3236: Border Message

Border Message

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Title text: Thanks to differences in logging regulations, the messages actually turned out to be visible from the air.

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Explanation

This is one of 67 incomplete explanations: This page was created by a bored legislator. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

Quite a lot of US States have very long, straight borders, in some cases due to lacking obvious geographic features round the area. This may well be quite boring for boundary legistrators, having to just draw long straight lines. In this comic though, legislators who were negotiating the boundary between two geographic areas ("Southlake" and "East Valley") livened up the normally boring process by arranging for the boundary to spell out a message when viewed on a map. It's unknown whether the areas are municipal regions, counties, etc. The boundary definition includes multiple areas — such as the bottom of the W, the interior of the O's and other letters with "holes", the apostrophe and so on — that are exclaves (probably of the northern territory, that are surrounded by the southern one, in most cases), (unlabeled) enclaved territories in their own right that are associated with no other disconnected area, or possibly terra nullius. This would be very inconvenient for both tourists and locals, since they would have to constantly consult the map if they want to know whether they are in East Valley or Southlake.

The title text implies that the area around the border is forested. Due to the different logging regulations in the two areas, the densities or types of trees on each side of the border are so different that you can see the border, and hence the messages, when looking down on the land. What logging would happen in the 'no man's land' between the letters is unclear (possibly none?), but evidentally that is different as well.

This comic may have been inspired by gerrymandering: defining voting districts to favor a particular group. This often results in districts with very unusual shapes. The comic was published on the day after Virginia voters passed a referendum approving redistricting that favored the Democratic Party. See also the Belgium-Netherlands border, which is extremely chaotic. This comic also happens to have been published on Earth Day.

Transcript

This is one of 43 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[A section of a map showing the border between two geographic areas, East Valley and Southlake (marked on it). The border is shown as a dotted line, and it spells out a message, followed by a small diagonal part:]

WE HOPE YOU'RE ENJOYING THIS MAP

[Caption below comic:]

When local legislators get bored

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Discussion

Wow, I got here early. 47.152.141.142 21:11, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

*salutations.* Caliban (talk) 21:39, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

The (sort of) Belgian village of Baarle-Hertog has numerous bizarre exclaves with neighbouring Netherlands, almost as complex as the borders in the cartoon. Some of the borders even pass through houses. https://maps.app.goo.gl/M5duocjEkJRQKedEA Martin (talk) 22:22, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Baarle is divided into two, with ~-Nassau being Dutch (the Dutch royal family is Oranje-Nassau) and ~-Hertog is Belgian. Note that Baarle is a 2km² area with an extremely chaotic border, but that otherwise the Dutch-Belgian border is pretty normal relative to other European borders. IIVQ (talk) 05:15, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

SMBC once had a similar idea to stop Gerrymandering: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-07-12 90.146.31.117 23:02, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Gerrymandering was not my first thought when I saw this comic, maybe that part should be removed from the description? I don't see any real way that it connects to gerrymandering besides the fact that it talks about borders. Qoiuoiuoiu (talk) 01:56, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

Maybe it was added after the vague link to that SMBC comic was found? 110.145.224.178 03:22, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the comment about gerrymandering was added in the very first text to be put on that page (21:09, 22 April 2026). It's not merely because of borders; it's because of "borders that have been made extremely convoluted for artificial reasons unrelated to the factors that usually define such boundaries, such as geographical features, roads, latitude/longitude, or regular divisions". BunsenH (talk) 03:38, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

Even as a non-USian, the recent gerrymandering efforts immediately seemed like an obvious prompt for the idea of the comic to me, even if it doesn't specifically reference it. 82.13.184.33 08:29, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

I once spelled out words on openstreetmap. There were some hiking trails nearby from a data set that opened up and I could not put them all up in one session, so I spelled "To Do" (in the shape of the actual hiking trails) on Openstreetmap. IIVQ (talk) 05:15, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

Is there a category for US State comics? There seems to be a lot of them, and a category might make sence. If there isn't perhaps someone could make one? -- GSLikesCats307 (talk) 09:26, 23 April 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
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