without "bean" ... crickets are now louder than a Boeing 747 during liftoff, intracranial pressure rises to unbearable levels

              And if this is a continental breakfast and this is an English breakfast ... cricket noise is now so unbearably loud that lights start to fade as Slash walks out of the embassy, ecstatically shredding away as a helicopter-mounted camera circles around him

              ... then it follows that CUBA IS NOT THE CONTINENT OF ENGLAND

              :Fidel-deke: :fidel-layup: :fidel-balling:

  • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I remember having a debate about this with a predditor who claimed that the Ural Mountains, the Caucasus Mountains, and the Turkish Straits constituted a continental divide.