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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

The Gulf Stream really throws off intuitions of how North America and Europe line up with each other.

Yes, though I've seen it many times on maps, from the air, and on the ground, I still imagine going directly east from Silicon Valley, across the US, through Virginia, and across the Atlantic ought to end up close to London or Paris. No. That path will take you to northern Tunisia in North Africa.

Also makes me wonder: Are there analogs to the Gulf Stream in other parts of our oceans? Currents bringing warm water to otherwise cooler regions?

Yes, Japan for example also receives warm ocean currents though Europe experiences the most extreme impact from this effect. The eastern portion of South American has warm ocean currents but they break off before reaching the southern tip. https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3652

And the Mercator projection.

Mercator projection does not influence how far north something appears on a map.

It is making the UK appear relatively larger than it is to the US though. This is because it is not an equal-area projection and warps areas further from the equator (UK) more than the ones closer (US).

It absolutely does. Looking at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Mercator..., it would seem that the UK is a bit north of the equator, but comfortably within the "center".

OK, I see what you mean, you were just referring to the unintuitive mapping between latitude and position on the map.

You can compare the sizes of countries using this website.

https://thetruesize.com/

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