You can easily see how true this is if you have a few friends on facebook, with birthday notifications on. Even when I had facebook for just a couple of months, I had ~50 friends, and was getting notifications for more than 1 person's birthday on the same day every so often. I have currently 214 friends, and whenever I have a notification, it's usually at least 2 (sometimes 3) on 1 day. And I probably miss some peoples because their birthday is private.

Today I learnt that the capital of California was Sacramento. I always thought it was LA

Orange Slices wrote on 10/04/17 at 02:59:22:

Is that the only US state you didn't know the capital of, because there are other weird capitals as well

Orange Slices wrote on 10/04/17 at 02:59:22:


The capital is always whatever town is smack in the exact middle of the state

State capitals generally tend to be located near the "center of population"; i.e., the point in a state from which an equal number of people live in each direction. In states that have two main cities (e.g. Missouri, Pennsylvania, or Kentucky) the capital tends to be in a third city located between those two, to be fair to people in both cities. For instance, if St. Louis was the capital of Missouri, it wouldn't be fair to those in Kansas City that would have to travel all the way across the state to visit their capital. And vice versa. So Jefferson City splits the difference. In Virginia, Richmond sits halfway between the state's two primary population concentrations, the Capital District (DC suburbs) and the Tidewater (Norfolk, Virginia Beach, et al.). Basically capital sites are usually chosen to be fair to everybody.

There are exceptions though, such as the aforementioned Juneau. Carson City is probably pretty far from Nevada's center of population as well (Nevada has perhaps the most uneven population distribution of any state, with the Las Vegas area/Clark County having more people than the entire rest of the Italy-sized state). You can't say that Wyoming's center of population is really anywhere near Cheyenne, which is close to the state's southeast corner. And yes, many more Californians live south of Sacramento than live north of it. But most state capitals are fairly well-placed, so that few people in America have to drive all the way across their state to reach their capital.

I'll just list all the US states I know:

California
New York
Washington state
Oregon
New Mexico
Nevada
Arizona
North Dakota
South Dakota
North Carolina
South Carolina
East Virginia
West Virginia
Mississippi
Massachusetts
Wyoming
Wisconsin
Illinois
Colorado
Indiana
Rhode Island
Hawaii
Alaska
Kentucky
Ohio
Georgia
Idaho
Texas
Florida
Nebraska
Tenessee
Alabama


That's it

Orange Slices wrote on 10/04/17 at 15:04:58:


Look up the song "Fifty Nifty United States". That's how I learned how to name all the states... in alphabetical order. In the fourth grade.

I suppose that's not a bad effort for an Australian teenager. I knew all of Australia's states when I was your age, but of course there are only seven of them. I know the name and location of all of Canada's provinces, most of Mexico's states, all of Spain's regions, most of the regions of France, Germany, and Italy, all of Austria's regions, about half of China's provinces, but relatively few of the divisions of most other countries. Only Japanese prefectures I could find on a map would be Tokyo, Chiba, and Hokkaido, while Friesland and Flevoland are the only Dutch regions whose locations I am absolutely sure of. I also don't know where most of the UK's ceremonial counties are, off the top of my head. I'm not too good with Switzerland's cantons either, just yet. I do know that Graubunden is the large one at the eastern end and Ticino is the one in the south that protrudes into Italy (and speaks Italian as well). Lots of Swiss cantons are really small and/or have unusual shapes/boundaries.

States that chose a good location for their capitals:

Mississippi: Jackson is the largest city and near the center of the state. It also splits the difference between the Gulf Coast and the southern Memphis suburbs, the next two largest concentrations of population. (Southaven, in particular, has grown a lot in the past couple of decades, and is now the state's third largest city, after Jackson and Gulfport)

Oklahoma: OKC, the largest city, is in the middle of the state and within reasonable driving distance of Tulsa, the state's second largest city.

Arkansas: Little Rock is both the largest city and centrally located.

Tennessee: Nashville is fairly centrally located, is the second largest city (and its metro may be the largest), and splits the difference between Memphis and East Tennessee (Chattanooga, Knoxville, etc.).

South Carolina: Columbia is dead-center in the state and the largest city, plus it's a middle ground between two other major concentrations of population: Greenville-Spartanburg in the interior and Charleston on the coast.

Maryland: Annapolis is quite a fair compromise between Baltimore and the DC suburbs, the two places where a Marylander is most likely to live. It also has sea access.

Alabama: This one is a toss-up between Birmingham and Montgomery. Either one could have worked very well, but Montgomery is the former capital of the Confederacy. Montgomery is also somewhat more centrally located for people in the growing Mobile area.

Colorado: Denver is the largest city with the largest metro area, and is convienently close to both Colorado Springs (the second largest city) and northern cities like Fort Collins. Since this state is larger than the UK, it's unavoidable that there will be places in the state that are far from the capital.

South Dakota: Pierre splits the difference between Rapid City in the west and Sioux Falls in the east.

Iowa: Des Moines is the largest city and has a fairly central location. Probably the best place to put the capital.

Indiana: "Indy" may be one of the very best state capital sites in the nation. Not only is it smack in the middle of the state, it's the largest city by far. Although I think the Hoosier State's center of population would be a bit farther north due to the eastern Chicago suburbs, certainly the second-largest population center.

Ohio: This may be the best capital city site in the United States. Columbus is not just the largest city and in the center of the state, it also sits halfway between Cincinnati and Cleveland, perhaps the two largest metros.

Arizona: Fast-growing Phoenix has the largest metro by far in Arizona and is also fairly centrally located.

Missouri: I see no way to be fair to both KC and STL but to put the capital in the middle.

Utah: Salt Lake City is both the largest city and sits in the middle of the Wasatch Front region where most of the state's population lives. The downstate area (St. George, etc.) gets shafted, sure, but you can't please everybody in a state the size of Great Britain.

Kansas: Topeka is another capital site chosen with the population distribution in mind. It somewhat favors the KC metro over Wichita, the largest city (although there are probably more Kansans in the former). Not good if you live in the western part of the state, although western Kansas is famously empty, with no cities over 40,000 people, and as the case with Utah, there's no way to put a capital in a Great Britain-sized state without having it too far from somebody. Topeka serves to be too far from as few people as possible.

Pennsylvania: As with Missouri, we're trying to be fair to both of the big cities on either end of the state. In this case, since Philadelphia is the bigger of the two, Harrisburg's location favors the City of Brotherly Love over the Steel City.

New Jersey: In a small state, there's really no bad place to put the capital. Trenton has the benefit of being between the eastern Philly 'burbs and the western NYC 'burbs.

Virginia: As mentioned earlier, Richmond is not far from either of the two main population centers of the Old Dominion. It's worth noting, for those who don't know much about VA, that this state kind of has an identity crisis, a split personality if you will. The eastern side of the state is largely urbanized and is where the majority of Virginians live, and is politically liberal (Democratic) like the Northeast; the western side is more mountainous, sparsely populated, and conservative-- decidedly more "Southern" in culture, as Spril can probably tell you. Definitely two states for the price of one.  

I often have to flush my toilet twice after a large bowel movement, not all of it goes down the first flush, some of it may backwash into the bowl, often making it look like someone peed without flushing, or there will be bits of shit floating that for whatever reason decided they didn't want to flush down.

InnovΔ wrote on 10/15/17 at 09:26:08:


Hey Kek I see what you're doing there you Master Kreep so don't even try to harass Nick, let him poop in peace m'kay-- there are interesting facts full of meticulous details, thanks for sharing!

I think the time has come.. give a look at 'the world's longest poop'

InnovΔ wrote on 10/15/17 at 09:26:08:

He forgot there was a "ordinary/boring things" thread I guess.

Apparently the food that makes you fart most, after beans, is CHEESE