35 Comments

Despite popular belief, Colorado is actually not a rectangle with four sides. It's what you'd call a hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon and it's got 697 sides

https://www.facebook.com/reel/880987283830883

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What a lovely unforced error!

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Point Roberts, Washington is another weird one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington

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Now that you mention it, this one is familiar! And, it's a great example. Excellent add-on.

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This is not an issue with the border itself, but isn’t there another town in Minnesota (possibly Caribou) that is not accessible by road except from Canada?

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This would hardly surprise me, although I think that the Angle is likely the furthest away of these.

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Definitely. That little piece of Minnesota is a true oddity.

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It makes me wonder about other borders, you know?

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If you look at a map of the Mississippi River, there are parts of Tennessee that are only accessible from Arkansas, and vice versa, due to changes in the river’s course. Similarly, the westernmost peninsula of Kentucky is only accessible from Tennessee.

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To make things even more interesting, you can’t even reach that part of Kentucky by crossing the river from somewhere in Kentucky - the opposite side of the river is in Missouri.

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That's great! So weird!

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This article reminded me of a page I found while exploring Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-crossing_ceremony - The line-crossing ceremony is a maritime tradition that celebrates a sailor’s first voyage across the Equator, often involving a playful ritual with King Neptune. It originated as a way to boost morale or test the mettle of new sailors on long voyages. Nowadays, it’s a common naval practice and a form of entertainment on some commercial ships.

What about ceremonies for passing state borders? How would you like to celebrate?

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That's really neat! I didn't know about the equatorial celebration.

I pass state borders all the time, so for me it's kind of like counting down states to my destination, assuming I'm driving somewhere far away (which was often the case for me during the 2000s and early 2010s).

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Passing states :)

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The Canadian town of Lloydminster is directly on the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan and this divides the town in half. Likewise for the American town of Bristol, split between Virginia and Tennessee.

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Oh yes! I know Bristol well, and have visited perhaps a hundred times over the years. I regularly taught jiu jitsu seminars at Absolute Jiu Jitsu in the town.

We even ran an event called the "State Line Grappling Championships" there once.

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This feels very similar to Denmark and the island of Bornholm. While it belongs to Denmark, the island is located much closer to Sweden, which basically "wedges" itself between the two. The most popular way to get to Bornholm is therefore to first take a train from Copenhagen to Ystad in Sweden, then take the ferry from there. (Unless you fly or take a much longer direct ferry from Køge.)

Also, your Substack has just been reported for proposing risky behaviors like driving a vehicle across untested frozen bodies of water. Looks like AndrewGPT didn't undergo sufficient red-teaming procedures and is not well aligned.

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Oh, Lake Woebegone's waters have been well tested! Wait, what were we talking about?

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I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of the water gushing through the shattered side windows of my car as it plunges into the icy depths of the Baltic Sea after I attempted to drive it straight to Bornholm upon following your advice.

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I'm sorry, all operators are busy at the moment. If you'll leave us a message, someone will deep-sea dive a message sealed in a pressurized container.

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This message has been brought to you by OceanGate.

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Too soon! They just suffered a crushing defeat.

I didn't say that.

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I had a sinking feeling you'd make such a subpar comment. I guess the pressure is getting to you.

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I'm instinctively drawn to the edges of things (which is how I ended up in Maine), and this is making me want to move to the Northern Shelf immediately. (I actually did look at real estate there at one point just for this reason.)

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Maine itself has a very interesting story, and I almost(ish) included it (would have made 3 states that begin with M, so the alliteration was tempting). It was a part of Massachusetts for a while, right?

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I have no idea. I'm really bad at knowing anything about the places I live. (I don't even know what the flag of Maine looks like.) You for sure know more than I do and I await your article with curiousity! 😎

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I do know that they call the northeast part of the state "downeast," which, don't even get me started on that.

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That's great! Lower Egypt is in the north and Upper Egypt is in the south (because of the way the Nile flows). I wonder if "downeast" has a similar reasoning/origin.

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It's something to do with the currents in the Gulf of Maine, and how ships had to go east in order to go north. Come to think of it, that might be a quirky topic for an article...

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"Go East in Order to Go North" is a very interesting premise, kind of like the "When Blue Makes White" article Michael Woudenberg and I worked on last month. Ironic, interesting, and intriguing, and it could open a door for other weird directional stuff.

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There are more... and that is just in the US

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Yes.

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