With a human face
Yeah, it’s actually a really great map for its purpose of navigation, which is a pretty damn important aspect of map usage. I’m tired of everyone shitting on it because of that scene in west wing.
https://youtu.be/vVX-PrBRtTY?si=EJI98A0zZR6zkURc Im sure there were people who felt this way before this episode, but it really exploded in public consciousness afterward.
It’s great for navigating at sea, but bad for looking at the world as a whole. Nowadays most people use maps for the latter; hence the complaints.
Sure, that’s why I qualified with “for its intended purpose”. It’s not a great classroom map but it is perhaps the most historically important projection. The problem is this idea of “Mercator bad” has entered public consciousness. For example, the start of this thread mentioned “how not-great the mercator is” without any such qualifications.
