United Shapes of America

[cosmolinguist]

Andrew has found numbers on 538 for the midterms, so he's asking me which congressional district is mine and stuff.

I know the answer to that. But then he kept talking about the other ones, and I'm like how surprised should I be that that one's expected to flip Democrat? which one's the 7th again?

So I said "Can you not get me a map of Minnesota with all the congressional districts that I can hang right here so I have some idea what you're talking about when this happens?" (It happened not that long ago, another late-night conversation about Minnesota politics; that's when I taught him how to say names like "Ole" (which is a given name) and "Edina" (which is a town).)

Andrew looked on Amazon and couldn't find that but has found a coloring book of all the states where you can color the congressional districts!

It's called United Shapes of America. One of its authors is the 9-year-old daughter of the other; her author bio says she "enjoys reading, drawing and Taekwondo. She wants to be an astronomer and find life on other planets." I am utterly charmed.

I have too many coloring books I'm not using, or I'd have bought it already.

Comments

[softfruit]

I'm getting slightly similar feelings about the Boundary Commission's supposed new role of devising fresh boundaries for just about every general election here. It's just going to descend from the warm familiarity of "ah yes, most of that is part of the old x seat that y was MP for in the 80s" into "Liverpool Randomword... that'll be a safe Labour seat then" and "I'm not sure where that town even is"

[cosmolinguist]

These hardly ever change, I'm just out of practice/crap at paying attention! :)

[softfruit]

"Seven" is probably less good a brain-prompt than "Torridge and West Devon" too.

[haggis]

I love it! I learned where the US states are by playing an online kids game where you drag and drop the shapes. With the net result that I have a better idea of where US states are than English or Welsh counties (never learned) or their Scottish equivalents (I learned and then they changed them).

[softfruit]

I'm surprisingly grumpy about the new new counties! I'm definitely from MG, not this new-fangled RCT nonsense. Bloody post-1994 world.