I am a fan of Areo magazine, and subscribe to their emailings. Today, I received the peculiar email above.
Peculiar, because the link takes you to a 404, ‘no such page.’ Similarly,
“Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://areomagazine.com/2021/03/08/in-defense-of-the-mercator-projection-the-non-racism-of-maps/” does not work.
OK, I thought, somebody fat fingered the URL, though it typically would be populated into the email automatically.
I search for ‘Mercator’ on Areo’s site. There is one hit, but it isn’t J. Edward Britton’s piece.
Indexes do get screwed up, so I’ll check the author’s page on Aero. Well, that author is there, but his Mercator post is not referenced. J. Edward Britton is said to have only made a single post at Areo. There it is. And it’s not the one about Mercator.
It’s not on the Wayback Machine, indicating it didn’t exist long enough to be preserved. This is getting more than a little peculiar.
Ok, let me try Duck Duck Go, et. al..
There’s no mention of words in the post title segments of the URL, or author’s mname in searches including the obvious 2 through 5 word combinations.
J. Edward Britton appears to be a legitimate person. Maybe someone posing as Mr. Britton momentarily bypassed the Aero editorial process with something truly vile?
IAC, fat fingering does not appear to be the explanation for the 404.
For some reason, an Aero advertised a post was buried. To further inform my current positive opinion of Areo, I need to read the advertised article, and I need an explanation of why I can’t at the moment.