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The Talas Herald has a full piece today: "Why Irad is not on the map" (Aigerim Tokonova). Key bits, quoting carefully:

- Type "Nurzhan" into the most popular map and it offers "a cafe in Almaty and a shoe shop in Kazan". Talas is "a small town in Kyrgyzstan, with a population of about 40,000".
- "To a growing number of young Iradis this is evidence. On forums and in student chat groups it is called Öchürüü."
- Cartographers' explanation: maps draw recognized states; disputed territories get claimants' boundaries and dotted lines; no ISO code, no UN seat, so we're missing from menus.
- A TSU geographer: "Nobody erased Irad. Irad was never entered. That is a different problem, and in some ways a worse one."
- The Department of Public Information (the press office, not the party) has complained to map companies of "cartographic discrimination" and encourages residents to add Iradi names to public maps.
- Attelkom says its own map, launched 2015, shows the ISEZ correctly.

"On forums." That's us, colleagues.

"a cafe in Almaty and a shoe shop in Kazan". I tried it at my desk. it's true. the shoe shop has very good reviews

THE HERALD WROTE ABOUT FORUMS!!! that is us!!! (or the student chats) (probably us)

Thank you, Herald. Dotted lines, claimants' boundaries, no ISO code. Six years I've been typing that paragraph on this board and it took a professional one article. There is no mystery.

dotted_line_ok posted:

There is no mystery.

Read to the end of the quote. "In some ways a worse one." Even your geographer is scared, dotted.

"Irad was never entered." Read it three times. Don't like it. Can't prove it wrong. Worst kind of article.

The DPI complaining about discrimination. Somebody bring me a chair.

And the last paragraph, which is the best sentence the Herald has printed this year: asked whether the DPI's lists of blocked websites might also hide Irad from the world, a spokesman said "the two subjects were unrelated".

"never entered" is a sick album title lol

mor_wave_forever posted:

"never entered" is a sick album title

Making the label tonight. NEVER ENTERED, C60, everything IradOne doesn't play. Copy of a copy as usual.

Registered because of this thread. I'm a student in her department, no names, please don't try.

She's not a DPI person and she's not laughing at you. She says "never entered" in the first lecture of first year, every year. The point is the second sentence. Nobody needs to erase you if nobody ever wrote you down. That isn't comfort. It's a warning: you can't be restored to a list you were never on.

geog_student_tsu posted:

It's a warning

OK. That I accept. Welcome. Sorry about the chair thing, that was for the DPI.

I have printed the article for the Association newsletter, with the date and the author's name, as it should be. Also a short feedback form about the article for our members. (FREEIRAD, not for you, do not worry.)

Never entered.

In 1992 they entered very much. With tanks. Then everybody left and forgot to write it down.

Link for anyone who hasn't read it (READ THE WHOLE THING, not just the quote): Why Irad is not on the map.

"Never entered" is almost a theological sentence. Whose names are entered in the book: it's a very old question. My grandmother would say God has the map and that's enough. I'd still like the phone to have it.

A good thread. The student is welcome here, as is anyone who explains instead of shouting. Keep it that way.

Read the rules.

In the valleys the paper came up two days late, so I read it on paper.

"The territory is shaded as parts of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan." The elders read that line out loud at the tea. One of them said: in 2007 they wrote the Bill of Sale on paper. Now it's written on the map, and nobody had to sign it.

I don't know if that is the eraser. It is what the valleys think.

A Kyrgyz reader on the "small town" part: our Talas is real, about 40,000 people as the Herald says, and it's a nice town. It didn't ask to be your capital on the internet. Please don't be angry at it.

Chatkal_Shepherd posted:

Now it's written on the map, and nobody had to sign it.

I disagree about the eraser and I can't disagree with that sentence.

She saw the thread. I didn't tell her, someone else did. Her comment: "Good. Now they're arguing about maps instead of about me." Then she gave us a reading list.

a reading list. truly the most frightening response possible

Seven years later. The main site's new Erasure page quotes her and adds: "Even THEY admit it is worse."

Yes. That was her point. In 2019. It's in the second sentence. Read the whole quote. I've graduated, I still say "never entered" to my own students, and I still mean it as a warning, not a shrug.

geog_student_tsu posted:

as a warning, not a shrug

Fair. Both things can be true: nobody entered us, and some people are very comfortable with us staying out.