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Comment by toddsiegel | Hacker News Reader

Similar to the 7 States of Facebook which surfaced a few years ago.

http://gigaom.com/2010/02/08/the-7-somewhat-united-states-of...

Culturally some of these boundaries seem more accurate.

Yes, that definitely captures some of the major culture boundaries more accurately. For example, no one would conflate the culture of California with the culture of Cascadia despite a few superficial similarities (like eco awareness).

My takeaway from the "Nine Nations" map is that it was created by people that have never actually lived or spent significant time all over the regions of the US, never mind North America, to have a frame of reference for the actual cultural differences. Some of the supposed cultural similarities are apparently based on popular caricatures of the rest of the US I see in places like urban New England. You can carve up North America on major cultural boundaries but it looks a lot more like the Facebook map.

Yes, as distressing as it may be to me personally to live in "Greater Texas" (I thought we left the Big 12?), the "Nine" definitely screws up by splitting Texas into three pieces, the largest of which has a "capital" in Los Angeles. Had Garreau ever been to Texas when he wrote the book? I've lived there, and the conformity of certain assumptions and habits across the state and across cultural and income groups is sometimes actually a bit unsettling.

Then again, the actual capital of Texas is Austin, so it's not that far from reality.

Austin seems to qualify as a separate city-state though, rather than being representative of Greater Texas as a whole.

It really irritates me, almost unreasonably so, that I cannot view a larger version of that map. And I've been searching for it since the first time it was posted. Take this post [1] for example, where it says "Click on the map to learn more". Clicking on the map refreshes the page. It also has a link that says "To make sense of the patterns I'm seeing, I've marked and labeled the clusters, and added some notes about the properties they have in common." When you click the link... still the same page.

What good is this Facebook Graph visualization without being able to see anything more than a low-res thumbnail?

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-split-up-the-us-2010-2...

Did you see Peter Warden's post? He's the creator of that map.

http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/02/how-to-s...

Yup. And clicking the image there goes to fanpageanalytics.com, which seems to be a parked domain? There's only one page and it's completely irrelevant to anything.

His blog says he was almost sued by Facebook, but for making a site to crawl Facebook's graph. Obviously he's not being sued by Facebook for creating the image because the image is everywhere, but only as a ridiculously tiny version.

large enough? http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/smart-takes/infographic-the-...

Unfortunately it appears as if the original image was just stretched to a larger size, but if that's the case the resolution you're looking for just may not be available.

Definitely. Even in larger versions in the map, are there any that clearly distinguish state lines and major cities? Omitting this information makes it hard to examine these regions from a cultural perspective.

As an Ohioian who has relocated to Maine I would say that culturally New England (at least Portland and most of the other parts I've been to) is very VERY different culturally IMO. Much more liberal and, IMO, progressive than Ohio in general.

The article concludes with "Ultimately, that is the reason we are nine nations. When you’re from one, and you’re in it, you know you’re home." - as a Mainer myself, who has since relocated twice (to the Empty Quarter and MexAmerica), I cannot explain the feeling I experience just from stepping off the plane in Boston. (I realize that's not a very scientifically qualified statement, but in this case I'm okay with it).

Is there a way to replicate this work trivially? It would be interesting to redo it periodically and watch it change.

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