In seriousness, the article’s final thesis is literally that steamships and trains and telegraphs broke the ‘month’ rule by bringing essentially the whole world

In seriousness, the article’s final thesis is literally that steamships and trains and telegraphs broke the ‘month’ rule by bringing essentially the whole world inside the one month range, which is what enabled a ‘sun never sets’ empire and then broke empires in general. Around the World in 80 days is set almost exactly at that inflection point.