I mean, before the advent of GPS, ships at sea got a "fix" of their position by taking two measurements: north/south latitude (via a sextant when the sun was visible) and east/west longitude (via a set of very accurate clocks that showed the time in Greenwich England, which could be easily compared to the time aboard ship). Mercator maps are just a grid showing where all the land is as a function of these two measurements on the X and Y axes. Any other projection would have just meant a lot more work figuring out where shit was, which is why Mercator became "the" map. It had absolutely nothing to do with any attempt to make Europe appear dominant -- Europe's dominance when these maps came into existence was too obvious and unquestioned to need any parlor tricks.

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  • [–] 5 points 20 hours ago

    More like $1000+ a month for a policy with a $7000+ annual deductible. If you're lucky and have a job with subsidized health insurance, it's much more reasonable. I'm a school bus driver and have excellent health insurance (which is rare for school bus drivers); I pay $129 a month while the district pays the rest and I have essentially no deductible.

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  • I was on private health insurance for a couple of years. My premium was over $300 a month and my deductible was $7000. I had looked for an ACA policy on the government website but something with the same level of deductible was closer to $1000 a month. What really sucked is that my private policy did not qualify for the exemption from the fine you had to pay for not having health insurance. Somehow I never had to pay the fine, I dunno why not. I'm sure my policy also would have fucked me if I'd ever tried to collect on it, but fortunately I was completely healthy during that stretch.

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