• mirshafie
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    17 hours ago

    I mean most American states are shaped as rectangles, have nothing notable in terms of geography or culture to tell them apart, and are under 2 million inhabitants.

    It’s like if Europe had Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and then 15 more of that, but they’re all shaped the same and speak the same language and their capitals are made of cinder block and plaster.

    • Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      14 hours ago

      I mean most American states are shaped as rectangles,

      Objectively false!

      and are under 2 million inhabitants.

      Objectively false!

      I don’t know why anyone is upvoting you

      • mirshafie
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        13 hours ago

        You’re objectively right, I was being hyperbolic. It’s a lot of states that are rectangle-shaped with quite small populations though. I mean if I had given the cutoff of “4.3 million inhabitants”, then that would cover half of all states.

        And easily more than half at least one 90 degree angle.

        Europe also has a lot of small states to be fair, and I don’t think we can expect people in general to keep track of all these.

        • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          This isn’t really relevant to the conversation, but your comments made me curious and I’ve just discovered that San Marino is actually a full 61km2. I had no idea, I thought it was about the same size as Monaco. The other mildly interesting tidbit is that Luxembourg is about the same size as Rhode Island - and both fill the role of “vortex of unknowable financial hijinks” for their respective region. I wonder what it is about small regions that breeds both tax havens and a shockingly high density of chocolatiers.

          • mirshafie
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            11 hours ago

            Yeah these small independent states are really strange. At least Rhode Island isn’t landlocked, but Luxembourg depends on all of its neighbors using it to launder money, and I’m not sure why that’s tolerated. Maybe it’s the chocolate.

            • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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              10 hours ago

              NIMBYism, but for financial criminals? Oh well. At the very least they’re not boring, I suppose that counts for something.