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Why is Chile so long?

A_D_E_P_T
32 replies
4h49m

One of the most interesting drives in my life was Chile from the island of Chiloe to the Tatio Geysers in the Atacama. Just so many different climate zones, and all in relatively close proximity.

Chiloe and Puerto Montt were damp, cold, and fog-shrouded in Summer (Jan-Feb), very similar to parts of the coastal pacific northwest.

The area to its north, centered around the German-influenced town of Valdivia, was California-like. Very temperate in Summer, and very green. Lots of pastures and rivers.

The region becomes progressively more "Mediterranean" as you move further north; one gradually sees fewer pastures and woodlands, more vineyards, olive trees, and fruit orchards. Santiago is on the far northern end of this Mediterranean zone. The great wine regions are generally to the south and west of that capital city.

A few hours north of Santiago and all is desert -- but it's a fairly live desert, with all sorts of succulent plants and many types of flower. Most of the road traffic in these parts comes from copper miners and their work trucks.

Continue north and you're in a dry, mostly empty, moonscape. Antofagasta and Calama are nice enough towns, though, and the interesting drive from the former to the latter takes just two hours but sees you rise from sea level to +2000m. It's such a gentle and relentless slope that you barely notice it. Nothing at all like driving in the Alps.

I broke something in my rental car when I continued to the geysers at +4000m, but it was worth it.

pc86
9 replies
4h17m

Torres del Paine in the south is pretty brutal to get to if you're not used to long flight but it is breathtaking. Definitely a bucket list trip if you enjoy nature and wildlife, hiking, etc.

Etheryte
7 replies
4h5m

It's nice, but unfortunately listed on nearly every tour guide of Chile, so these days it's flooded with tourists most of the time. You'll have a much better time seeing other places slightly off the beaten track.

drroots23
6 replies
3h38m

During the summer months yeah, but I've been there last year during the end season and, although there are still lots of tourists, it's not overwhelming and some of the hikes were pretty chill.

Going straight to the Torres themselves will usually be crowded (depending on the time of the day). But some of the other hikes less so. I've done the W Circuit (a multi-day trek) and during some days I barely saw another hiker.

dheera
5 replies
3h27m

I hate visiting touristy cities but I mind don't mind it as much in nature areas. Mainly because the nature isn't changing itself for the tourists.

I visited Torres de Paine and it was refreshingly different from national parks in the US. On the upside, you can get water and basic snacks at the refugios which reduce the load you have to carry, and makes for an overall safer experience than unsupported wilderness backpacking but still with minimal impact on nature. On the other hand I did not like that they close a lot of viewpoints long before sunset.

lukan
4 replies
3h7m

"Mainly because the nature isn't changing itself for the tourists."

Yes, but some tourists change the nature by leaving their garbage etc.

lukan
0 replies
1h8m

That sounds bad, but in the end:

"Nevertheless, recent paleoenvironmental studies performed within the Park indicate that fires have been frequent phenomena at least during the last 12,800 years."

So fires are a normal thing there, or they have tourists since 12,800 years ..

seattle_spring
0 replies
1h39m

Or blasting their music from a phone or Bluetooth speaker.

dheera
0 replies
2h50m

Yeah I hate that, but at first glance it didn't seem to be a huge problem in TdP compared to most other national parks around the world I have been to. Most people I encountered seemed quite responsible. Chile is overall a very well-educated country though, and TdP takes significant effort to get to compared to so it is perhaps a natural filter.

tuzemec
0 replies
3h59m

Really enjoyed that. The views are surreal. Got lucky with the weather too.

gottorf
7 replies
2h47m

Just so many different climate zones, and all in relatively close proximity.

Another place like this, perhaps lesser in scale, is the Big Island of Hawaii. Its latitude means the trade winds are blowing from the same direction year-round, bringing moisture to the windward side (e.g. Hilo, HI with 120" average annual rainfall) and leaving the leeward side dry (e.g. Kailua-Kona, HI with under 20" average annual rainfall), on the other side of massive volcanoes. And you can go from the ocean to almost 14k feet in elevation in an hour's drive; this may be one of the only places in the world where you can do that.

All of this means that as you move around Big Island, based on the precipitation, humidity, and elevation, you're going to see wildly different environments mere minutes' drive from each other. It truly has to be seen to be believed.

tim333
2 replies
1h34m

Tenerife is a bit like that. 12k feet at the top.

pferde
0 replies
1h13m

Yes, Tenerife is awesome, a different biome almost every few kilometers. I've been there hiking several times, and I always see something new!

bostik
0 replies
7m

And to a lesser extent, Gomera.

Just by the sea, beaches and small banana plantations. Go slightly inland and up the hills, you're in an arid region. Continue slightly further up, and you get into a lush, verdant forest. All within maybe 20 minutes' drive.

Best part? There's no airport on the island - you have to fly to Tenerife and take a ferry.

To this day, the best tomatoes I've ever had.

Gud
2 replies
1h45m

Hawaii was never on my list of places to visit until now, but now I have to go there. Thanks for sharing

devilbunny
1 replies
1h14m

It's expensive, and it's a long way away from anything else.

I've been twice and both times the Big Island was my favorite. Maui and Kauai are spectacular in their own ways, as are the few rural areas of Oahu, but there's nothing like the Big Island. The drive from Kailua-Kona to Hilo over the Saddle Road (which, in itself, goes to around 6600 ft) is spectacular, and if you have enough time to make a day of it, coming back around via the southern ring road is well worth it. If you get up early, Waimea and the surrounding area (esp the NW protuberance of land) are worth seeing as well. Huge variation in biomes in very short distances.

Gud
0 replies
19m

Probably I’d go there for a few weeks. I’ll make it my first stop to the US(if they let me in).

jghn
0 replies
1h19m

I was recently in the big island and this was both unexpected and wild to me. The difference of a couple miles could have an enormous impact on the weather over time. We stayed a couple of days in Volcano Village and like clockwork it'd be rainy there but sunny or at least partly sunny just a few miles down the street. Then there are rain forests, cloud forests, deserts, and every thing in between.

dheera
6 replies
3h32m

I travelled to Chile earlier this year and visited Atacama and Torres de Paine.

The thing that boggled my mind was that you can't drive between the two without a very long detour through Argentina. Chile has literally no road linking the northern part with the southernmost part without going outside the country.

It is also mind boggling that rail is not more popular there. A long, slim country is ideal for high speed rail.

TremendousJudge
1 replies
3h22m

It is also mind boggling that rail is not more popular there

That would require the upper class to mix with the poor. Not acceptable in Chile.

OJFord
0 replies
1h8m

Barely, different classes of carriage?

I don't know anything about the history of trains or carriages, but in the heyday of railway development in Britain (iron rails, steam locomotive, etc.) it would have been far less acceptable than today too. And still all trains I'm aware of/have been on have two classes of carriage. Indian trains have several, and similar cultural need for that I imagine (I don't really know anything about Chile).

A_D_E_P_T
1 replies
1h19m

I tried to cross the border into Argentina north of Puerto Montt. I wanted to check out the Argentinian side for a day or two. But they wouldn't let me across the border with my rental car, and I got turned back. I suppose the rules are a little bit different in the far south?

returningfory2
0 replies
1h12m

If you want to bring a Chilean rental car into Argentina you need to obtain and pay for a specific permit at least a few days before you pick up the rental car. Maybe that was missing? When I crossed the border they were very thorough with checking this permit.

prpl
0 replies
2h37m

The bus system is very cheap though, it’s very hard to compete with that

flobosg
0 replies
3h9m

It is also mind boggling that rail is not more popular there. A long, slim country is ideal for high speed rail.

See one of my other comments in this post regarding the rail in Chile.

prpl
1 replies
2h39m

It’s roughly the equivalent of British Columbia to Mazatlan, except the water is a tiny bit cooler. Santiago is the same latitude as LA, for example.

I love Chiloe and Los Lagos region. I would buy a “southern summer” house there if I didn’t have kids in school.

jvm___
0 replies
1h51m

Vancouver when the cherry blossoms are in bloom is interesting, the different elevations and the different progress of the trees is fun to pay attention to.

hinkley
1 replies
1h17m

I’m told that prior to industrialization there were areas along the Andes (in Peru for sure, presumably Chile as well) where you rarely if ever met the tribes living uphill or downhill from you. It was way easier to travel north and south.

pfdietz
0 replies
4h44m

The Atacama Desert is exceptional, the absolutely best solar energy resource on the planet.

hammock
0 replies
4h11m

so many different climate zones, and all in relatively close proximity

Yes. Just mountain climbing in northern Patagonia (between Bariloche & Villarica, really only 100mi of north-south distance) became my favorite part of the world for your reason. In a single day (or two), we could walk in the dry, dusty bottom of a canyon dug out by glacier melt, cross through a humid jungle, rest on the shores of an alpine lake, pick your way across a massive rocky field of a'a lava, up a glacier and look down inside the caldera of an active volcano.

The only other place I have been that come close to having that amount of diversity of terrain in a limited area might be the Tetons/Yellowstone.

fluoridation
21 replies
4h54m

How is the table of dialects constructed? It's obvious if two dialects are at 1, but what does it mean if they're at 0? They can't be mutually unintelligible, since that would make them different languages. I ask because the dialects spoken in Argentina and in Uruguay are practically identical, save for a few regional words. If the scale being used puts them at 0.35, then it makes me wonder about the usefulness of the scale.

prmoustache
12 replies
4h20m

I have no idea. Also there is no standard spanish even in Spain. Like Andalucian spanish and Domenican spanish have a lot in common but vary greatly with other forms of spanish.

digging
6 replies
3h54m

There literally is a standard Spanish, no? I understand it to be based on Castilian. However I understand your point that even within the country of Spain there are many dialects which diverge from "standard".

umanwizard
3 replies
3h19m

There literally is a standard Spanish, no?

Not really. Just like English, the standard variety in each country is considered equally "standard".

I understand it to be based on Castilian.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. As far as I know Castilian is just a synonym for the Spanish language (as opposed to other languages of Spain e.g. Catalan). So the variety spoken in Guatemala and the one in Tenerife are equally "Castilian".

servilio
1 replies
2h39m

Spanish native here, confirming that RSA is the institution that sets the language standard.

But, people always deviate from it, though in my experience in word meanings and pronunciation, never in grammar to a degree that it become intelligible to another Spanish speaker.

The toughest film to listen to for me was "The rose seller"[1] (1998), took me like 10m to get my ear accustomed to their pronunciation.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASrxQCuVT-U

Gualdrapo
0 replies
2h11m

The paisa accent is very hard, even for us non-paisa colombians - not only for its colloquialisms but for its cadence.

joseda-hg
1 replies
3h6m

There's "neutral" spanish, but it's less of a formal standard and more of a rough subset that people recongnize it's generally understandable to most people

It being so artificial means that it doesn't fit anywhere, even it if's becoming more common (Kids are growing up listening to Media dubbed to it, so it's not weird seing a Child "speak like a cartoon" for a while until their local dialect kicks in)

prmoustache
0 replies
1h25m

It is what I usually call the "TV" or "media" standard. Same in french, the french language you listen on TV is very uncommon if you actually talk to french people from different areas of France and it is not even common in Paris.

albrewer
4 replies
3h24m

When I was getting my degree, two of my classmates spoke Spanish as a first language. One was a transfer student from Madrid, and the other was an immigrant from northern Mexico. I was in the room the first time they met and tried speaking Spanish to one another. They couldn't understand each other and communicated solely in English after about 10 minutes.

Gualdrapo
2 replies
2h15m

The funny thing is that both Spaniards and Mexicans claim to use the most neutral spanish, but you'd find their idiosyncrasies rather quickly - spaniards' 'f' sound of the letter S, and the infinite modisms and particular mexican accent on the other hand.

As the Spanish empire extended its spread so widely the language grew pretty complex (as english did!) so not even the most "neutral" spanish speaking countries do it as the RAE intends.

On the other hand, Chileans really do speak their very own language.

Phrodo_00
1 replies
1h25m

Chileans really do speak their very own language

Only informally. Formal Chilean Spanish is probably one of the most understandable ones, accent-wise. (There's still some vocabulary differences)

flobosg
0 replies
1h16m

This idea is somewhat prevalent among native Chilean speakers, but I respectfully disagree. Even under formal settings, many of the features of colloquial Chilean variants are present, and often an additional effort to neutralize the accent needs to be made to sound “formal enough” to other Spanish speakers.

russellbeattie
0 replies
57m

That's a very anecdotal experience.

I met my ex-wife in Madrid where I lived for 4 years and where she was from. That's where I learned Spanish as a second language. After we moved back to California, we obviously met and spoke to many Mexicans over the years. Zero problems communicating for her, ever. Spanish is still Spanish.

jhbadger
4 replies
3h59m

Dialects can mean very different things hence the old joke "a language is a dialect with its own army and navy", recognizing that the issue is really political rather than linguistic. Many Chinese dialects (like Mandarin and Cantonese) are considered dialects of the same "Chinese language" for political reasons but are mutually unintelligible, whereas Danish and Norwegian (the majority bokmal dialect anyway) are considered different languages even though they are pretty mutually intelligible because Norway and Denmark are different countries.

As for how the table of Spanish dialects was constructed, the figure gives the link to the paper it was from [1]. Basically they measured differences in dialects by giving pictures of an item (the example shown is a pinwheel) and asking what Spanish speakers from different places called that thing. Given hundreds of different concepts you can see how close Spanish dialects are to each other.

[1] https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/opli-2018-003...

fluoridation
3 replies
3h48m

Okay, so the article is wrong for using that bit of data for the argument. It doesn't tell you much about how well two people from two different places will understand each other. If two people are in the same place and one says to the other "¿me das la veleta?", but the other would have called the object "molinete", chances are they could probably understand what the other person is saying. What makes different dialects of Spanish difficult to understand each other is slang and accent, not different words for common objects. Like, if a Spaniard tells me "Mariana está en el ordenador", I'm not going to get confused about what he means even if I would have called it "computadora".

jhbadger
1 replies
3h31m

True, but that's like saying a British person wouldn't be confused by the phrase "the trunk of my car" said by an American even if they would would say "the boot of my car" themselves. The fact still remains than "trunk" is US dialect and "boot" is British, and that the dialects are different.

fluoridation
0 replies
3h0m

I'm not saying the dialects are not different, I'm saying the fact that they're different is separate from how mutually unintelligible they are. Correlated? Yeah, sure. Equivalent? Not even close.

servilio
0 replies
2h35m

I agree with you, differences in pronunciation, cadence, etc. should be taken in account as well. Though measuring those could take longer, if possible.

posix86
0 replies
4h4m

but what does it mean if they're at 0? They can't be mutually unintelligible, since that would make them different languages.

I think it might actually mean unintelligible. If you read on the term "dialect" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect it says in part:

There is no universally accepted criterion for distinguishing two different languages from two dialects (i.e. varieties) of the same language.

The difference between language is more culturally and politically defined than linguistically; there are different langauges spoken in the world that have a fiar overlap and elligibility, and there are different dialects of the same "language" that are basically untelligable. It might be sensible to just consider all spoken systems to be "dialects" of each other, and comparing their similarity.

Not a linguist though.

cryptonector
0 replies
1h21m

I agree. Argentine and Uruguayan Spanish are very close. I'd expect to have seen .85 or so. Argentine and Chilean Spanish are not that far apart either -- or at least they weren't 30 years ago.

cdelsolar
0 replies
4h43m

Yeah, I was wondering about these two countries myself. Also it was very strange to see the Peru and Cuba correlation, those two dialects are nothing alike.

rob74
17 replies
3h35m

On the difference of Chilean Spanish to other "dialects":

It’s the farthest region from Spain, so the least communicated to the rest of the empire, and hence the one that drifted the most from the homeland.

Er... if you look at the table (https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_...), Chile has quite a lot of red, but actually its Spanish is closer to the Spanish from Spain than that of other South American countries. So it looks like those have drifted further from "standard" Spanish, while Chile hasn't as much?

alephnerd
4 replies
3h27m

Chilean Spanish is heavily influenced by Spanish, German, Italian, and Croat immigrants from a pronunciation and colloquialism standpoint because those were the 4 main immigrant communities to Chile.

Also, Spain Spanish is not necessarily "Standard" (Castilian) Spanish.

rob74
1 replies
3h11m

That's why I put it in quotes :)

alephnerd
0 replies
3h5m

Spain Spanish isn't "Standard" Spanish though. The closest thing to "Standard" Spanish is what the RAE prescribes, but no one listens to them. Insurgencies and protests were fought over this fact in Spain during the Francoist and Post-Francoist era (eg. Andalusian, Murcian, Canarian, Leonese)

melenaboija
0 replies
2h36m

My opinion as Spaniard and having a chilean close, is that Chilean Spanish is the closest to mine in terms of pronunciation. And to me what makes the biggest difference is not European migration but native words.

Phrodo_00
0 replies
1h24m

More than any of that, it's influenced by Mapuzungun in a way other countries just aren't exposed - Argentina's Conquest of the Dessert was more brutal, and is the only other modern country where Mapuche land was.

wageslave99
3 replies
3h22m

Please note that there is no "standard" Spanish. In the Spain there are multitude of dialects and different variants. Even in the same region (e.g. Andalusia) you can find a ton of different variants. All of them are valid, as the RAE and the AAL make it clear.

alephnerd
2 replies
3h17m

RAE is supposed to be the prescriptive source for Spanish, but no one cares about it outside of a subset of Academics in Spain.

santiagobasulto
1 replies
2h14m

Thanks god we don't care. Spain wanting to dictate what's real "spanish" is like the King of England telling a jamaican that their english is wrong.

walthamstow
0 replies
1h41m

Yes, we leave that kind of thing to the French

mechanicalpulse
3 replies
2h43m

So it looks like those have drifted further from "standard" Spanish, while Chile hasn't as much?

I think the chart is saying less about differences relative to Spanish Spanish and more about each regional dialect relative to the others.

In the table, the countries appear to be ordered (horizontally as well as vertically) by distance relative to Spain. Assuming there's nothing (like an ocean) to prevent the diffusion and evolution of language, given any cross-location in the grid, the cells nearest should theoretically have little to no gradient.

That's clearly not the case with Chile and isolation due to the Andes seems like a reasonable cause.

Colombia and Costa Rica also exhibit this effect, though, and I'm not sure why. FARC? They are separated by Panama and the PCZ; has the canal had an effect of preserving Panama's cultural ties relative to other countries at the expense of those of CO/CR?

Edit: s/Columbia/Colombia/; s/expensive/expense/

woodson
2 replies
2h2m

These differences go back much further in the past, so FARC has nothing to do with it in Colombia (it’s spelled with an “o”). There’s a large linguistic diversity within these countries, which that table doesn’t reflect or account for.

mynameisvlad
1 replies
1h39m

There’s a large linguistic diversity within these countries, which that table doesn’t reflect or account for.

I’m pretty sure that’s the case for every country in the world.

prpl
1 replies
2h32m

New Mexican Spanish is similarly isolated, but the number of speakers is tiny.

gaudystead
0 replies
2h4m

Orale! Was not expecting to see us New Mexicans get called out here on Hacker News, but you're not wrong. It's surprising how much variation there is despite NM being so close to Mexico.

tomjakubowski
0 replies
2h40m

"Standard" Spanish is modern, and, like Chilean, has itself drifted from dialects which were spoken in the era of Spanish colonization.

aeyes
0 replies
1h19m

Something that wasn't mentioned here before is that Chile is quite close in terms of grammar. Other South American countries supposedly have deviated more.

It's hard to understand some Chilean speakers but that's because they don't modulate their voice and cut or join words. But grammatically they are "correct".

There is a lot of Chilean slang and it's almost universally understood from north to south. But people are aware of it, it's usually not used at work. And then there are a lot of words which are just different, just about every fruit has a different name.

throwup238
15 replies
5h3m

My key takeaway from this article is that the best place to go see the Milky Way is deep in the Amazon rainforest… where the tree cover is nearly 100% and there isn’t a single road for a hundred miles.

That’s a neat collection of graphics. I’m curious how bespoke the creation process is for each graphic or if this is something everyone just does in ArcGis or similar.

That last graphic about the Western US being the only other candidate is interesting because the two sides of the Rockies weren’t connected by a highway until the I70 over Glenwood Canyon was completed in 1992. Before its completion, the western and eastern halves of Colorado were practically different states and it took the interstate highway project half a century to get there because the terrain was so challenging.

FinnKuhn
3 replies
4h29m

The problem with your takeaway is that you a) won't be able to realistically get deep into the amazon rainforest and b) the tree canopy would cover all of the sky ;)

namenotrequired
1 replies
3h27m

Yep. It's way easier to take a boat to the middle of the ocean - fewer roads than even in the amazon :) and the best starry sky of my life

probably_wrong
0 replies
3m

This is a dream of mine, to soend the night far away from land that there's nothing around but water.

Did you already have sea experience, or did you just rent a boat and gave it a try?

HPsquared
0 replies
4h18m

Also, there's likely to be cloud cover and mist, etc. Rainforest!

AnimalMuppet
2 replies
4h13m

the two sides of the Rockies weren’t connected by a highway until the I70 over Glenwood Canyon was completed in 1992.

US 40, 6, and 50 would like a word.

They weren't connected by an interstate before that. But you said "highway". US 6 was a highway, and it ran through the exact same Glenwood Canyon.

throwup238
1 replies
4h5m

Fair point about the exact terminology but those are tiny two lane roads with impassable grades for the majority of commercial traffic. The term highway has drifted in colloquial use (hence your use of the word “was”).

AnimalMuppet
0 replies
3h38m

Yes, they were two lane roads. But no, they did not have impassable grades. Neither Loveland nor Berthoud Pass were easy, especially in winter, but they did in fact carry lots of commercial traffic (though I would think twice about sending an oversized load over them). In fact, to this day the old two-lane road of US 6 over Loveland Pass is used to keep hazardous material out of the I-70 tunnels.

I mean, I remember around 1968-69, before they finished building Interstate 80 up Echo Canyon, and that tiny two-lane road had to take all the commercial traffic that there was on "the main street of North America".

fullstop
1 replies
3h41m

My key takeaway from this article is that the best place to go see the Milky Way is deep in the Amazon rainforest… where the tree cover is nearly 100% and there isn’t a single road for a hundred miles.

Check out Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_Springs_State_Park

jaggederest
0 replies
50m

Pine Mountain Observatory, if you're on the West coast, has some of the darkest skies, best weather and stable atmosphere for good seeing. 24 inch telescope, too.

https://pmo.uoregon.edu/

xeromal
0 replies
1h30m

It's a fantastic drive if you've never done it

w4der
0 replies
2m

Not really, that would probably be the north of Chile on the Atacama desert, there's a reason why the Extremely Large Telescope, Giant Magellan Telescope and Vera C. Rubin are being built there.

tylermw
0 replies
23m

Several of the maps were made by Twitter users @researchremora and @cstats1, using R and the rayshader package.

tambourine_man
0 replies
34m

It rains almost everyday, mostly in the late evening and night. My guess is clouds would be your main concern, not light pollution.

jprete
0 replies
4h55m

I think the graphics have numerous sources and mostly/entirely aren't made by the post author. There are five different styles in the first six map images!

grecy
0 replies
4h21m

I've been to many places around the world from the Amazon rainforest to the Atacama Desert in Chile to right around Africa.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the interior of Australia is STAGGERINGLY the best for stargazing. It's not even close.

This was a single 8 second exposure. [1] and I'm not a great photographer. The milky way was so bright it kept me awake in my tent.

[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/CersLuLBfCz/

mFixman
12 replies
5h3m

Is there a name for this simple style of writing?

It reminds me of the style of pop science books written in the late 19th and early 20th century. There's a nice charm in it, like it's trying not to be pretentiously complex.

_visgean
2 replies
4h58m

honestly it feels like a powerpoint presentation in an article.

the_arun
0 replies
4h9m

I also had fun reading the article & repeated question - why is Chile so long? and sharing another bit of twist. Nicely done.

callalex
0 replies
1h54m

Apparently it started as a series of xhits or whatever they’re called this week.

mikepurvis
1 replies
4h41m

This author wrote a number of pretty influential essays during the early pandemic advocating for mask use, social distancing, and other mitigations. He's a trained educator, so the effectiveness of communication is definitely no accident:

https://fortune.com/2020/08/10/the-overnight-coronavirus-exp...

talldatethrow
0 replies
43m

My gf is a trained educator too with two masters somehow related to education. She teaches 8th grade English but has also taught highschool.

She can't write or communicate at any level beyond typical hairdresser. Considering it's very hard to fail out of most upper level education unless you simply don't do the work at all, we really should stop giving people so much credit for just getting degrees.

It's what you do with it that matters and how you devote yourself on your own time that makes people great. And that's what the previous commenter was doing. Trying to give credit to some education system someone went through is taking away from the person that actually made something of themselves, almost always by themselves.

Side note, I graduated with a MechE degree from UC Berkeley. Decent grades. I can honestly say I learned almost nothing. I just did a ton of work they wanted. If I made something of myself in the engineering field, I promise it wasn't because of UC Berkeley.

open_
0 replies
2h51m

Apart from a few other factors, the biggest one that stands out is not stringing you along in a click-baity way, instead just asking a question and giving a direct answer right after the question and in simple direct words.

No dark patterns to make you spend a longer time on the webpage for ad metrics.

nsbk
0 replies
1h37m

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the post. A breath of fresh air among all the click-bitey and false buildup so common in content these days. PLEASE DO TRAIN THE GPTs ON THIS GUY

keyle
0 replies
4h48m

Highly entertaining, keeps you surprised as you never know what's happening next, and full of images without being memes. Loved it.

hammock
0 replies
4h4m

The author Tomas Pueyo grew up in a family of filmmakers. For his Stanford MBA he specialized in behavioral psychology, design, storytelling, and scriptwriting. I have to imagine that has some influence on his writing

err4nt
0 replies
1h24m

I thought it would be dense, but it was lighthearted and didn't take itself too seriously, and both shared information and fun questions to ask. I enjoyed the speculation which had not even a shred of political or social agenda anywhere in sight. Just pure fun.

edouard-harris
0 replies
3h33m

It's roughly in the style of a children's picture book. That's the same style the best startup pitch decks are written in.

dotinvoke
0 replies
4h38m

I read it before on Twitter, it’s probably adapted to fit into the 280-character limit.

29athrowaway
7 replies
4h39m

Another interesting fact about Chile is: no compass is needed. The mountains show where the East is. If the East is to your right you are facing North, otherwise you are facing South.

arachnid92
1 replies
3h26m

In fact, it’s so easy to know where North is that it’s very common to use cardinal directions when describing locations or meeting points in Santiago, as opposed to using landmarks. For example, when meeting a friend you may say “I’ll meet you on the north-eastern corner of the crossing of Pedro de Valdivia and Irarrázaval Avenues”, and everyone involved will know what that means.

desas
0 replies
1h18m

Relatedly, one of the claims made about the Pirahã people is that they have no words for left and right in their language, instead they orient themselves relative to the river bank.

aeyes
1 replies
59m

The coastal mountain range reaches heights of 3000m, it's not as easy if you are in the valley in between these mountains and the Andes because you'll be surrounded by mountains.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_Coast_Range

29athrowaway
0 replies
48m

But those don't have snow in them. It is easy to tell them apart.

umanwizard
0 replies
3h16m

Same thing I use the Empire State Building for when in lower Manhattan. Granted that works over a much smaller area...

the__alchemist
0 replies
4h31m

I had a similar feel driving through Croatia, although not as extreme: If you don't hit the sea or a border crossing, you are going in the right direction! (With a tau/2 ambiguity you can resolve using the sun)

KineticLensman
0 replies
2h30m

This is also true of long linear coastlines, such as the South Coast of England, where (ignoring small bays and harbours), if the sea is to your left (right) then you are facing west (east).

I was briefly disoriented when I stayed on the North coast of Cyprus where the situation is the opposite.

prmoustache
5 replies
4h24m

Is there a single chilean dialect? Surely in such a long country there must be a huge difference between northern, center and southern chilean.

flobosg
3 replies
3h45m

There are regional variations, but the difference is less than what you would probably expect, applying mostly to intonation/cadence (more marked and melodic in the south, less so in the north) and some vocabulary. Most of the variation in Chilean Spanish is based on socioeconomic status, since Chile's income inequality is rather high.

Cthulhu_
2 replies
3h11m

[...] intonation (more marked and melodic in the south, less so in the north)

Oddly enough, albeit anecdotal, this is true everywhere; in every country and every continent, people are looser in the south. That said, if it's also true for Chile then it means it's not related to the climate.

gottorf
0 replies
2h42m

in every country and every continent, people are looser in the south

Fun to think about, but I'm sure there are as many counterexamples as there are examples. In the Germanic languages, for example, no one could deny that Swedish or Norwegian are much more sing-songy than stodgy German.

flobosg
0 replies
3h1m

people are looser in the south

What does “loose” mean in this context? My first impression would be that the accent in northern Chile is “looser” than the south.

digging
0 replies
3h51m

Dialect and language are sort of a "coastline problem". You can find variation between two neighboring villages if you like, but at some point you have to draw a boundary around a group of speakers and call it a dialect. I'd assume the common dialect of Santiago, where most people live in Chile, is considered "the Chilean dialect," but it almost certainly sounds different in rural areas.

flobosg
5 replies
3h15m

Trivia question: how many time zones does Chile have?

Suppafly
3 replies
2h29m

I had to google, I'm surprised that it's 3, I would have assumed that it was just one since it's so narrow.

flobosg
2 replies
2h26m

Everybody forgets Easter Island! (And the other one in the Magallanes and Chilean Antarctica region was added not long ago, 2017 IIRC.)

Suppafly
1 replies
1h12m

I assume maybe the other one is to align more closely with Argentina or something? If you look at the time zone map, they just as easily could have had the whole mainland country on one timezone. Bolivia, Paraguay, and parts of Brazil share the same timezone as the northern part of Chili and are just as far east as the southern parts of Chili.

Easter Island makes sense, you don't necessarily expect islands that are far away to share the mainlands timezone. Antarctica is one that probably catches a lot of people since most time zone maps don't even bother to include it and there is no real population there.

flobosg
0 replies
1h3m

I assume maybe the other one is to align more closely with Argentina or something?

It has to do with differences in latitude. In winter, the southernmost region of Chile[1] was completely dark at around 4 PM with the old time zone. Staying on summer time for the whole year gives its inhabitants an additional hour of sunlight.

[1]: Which includes, but is not equivalent to, Antarctica: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magallanes_Region

gottorf
0 replies
2h39m

Given that Chile only covers about nine degrees of longitude, the reasonable expectation is that it only has one time zone (excluding any far-flung territories and whatnot). I'm sure you're going to surprise me with the true answer :-)

cassepipe
5 replies
4h48m

No excuse for not building one giant high speed multi-tracks train line from North to South then :)

__MatrixMan__
1 replies
1h54m

That sounds like the kind of investment in the commons that a socialist would make. In 1973 the US encouraged a coup to ensure that no such investments were made (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...). Instead, we applied guns to the affected area and ensured that they would part with their resources as "fair free-market prices" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Boys). They've started the process of removing those policies, but only in the last few years.

If I had to come up with an excuse for not having trains, I'd chose that.

golergka
0 replies
45m

That's why Chile is the most successful economy on the continent.

fluoridation
0 replies
4h8m

Except that the people are not spread that far out that it makes economical sense.

flobosg
0 replies
3h38m

In the 2000s the Chilean state railway company was involved in a huge corruption scandal as well as bad administrative practices. It’s been slowly recovering, but rail services in Chile still leave a lot to be desired.

cryptonector
0 replies
1h18m

Whatever for? As TFA notes the vast majority of Chileans live in the middle, in or near Santiago.

throw4847285
4 replies
4h35m

When I went to Chile I was about to undertake a cross-country move across the US. Everybody I spoke to in Santiago couldn't imagine a country where you can drive a massive distance like that and move from one major metropolis to another. At the time, I thought they were just reflecting on the fact that Chile is a country where 40% of all people live in one metro area, so there isn't another huge metro area to move to.

Looking at those maps, I understand their incredulity. Because of the shape of Chile, you can drive a similar distance and basically cover the entire country, rural, urban, and suburban. It's both a large country and a small one at the same time.

aeyes
3 replies
2h15m

The Concepción metro area is 1 million people, Valparaíso/Viña as well. Chileans love to point out that there isn't much outside of Santiago but it's not really true.

throw4847285
0 replies
1h34m

I was talking to Santiaguinos, so I took it with a grain of salt.

jkaptur
0 replies
8m

"View of the World from Ruta 70"

flobosg
0 replies
2h11m

While that might be true, Chile is a very centralized country, unfortunately.

seu
3 replies
3h57m

It completely ignores the influence of the indigenous languages in the "dialect" or variation of Spanish, which is actually a much better explainer than "distance from spain".

TremendousJudge
1 replies
3h29m

I don't think that's a good hypothesis, because in that case, other countries with a huge colonized population such as Mexico or Perú would have less intelligible dialects as well.

arachnid92
0 replies
3h21m

Not all Latin-American countries experienced the same level of mestizaje and colonization. The southern part of Chile, in particular, was never successfully colonized by the Spaniards, and mapudungún, the language of the Mapuche people who live there has had (and continues to have) a tremendous influence on Chilean Spanish.

novok
0 replies
9m

Huge mountain ranges separating people that are close in distance is a pretty classic mechanism of creating linguistic diversity / dialects in places that are physically close to each other. You see this with villages in various parts of Asia historically.

Indigenous language effecting Spanish is something that would effect everyone in South America, so even if you remove Spain from the table, Colombia, Chile, the Caribbean and Costa Rica will all stand out about how "different" they are from the rest of South America, probably from their physical barriers separating them from the rest of the continent.

eatonphil
3 replies
4h53m

The article mentions it, but I only learned recently that Bolivia did not used to be landlocked. Chile took Bolivia's coastline somewhat recently (late 1800s/early 1900s).

The dispute began in 1879, when Chile invaded the Antofagasta port city on its northern border with Bolivia as part of a dispute over taxes. Within four years Chileans had redrawn the map of South America by taking almost 50,000 square miles of Bolivian territory, including its 250-mile coastline on the southern Pacific Ocean. Bolivia accepted this loss in 1904, when it signed a peace treaty with Chile in return for a promise of the “fullest and freest” commercial access to port.

https://time.com/5413887/bolivia-chile-pacific/

sidmitra
1 replies
4h37m

Disclaimer: I live in Chile, but not a Chilean national(nor of similar ethnicity), and certainly not a historian.

The dispute is seen differently in Chile and is not as simplistic as Chile invading a port. In general i've gotten the sense that the general populace believes that Bolivia(with its secret alliance with Peru) had other intentions.

In February 1878, Bolivia increased taxes on the Chilean mining company Compañía de Salitres y Ferrocarril de Antofagasta [es] (CSFA), in violation of the Boundary Treaty of 1874 which established the border between both countries and prohibited tax increases for mining. Chile protested the violation of the treaty and requested international arbitration, but the Bolivian government, presided by Hilarión Daza, considered this an internal issue subject to the jurisdiction of the Bolivian courts. Chile insisted that the breach of the treaty would mean that the territorial borders denoted in it were no longer settled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pacific

Ill-defined borders and oppressive measures allegedly taken against the Chilean migrant population in these territories furnished Chile with a pretext for invasion.

https://www.britannica.com/place/Chile/The-War-of-the-Pacifi...

cdelsolar
0 replies
1h25m

Chilenos weones

aeyes
0 replies
1h5m

Chile could have been even longer, during the war the Chilean army took Lima.

ShaggyStyle
3 replies
3h47m

All of this is just because Chile is the best country of Chile... if you know what I mean ;-)

arachnid92
2 replies
3h40m

Somo el mejor país de Chile hmno.

As a Chilean living in the US, seeing this on HN made my day - it’s not often the rest of the world (outside of South America) remembers we exist.

novok
0 replies
8m

Chile feels like the Canada of South America in some ways. Even has a special work visa category with the USA!

elzbardico
0 replies
3h13m

Believe me, not being remembered by the rest of the world is sometimes a blessing.

bwanab
2 replies
1h47m

That is a really nice bit of information communication. Hat's off! I feel like I learned a lot and that always makes me happy.

One quibble. At the end it mentions why Mexico's west was of interest to the Spanish, but neglects possibly the most important part - it was where the Spanish galleons from the Philippines first landed after the grueling trip across the Pacific as detailed beautifully in Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle".

idontwantthis
1 replies
57m

And the real history in 1493 by Charles C. Mann.

Samurai were documented as guards on galleons brought to Mexico. It needs to be a movie.

piuantiderp
0 replies
51m

If I recall there were also some Aztecs or Mayans brought to fight in Phillipines and SEA

santiagobasulto
1 replies
2h16m

Off topic, but that correlation matrix of "Spanish similarity" seems a bit odd. I'm from Argentina, and the spanish in Uruguay sounds practically the same. At least A LOT MORE similar than Cuban or Paraguay as it shows there.

DavidAdams
0 replies
1h51m

I'm sure that has a lot to do with the close physical proximity of the capitals of Argentina and Uruguay.

rieg3c
1 replies
2h51m

Chile is a great country, greetings from Saint Bernard

flobosg
0 replies
2h42m

Should’ve put it in that other meme collection thread!

phaser
1 replies
5m

Chilean dialect of spanish is wild. Only a chilean can understand this:

"el weon weon, weon."

onionisafruit
0 replies
1m

Care to translate it for us? gpt says “The dude, dude dude”

pandalicious
1 replies
3h57m

Am I misreading this or is that "How close is Spanish from Different Countries" graphic kind of jank? There's intersecting lines that are missing, like Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic.

delecti
0 replies
3h26m

The intersection between Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic is the 0.42 right above the "1" in the PR column (5th from the left).

If you imagine the full graph of all countries horizontally and vertically, there would be a lot of overlap (the PR column and DR row, and the DR column and PR row). So to save that redundancy, for all countries except Spain (very top) and Argentina (far right) you have to look around a bit to see where it crosses any other given country.

nikolay
1 replies
25m

I've always concluded entirely based on maps, not historic facts, that it was conquered with a strong fleet and not enough infantry.

flobosg
0 replies
14m

What made you reach that conclusion? I’m just curious.

nojvek
0 replies
2m

If we were superb at building ships and living on the seas, Chilean Empire would have been a thing.

carabiner
1 replies
1h5m

They should make it longer.

golergka
0 replies
45m

Bolivians and Peruvians might disagree, violently.

anothername12
1 replies
4h12m

I’m gonna round trip motorcycle that later starting with Colombia

gottorf
0 replies
2h38m

Sounds beautiful. Good luck with your trip.

alganet
1 replies
3h42m

Cool article. TIL I learned that Atacama has flower blooms.

I miss the Inca though. Talking about Chile without mentioning the Inca Empire is like talking about Italy without mentioning the Roman Empire.

WarOnPrivacy
1 replies
4h55m

This site owner is living the small-web fantasy we HN'rs keep talking about.

renewiltord
0 replies
4h31m

There are lots of substack sites like this. Probably the new blogspot. The newsletter modal is because that's a choose piece of substack.

wruza
0 replies
1h32m

Because Andes?

See also “chilean empire map” (it’s not serious).

tumidpandora
0 replies
4h58m

This is such a clear and engaging read! I wish all articles made learning this fun and accessible

syngrog66
0 replies
3h10m

many nation shapes don't make any sense. add in the wildly disconnected/schizophrenic sovereign territory of some countries (US and Russia among exemplars) and I've learned one must simply turn one's brain off when analyzing them. Its a circus.

racl101
0 replies
2h6m

The Chilean Spanish portion of the article made me laugh. I'm a Spanish speaker and the Spanish I speak is closer to Mexican Spanish. I could not for the life of me understand Chileans I met in Canada. Brings back funny memories of 2001 for me.

pulketo
0 replies
2h59m

This Chile is too long too...

notachatbot1234
0 replies
3h12m

90% of the content is stolen from other people without appropriate or any attribution.

matreyes
0 replies
48m

Wena weon!!!

lucideer
0 replies
2h0m

Reading the title, my initial expectation was that this was going to be a Croatia/Bosnia-Herzegovina situation. Refreshing to read that most of the reasons here are geological/meteorological in nature.

k1ns
0 replies
3h57m

This article is awesome. I've always wondered why Chile is that shape and I didn't know about the Chilean dialect of Spanish being so far off from the others. Super cool.

ferrantim
0 replies
5h31m

This is super interesting. Sharing with my kids who are starting geography in school this year.

diego_sandoval
0 replies
42m

As a Valdiviano, I find the Santiago climate too hot and dry. I prefer the south.

danhau
0 replies
2h6m

I love how effective the article is at communicating. A digestible idea followed by visual example. Rinse and repeat. I think we could learn something from this for our documentations, or even Jira comments.

cryptonector
0 replies
1h26m

That map of Spanish dialect difficulty... I can confirm.

br1
0 replies
28m

Because Chile renounced Patagonia to keep Argentina out of the war with Bolivia and Peru. Argentina is the bully around here.

afh1
0 replies
2h7m

If all articles were written like this, straight to the point and only the important bits, I would read a lot more and skim a lot less...

ableal
0 replies
4h56m

"""

Peru & Bolivia went to war with Chile for that region, but they lost in the War of the Pacific.

Why fight? Natural resources: guano and saltpeter.

Back then, guano was the world’s main fertilizer (and this area had most of the world's guano, thanks to the climate).

"""

That fertilizer produced iconic advertising in mid XX Century Portugal and Spain: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/AR22G9/nitrato-de-chile-advertisin...

Yawrehto
0 replies
4h30m

The Atacama Desert is so dry NASA uses it to stimulate Mars. Wikipedia also lists five (!) observatories (one under construction, to be home to the Extremely Large Telescope), including the Very Large Telescope (built), ALMA (built), and others.[1] It's basically as close as you can get to space while being on the ground on Earth. [1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Desert#Astronomical_observatories

TheBlight
0 replies
2h54m

Isn't this the covid "Hammer and Dance" article author? Not getting another click from me for the rest of my life.

Phrodo_00
0 replies
1h35m

Far south: too cold for another country

Chile has an Antarctic claim going all the way to the pole. If you consider that, it's impossible to go further south

If you don't, then we still just run out of land in the Continent. Note that the neighbour competition also applies to Tierra del Fuego, as we've had tensions with Argentina through history over the control of Magallanes Channel.

Perroboc
0 replies
1h0m

Wow, it's wonderful to see my country mentioned here! And the article has a lot of content I didn't know about, too.