A or B but not both

At the recent UN meeting, a resolution was passed to recommend an "Equal Earth" map projection to replace the ubiquitous "Mercator" map projection (link). The Guardian shows us the two maps side by side:The left-hand-side map looks familiar while the right-hand-side map looks elongated with the African continent "blown up" while Europe, and especially U.K., looks shrunken.The argument for adopting the "Equal Earth" map on the right is that it preserves areas, i.e. the map does not distort the sizes of countries and continents. Yes, the Mercator map on the left distorts areas, quite severely the further one moves away from the equator. The Map Distortion Lab has a nice utility that quantifies the level of distortion (link):Most of the inhabited southern hemisphere are shown smaller than their actual size while Greenland, Antartica, Canada and Russia are displayed larger than their true size.Here is the same visualization for an Equal Earth map:No distortion anywhere as expected,…