Fun article. Surprised it doesn't mention the Peters projection map.
You cannot have both area fidelity and shape fidelity to represent countries on a map.
If you want area fidelity, the Gall-Peters [1] projection and the Peters world map [2] (1952) by Arno Peters are the way to visualize countries, whereas common maps focus on shape-fidelity.
There are plenty of other equal-area map projections. Several of them are less shape-distorting than the Peters projection. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-area_projection. Peters did a great job of publicity, as witness the common but completely false idea that the Peters projection is "the way" to make an equal-area plane map, but there's nothing particularly great about the projection itself.
You cannot have both area fidelity and shape fidelity to represent countries on a map.
If you want area fidelity, the Gall-Peters [1] projection and the Peters world map [2] (1952) by Arno Peters are the way to visualize countries, whereas common maps focus on shape-fidelity.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Peters?useskin=vector [2] https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/map-of-the-world-peters-p...