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Comment by bdangubic | Hacker News Reader

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bdangubic

> where there is nothing much more than sheep and tourists

kind of like Mississippi but without the tourists part

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people have the weirdest/wrong perceptions of mississippi

It's more like "it's like the US, but without the education"

punching down on a state you don't understand or know anything about is such a overdone trope. at least be funny!

ok how bout this, its all relative except for mississippi, there's too much going on between relatives there.

get it? hahahaha

unfortunate life you must live to be so unfunny

oooh look who's punching down now haha yes sir, I have an extremely unfortunate life, I'm the sort of individual who does not have good luck. I try not to bring it up because its simply not on topic for hn, me circling the drain is really nobody's business but mine and the drain, oh yeah, yours too I guess. questions?

Luckily our government is full bore on banning the collection of statistics so you can feel better about your state.

They are serious - MS is doing very well in early reading and vaccination. We in Louisiana don’t get to say last except for MS anymore.

Yea you might need to update your knowledge. They are killing it in schools now

It’s still the 48th worse place for kids.

https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2025/06/11/mississi...

When you come in dead last (or in the bottom 5 states) in virtually every possible positive metric, people are going to make negative assumptions. I understand the historical reasons for that, but it doesn’t change what it is.

fair enough, but their assumption wasn't even about that. a better joke on that quote would've been about vermont.

i hear people online punch down on mississippi all the time, and often they don't know anything about the state except whatever metric they've heard about from a headline. the rest of america isn't very far behind, and if you think the state of mississippi isn't a product of america as a whole then you are extremely mistaken. without the industrialized north you have no plantation economy and without the civil war you have no "dead last (or in the bottom 5 states) in virtually every possible positive metric."

i grew up there, attended public school all the way through my BA, and then spent significant time as a young adult there. based on the stereotypical assumptions, it might be shocking to the big brains on hacker news that somebody from mississippi is an audience of this website.

True. As an AI engineer from Gurajatar, Uttar Pradesh I can relate to your experience in this auspicious website sir. We are top human capital.

> i hear people online punch down on mississippi all the time, and often they don't know anything about the state except whatever metric they've heard about from a headline. the rest of america isn't very far behind, and if you think the state of mississippi isn't a product of america as a whole then you are extremely mistaken.

Agreed, people usually just say ‘lol MS is full of idiots, they’re bad at school’ instead of taking the time to understand why. It was more isolated than GA and LA (and AL), there was a higher ratio of slaves to freedmen in the antebellum period, the Delta was undeveloped so lots of impoverished people from across the south moved there to try and develop the land, to name a few reasons.

> i grew up there, attended public school all the way through my BA, and then spent significant time as a young adult there. based on the stereotypical assumptions, it might be shocking to somebody on hacker news that somebody on a similar enough intelligence level to be an audience of this website is from mississippi.

I can say that I don’t assume everyone from Mississippi is stupid, but the generalization about Mississippi that you related seems to be more common than it should be. I think a lot of it has to do with a lack of exposure to people from Mississippi or Mississippi itself.

Thanks for taking the time to respond, I appreciate the discussion.

There was a recent post at the top of HN done by someone who went to USM in Hattiesburg who lives in New Orleans now (and which inspired a show HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45183050 )

Isn't diversity a positive metric? Mississippi has the highest black percentage of all the states. If one wants to use statistics, use all of the statistics.

So what’s going on in Mississippi these days?

improved literacy rates (https://mississippitoday.org/2025/01/24/jim-barksdale-100-mi...), misspent welfare money with brett farve involved (old news), state auditor doxing private individuals for their political speech, new jesmyn ward novel came out a couple years ago, mississippi filmmaker al warren released a funny movie "dogleg", the band mspaint had a good album a couple years ago, etc

data centers being built but people fighting it. new rezoning in taylor, MS being fought by locals bc they are trying to reclassify agriculture land for heavy industry so they can build an asphalt plant. federal government troops in nearby memphis.

just like anywhere else in america.

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