Koramei posted:

The whole map projection argument feels a bit silly to me. It's bad that Europe is lended bias because of a projection incorrectly showing its relative size, sure, but you know what else is bad? Using relative geographic size as a measure for anything except which continent would come out on top if they were all turned into massive dinosaurs. Greenland may actually be smaller than South America, but you know, Bangladesh and Java together are also like a tenth of south America's size, yet they hold the same population. Are they less important because they're smaller? gently caress no. gently caress off. gently caress map projections.

(Also the correct answer is Antarctica because it can turn into a spinning-doom-circle-dinosaur. Asia would just like fall over, it barely has any legs)

Peanut President posted:

"Other Responses" are amazing
3.349 Million "White"
11,945 "Appalachian"
9,681 "Acadian"
1.089 Million "Religious Response" does that mean they filled in the wrong box or what?

Reveilled posted:

I'm very curious as to the nationality of the person who drew it, thinking that the average American would know what a Belarus is nevermind identify it as the last dictatorship in Europe.

appropriatemetaphor posted:

The big swastika one is vaguely Belorussian in shape.

Trench_Rat posted:

what is the spot in the middle of spain?

Soviet Commubot posted:

What exactly is going on in northern Italy? Do they burn tires for warmth or something?

Fojar38 posted:

What's Norway's reason for being so negatively viewed then?

Killer robot posted:

Mostly, though there are edge cases due to every state's number of representatives being an integer. Big states regress toward the mean of around 700,000 people per representative, small states can have districts ranging from 350,000 to just short of a million, and this can skew numbers one way or the other. Beyond even that, having a small number makes the skew easier. A state with 2 or 3 representatives, districts drawn by blindly neutral population map, and 2/3 of its voters going to one party might have all of its representatives go that direction: if you wanted that not to happen you might have to deliberately gerrymander to make sure the minority party gets a chance at representation at all. And if it has 2 representatives and a 1/1 split, the majority party is now under-represented: you can't really win. A state with 30 representatives and the other factors all the same makes that a whole lot less likely, and makes proportional representation easier either deliberately or by accident.

Mostly it's that gerrymandering for political gain by whoever is drawing the maps is a genuine thing, but states and especially small states are hard to get proportionate representation to due to rounding errors. Given a good number of relatively small red states, it wouldn't be terribly surprising if this explains some.

Budzilla posted:

This should have been posted in the OP. PNAC redrawing of the ME.

Fuschia tude posted:

Possibly an interesting idea -- has anyone ever proposed apportioning house districts based on population alone? A lot of these districts abut fairly awkwardly against the state borders. I assume two people just on either side of a state border have more in common than with the people in their respective state capitals.

Of course that would probably mean people in, say, Wyoming would be divided among something like south Idaho, west Dakota, and north Colorado and Utah, but in general I'd think this might make a more equitable division of people, with representatives of actual geographic areas, rather than only subsets of states. With the way culture tends to accumulate according to number of people, I'd think these representatives' constituents might be more homogeneous than in the current system.

Emanuel Collective posted:

Iowa has a neutral legislative committe draw up maps, which the legislature can accept or reject. It seems to work quite well. None of Iowa's districts has a Cook PVI of more than 5 points for either party, which is remarkable.

EvanSchenck posted:

That's the case at the federal level but not at the state level. As an Iowan, my sense is that the party that refused to accept the non-partisan reapportionment system would be punished by the electorate. In any case, Iowa might be home to some firebrands like Steve King but it's very close to 50-50 D:R, and the state-level parties are tend to be moderate. The main leader of the reactionary movement in Iowa is a guy named Bob Vander Plaats, and he's tried to run for governor three different times, each time getting stuffed in the primary by a more moderate candidate with better ties to the business establishment.

Baloogan posted:

How the hell does "Jennifer" take over like that?

jb7 posted:

I feel bad for the schools that aren't even the most popular in the counties in which they are located.

stereobreadsticks posted:

Just like in the NFL map that was posted in hear a while back Montana needs to get its poo poo together.

DrSunshine posted:

By a further comparison, it's a drive of 3,370 miles at 65 hours from Kashgar, Xinjiang, China to Guangzhou, Guangdong, China. Which is roughly comparable to traveling from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to Miami, Florida, USA, at a distance of 3,433 miles, 50 hours driving.

China... is big.

Lycus posted:

I'm still waiting for some libertarian group to move to Bir Tawil, lay claim to it and try to start some casinos or something. Would love to see how that turned out.

Riptor posted:

Kentucky: Proud member of the European Union

Riptor posted:

Yep, same reason Northwestern University is in Illinois

Vivian Darkbloom posted:

This one's politically-loaded because it makes me go on a rant about how Twin Peaks was too good for America.

Golbez posted:

You've got the name slightly wrong. It's Case Western Reserve University. Back before the Revolution, most of the thirteen colonies had "sea-to-sea grants", basically meaning they claimed everything to the west until you hit seawater. Almost all of the colonies surrendered these grants to the federal government upon entering the union, in exchange for the federal government taking on their war debt, and were left generally with their current forms. The only ones who didn't were Georgia (its grant was truncated later), Virginia (which was far larger than it is now, but still surrendered Northwest Territory, which was part of its sea-to-sea grant [and overlapped with several other colonies' sea-to-sea greants]), and Connecticut.

Connecticut's was interesting. They couldn't have a straight line, of course: Pennsylvania was in the way. This didn't stop them from continuing on the west side of Pennsylvania where they left off. And when they surrendered their grant to the federal government, they maintained one portion, which they called their "Western Reserve."

This is now the northeast sixth or so of Ohio.

Golbez posted:

I made this map.

Rincewind posted:

Doesn't Nebraska or somewhere already assign its electors proportionally?

Antwan3K posted:

I reckon Argentina would construct a completely new island just to block the Falklands, if this were to be implemented. After all, Dubai did it, it's not impossible.

Ammat The Ankh posted:

Why are the Swedes so lucky in war? Haven't they been neutral for centuries?

Peanut President posted:

Folks asking me to define worth: Can't farm it, it's nearly inhospitable, and it's really hard to get to. It's like buying the moon.

Sheng-ji Yang posted:

Yeah, here's one that supposedly includes all teams, though I'm not sure about how accurate it is. ATM definitely aren't as popular as UT in all of east Texas.

Private Speech posted:

A dig at Stalinists might be more appropriate too, given who was in charge then & all that.

Private Speech posted:

I'd argue it doesn't, it was the descriptive word for soviet ideology stemming from Lenin until the end.

Rebel Blob posted:

I learned about this profoundly dumb thing, so now you have to as well: Disney Villains Victorious.

i say swears online posted:

wanna see that flat-earth atheist vs young-earth creationist PTA meeting

Xelkelvos posted:

Because Paul was high as gently caress when he wrote Revelations and someone at the Council of Nicea demanded it be included.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

The religions practiced in the South evolved as a result of the Great Awakening, as a reactionary response to the rise of secularism in the largely Protestant US. The South is thus "protestant" against Protestantism, which flips adherents back to believing in eternal damnation.

i say swears online posted:

no coherent geographical justification, no claim on northwestern university.[b][/b] literally the worst irridentist map i've ever seen

OwlFancier posted:

illiindi
noisana

alageo
bamargia

SlothfulCobra posted:

drk posted:

According to this highly scientific illustration, English is the most German language of all