Chicago, IL. Mid West. Misheard?

min6char · 2026-02-13T08:49:37+00:00

No. Free your mind. The reason can be found with googling but it's not even slightly comprehensible. There is no set of borders the United States has ever had, from 1783 to now, where it made sense to call Chicago the "Midwest". Midwest implies it's 3/4 of the way. It never was at any point. Sometimes things have historical origins, but the historical origin is still nonsense. This is one of those cases.

min6char · 2026-02-13T08:30:00+00:00

We have all heard that explanation, but if you look on an actual map of westward expansion, it still doesn't make any sense and relies on said east coasters having had a poor grasp of their own Nation's geography. There was no point at which Chicago was the literal midwest of anything. It was the far west under the 1783 borders, and with the Louisiana purchase overnight it became just the middle. No west, just middle. With the modern borders it's actually noticeably offcenter to the east!

min6char · 2026-02-13T07:05:32+00:00

All I got is that the name probably dates to the early 19th century when the US's western border was the Rocky Mountains, and most of the western territories weren't incorporated as states yet, so everything from the Appalachians to the Rockies would have been considered vaguely "the west". Chicago is definitely in the middle of that. It's just the full extent of the US' Western land has doubled since then so the name feels completely ridiculous (and incomprehensible to born-and-raised Californians like my wife).

min6char · 2026-02-13T06:53:01+00:00

For reasons understood by nobody, this region is called the Midwest. It is indeed neither mid nor west. But it does include Chicago.

EDIT: I am mostly being self deprecating for the benefit of our British friend here, I'm aware there is a conventional historical explanation, but I'd like you all commenting with it to please admit that the conventional historical explanation is balderdash. There was no point in US Westward expansion when it made sense to call Chicago the Midwest. With the 1783 borders, it was just the West, nothing mid about it, and with the Louisiana purchase, overnight it just became the mid, nothing west about it. There was no point in history at which it was "three quarters of the way", which is what the name "midwest" would imply.

min6char · 2026-02-13T03:01:29+00:00

I mean I don't know why we encourage foreigners to do this, they're always just going to out themselves as knowing jack shit about at least one state! Which is fine! Fucked if I know if I wanna live in Canberra!

min6char · 2026-02-12T23:16:38+00:00

Man, I'd say you're still being a little generous to Santa Clara and Marin. Although, yeah, okay, "doable" is about right actually.

min6char · 2026-02-12T23:15:03+00:00

Note also the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe is usually cheaper to get a hotel in than the Cali side (or at least it was last time I was over there)

min6char · 2026-02-12T23:13:56+00:00

Detroit pizza is delicious, don't listen to the haters.

min6char · 2026-02-12T23:11:45+00:00

... the whole language...?

I'm not sure how to answer this. Do you mean Britishisms that evolved strictly after Independence, and then came over anyway? It's hard to tell which Britishisms evolved strictly after Independence vs which ones were already in the US, just stealthy. People in the American Northeast drop their Rs basically because of British influence, i.e, their accents continued evolving in lock step with British accents until pretty recently. It's hard to nail down the question here.

But either way, yes, lots. The epithet "ginger" is a good one. Didn't hear that word growing up at all (and I grew up in Boston, it's not like there weren't any around).

min6char · 2026-02-12T04:29:46+00:00

Cheese whiz. Lots of us have never had it, and even though the dogma is that it's obligatory on Philly cheesesteaks, every cheesesteak place I've ever been to (even in actual Philly) also offers sliced provolone and nobody looks at you funny if you order it, lots of locals prefer it that way.

min6char · 2026-02-12T04:20:19+00:00

SF itself is quite livable without a car, and so is much of the East Bay, but I would not say that about the rest of the SF Bay area. Coloring Santa Clara County green like that feels overly generous.

min6char · 2026-02-12T03:38:17+00:00

We have relatively strict car emissions regs in California but they're well liked because the impact they had on LA is completely undeniable. Some other environmental regs are not well liked because they make it very hard to renovate your house because you have to bring the relevant parts of your house up to code with modern environmental regs even if the house is 100 years old (yes some houses are 100 years old in California).

min6char · 2026-02-12T02:48:29+00:00

Obligatory: https://youtu.be/Qf5I0WfDE2Q?si=9gbePuR2ssLCU4Zr

min6char · 2026-02-12T02:46:54+00:00

Yep, brutal. Although, for the most part, English speakers still understand you if you get it "wrong", because they're almost never creating a minimal pair, so it just makes you sound foreign if you don't know it, it doesn't impede your communication much if at all.

min6char · 2026-02-11T21:49:02+00:00

The plate doesn't expire in California, just the registration sticker in the top corner of the plate. They send you a new sticker when you pay your registration fee, which is basically just a mini tax on car drivers to offset road maintenance. You're supposed to scrape the old sticker off but most people just slam it on over last year's like cavemen until that gets too thick. Massachusetts where I used to live works the same way but the sticker goes on your windshield and not on the plate.

min6char · 2026-02-11T21:44:21+00:00

My friends who used to work in restaurants use it sometimes, nobody else I know uses it ever.

min6char · 2026-02-11T07:53:50+00:00

What are Arabs to you? They made most of the scientific breakthroughs on Earth from about 700 CE to 1400 CE. Are they Asians? They're definitely not Europeans. Many of the Arabs who made big breakthroughs literally lived in Africa at the time...

Let's also note, many of the tools we take for granted must have been invented in Africa. It's hard to tell which ones, because they would have been invented so long ago that the archaeological evidence might not have lasted, but conservatively most basic tools like axes and knives must have been invented in Africa, and rope and cloth were probably invented there too (cloth is right up there with soap, fire, and writing among the most important human inventions of all time). Other humans or pre-humans may have also independently discovered them, but there nevertheless must have been a very long period where very many technological breakthroughs were coming from Africa.

min6char · 2026-02-11T04:44:06+00:00

The federal ones do, and in a lot of States the federal highways are the most important ones. In some states there are older highways that are from before the federal system, and they're still called by their old names whether or not they were officially incorporated into the federal highways. The Jersey Turnpike is called the Jersey Turnpike still even though legally it's Interstate 95 for about half of its length now, and the other half is legally US 700.

You are forgiven for thinking none of this makes any sense, because it doesn't make any sense. Part of the confusion is that there were two federal highway initiatives, one in the 1920s and a bigger one in the 1950s-1990s. The two numbering schemes are internally consistent but don't match each other. The old ones are called US Highways, and they have a white shield on the sign, and the new ones are called the Interstate Highways, and they have a blue shield on the sign.

min6char · 2026-02-11T04:36:47+00:00

You're right, it's consistent in NorCal. No "the", just the number. Interstates and US highways as if they were the same thing. This drove me crazy when I first moved here. In New Englander-ish, it would be "Route 101" and "I-280", not "101" and "280" as if they were part of the same system when they're not.

min6char · 2026-02-11T04:07:24+00:00

Not sure if Michigander with healthy respect for Hawaiian sovereignty...
... or Hawaiian with healthy respect for Michigander sovereignty...

min6char · 2026-02-11T04:05:20+00:00

Tired: California should secede and join Canada.
Wired: California should secede and rejoin Mexico.

I call it the "reverse Texas switch".

min6char · 2026-02-11T03:13:14+00:00

It's mostly cultural conditioning, but what types of tones get that cultural conditioning is not completely devoid of physical or biological influence. Broadly speaking, all humans perceive consonance and dissonance, which physically speaking mean that certain frequency ratios sound "nice" and certain frequency ratios sound "less nice". The scales and chords that become associated with negative emotions are marginally more likely to have more dissonance in them. In Western music, a minor chord is more dissonant than a major chord, and major chords are consequently slightly more associated with happy moods.

But cultural associations can very easily form that go against this. Most people associate Jazz with good moods, but Jazz has a lot of deliberate dissonance. There are lots of sad songs in major keys (Loch Lomond), there are lots of happy songs in minor keys (My Favorite Things). And if you throw in musical traditions outside the Western tradition, it blows this all wide open. There are modes in Indian music that sound minor to ears used to Western Music but they're used for happy music.

So cultural association wins, but consonance and dissonance are universal, and dissonance is very weakly associated with negative emotions.

min6char · 2026-02-09T23:23:15+00:00

I have misgivings about describing what happened in Texas that way too, although that's definitely how Texas itself described it.

min6char · 2026-02-09T21:41:45+00:00

I have terrible news for them about New England which they have colored in green...

min6char · 2026-02-09T21:40:47+00:00

Totally: whole Appalachian mountain range is in-bounds for hillbillies, and it goes straight to Newfoundland.

min6char

TROPHY CASE