The Mercator projection is useful if you want to place a global map on a cylinder. But it gets very limited the further one looks away from the Equator, as the relative sizes of areas get distorted.
That's why Twitter user @neilrkaye created this animated .gif. It shows the nations closer to the poles shrinking to their true sizes relative to the equatorial nations.
-via Nag on the Lake
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That really puts Russia in perspective, HUGE, but still much smaller than the continent of Africa.
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Looks like shrinky-dinks. Look at how huge China is compared to Russia! That's a lot of distortion.
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