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Bro Dad posted:What if you redrew the United States so state borders actually represented their constituents? You get something like this: It makes sense for Western Massachusetts to be part of New York. It definitely blends right in to Connecticut.
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Dec 24, 2013 18:18
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What's the general idea behind making up new states? Is it an attempt to fix the broken electoral college system without actually touching it?
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Dec 24, 2013 18:20
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Boiled Water posted:What's the general idea behind making up new states? Is it an attempt to fix the broken electoral college system without actually touching it? Pretty much. I always wonder how the people drawing those get the borders so neat while they're masturbating furiously to the thought of their side getting more Senate seats.
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Dec 24, 2013 18:21
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Boiled Water posted:What's the general idea behind making up new states? Is it an attempt to fix the broken electoral college system without actually touching it? The guy who made this said it was about fixing very specific, very small things. Example: "Who should pay for a rapid transit system in St. Louis? Only those citizens within the boundaries of Missouri, or all residents of St. Louis's metropolitan area, including those who reach over into the State of Illinois?" 
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Dec 24, 2013 18:55
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From the d&d pics thread:HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:New Electoral College map redrawn into 50 states with equal population. I would gladly live in the state of MAMMOTH. 
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Dec 24, 2013 19:01
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Peanut President posted:From the d&d pics thread: I always loved this picture for Shiprock. The admission that it's nothing but blasted wasteland and armadillos.
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Dec 24, 2013 19:13
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Space Bat posted:I always loved this picture for Shiprock. The admission that it's nothing but blasted wasteland and armadillos. I mentioned this earlier but there's approximately 71 million people in the West (counting Alaska & Hawaii). There are 5 (out of 23) Provinces of China with larger populations than that. Bonus fun fact: the smallest Chinese province population wise is the Tibet region which has ~3 million people. That is still larger than 20 US states, and it's roughly the same size as the bottom 5 US states (+ DC) combined.
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Dec 24, 2013 19:29
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I'm not sure how thrilled I would be about living in the Firelands, although I guess that's no fault of the borders.
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Dec 24, 2013 19:36
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DarkCrawler posted:Also, this thread and many, many others have thought me that Americans are obsessed with their accents. Especially in regards to soft drinks. It's funny because they all sound the same to me.
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Dec 24, 2013 19:42
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Peanut President posted:From the d&d pics thread: Lexington ends up in the same state as Charlotte? Weird.
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Dec 24, 2013 19:58
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Peanut President posted:He's from Virginia originally, so everyone calls him..wait for it...the Virginian. Thank you for the helpful hint!
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Dec 24, 2013 20:03
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3peat posted:It's funny because they all sound the same to me. They're mostly the same, because we only have had roughly four hundred years for them to differentiate over regions, and we're jealous because the UK has so many awesome accents and variations. We just want to be like our big brother.
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Dec 24, 2013 20:12
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GreenCard78 posted:Thank you for the helpful hint! I live to serve! Basil Hayden posted:Lexington ends up in the same state as Charlotte? Weird. On the bright side Louisville and Indianapolis get to be in the same state together. The state were counties ceased to be.
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Dec 24, 2013 20:22
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I took the dialect test as a non-US citizen with English as my second language. Most similar to the Northeast, and somewhat odd also a similarity pocket in San Francisco and Hawaii. Probably due to media influence.  Before i took the full version of this test and it matches the short version on the NYT pretty well. Well, almost, the hot spots match but there are some variances in some central and southeastern states.  And some standard European English words that correspond to American dialects color that map as well. Everybody call them highways here, as well as crayfish, things like crawfish and crawdads seem very dialectical to Americans, there is no such connection over here and crayfish is the neutral word used. Some words, specially traffic terms, i draw more from British English, so the traffic terms on the quiz that most closely resemble UK ones must have an influence as well. Mountain lions probably vary among Europeans. I call them mountain lions because that seems most natural to me because it's the term i hear the most on US media, and since we don't have them, i don't have a personal geographical connection to the word. Many of my fellow countrymen would call them Pumas, since that's the word we use for them in my native language. Falukorv fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Dec 24, 2013 |
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Dec 24, 2013 20:24
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Gen. Ripper posted:Gentlemen, welcome to California. It's interesting how the map will pin you as being being from California, but then have the rest be almost opposite.  The only  specific question I guess?
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Dec 24, 2013 20:26
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appropriatemetaphor posted:The only People in Texas will call it a freeway as well, I call it a highway.
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Dec 24, 2013 20:27
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computer parts posted:People in Texas will call it a freeway as well, I call it a highway. Ehh. I call it a highway, as does my family and town in general.
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Dec 24, 2013 20:31
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Stumbled upon these while browsing Wikipedia.  Left: Italy-France border (south-north), passing through the summit of Mont Blanc. Right: a true, honest-to-god, we-swear-it's-not-a-fake-guys historical map from the French archives showing the CORRECT border 
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Dec 24, 2013 20:31
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Falukorv posted:I took the dialect test as a non-US citizen with English as my second language. All of those places except the extreme northeast also have a huge amount of people that are first- or second-generation immigrants. New York City, for example, I'd imagine to have more than one distinct set of "New York City accent" answers.
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Dec 24, 2013 20:33
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PrinceRandom posted:Ehh. I call it a highway, as does my family and town in general. The question is pretty vague though, if I was on one of those "freeway" things in like Maryland or whatever where cops can sit between the two sides, and there's a median where you can make a U-turn, then I wouldn't really call that a "freeway", probably a "highway".
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Dec 24, 2013 20:54
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3peat posted:It's funny because they all sound the same to me. Do not trivialize the great pop/soda divide. It is the most important political issue of our time.
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Dec 24, 2013 21:01
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Phlegmish posted:Do not trivialize the great pop/soda divide. It is the most important political issue of our time. this but unironically
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Dec 24, 2013 21:39
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Those people who call them all "coke" can go to hell, though.
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Dec 24, 2013 21:43
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The most infuriating thing about those "let's re-divide the States" thing is that never once is the section containing Los Angeles called Greater Los Angeles.
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Dec 24, 2013 21:51
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As someone who's never been to the states before, I think I may have broken that map thing...
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Dec 24, 2013 22:02
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Bro Dad posted:What if you redrew the United States so state borders actually represented their constituents? You get something like this: Wait a minute, if most other states are being split up, why is southern Oregon still a part of Cascade? There've been active secession movements there within living memory, and there's a lot of conservatives there that would probably want out if the boundaries are being redrawn. That said, any state that has both Portland and Seattle in it is a better arrangement than when they're separate, I guess. Peanut President posted:From the d&d pics thread: This makes even less sense, why is Hawaii a part of Oregon and Alaska a part of Washington, even by necessity of each state having approximately equal population this is still nuts. 
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Dec 24, 2013 23:22
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Lycus posted:Those people who call them all "coke" can go to hell, though. And what's with the idiots who call it Aspirin???
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Dec 24, 2013 23:31
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Lycus posted:Those people who call them all "coke" can go to hell, though.  I don't do it on purpose I swear .My cousins called them cans.
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Dec 24, 2013 23:47
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Since someone brought up the Electoral College, I figure it's worth bringing up the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which is a plan to use the electoral college to implement popular elections of the U.S. president and vice president. Green is for states which made it law, yellow for pending. Yes, I noticed whoever made this map for Wikipedia hosed up Oregon. The bill failed its state senate. Anyway, it was passed into law in nine states and the District of Columbia, totaling 136 Electoral Votes or 50.4% of the 270 electoral votes needed for the law to go into effect. People kept on confusing the "winner-take-all" per state system with the electoral college itself. The electoral college as written in the U.S. Constitution didn't advocate for the current system practiced any more than it would for the Popular Vote method proposed by this compact. Amending the U.S. Constitution is not necessary to have a popular (or at least plurality) election of the POTUS.
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Dec 25, 2013 00:22
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Isn't that compact about as far along as it's likely to get in the next 20 years or so? I can't imagine any Republican controlled state government would ever sign on.
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Dec 25, 2013 01:17
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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eXXon posted:I'm not sure how thrilled I would be about living in the Firelands, although I guess that's no fault of the borders. Dude, you get to live in THE FIRE LANDS  It's like you're from some kind of fantasy realm full of volcanoes!I don't want to live in Yerba Buena. Why do all these redrawn maps of the USA have to give corny new names to every state?
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Dec 25, 2013 02:00
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PittTheElder posted:Isn't that compact about as far along as it's likely to get in the next 20 years or so? I can't imagine any Republican controlled state government would ever sign on. Well, you need 270. There's 68 right now, you can get another 46 from the states in yellow (+ Oregon). I'd say it has a shot at passing in Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico, so that's another 20. If you get PA back and the rest of New England there's another 35, for a total of 169. So that's about 100 votes short, but that's about 5-6 mid sized states so it's not too terrible (maybe add in Michigan, there's another 16, etc).
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Dec 25, 2013 02:06
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PittTheElder posted:Isn't that compact about as far along as it's likely to get in the next 20 years or so? I can't imagine any Republican controlled state government would ever sign on. At the same time, that means big states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina and Ohio are less likely to support it.
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Dec 25, 2013 02:17
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What? No it wouldn't. The electoral college is the only reason Wyoming and Montana have any relevance in presidential elections at all. If that were removed then candidates would pretty much never leave the coasts for campaigning. It gives underpopulated red states more sway in the election than they would otherwise have. And the original intentions of the electoral college were to filter democracy through an elite of 'distinguished citizens', meaning the rich, to prevent the unwashed masses from having as great an effect on the political process.
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Dec 25, 2013 02:30
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It's also likely unconstitutional as an unauthorized compact within the union between the states and as an infringement of the right to vote. It will not be enacted, and if it is, it will be struck down and its advocates will be called damned fools.
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Dec 25, 2013 02:37
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icantfindaname posted:What? No it wouldn't. The electoral college is the only reason Wyoming and Montana have any relevance in presidential elections at all. If that were removed then candidates would pretty much never leave the coasts for campaigning. It gives underpopulated red states more sway in the election than they would otherwise have. The whole popular vote = "urban power grab" thing is horseshit. The original intentions of the electoral college, in addition to what you said, was a compromise to defer how the president is selected to the states. Eventually every state decided to defer to voters anyway, in a weird manner with some votes mattering way more than others. Echo Chamber fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Dec 25, 2013 |
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Dec 25, 2013 02:41
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icantfindaname posted:What? No it wouldn't. The electoral college is the only reason Wyoming and Montana have any relevance in presidential elections at all. If that were removed then candidates would pretty much never leave the coasts for campaigning. It gives underpopulated red states more sway in the election than they would otherwise have. So you're saying they would get proportionally little representation because there aren't very many people to represent from them? I'm not sure why this is being cast as a bad thing.
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Dec 25, 2013 03:33
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Dusseldorf posted:So you're saying they would get proportionally little representation because there aren't very many people to represent from them? I'm not sure why this is being cast as a bad thing. There are issues which require disproportionate amount of funding or support for the population a state has.
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Dec 25, 2013 03:36
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Dusseldorf posted:So you're saying they would get proportionally little representation because there aren't very many people to represent from them? I'm not sure why this is being cast as a bad thing. Because we've been taught since we were kids that the Founding Fathers were living gods and obviously if they saw small states being represented in accordance with their populations as a bad thing, then it is. Also those new state maps are just a chance for the people making them to make up dumb names.
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Dec 25, 2013 04:09
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IceAgeComing posted:As someone who's never been to the states before, I think I may have broken that map thing... My Japanese wife took the test, she learned English in America on the west coast: 
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Dec 25, 2013 05:04
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