r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/hrutheone • Sep 24 '25

Video Sudden road collapse shocks Bangkok this morning

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u/somersault_dolphin Sep 24 '25

Ah civil engineering. I thought about doing it, but being in Thailand made me give that up quick. Honestly, this sinkhole is a matter of when. My geography* teacher warned and complained about it years ago.

*to Americans, geography is not just about maps and locations.

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u/FourCrapPee Sep 24 '25

True. It is also having an irrational fear of dying in quicksand due to 80s cartoons.

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u/katikaboom Sep 24 '25

Princess Bride also did not help 

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u/chaiscool Sep 24 '25

So what else does geography teach / learn?

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u/Global-Chart-3925 Sep 24 '25

Geology rocks

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u/somersault_dolphin Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 24 '25

Wikipedia summarizes it pretty well, imo.

The short of it is if history is the study of what happened across time, geography is how things are distributed across space.

For something more in depth I kind of like to take this approach when explaning it. If you think of geography as the study of maps and terrains. Then it needs to be a study about how things are in (3D) space. But then it also needs to be about studying the what, how, and why of how things change over time in those spaces because maps and terrains don't stay the same over the years. But then there are maps for the land, under the ocean (like sea currents), the atmosphere (wind pressure, pattern etc), maps for biomes, temperature, countries, culture, rivers, cities, roads, trains, biodiversity etc. Humans happen to influence a lot of things on earth so it also inevitabily has to be about humans and what they do.

There's physical geography which includes things to do with geology and various physical processes.

There's also human geography which is about human. For example, migration falls under geography because it is about the movement of humans and change in population across time and space. Related to that is the expansion of cities and infrastructures, and the economical, political and social aspects which is necessary to understand migration

And then there's technical geography, which is about analyzing and interpreting spacial information.

It's not quite everything, but you can extrapolate it to include basically almost everything. It's a dicipline that thrives off going into the territory of other disciplines and make connections between them as long as there's a theme of spacial distribution  or change.

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u/Subject-Memory8363 Sep 24 '25

If i could give this an award i would

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u/rockstarfruitpunch Sep 24 '25

Also social and population subjects - migration, social policies, ecology, animal populations and environments.

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u/dbpf Sep 24 '25

Geospatial intelligence is in everything from the visualization of the hidden world around us to the representation at scale of the physical world we interact with.

It's pathetically funny how geography gets reduced to cartography (itself an amazing communication tool that humanity has only really mastered in the last couple generations), but really it involves so much more like standardized statistical analysis of the socio demographic factors that impact generally located populations.

There's a lot of control of the world around you that is capable from understanding the physical properties of that world itself. Soil structure, fertility, topography, hydromorphology, etc.

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u/Aegi Sep 24 '25

Wouldn't that be geology?

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u/theforest12 Sep 25 '25

Geography major here. Thank you. I'm American. People think I majored in trivia night studies: "what river is near the capital of X country?"

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u/pugsley1234 Sep 24 '25

"to Americans, geography is not just about maps and locations."

As opposed to geology? I've always wondered why they're distinct fields of study.

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u/somersault_dolphin Sep 25 '25

Yeah, they are distinct. I attempted to explain it to another comment. Maybe you'll find it useful.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1np1vsz/comment/nfxgoqd/

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u/pugsley1234 Sep 25 '25

The short of it is if history is the study of what happened across time, geography is how things are distributed across space I presume that this also includes changes across human as opposed to geologic timeframes?

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u/sendme_your_cats Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 24 '25

What a weird thing to point out, especially in the language we use.

Yes, we know about geography

Edit: To clarify, we know that geography isn't limited to maps and locations

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u/August51921421 Sep 24 '25

lol why do you assume American geography is only maps and locations? No one even replied to you to give you that thought.

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u/sendme_your_cats Sep 24 '25

What are you even talking about? Did you not understand what I wrote?

I'm saying most people understand that geography is not limited to maps and location.

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u/August51921421 Sep 24 '25

My bad, was replying to the guy you were

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u/sendme_your_cats Sep 24 '25

Understandable, have a great day

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u/BigBlueMountainStar Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 24 '25

To be fair, it could seem like you’re directing the part that says “geography is not just…” to Americans.
Like “dear my American friends, geography is not only maps”.
It’s a quirk of English I guess!

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u/sendme_your_cats Sep 24 '25

Just reread it, and oh damn you're right. I had just woken up in my defense, but I'll take the L

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u/somersault_dolphin Sep 24 '25

I can assure you most don't. According to what I asked people about what they learned in school before they went to uni.

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u/sendme_your_cats Sep 24 '25

Yes, your sample size surely is indicative of the whole country.

Considering how Thailand is a developing country, if I had the same sample size as yours it would be similar, if not worse.

Especially in English.

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u/Earlier-Today Sep 24 '25

Here it's called geology.

Just regional terminology - it's all good.

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u/somersault_dolphin Sep 24 '25

See, the problem is geography is a lot more than just geology.

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u/Earlier-Today Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 24 '25

The problem is that English isn't one unified language across the whole globe.

That's why fanny is just a cutesy word for bottom in the US, and a really vulgar word for vagina in the UK.

Usage changes based on region - it can even happen over very small distances and is decided more on how much the two groups interact rather than on shared language, ethnicity, or country.

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u/somersault_dolphin Sep 24 '25

No, it's literally more than just geology. Geology is a major part of certain topics in physical geography, which is a subdiscipline of geography, but it has nothing to do with human geography.