That was my first reaction, until i remembered that i've seen a globe before, and my general perception of the shapes of countries is informed by a globe and no

That was my first reaction, until i remembered that i've seen a globe before, and my general perception of the shapes of countries is informed by a globe and not just the mercator projection. This map might bill itself as "the most accurate", but it's still making some crazy distortions. Mercator might get some sizes wrong, but it gets the shapes mostly right.