That quite plausible map, and the other one, really highlights how arbitrary and contingent the actual 50 states are. Things could have been very different.
And his maps don’t even begin to scratch the surface of how different they might have been. They’re jazz improvs on the underlying melody of current reality. Starting instead from a zero baseline we could have had ~2500 Rhode Island-sized states or just 6 ~Alaska-sized states. Or anything in between or not in between.
And did anyone else notice that Lake of the Woods is completely detached on both maps?
Meh. In a well-organised world, they would just all be Lower Saskatchewan. Sorta like Baja California. Minot is the new Tijuana.
He worked Cascadia in there as well.
Point Roberts is even included!
I was looking at this again this morning and trying to decide if one could unambiguously identify the bogus states versus the (slightly deformed) real states. IOW, if each of us colored what we thought were the real states one color and the fake ones another color, how well would all our maps match up?
I think pretty closely, but I bet there’s some hunk of country we’d have bickering about. e.g. IMO the Pacific coastal rectangle just above California is the fake one, with real Oregon & Washington above. And I bet most of us would agree with that assessment. But which two of the three states in the New Hampshire + Vermont region are real and which is the imposter? I don’t know.
They’re all fake
The New England one is easy, because the real Maine border is (mostly) a straight line, and there’s no state with a straight(ish) western border that’s wider on the south end like that. The toughest one is probably Indiana, since the XKCD map pretty much splits the real Indiana into two.
Those are pretty easy (though I did check a map to be sure; my geography’s terrible.) The one on the left is shaped approximately correctly for Vermont. The one in the middle is shaped approximately correctly for New Hampshire. The one on the right is shaped wrong for either of them.
Thank you both. I’m showing off my relative regional chauvinism / ignorance I guess.
As to the Indiana situation, I’ll suggest the one on the left that would contain Gary is the “real” Indiana, the state two to the east that closely resembles the shape of real Ohio, is kinda squashed left/right, and borders most of Lake Erie’s south shore is the “real” Ohio, and the one that looks like Indiana’s shorter, plainer cousin in between them is the fake.
Which between these three cases ( CA/??/OR, NY/VT/NH/??/ME, and IN/??/OH) suggests his over-arching generation logic. To wit:
Start with two distinctively-shaped adjacent states, squash both of them a bit to create some empty space in the middle, then create a fresh state that shares the gross shape and some border details with one of the originals. e.g. The fake in between the altered IN & altered OH has a slanted sawtooth bottom and a nearly straight flat top while the sides follow meridians. And it’s about a 3:1 ratio of height to width. All of which are rough indicia of real undistorted Indiana.
I also think overall his USA is about one row of Kansas or Dakota-sized states taller than the real thing. Which gave him room to slip in what amounts to a whole row-worth of new states from coast to coast. Not a single contiguous row mind, just room enough to slip a ringer in somewhere along the total north to south extent. And his USA is about one column-worth of western plains states wider too for the same reason.
The sum of the extra room is that the “real” states don’t need much squishing; a bit of that, plus a bit of distributing the extra national empty space between the “real” ones about right to enable another similarly-sized state in that region, then finally fudging the boundaries of the fake newbie to be plausibly similar to the “real” but mildly distorted neighbors.
A fun map to fiddle with for sure.
I think it’s brilliant. Now, Randall, figure out the effect on the electoral college…
What are the demographics of the people currently living in the states of Klamath, Pocatello, and Thermopolis? Or South West Virginia, Newer Hampshire, or Yankee Carolina?
The one I have trouble with is my own state. Both Arkansases have some of the state’s characteristics. North Arkansas gets the northeast portion correct, while South Arkansas gets the southwest portion correct.
I guess the South also gets the southeast corner correct, so it barely wins, even though the North’s Missouri cutout shows a lot of the character of the state. So I’d pick South Arkansas if I had to pick.
But, as you can guess by my naming, I prefer to split the difference.
East and West Colorado have a similar issue.
Of course, their shapes don’t vary a bit, only what states they border.
I thought it was clever of Randall to not have a second Four Corners, which would really make the Southwest look off. As it is, Gila evokes New Mexico along the Mexico border just enough for a casual perusal to miss it, and its aspect ratio is close enough to both Arizona and New Mexico to seem like the second when looking at the first, and like the first when focusing on the second.
That’s interesting. I lived in MO for ~20 years. To me it’s “obvious” the north Arkansas is the real one and the south one is an imposter made mostly from a copy of northern Louisiana plus a smidgen of Mississippi river wiggles.
I’m not suggesting I’m right and you’re wrong. You’re the local there not me. It’s just interesting to me how strongly our perspectives differ.
For sure the fact MO is little-distorted helps make it an anchor of reality that other nearby real and fake states are judged by. Or is my impression bogus and just another manifestation of my MO-centric glasses while orienting myself around and within the Midwest and upper South?
For sure his MO has migrated a couple hundred miles north of the real one and its western border is now mostly connected to NE, not KS.
I suspect that’s because the part of Arkansas you are most familiar with is its northern border. That little bit where the south east corner cuts into Arkansas stands out. Leave it out, and the state doesn’t look like Arkansas.
But I can’t help but also notice how wrong that southwest corner is. That part where Texas juts in at almost a right angle is just as important in my mental shape of Arkansas. The state always looks completely wrong when it is left out.
Now I wonder if people who live there would agree with which one I think is the “real” state vs. the added one.
I think I consider the southern Arkansas to be the “real” one, but that’s partly colored by my perception that there must be a Texarkana. Which of course can’t be in the northern one.
ETA: @BigT two posts up.
You’re (unsurprisingly) absolutely right.
I’ve been trying to do all my xkcd map analysis without reference to a real map. So letting his states flow against my own partly-remembered imprecise notions of what each state looks like and what it borders with. So looking for “qualitative” or “gestalt” comparisons, not the “quantitative” comparisons against a real map.
I just “cheated” and looked at a real map of AR and you nailed it. He borrowed the two distinctive corner cuts and put one in each new state. Other than that they each have mostly parallels for north and south borders, a wiggly river on the east, and are tapered a bit to be wider on top than bottom. But after those very high-level qualia, everything is wrong with both of them. and more or less equally wrong.
As an adult I’ve spent a lot more time looking at maps with state borders than many folks, but it’s still interesting how much some of my impressions are pretty close and others are “Thar be Dragyns!” fanciful.
Two of my cousin’s kids were born in North Dakota, which they like to call “Baja Manitoba.”
Here’s my idea to make it work. I numbered all the “states.” That will make it easy to point out which ones you don’t see as states and/or name the ones you think are. Or, heck, do both: name the new and old states.
In my view, the fake states are 5, 8, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 26, 34*, 39*, 43*, 51, and 57. The starred ones, I could maybe be talked into taking the other one instead (and I think in all of those cases, it’s clear which “the other one” is).