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   Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 06:10:57 JST Paul Cantrell

   One time I was talking to somebody in NYC and they called Colorado the “west coast,” and I looked at them with the dry death stare one acquires growing up in the Mountain West and said, “The distance from Denver to LA is greater than the distance from Chicago to NYC,” and I’ve never someone come that close to physically reproducing the exploding head emoji.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 06:16:50 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     (For those genuinely puzzled by the above but afraid to ask: Colorado is the West, not the West Coast.)

     Genuinely curious: where does the self-identification line shift?

     Do folks in Sacramento think of themselves as living on the “West Coast?” What about near Yosemite? Reno?

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 06:17:53 JST Paul Cantrell

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     • The Corodon

     @thecorodon Now breaking my brain trying to think about what kind of geometry this could imply taken as a mathematical definition

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     The Corodon (thecorodon@wandering.shop)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 06:17:58 JST The Corodon

     in reply to

     @inthehands
     West of the Missouri River the distance between any two points is three times greater.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 06:25:31 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     I guess it’s a good occasion to repost this one:

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 06:30:02 JST Paul Cantrell

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     • wet forest moon folklorist

     (@seachanger, is this one accurate?)

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     whetstone (whetstone@romancelandia.club)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 06:31:10 JST whetstone

     in reply to

     @inthehands As a native Coloradoan I am still salty about the summer camp kids in Minnesota who informed me that Colorado was not "western" but that California was. Validation, at long last.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 06:31:22 JST Paul Cantrell

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     • whetstone

     @whetstone
     As a Coloradan who lives in Minnesota, I can say with confidence that most of the lovely Midwesterners here have absolutely no clue where or what the West is.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 06:37:38 JST Paul Cantrell

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     • Paul_IPv6

     @paul_ipv6
     It’s all too true. Hopefully somebody will post the famous New Yorker cover about this.

     My dad in Colorado always jokes that I live “out east“ (in Minnesota). To be clear, he knows he’s joking; he’s from PA.

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     Paul_IPv6 (paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 06:37:39 JST Paul_IPv6

     in reply to

     @inthehands

     my dad grew up in NYC. to his relatives, "the west" was anything west of the hudson river. ;)

     he went to college in iowa and they never got that iowa and ohio weren't the same place. "he goes to school somewhere way out west".

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 06:38:21 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Jesse Morris

     @aubilenon Ah! I think of it as squarely Central Valley, perhaps wrongly!

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     Jesse Morris (aubilenon@escaperooms.social)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 06:38:22 JST Jesse Morris

     in reply to

     @inthehands I've talked with folks in Sacramento who think of themselves as living in the Bay Area.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 06:56:12 JST Paul Cantrell

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     • Paul_IPv6

     @paul_ipv6
     Sounds like the one!

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     Paul_IPv6 (paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 06:56:13 JST Paul_IPv6

     in reply to

     @inthehands

     suspect you mean the 29 Mar 1976 cover. the copy i found is very heavily copyright limited on use but shows Manhattan, 9th ave, 10th ave, Hudson River, then a very narrow brown strip of bare earth, then the Pacific ocean. sums it up pretty well. ;)

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 08:17:09 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     I always think back to this one NY Times article where the food reporter breathlessly praised the new food craze that had started in Brooklyn: banh mi.

     I remember thinking, “Banh mi have been popular here in MSP, in the US, for…what, 10 years? 20 years? And have existed in Vietnam, their place of origin, for •how many• decades now?!” But no, it officially does not exist until it reaches NYC.

     That’s the mindset in which somebody can thing Colorado is somewhere near the Pacific Coast.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 08:19:31 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • wet forest moon folklorist

     @seachanger ha, I can imagine

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     wet forest moon folklorist (seachanger@alaskan.social)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 08:19:32 JST wet forest moon folklorist

     in reply to

     @inthehands more likely “still big mad about being left off the map last time” lol

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 08:49:13 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     I notice and appreciate all the folks in the replies who posted the classic New Yorker cover on this topic.

     My cousin from PA had that framed in her apartment back when she lived in Brooklyn.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 09:01:25 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • okanogen TheEnemyFromWithin
     • whetstone

     @Okanogen @whetstone
     These terms are of course situated relative to history, not geography. The Midwest was exactly that from the point of view of European descendants who had colonized only what we would now call the East Coast.

     But if we are going with raw geography, Colorado is most certainly in the western half of the lower 48.

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     okanogen TheEnemyFromWithin (okanogen@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 09:01:26 JST okanogen TheEnemyFromWithin

     in reply to

     • whetstone

     @inthehands @whetstone
     My friend from Seattle laughed that people used the term "Midwest". It's not west at all. It's the middle of the country He would also dispute Colorado being "The West" Texas, too. They are in the middle of the country.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 09:06:20 JST Paul Cantrell

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     • Maggie Maybe

     @maggiemaybe Official definitions aside, I wonder whether people from Bakersfield would consider themselves to be West Coast?

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     Maggie Maybe (maggiemaybe@hear-me.social)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 09:06:21 JST Maggie Maybe

     in reply to

     @inthehands I don’t even consider Bakersfield to be the west coast, but it is because California is.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 09:26:03 JST Paul Cantrell

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     • okanogen TheEnemyFromWithin
     • whetstone

     @whetstone @Okanogen
     Indeed. Edward Said wrote a whole book (Orientalism) with this observation as its cornerstone!

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     whetstone (whetstone@romancelandia.club)'s status on Saturday, 23-Sep-2023 09:26:04 JST whetstone

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     • okanogen TheEnemyFromWithin

     @inthehands @Okanogen “midwest” is no more nonsensical than “the middle east”

     just tells you something about the perspective from which the naming originated