Random Thoughts X: Impromptu Interpretations

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I suppose they sent you a digitised copy of the actual file used to print the book? I've been sent some of those for translation work.

That's what I'm thinking. The damn ePub didn't even have a cover image, I had to insert it myself.
 
Now that various US states are starting to quarantine themselves from one another, I had what might have been a beer-soaked discussion with a friend about what the US would look like if it splintered into its component parts. Then I got lists of the GDP of US states and of countries around the world, and cut 'n pasted them together into a spreadsheet, just for one view of what the US would look like in a global context if it wasn't a single country. The list of countries isn't comprehensive, and there could be any number of reasons this exercise is dumb. Also, GDP Per Capita might be a more useful number, but I didn't think of that until this morning and I don't feel like doing this all again.

Spoiler :
Country/US state GDP
China 14.3 trn
Japan 5 trn
Germany 3.8 trn
California 3.1 trn
India 2.8 trn
UK 2.8 trn
Italy 2 trn
Texas 1.9 trn
Canada 1.7 trn
New York 1.7 trn
Russia 1.7 trn
Mexico 1.2 trn
Florida 1.1 trn
Indonesia 1.1 trn
Netherlands 909 bln
Illinois 900 bln
Pennsylvania 824 bln
Saudi Arabia 793 bln
Ohio 706 bln
Switzerland 703 bln
New Jersey 652 bln
Georgia 625 bln
Washington 610 bln
Massachusetts 604 bln
North Carolina 596 bln
Poland 592 bln
Taiwan 574 bln
Virginia 561 bln
Michigan 548 bln
Thailand 543 bln
Iran 445 bln
Maryland 434 bln
UAE 421 bln
Colorado 396 bln
Israel 395 bln
Ireland 388 bln
Minnesota 386 bln
Tennessee 385 bln
Indiana 381 bln
Philippines 376 bln
Arizona 372 bln
Singapore 372 bln
Wisconsin 352 bln
South Africa 351 bln
Missouri 336 bln
Egypt 303 bln
Connecticut 289 bln
Chile 282 bln
Finland 268 bln
Louisiana 267 bln
Oregon 255 bln
Romania 250 bln
South Carolina 250 bln
Alabama 234 bln
Iraq 234 bln
Kentucky 217 bln
Greece 209 bln
Oklahoma 207 bln
New Zealand 206 bln
Iowa 197 bln
Utah 192 bln
Kazakhstan 180 bln
Nevada 180 bln
Kansas 175 bln
Ukraine 153 bln
Arkansas 135 bln
Kuwait 134 bln
Nebraska 129 bln
Mississippi 120 bln
Morocco 118 bln
New Mexico 105 bln
Slovak Republic 105 bln
Hawaii 98 bln
Ethiopia 96 bln
New Hampshire 90 bln
Dominican Republic 89 bln
Idaho 82 bln
West Virginia 78 bln
Oman 77 bln
Delaware 76 bln
Guatemala 76 bln
Maine 68 bln
Bulgaria 67 bln
Rhode Island 64 bln
Tanzania 63 bln
North Dakota 57 bln
Uruguay 56 bln
Alaska 55 bln
South Dakota 54 bln
Lithuania 54 bln
Montana 53 bln
Lebanon 53 bln
Bolivia 40 bln
Wyoming 39 bln
Cameroon 38 bln
Vermont 35 bln
Latvia 34 bln

All numbers are in USD, copied from Wikipedia. GDP of US states provided is from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, as of 2019. International GDPs is from The World Bank, also 2019.
 
In the midst of this pandemic, some provinces and territories here have declared that people from other provinces/territories are not welcome unless they're residents or work in essential jobs. This has led to situations of people not being allowed to attend funerals for immediate family, and people doing essential work in one province but they live just over the border in another province being verbally abused, their vehicle vandalized, sometimes they're assaulted... honestly, the border towns in Alberta and BC have to learn to get along, since each depends on the other for their local economy - more so now that foreign tourists are prohibited.

And while all this is going on, there's a group of BS!C people in Alberta pushing for "Wexit" - western separation. Again. :shake:
 
BS!C people?
 
British Separatist Columbia, I suspect.
Now that various US states are starting to quarantine themselves from one another, I had what might have been a beer-soaked discussion with a friend about what the US would look like if it splintered into its component parts. Then I got lists of the GDP of US states and of countries around the world, and cut 'n pasted them together into a spreadsheet, just for one view of what the US would look like in a global context if it wasn't a single country. The list of countries isn't comprehensive, and there could be any number of reasons this exercise is dumb. Also, GDP Per Capita might be a more useful number, but I didn't think of that until this morning and I don't feel like doing this all again.

Spoiler :
Country/US state GDP
China 14.3 trn
Japan 5 trn
Germany 3.8 trn
California 3.1 trn
India 2.8 trn
UK 2.8 trn
Italy 2 trn
Texas 1.9 trn
Canada 1.7 trn
New York 1.7 trn
Russia 1.7 trn
Mexico 1.2 trn
Florida 1.1 trn
Indonesia 1.1 trn
Netherlands 909 bln
Illinois 900 bln
Pennsylvania 824 bln
Saudi Arabia 793 bln
Ohio 706 bln
Switzerland 703 bln
New Jersey 652 bln
Georgia 625 bln
Washington 610 bln
Massachusetts 604 bln
North Carolina 596 bln
Poland 592 bln
Taiwan 574 bln
Virginia 561 bln
Michigan 548 bln
Thailand 543 bln
Iran 445 bln
Maryland 434 bln
UAE 421 bln
Colorado 396 bln
Israel 395 bln
Ireland 388 bln
Minnesota 386 bln
Tennessee 385 bln
Indiana 381 bln
Philippines 376 bln
Arizona 372 bln
Singapore 372 bln
Wisconsin 352 bln
South Africa 351 bln
Missouri 336 bln
Egypt 303 bln
Connecticut 289 bln
Chile 282 bln
Finland 268 bln
Louisiana 267 bln
Oregon 255 bln
Romania 250 bln
South Carolina 250 bln
Alabama 234 bln
Iraq 234 bln
Kentucky 217 bln
Greece 209 bln
Oklahoma 207 bln
New Zealand 206 bln
Iowa 197 bln
Utah 192 bln
Kazakhstan 180 bln
Nevada 180 bln
Kansas 175 bln
Ukraine 153 bln
Arkansas 135 bln
Kuwait 134 bln
Nebraska 129 bln
Mississippi 120 bln
Morocco 118 bln
New Mexico 105 bln
Slovak Republic 105 bln
Hawaii 98 bln
Ethiopia 96 bln
New Hampshire 90 bln
Dominican Republic 89 bln
Idaho 82 bln
West Virginia 78 bln
Oman 77 bln
Delaware 76 bln
Guatemala 76 bln
Maine 68 bln
Bulgaria 67 bln
Rhode Island 64 bln
Tanzania 63 bln
North Dakota 57 bln
Uruguay 56 bln
Alaska 55 bln
South Dakota 54 bln
Lithuania 54 bln
Montana 53 bln
Lebanon 53 bln
Bolivia 40 bln
Wyoming 39 bln
Cameroon 38 bln
Vermont 35 bln
Latvia 34 bln

All numbers are in USD, copied from Wikipedia. GDP of US states provided is from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, as of 2019. International GDPs is from The World Bank, also 2019.
Yeah, it's non-comprehensive because I think California's supposed to be #7 instead of #5, but yeah, a California Republic like the one in Fallout is viable, at so many levels… of course, California is rich because of its membership in the U.S. of A., but that's another thing, eh? ;)
 
BS!C people?
Slang term that is not complimentary (don't worry; it's not racist). Western separatism has been around for decades, and there have been numerous fringe parties formed, but they never go anywhere. Nowadays people are looking at the BQ in Quebec and thinking that if the BQ can be a federal party dedicated to taking Quebec out of Confederation, why can't there be a similar party for the West (run from Alberta, but would include Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia).

The premier of my province is simultaneously fanning the flames of this nonsense, while making pious speeches about how separatism is wrong at the same time that he's making demands of the federal government and talking about opting out of the CPP and setting up a provincial police force to replace the RCMP.

Like I said... BS!C. These people are stark-raving nuts. And we have to put up with them at least until 2023, when the next provincial election is slated.
 
@Synsensa (probably as a joke) suggested that I change the typewriter sounds in FocusWriter to explosions. I replaced the wav file in the program folder. The result is pretty hilarious.
 
@Synsensa (probably as a joke) suggested that I change the typewriter sounds in FocusWriter to explosions. I replaced the wav file in the program folder. The result is pretty hilarious.
Has it improved how emphatic your characters are?
 
This is what I like real typewriters for. You can’t alt-tab back to something and then decide to throw down a game of solitaire.

I will also play solitaire with real cards from time to time. There is a sense of accomplishment the iPhone version doesn’t give me.
A sense of pride and accomplishment, you say?
 
So shame and accomplishment, then.
 
This is what I like real typewriters for. You can’t alt-tab back to something and then decide to throw down a game of solitaire.

I will also play solitaire with real cards from time to time. There is a sense of accomplishment the iPhone version doesn’t give me.
There are some forms of solitaire that need two decks and a lot of table space. I don't have that much physical space here (the only available tables have computer stuff on them), so I play one of the numerous solitaire games I have on the computer.
 
[...]of course, California is rich because of its membership in the U.S. of A., but that's another thing, eh? ;)
I expect this is true for much of the country, that our wealth is in part a product of the fact that we aren't a collection of 50 countries.

There was an article in the paper yesterday about how some US states are starting to get concerned because their neighboring states have varying levels of control on the coronavirus. Whether it's different requirements about wearing masks and 'social distancing', or just cultural differences, people in one state may be more laissez faire about it, but they're still free to travel as they please. It's more complicated than that, though. Because our state borders are wide-open, people along every state border in the Union travel across them on a daily basis, living in one state and working in the other, or their families spread out. States have varying sales taxes, so people living at the border of a state with higher taxes on retail purchases routinely go next door to shop, probably without even thinking about it. In some places, you might not even notice you've crossed into the next state.

So in an economic sense, the US states aren't just next to one another, their economies overlap willy-nilly. If you tried to make an "economic map" of the US, you probably wouldn't even be able to pick out all of the states' political borders. And that's without taking into consideration the distribution of Federal funds for things like our interstate highways, which are literally invaluable to commerce. Imagine if Wyoming had to pay for all of its own highways. What would that do to the economy, not just of Wyoming, but neighboring states? How much of the commerce to and from Nebraska and Idaho uses Wyoming's interstates?

Also, our international trade comes through a handful of big ports. iirc, Houston, New Jersey/New York and Los Angeles/Long Beach are the super-duper ones, but we have some others. I don't know how much of the value of that international trade ends up in the GDP figures of those states. I don't know how the EU handles it, vis a vis the ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg, which are their super-ports (in terms of total traffic, Rotterdam and Antwerp are actually bigger than any of our individual ports - and if you're wondering, yes, the East Asian ports blow everybody out of the water). Unless the Dutch, Germans and Belgians are actually consuming all of those goods themselves, there must be some rules about moving freight across European national borders by truck and train without the goods being so expensive at their destination that almost nobody will buy them.

I suppose the relationship between those 50 hypothetical independent nations could be whatever they wanted, but I suspect that the collective, overall wealth of the 50 states would drop. For comparison's sake, the GDP of the EU is close enough to ours to call it close enough, 18 trn to 20 trn, but they have more people.
 
Unless the Dutch, Germans and Belgians are actually consuming all of those goods themselves, there must be some rules about moving freight across European national borders by truck and train without the goods being so expensive at their destination that almost nobody will buy them.
It might be this EU thing.
 
Yes, but markets are evil. The EU is a state, which is also evil. So, following the thread's subtitle, uhm… we should be against everything, just to be safe.
 
Yes, but markets are evil. The EU is a state, which is also evil. So, following the thread's subtitle, uhm… we should be against everything, just to be safe.

Its not just a state, its a supranational state, so it must be super evil.
Hence the mob with torches and pitchforks that pretends to be the UK government.
 
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