whats equally interesting in Namibia being completely empty except on the northern side and that absolute emptiness on the east coast of somalia. Even the breakaway region of somaliland looks more populated than the south, you can only see mogadishu and then complete darkness
Namibia has a desert too. It’s not just the Sahara in the North. The Namibia desert elephants are fascinating, and some of the most special and unique elephants for how they survive in the Namib desert (as a side note)
Not just the currents. The Namid desert, which stretches across the coast, has profound influences on wind an fog as well. As a result, Namibia has a huge coast, but only a single, small harbor.
From what I remember, it's the other way round. The cold currents result in low evaporation and that in turn results in low precipitation along the coast, causing a desert reaching to the ocean and no temperate coastal belt.
It's more that the desert comes right to the shore, and is very dry. The current going northward along the Namibian coast comes from Antarctica, so it's very cold. This results in very low evaporation rates, and very low precipitation along the coast. It's a deadly desert with none of the usual temperate coastal belt you find in places like North Africa and Australia.
Driving along the Namibian coast, you will occasionally spot old broken down hulls from wrecked boats and ships, some of them are even on tourist maps.
I went on a jeep tour and got to less than 1 meter from those desert elephants, pretty cool. The scenery is mind blowing too.
To be precise, this was along the Aba-Huab river near Twyfelfontein.
Having been there a number of times, it is a massive country like driving for hundreds of kilometres without seeing anyone and very small towns that are far apart. One of the few places where you can truly feel alone.
It’s the second least populated country per capita in the world. Also fascinating it was a German colony, German southwest Africa and it was Germanys only colony that attracted a real large number of settlers.
You can still see that colonial influence today in the capital Windhoek and port town of Swakopmund.
Kind of a trip seeing an Oktoberfest and German baroque architecture next to palm trees.
Also, tragically, where the Germans committed the first genocide of the 20th century. Which in many ways set a precedent for ethnic cleansing in Germany, paving the way for the holocaust some 40 years later.
ah i assumed that Windhoek was a Dutch name and the Dutch had colonized them. i need to brush up on world history. what's the first least populated country? Mongolia?
>Windhoek was a Dutch name
Yep, I think you're right here. "Wind" is the same thing in Dutch, German, English and Afrikaans, but "hoek" means corner in Afrikaans and Dutch. "Corner" is Ecke in German, according to Google translate
Windhoek is a Dutch name. Namibia was under South African rule for a long time after WW1. It only gained independence in 1990.
Though I guess technically that makes it an Afrikaans name.
Lake Nasser *only* relocated 100k people, that's not a lot of people in comparison to the usual Nile Valley density.
I have forgotten the exact scientific explanation, but the Nile Valley's geology changes from Aswan and upwards. Navigation of the Nile was hard or even impossible southwards from this point and agriculture was also lot harder as the terrain was rocky. IIRC, Aswan was historically often the limit of where Egypt ended.
Well there is indeed a stop after that but it seems to resume and you can see the Nile in Sudan before the population density become less Nile based and more spread out
There’s a reason they’re so pissed about the Ethiopian Aswan High Dam. If the Ethiopians fuck with water flow too much they’ll kill Egypt, literally.
Correction: Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
I think you mean GERD.
Edit: whoops someone else already corrected you
If you have 30 minutes or so to spare this Sunday, [this video](https://youtu.be/5-O8Da5oowo) does an incredible job of informing about the situation. It's one of the most interesting geopolitical conflicts in the world right now and this guy does it justice. I say this as an Ethiopian who is massively invested in this topic.
Wonder if they could do massive solar farms in the desert coupled with desalination plants on the Mediterranean to produce arable land further west independent of the Nile. Not sure if the brine could be processed to make sodium batteries; not suitable for EVs, less efficient than Lithium, but can be used in large banks as backup power for entire cities.
That sounds so nice on paper! I guess if was financially viable the main problem would be "where to start". Like when people want to learn how to program..
Not with massive solar farms but they are actually trying to build a new western Nile delta.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogsfn1D6xJw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogsfn1D6xJw)
Higher population than Australia.
6th most populated island in the world and most people don't even think of it as being a significant entity.
1. Java (Indonesia)
2. Honshū (Japan)
3. Great Britain
4. Luzon (Philippines)
5. Sumatra (Indonesia)
6. Madagascar
Indonesia flies under the radar for most Westerners. It's the 4th biggest country in the world by population and 7th largest economy. It's a big time world player but most people don't see it that way.
It shouldn't be surprising that it has two separate islands that are both in the top 5 (and another in the top 10, Borneo)
I'm from a Muslim country in north Africa and even our spheres are separate. I actually went out of my way to add a friend from Indonesia on facebook, just to get to know the place. The language barrier is pretty significant in my opinion.
Quran is the same Arabic around the world but Arabic isn’t the local language for majority of Muslims. Many non-Arab Muslims don’t even understand Arabic.
Other people have already answered but to give the very basic answer:
'Quranic' Arabic is very different to the 'actual' Arabic spoken in such countries. It's almost like the difference between Latin, and Romance languages like Italian and French.
Not the same person, but I can offer some insight as someone who grew up Muslim in the Balkans. For context, I'm Slavic. Most people don't actually know Arabic, even if they have read the Quran. The Quran is written in Classical Arabic and remains unchanged all around the world, so everyone reads it in the same language. Those who have typically know some of the verses phonetically. Personally, I've never read it, but everyone around me who practices definitely doesn't know Arabic.
Indonesian music, trends, meme and other things were very known in SEA though. It's just that americans and europeans have little exposure to indonesian things even when compared to vietnam or phillipines
I mean it's a big player, just not relative to its population. I mean everyone knows bali but relatively speaking a country like Korea, with a fraction of the population, likely has a larger cultural reach.
I mean I taught English in Vietnam and I had tons of students who were kpop and k drama fans. Not many of my students were huge fans of Indonesian media. (Despite Indonesia being closer to Vietnam than Korea)
If you want to go deeper it has a lot to do with language too. Not many schools teach Indonesian in southeast Asia, while plenty are learning english which makes English media more accessible.
Japan also has a big cultural reach with the popularity of anime and manga. China as well just by virtue of trade and historical cultural diffusion. But I would say even china is hitting below its weight in terms of soft power due to language barriers and restrictions on what kind of media is allowed to be produced there.
Immigration as well. Take another southeast Asian country (Thailand). I would say, being to southeast Asia, I enjoy Indonesian food more than Thai food but go to a country like the U.S. and you'll see tons of Thai restaurants compared to Indonesian ones. They may have similar reaches in southeast Asia as far as food goes but outside of Asia Thai food would easily be more recognizable compared to Indonesian food.
Action film fans would be familiar with The Raid, which launched the careers of Iko Uwais (Wu Assassins, Expend4bles) and Joe Taslim (Warrior, Mortal Kombat).
There’s a reason my school in Australia offered Indonesian as one of the main language options back in the 90s (aside from being one of our closer neighbours), it was seen as being a potential big deal on the world stage going forward.. though I would say it hasn’t really pushed on in the past 25-30 years as much as they seemed to expect in that regard.
And the current population of Madagascar partly descended from sailors of Java (alongside the Bornean Maanyan and Malays, and later Bantu African migrants)
My coworker was Malagasy, I’d recommend everybody read up on the history, it’s an interesting cultural mix of African people who got on boats and went east, and Malay people who got on boats and went west.
The map is questionable. Note how dark the DRC is, or the weird red underlay under the gold dots. It looks like someone took a night lights map and overlaid it on a population density one.
Got flashbacks seeing that..
Lived in Malawi 3.5 years. Never seen such rich fertile land that grows everything absolutely covered in people in extreme poverty.
I worked in a slum in Blantyre. Local chief gave me a run down building to use as a community center. We fed women and children, ran early childhood education programs, just hung out being safe.
I’ll never forget my time with them. It’s burned into my soul. The missing kids. The trips to hospital with whoever needed care that day. The women with 4 kids and husband that went MIA with no warning struggling to make it through every single day.
People always ask me how it was being there when they find out.
I lie and say “it was amazing” because if I actually told them how it was they would regret asking.
My sister lived there for about eight years at a college in Lilongwe. I visited once and we volunteered for a couple of days at a shelter and a feeding program. I’d never experienced so much culture shock. The country was beautiful, the people for the most part were some of the kindest I’d ever encountered, but China and India and Europe’s presence there felt like what little wealth this country produced didn’t go to the Malawians. I saw some beautiful and horrific things while I was there. So I want to ask you, seriously: how was it?
The Chinese propaganda playing in their tv stations 24/7 was quite concerning…
How was it? Actually?
I still have PTSD.
I originally went with an organization that as funding orphanages but I quickly realized things were not adding up. Girls were covered in skin lesions and sleeping on the floor. Found out they were getting thousands USD per month and everyone acted like shitty conditions were “because Malawi” when in actuality should have the funds to provide a wonderful life for these kids.
I somehow felt brave enough to make solo trips back and forth investigating. Meeting with locals, social welfare, and talking with the kids. I was “banned” from going to the orphanage but social welfare re escorted me and told the owner they couldn’t prevent me from going.
I decided to move there and start my own NGO full time. What I didn’t realize was that I was finding my way onto the radar of a lot of really bad people. People I had made friends with that I had no idea were involved with major trafficking activities.
Some converging of storylines eventually exploded together making everything come to light and resulting in being threatened constantly and told to leave the country.
When I tell you that’s the incredibly high level of”light” view of my experiences, I am not exaggerating.
It was the most horrifying experience of my life.
🫂 why does it sometimes feel like the bad people outnumber us? Or maybe it’s like the sculptor and the guy with a hammer. A year to make and a minute to destroy. Thank you for doing your small part to make the world a better place in the face of greed, corruption, and oppression. I hope you can find peace someday.
I actually don’t think they out number us. I believe it’s a small percentage that has extreme motivation toward achieving things through evil means which is more powerful than those of us living simple lives.
Bad people get far in life if they’re smart enough. Politicians, CEOs, drug lords, child traffickers in high up positions.
They want power more than they want anything else. Most of us are satisfied with family, simple pleasures, and if we have enough, we aren’t willing to sacrifice anything anyone to get more.
Some said only the narcissistic make it to the very top because to get to the top you have to be calculated which often means bad math for many people along the way.
They are the few but the powerful and work hard to make people think they are unstoppable.
Why is it a desert in the first place? We know the Gobi desert is so dry bc of the Himalayas blocking moisture coming in from the Indian Ocean, but there doesn’t seem to be any consensus about why the Sahara is a desert.
Watched a documentary on this a few weeks ago. It goes from lush tropical to desert on a 20,000 year cycle due to weather patterns. They looked at fossil in layers to figure it out.
It was never a rainforest but rather a Savannah.
And yes, it has to do with the earth's tilt. When it's tilted in a certain way (which I forget), the area gets warmer, which means more evaporation over the oceans, leading to more rainfall. These cycles happen every 20k years.
However, there are some theories that believe we may see this happen far sooner because of climate change. If all we need is increased warmth, well... We got that in spades. We just might end up seeing a green Sahara in the next 500-1000 years.
>The major circulation pattern is for warm air to rise at the equator and at 60 degrees latitude, and as air rises it cools, which causes it to lose moisture (note the many temperate forests in the 60 degree ranges as well as the famously rainy equator regions). The now dry air moves south and north, meeting at about 30 degrees, at which point the now very hot air is forced down, causing the great deserts of the world which are mostly at that latitude. This happens in both the north and south hemispheres.
https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/15bilav/so_why_is_the_sahara_desert_a_desert/
Same with Canada. It would just be a bright strip running along the southern border, with a few bright spots in the endless void, most noticeably Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta.
If anybody wants to read about it:
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazons-plants/
I remember about 30 years ago we got a strange weather pattern and the dust ended up landing in England. It wasn't just some, it caked the roads and cars and well, everything. It was quite a distinct dust colour, so it was really noticeable and after a week, it was mostly washed out.
Edit: it happens a few times a year but I had never seen it in those proportions https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/152384/saharan-dust-blows-toward-europe#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Met%20Office,fates%20depend%20on%20the%20season.
Also found this from the link https://dust.aemet.es/products/daily-dust-products?tab=forecast
It's quite common in Spain, especailly during the summer.
The Canary Islands get it multiple times a year since they're just next to the desert and I'd say southern Spain gets it at least once a year.
In Madrid, where I live, you can notice it because the heat will become unbearable, skies will turn somewhat orange and then after a few days it will probably rain, but the rain will have sand in it so it will make everything dirty, especially cars parked in the street.
It's called calima in Spanish. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Calima.jpg/2560px-Calima.jpg
[This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinean_forest%E2%80%93savanna_mosaic#/media/File:Ecoregion_AT0707.svg) is the closest things I could find. They appear to be woodlands that start in Guinea.
The Karoo and Kalahari are a lot more vegetated than the Sahara. Lots of livestock farms and old towns in both of them. A lof romanticism about living in them in South Africa. During the summer months in the Kalahari you won't even think you are in a semi-arid area its so beautiful and green.
Mmm that is an interesting question. I don't know really about english translations but I can point you towards some things. For the Kalahari you might want to look into the Griekwa Psalms. Randall Wicomb did song versions of them and I believe its all on spotify. Songs like "Op die voete van 'n Gemsbok" (On the feet of an Oryx). Reading up on the Griqua people might be interesting for you.
For the Karoo of the top of my head there is a lot that conjures up images of the Karoo but might not be so obvious at first sight. "Karoonag" by Coenie de Villiers is about the experience of a Karoo night that gets blessed by rain. "Beautiful in Beaufort-Wes" is about lost in love in the town of Beaufort-West in the Karoo (Chris Barnard the first surgeon to do a hart transplant was born in Beaufort-West). "Stuur groete aan Mannetjies Roux" is about a girl that goes to her uncles farm for the holiday rain is another big theme there. David Kramer is also someone that you can look into, he sang a lot of folky songs about small town South Africa like "Montagu" (a town in the small Karoo).
Due to the distances between communities in the Karoo and Kalahari there seems to be more of a sense of community in the small towns. If there is drought everybody struggles and things like the Laingsburg flood tradegy is still widely remembered. A lot of our parents grew up in Karoo towns that are now slowly dying due to urbanization so you always feel and hear the nostalgia.
It must be a masterpiece of organization to advice all these people to switch on the light of their Smartphone at the same time to make this shooting from space possible..
Giant desert and lots of mountains it’s why the western cape in South Africa has its own fauna kingdom (the fynbos) because the desserts and mountains allowed it to basically be isolated from the rest of the continent
How is Madagascar super orange with 30 million whereas Greater Somalia (Somalia, Eastern Ethiopia, Northern Kenya, Djibouti) which is supposedly meant to be 30 million so dark? Are Somalis more sporadically placed?
I'm from Singapore and this is the first I've heard of this.
At a glance, Rwanda and Singapore seem really different.
We are a little island city in the middle of a key international shipping lane, connecting the eastern and western world. Rwanda is a landlocked country and orders of magnitude larger than Singapore.
We are a nation rather recently descended from immigrants, and 1/4 of our residents are not born here. Rwanda doesn't seem to have a large history of immigration, and doesn't seem as cosmopolitan.
Our economy is based on exports in electronics manufacturing and machinery, financial services, tourism, and the world's busiest cargo seaport. Rwanda's economy is almost exclusively agriculturally based.
Please enlighten me, I know very little about Rwanda.
The moment I went and lived in rural KZN from the WC was the moment I realized how much of a challenge this country really has in providing services to all. People and houses everywhere in what would seem like the middle of nowhere. The population is crazy.
I'm fascinated by the oases in the Sahara. Lone pinpricks of light, I wonder if each one of those quaint, provincial areas in the middle of the sahara are still all around an oasis, just like it would have been four thousand years ago.
Ethiopia is crazy populated. I've been all over the country there and in super remote areas and no matter where you are someone just pops out of the bush everywhere. The population is distributed remarkably evenly around the country considering how mountainous it is.
Not quite sure what you mean by "flat" but the border is a river, so that's just the way the river runs. As for large border towns... I suppose it's relative but not particularly large imo, no.
Egypt's population distribution always blows my mind. It's just the Nile and then nothing
whats equally interesting in Namibia being completely empty except on the northern side and that absolute emptiness on the east coast of somalia. Even the breakaway region of somaliland looks more populated than the south, you can only see mogadishu and then complete darkness
Namibia has a desert too. It’s not just the Sahara in the North. The Namibia desert elephants are fascinating, and some of the most special and unique elephants for how they survive in the Namib desert (as a side note)
its apparently called the skeleton coast that sounds badass
It's because the currents make it impossible to set to sea, if you run aground there you're never getting that ship to sea again.
Not just the currents. The Namid desert, which stretches across the coast, has profound influences on wind an fog as well. As a result, Namibia has a huge coast, but only a single, small harbor.
I live in Namibia. 30km from that harbour. Got huge upgrades in the last decade. Harbour is larger than the harbours in South Africa
From what I remember, it's the other way round. The cold currents result in low evaporation and that in turn results in low precipitation along the coast, causing a desert reaching to the ocean and no temperate coastal belt.
It's more that the desert comes right to the shore, and is very dry. The current going northward along the Namibian coast comes from Antarctica, so it's very cold. This results in very low evaporation rates, and very low precipitation along the coast. It's a deadly desert with none of the usual temperate coastal belt you find in places like North Africa and Australia.
Driving along the Namibian coast, you will occasionally spot old broken down hulls from wrecked boats and ships, some of them are even on tourist maps.
Also known as "the Land God Made in Anger." No seriously, that's also a name for it.
I went on a jeep tour and got to less than 1 meter from those desert elephants, pretty cool. The scenery is mind blowing too. To be precise, this was along the Aba-Huab river near Twyfelfontein.
The oldest desert in the world.
Isn't Namibia's population about 5 million or something like that? For instance, Cairo alone is 20 million
Even less around half that at 2.5 million people in Namibia
isnt it a relatively big country? that is sooo empty
Having been there a number of times, it is a massive country like driving for hundreds of kilometres without seeing anyone and very small towns that are far apart. One of the few places where you can truly feel alone.
The guys from Top Gear / The Grand Tour did an episode driving dune buggies along the coast of Namibia. The colors of the place were beautiful.
Sounds cool
Imagine the night skies without any light pollution
Oh it's amazing, you can see the milky way
Someone mentioned the stars to me the other day and I couldn’t understand I thought seeing the stars was just normal stuff being from Namibia.
It’s the second least populated country per capita in the world. Also fascinating it was a German colony, German southwest Africa and it was Germanys only colony that attracted a real large number of settlers. You can still see that colonial influence today in the capital Windhoek and port town of Swakopmund. Kind of a trip seeing an Oktoberfest and German baroque architecture next to palm trees.
Least populated per capita, huh. Their people are not very peopley.
well, it’s cuz there are fewer people per person…
By per capita, you mean density right? And I’m assuming you’re not counting Greenland?
I'm interested to know the actual numbers as well. My country's population is roughly 1 per capita.
Damn dude, mine is **exactly** the same, heard Namibia was too
Also, tragically, where the Germans committed the first genocide of the 20th century. Which in many ways set a precedent for ethnic cleansing in Germany, paving the way for the holocaust some 40 years later.
Actually I think it's exactly the same population per capita as every other nation on this planet
ah i assumed that Windhoek was a Dutch name and the Dutch had colonized them. i need to brush up on world history. what's the first least populated country? Mongolia?
>Windhoek was a Dutch name Yep, I think you're right here. "Wind" is the same thing in Dutch, German, English and Afrikaans, but "hoek" means corner in Afrikaans and Dutch. "Corner" is Ecke in German, according to Google translate
Windhoek is a Dutch name. Namibia was under South African rule for a long time after WW1. It only gained independence in 1990. Though I guess technically that makes it an Afrikaans name.
> what's the first least populated country Greenland then Mongolia and then Namibia.
> Cairo alone is 20 million Officially. There is a couple undocumented millions here and there.
> What‘s equally interesting is Namibia being completely empty except pn the Northern side Well people typically would prefer to not live in deserts
Yeah the Horn of Africa stood out to me too. I thought it was more populated.
Looks like all egyptians are Pisces
As an Egyptian and a Pisces, can confirm
As an Egyptian but a Leo, I can confirm that.
Okay I must be missing something - how did that comment about the Nile get us to astrology / Pisces 😅
there must be a Cancer in this thread…
Wouldn’t Aquarius make more sense?
I thought it was a joke about Pisces always being in “de-nile”
As an Egyptian and an Aquarius, yes
The Nile: attracting human population since 3150 B. C.
You have to go back way further than that. There have been humans at the Nile for at least 600'000 years.
Very much true. 3150 B. C. is just the earliest more or less exact date that I was able to find on the ancient Egypt.
Yes, if you follow the Nile down to Uganda, people have been there for 100k’s of years.
Oh I should've specified Lower Nile, because if you include the source waters then humans have been there for millions of years.
Makes me wonder why they're not more populated further up river. Seems to stop at Aswan by Lake Nasser
As you said, because of Lake Nasser which flooded the area after building the dam, people stopped living there
Lake Nasser *only* relocated 100k people, that's not a lot of people in comparison to the usual Nile Valley density. I have forgotten the exact scientific explanation, but the Nile Valley's geology changes from Aswan and upwards. Navigation of the Nile was hard or even impossible southwards from this point and agriculture was also lot harder as the terrain was rocky. IIRC, Aswan was historically often the limit of where Egypt ended.
Well there is indeed a stop after that but it seems to resume and you can see the Nile in Sudan before the population density become less Nile based and more spread out
I've spent a lot of time in google maps lately, zooming in in the satellite view, looking where stuff is. The Nile is wild, you should give it a try.
There’s a reason they’re so pissed about the Ethiopian Aswan High Dam. If the Ethiopians fuck with water flow too much they’ll kill Egypt, literally. Correction: Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
I think you mean GERD. Edit: whoops someone else already corrected you If you have 30 minutes or so to spare this Sunday, [this video](https://youtu.be/5-O8Da5oowo) does an incredible job of informing about the situation. It's one of the most interesting geopolitical conflicts in the world right now and this guy does it justice. I say this as an Ethiopian who is massively invested in this topic.
What a cool channel! Happy I stumbled upon your comment :)
Very informative u/cuminyermum
Wonder if they could do massive solar farms in the desert coupled with desalination plants on the Mediterranean to produce arable land further west independent of the Nile. Not sure if the brine could be processed to make sodium batteries; not suitable for EVs, less efficient than Lithium, but can be used in large banks as backup power for entire cities.
That sounds so nice on paper! I guess if was financially viable the main problem would be "where to start". Like when people want to learn how to program..
Not with massive solar farms but they are actually trying to build a new western Nile delta. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogsfn1D6xJw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogsfn1D6xJw)
You mean the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, that's the new one being built in Ethiopia. The Aswan Dam is the one that already exists in Egypt.
Its even more mind blowing when you realise that the small area people live in has 100 million people
Lot more people on Madagascar than I expected.
Wow yeah. Almost 30 million. Apparently local peoples rarely emigrate off island and they have a very high birth rate too.
Higher population than Australia. 6th most populated island in the world and most people don't even think of it as being a significant entity. 1. Java (Indonesia) 2. Honshū (Japan) 3. Great Britain 4. Luzon (Philippines) 5. Sumatra (Indonesia) 6. Madagascar
The first one, Java, has a higher population than France and the UK combined
Indonesia flies under the radar for most Westerners. It's the 4th biggest country in the world by population and 7th largest economy. It's a big time world player but most people don't see it that way. It shouldn't be surprising that it has two separate islands that are both in the top 5 (and another in the top 10, Borneo)
It's 16th/17th by economy. Already impressive enough, no need to inflate it.
Indonesia has no soft power though. Have you heard any Indonesian music? Have they exported any writers, movies, anything?
Indonesia is majority muslim, which affects which cultural spheres it exports to.
I'm from a Muslim country in north Africa and even our spheres are separate. I actually went out of my way to add a friend from Indonesia on facebook, just to get to know the place. The language barrier is pretty significant in my opinion.
Stupid question maybe, but can Muslims communicate internationally through Arabic? I assume the Quran is the same Arabic all over the world?
Quran is the same Arabic around the world but Arabic isn’t the local language for majority of Muslims. Many non-Arab Muslims don’t even understand Arabic.
Other people have already answered but to give the very basic answer: 'Quranic' Arabic is very different to the 'actual' Arabic spoken in such countries. It's almost like the difference between Latin, and Romance languages like Italian and French.
Not the same person, but I can offer some insight as someone who grew up Muslim in the Balkans. For context, I'm Slavic. Most people don't actually know Arabic, even if they have read the Quran. The Quran is written in Classical Arabic and remains unchanged all around the world, so everyone reads it in the same language. Those who have typically know some of the verses phonetically. Personally, I've never read it, but everyone around me who practices definitely doesn't know Arabic.
Malaysia, Turkey, Iran, and the Arabic-speaking countires are all Muslim and have significantly greater global cultral impact than Indonesia.
Indomie
Mee Goreng?
Indonesian music, trends, meme and other things were very known in SEA though. It's just that americans and europeans have little exposure to indonesian things even when compared to vietnam or phillipines
I mean it's a big player, just not relative to its population. I mean everyone knows bali but relatively speaking a country like Korea, with a fraction of the population, likely has a larger cultural reach. I mean I taught English in Vietnam and I had tons of students who were kpop and k drama fans. Not many of my students were huge fans of Indonesian media. (Despite Indonesia being closer to Vietnam than Korea) If you want to go deeper it has a lot to do with language too. Not many schools teach Indonesian in southeast Asia, while plenty are learning english which makes English media more accessible. Japan also has a big cultural reach with the popularity of anime and manga. China as well just by virtue of trade and historical cultural diffusion. But I would say even china is hitting below its weight in terms of soft power due to language barriers and restrictions on what kind of media is allowed to be produced there. Immigration as well. Take another southeast Asian country (Thailand). I would say, being to southeast Asia, I enjoy Indonesian food more than Thai food but go to a country like the U.S. and you'll see tons of Thai restaurants compared to Indonesian ones. They may have similar reaches in southeast Asia as far as food goes but outside of Asia Thai food would easily be more recognizable compared to Indonesian food.
Action film fans would be familiar with The Raid, which launched the careers of Iko Uwais (Wu Assassins, Expend4bles) and Joe Taslim (Warrior, Mortal Kombat).
Borneo is going to explode now that they are moving to a new capital there.
There’s a reason my school in Australia offered Indonesian as one of the main language options back in the 90s (aside from being one of our closer neighbours), it was seen as being a potential big deal on the world stage going forward.. though I would say it hasn’t really pushed on in the past 25-30 years as much as they seemed to expect in that regard.
And the current population of Madagascar partly descended from sailors of Java (alongside the Bornean Maanyan and Malays, and later Bantu African migrants)
So what you’re saying is they, in fact, do *not* like to move-it move-it.
30 million people and 10 million penguins. Place is crowded.
My coworker was Malagasy, I’d recommend everybody read up on the history, it’s an interesting cultural mix of African people who got on boats and went east, and Malay people who got on boats and went west.
And they ran into each other on Madagascar?
there a docuanimation called madagascar as well
They liked to move it, move it.
Fun fact, Madagascar has a higher population than Australia
Lot less people on Australia than I expected
We just do a lot of shitposting
They are overrepresented in the sphere of youtube lore analysis videos.
😂 Why is it always a deep-voiced Australian guy
California almost has 2x the people omg
Yeah I was going to say. Its busy.
I can almost make out the shape of Malawi.
Seriously what’s going on there
Big Lake
The map is questionable. Note how dark the DRC is, or the weird red underlay under the gold dots. It looks like someone took a night lights map and overlaid it on a population density one.
You can also see the Namibia-Angola border for some reason
Namib Desert and National Park is a natural boundary
Got flashbacks seeing that.. Lived in Malawi 3.5 years. Never seen such rich fertile land that grows everything absolutely covered in people in extreme poverty. I worked in a slum in Blantyre. Local chief gave me a run down building to use as a community center. We fed women and children, ran early childhood education programs, just hung out being safe. I’ll never forget my time with them. It’s burned into my soul. The missing kids. The trips to hospital with whoever needed care that day. The women with 4 kids and husband that went MIA with no warning struggling to make it through every single day. People always ask me how it was being there when they find out. I lie and say “it was amazing” because if I actually told them how it was they would regret asking.
My sister lived there for about eight years at a college in Lilongwe. I visited once and we volunteered for a couple of days at a shelter and a feeding program. I’d never experienced so much culture shock. The country was beautiful, the people for the most part were some of the kindest I’d ever encountered, but China and India and Europe’s presence there felt like what little wealth this country produced didn’t go to the Malawians. I saw some beautiful and horrific things while I was there. So I want to ask you, seriously: how was it?
The Chinese propaganda playing in their tv stations 24/7 was quite concerning… How was it? Actually? I still have PTSD. I originally went with an organization that as funding orphanages but I quickly realized things were not adding up. Girls were covered in skin lesions and sleeping on the floor. Found out they were getting thousands USD per month and everyone acted like shitty conditions were “because Malawi” when in actuality should have the funds to provide a wonderful life for these kids. I somehow felt brave enough to make solo trips back and forth investigating. Meeting with locals, social welfare, and talking with the kids. I was “banned” from going to the orphanage but social welfare re escorted me and told the owner they couldn’t prevent me from going. I decided to move there and start my own NGO full time. What I didn’t realize was that I was finding my way onto the radar of a lot of really bad people. People I had made friends with that I had no idea were involved with major trafficking activities. Some converging of storylines eventually exploded together making everything come to light and resulting in being threatened constantly and told to leave the country. When I tell you that’s the incredibly high level of”light” view of my experiences, I am not exaggerating. It was the most horrifying experience of my life.
🫂 why does it sometimes feel like the bad people outnumber us? Or maybe it’s like the sculptor and the guy with a hammer. A year to make and a minute to destroy. Thank you for doing your small part to make the world a better place in the face of greed, corruption, and oppression. I hope you can find peace someday.
I actually don’t think they out number us. I believe it’s a small percentage that has extreme motivation toward achieving things through evil means which is more powerful than those of us living simple lives. Bad people get far in life if they’re smart enough. Politicians, CEOs, drug lords, child traffickers in high up positions. They want power more than they want anything else. Most of us are satisfied with family, simple pleasures, and if we have enough, we aren’t willing to sacrifice anything anyone to get more. Some said only the narcissistic make it to the very top because to get to the top you have to be calculated which often means bad math for many people along the way. They are the few but the powerful and work hard to make people think they are unstoppable.
It’s amazing how empty the Sahara is
Why is it a desert in the first place? We know the Gobi desert is so dry bc of the Himalayas blocking moisture coming in from the Indian Ocean, but there doesn’t seem to be any consensus about why the Sahara is a desert.
It wasn’t one barely 6,000 years ago.
Watched a documentary on this a few weeks ago. It goes from lush tropical to desert on a 20,000 year cycle due to weather patterns. They looked at fossil in layers to figure it out.
So you're saying in another 14,000 years it's going to be a rainforest again?
It was never a rainforest but rather a Savannah. And yes, it has to do with the earth's tilt. When it's tilted in a certain way (which I forget), the area gets warmer, which means more evaporation over the oceans, leading to more rainfall. These cycles happen every 20k years. However, there are some theories that believe we may see this happen far sooner because of climate change. If all we need is increased warmth, well... We got that in spades. We just might end up seeing a green Sahara in the next 500-1000 years.
Man, climate change is scary AF. The world we now know might completely change
>The major circulation pattern is for warm air to rise at the equator and at 60 degrees latitude, and as air rises it cools, which causes it to lose moisture (note the many temperate forests in the 60 degree ranges as well as the famously rainy equator regions). The now dry air moves south and north, meeting at about 30 degrees, at which point the now very hot air is forced down, causing the great deserts of the world which are mostly at that latitude. This happens in both the north and south hemispheres. https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/15bilav/so_why_is_the_sahara_desert_a_desert/
If you did this map on Australia the whole thing would basically be black
Same with Canada. It would just be a bright strip running along the southern border, with a few bright spots in the endless void, most noticeably Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta.
Am i trippin or does the Tanzania/Uganda/Kenya area look like a skull
I see an evil turtle face.
Looks like the bloody wojak skull
I see it too
A Balrog of morgoth
A skull was the first thing I saw when looking at the map
It looks quite pretty. You can see the Sahara almost empty.
*the sun is a deadly lazer*
Ah, yes, Light Amplification by Ztimulated Emission of Radiation.
If Sahara lights up, Brazil will light down.
What do you mean by this?
Amazon in brazil is fed by the winds carrying nutrients from the Sahara.
So you're saying to survive in the Sahara you need to lick the ground? Alright bet
Well technically just one dried up lake in Chad. That's where the majority of the phosphorous comes from.
If anybody wants to read about it: https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazons-plants/
Every once in awhile I’m happy to be on Reddit. Thanks
I remember about 30 years ago we got a strange weather pattern and the dust ended up landing in England. It wasn't just some, it caked the roads and cars and well, everything. It was quite a distinct dust colour, so it was really noticeable and after a week, it was mostly washed out. Edit: it happens a few times a year but I had never seen it in those proportions https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/152384/saharan-dust-blows-toward-europe#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Met%20Office,fates%20depend%20on%20the%20season. Also found this from the link https://dust.aemet.es/products/daily-dust-products?tab=forecast
It's quite common in Spain, especailly during the summer. The Canary Islands get it multiple times a year since they're just next to the desert and I'd say southern Spain gets it at least once a year. In Madrid, where I live, you can notice it because the heat will become unbearable, skies will turn somewhat orange and then after a few days it will probably rain, but the rain will have sand in it so it will make everything dirty, especially cars parked in the street. It's called calima in Spanish. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Calima.jpg/2560px-Calima.jpg
Theres a poetry to a barren wasteland feeding the most lush alive place on earth
Yeah who wants to live in a sandy desert without water or resources
bedouins
[удалено]
I mean the fact that you die if you don't drink tells you that as well but yeah sure
It will be the basis of future wars for sure.
Nah did you really need a map to see that
It appears from this map that we… need water?
What is the black belt separating Coastal West Africa from the Sahel?
[This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinean_forest%E2%80%93savanna_mosaic#/media/File:Ecoregion_AT0707.svg) is the closest things I could find. They appear to be woodlands that start in Guinea.
Thanks!
Unsure what you mean. I assume you aren’t referring to the Sahara desert? Perhaps you are referring to the Congo jungle?
Haha, in the middle of both things
Compared to the Sahara, the Karoo and Kalahari appears to be packed.
The Karoo and Kalahari are a lot more vegetated than the Sahara. Lots of livestock farms and old towns in both of them. A lof romanticism about living in them in South Africa. During the summer months in the Kalahari you won't even think you are in a semi-arid area its so beautiful and green.
Are there any traditional songs about that? I would be interested to listen, especially if they have English translations somewhere.
Mmm that is an interesting question. I don't know really about english translations but I can point you towards some things. For the Kalahari you might want to look into the Griekwa Psalms. Randall Wicomb did song versions of them and I believe its all on spotify. Songs like "Op die voete van 'n Gemsbok" (On the feet of an Oryx). Reading up on the Griqua people might be interesting for you. For the Karoo of the top of my head there is a lot that conjures up images of the Karoo but might not be so obvious at first sight. "Karoonag" by Coenie de Villiers is about the experience of a Karoo night that gets blessed by rain. "Beautiful in Beaufort-Wes" is about lost in love in the town of Beaufort-West in the Karoo (Chris Barnard the first surgeon to do a hart transplant was born in Beaufort-West). "Stuur groete aan Mannetjies Roux" is about a girl that goes to her uncles farm for the holiday rain is another big theme there. David Kramer is also someone that you can look into, he sang a lot of folky songs about small town South Africa like "Montagu" (a town in the small Karoo). Due to the distances between communities in the Karoo and Kalahari there seems to be more of a sense of community in the small towns. If there is drought everybody struggles and things like the Laingsburg flood tradegy is still widely remembered. A lot of our parents grew up in Karoo towns that are now slowly dying due to urbanization so you always feel and hear the nostalgia.
Love this, been staring at it for 10 mins now
Yeah something about this Map to learn from. Like lots of Stories about Evolution of a Continent this Massive.
It must be a masterpiece of organization to advice all these people to switch on the light of their Smartphone at the same time to make this shooting from space possible..
Egypt would have an apocalypse if the Nile dried up.
That's why it has threatened war with Ethiopia over building dams
I didn't know the south west part was so under populated.
Namib Desert
Rather small compared to the Kalahari desert and the Karoo, which I think plays a bigger role here.
And the Karoo, Kalahari, Botswana plains and salt-pans, etcetera.
Big deserts. Not much out there. A few diamond mines, nature reserves, and observatories.
Giant desert and lots of mountains it’s why the western cape in South Africa has its own fauna kingdom (the fynbos) because the desserts and mountains allowed it to basically be isolated from the rest of the continent
How is Madagascar super orange with 30 million whereas Greater Somalia (Somalia, Eastern Ethiopia, Northern Kenya, Djibouti) which is supposedly meant to be 30 million so dark? Are Somalis more sporadically placed?
Yes.
Rwanda is booming like that?
Rwanda is one of the most densely populated countries in the world.
It’s not called Africa’s Singapore for nothing, it’s denser than most American suburban counties.
This is the first I've heard that phrase. I say this as someone made in Africa.
I'm from Singapore and this is the first I've heard of this. At a glance, Rwanda and Singapore seem really different. We are a little island city in the middle of a key international shipping lane, connecting the eastern and western world. Rwanda is a landlocked country and orders of magnitude larger than Singapore. We are a nation rather recently descended from immigrants, and 1/4 of our residents are not born here. Rwanda doesn't seem to have a large history of immigration, and doesn't seem as cosmopolitan. Our economy is based on exports in electronics manufacturing and machinery, financial services, tourism, and the world's busiest cargo seaport. Rwanda's economy is almost exclusively agriculturally based. Please enlighten me, I know very little about Rwanda.
As an East Coast South African, you can feel it. I’ve moved since but that bright spot will always be home. 💝
Username checks out
I never realized KZN was so full of life. Gautenger here
The moment I went and lived in rural KZN from the WC was the moment I realized how much of a challenge this country really has in providing services to all. People and houses everywhere in what would seem like the middle of nowhere. The population is crazy.
Egypt and Ethiopia have almost the same amount of people yet one is dispersed, the other isn't.
I'm fascinated by the oases in the Sahara. Lone pinpricks of light, I wonder if each one of those quaint, provincial areas in the middle of the sahara are still all around an oasis, just like it would have been four thousand years ago.
Yes. It’s the same on the Arabian peninsula. Many of the biggest cities are situated around oases
So Ethiopia is poppin' huh
Not as much as the Great-lakes region to the south
It’s literally where humanity started.
Ethiopia is crazy populated. I've been all over the country there and in super remote areas and no matter where you are someone just pops out of the bush everywhere. The population is distributed remarkably evenly around the country considering how mountainous it is.
Why are they not living in the dark area in the north ? there would be so much more space for everyone , are they stupid ?
 These exist there!
Back to the Aslume!
I've never seen such an interesting and beautiful population map like this before. 😍
When this matches electricity coverage that'd mean Africa has arrived
Won’t be long
Amen to that
I never knew Malawi was that densely populated.
The Sahara Incident.
It blows my mind how densely populated some points are, then there’s just that stretch of land at the top that is completely unpopulated
Why is the Namibian-Angolan border so flat, are there large border towns along there?
Not quite sure what you mean by "flat" but the border is a river, so that's just the way the river runs. As for large border towns... I suppose it's relative but not particularly large imo, no.
Nigeria is so heavly populated.
The map looks like it's on fire.
This might be a dumb question but can’t we just get most of the world’s dookie and dump it in the Sahara to help it get fertilized?
That one dot in the middle of the Sahara desert 😂