I was in Texas for the eclipse. It messed me up driving on little two lane country roads with a 75mph speed limit. Back home only the big highways get close to that
Yeah, I-10 goes straight across the western most to Eastern most part of Texas and is almost 900 miles long. The average US state is larger than the average European country if you only count Russia west of the Urals. Europeans think of the US as a country similar to the UK or Germany when theu really need to think of it more like the EU and each state it’s own country. New York City to Los Angeles is almost exactly the same distance as Moscow to Portugal. Seattle to Miami is like London to Bagdad.
Europeans understand the concept of states, lots of european countries are subdivided into states. The USA is one country, a large one but still only one.
It doesn’t change the fact that the US is more analogous to a super nation organization like the EU than any particular European state. Texas and California aren’t conducting their own foreign diplomacy like the Spain or France are, but their internal laws, taxation, bureaucracies are wildly different, with each state essentially out for itself with the federal government intervening in extreme cases. Ohio and Michigan have GDP’s that are equivalent to Austria and Switzerland. Comparing Texas to Bavaria is as ridiculous as comparing New York City to Singapore.
First time visiting, i arrived in Sāo Paulo in a Bus, when i saw the sign "Welcome to Sāo Paulo i stood up and started to get my things… When we got to the São Paulo Bus Station, 5 hours later, i understood why the other passengers were very amused by my behavior.
I know so many people who choose to drive. It blows my mind. Like, yeah, the subways can be frustrating, but nowhere near as frustrating as driving in the city.
I can drive for like 2 minutes in my mind and still be in my mind. Beyond that I’m more limited by my attention span than the amount of space I can imagine.
If you drive the border of Texas it is a trip more than 40 hours long. Two straight days of non-stop driving. The US is stupid big and has an insane amount of roadways, you could drive your whole life and have roads you have never been on.
This has me curious about the extremes of the relationship between perimeter length and area of various states. Time to go down a YouTube rabbithole I think, stand up maths probably has something on it.
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