This. There are a couple of different things people use maps for, but the biggest two are finding out where things are and figuring out routes between two thing

This. There are a couple of different things people use maps for, but the biggest two are finding out where things are and figuring out routes between two things. Mercator throws the needle all the way toward finding routes between two things, and it is very, very good at that, but this comes at the expense of distorting exact locations and sizes of things. Perhaps a compromise is possible, whereby Mercator is used when plotting routes between things but some other projection is used when you're looking for isolated points. Let each projection do what it does best.