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Comment by Freak_NL | Hacker News Reader

The example of the Netherlands is a good one. When people say or think 'the Netherlands', most of the time (about 99%) they mean the country on the European continent in the Schengen area bordered by Belgium and Germany, but there is also a bit of colonial legacy lingering in the Caribbean in the form of overseas territories that are formally part of our kingdom:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/47796

So if you say 'all Dutch addresses have a postcode', then this is true for 99.999% of the addresses in the country proper (100% for all formally defined addresses), but you won't find any in the Caribbean island of Saba which is part of the kingdom.

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The Netherlands has a more fun example: Baarle Nassau. Which is a weird city where parts of the city are Belgian enclaves. It even has nesting of exclaves and enclaves. And of course some houses have doors in multiple countries, which makes delivering mail and figuring out taxes interesting.

He shows that in the article too, but it's really just a historical curiosity with little impact on day to day living beyond a few trifles. Mail and taxes have been solved long ago; all dwellings have a 'main' front door which determines which country's laws and taxes apply — it's not something that changes arbitrarily.

It's reportedly great for tourism though.

And depending on what you care about, this gets even more complicated. Some of the territories in the Carribean are part of the country of the Netherlands that you linked to (Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, Saba), while there are others that are separate countries part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten). Some things are matters of the kingdom, while others are matters of the country.

For example, those other countries are not part of the European Union, but their citizens are citizens of the European Union since that's a matter of the Kingdom.

A couple of years ago I wondered if any chocolate was made from EU-grown cacao, since French Guiana in South America is part of the EU. Wasn't really able to find any.

Some asylum seekers go to French Guiana hoping to get to France that way. It's not an easy option - https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/28188/french-guiana-a-n... and https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/photo-feature/2021/2/3/fr... . ("Rent is high, and most food and basic necessities are imported from Europe, at a price.")

Not easy reads.

Yes, lots of geoweird things about the Netherlands. See: https://twitter.com/OpenCage/status/1511722717476700163

Is Alaska part of America? How about Hawaii?

I think Greenland is part of Denmark.

Don’t forget administrative districts, like Guam, or Puerto Rico.

Tokyo has a “grid-based” street addressing system, that I never fully understood. There are streets with no name, there (wasn’t that a U2 song?).

I find that long/lat (don’t forget the Southern Hemisphere) is about the only universal constant. If I am writing software that has a focus on just one nation, that helps a lot, but I need to keep in mind, that I may want to expand it.

Normalizing time, across the International Date Line, or Prime Meridian, is also fun (Daylight Savings makes this fun. India has a time zone that has a 30-minute component).

Greenland now has a semi-autonomous status under the Danish monarch, so not part of Denmark. So it is similar to the former Dutch colonies in the Caribbean in that respect.

And there are also +45 minute time zones.

Not just India. Including one zone in Australia, and Newfoundland in Canada.

Here is a map: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/So...

Look at it and tremble.

Regarding japanese addresses, you can either see blocks as unnamed spaces between streets, or streets as unnamed spaces between blocks.

https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_weird_or_just_differe...

No, this is not the equivalent question. The more appropriate one for US is Puerto Rico or even US Virgin Islands.

Or Guam, among others:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territories_of_the_United_St...

Each of the territories have slightly different statuses.

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is "closer" to being like a state than any of the others.

Learned that during the GW Bush administration, the Federal Government was ordered to interact with the government of Puerto Rico, as much as with possible, in the same way as an equivalent interaction with a state government.

So it is closer.

As in the article, I think it depends to some extent on what question you're asking. "What is the population of the US?" is almost definitely intended to include Alaska and Hawaii, but if someone asks "what is the geographic center of the US," they probably intend for the answer to be something in South Dakota, not the point off the coast of British Columbia that you get if you include Alaska and Hawaii, or the point out in the middle of the Pacific if you include Guam, etc.

Politically they are two of fifty states of the United States, and on an equal footing with the other 48.

Geographically, Alaska is part of North America, and Hawaii isn't.

A discussion of all the various territories of the US

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASSOQDQvVLU

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