My guess is that this is a holdover from when rich people did have train cars (and sometimes even full trains!).

I would bet there are still a couple of rich people living out their train fantasies.

I feel like this map must be some sort of trolling for people that have any understanding of the United States. I could write a doctoral thesis for how badly this would disenfranchise people, screw over others economically, and involves taking over territory that isn’t even fully American.

Let’s just talk about your “territories” region. It is somehow supposed to compete on the world stage when it has less population than New York? Far less accessible resources? Peoples that may not even want to be part of the US given a choice?

The Western area is taking over tons of Native American land and have no water.

The middle area has the same population problems (except Texas) and the territories. Plus, they largely rely on Federal tax dollars and that would dry up.

The Eastern section would be dominated by the North East and people in the South would rather die than be lumped in with them.

I could go on?

All of this for what? Some sort of global representation? Each state already represents itself globally. For smaller regions of representation? Well, these are still huge (and uneven) regions that ignore population.

The major issue is that land doesn’t vote. Take away the electoral college and first pass the post voting and, suddenly, America works much better.

The problem with this is you are screwing over liberal bastions (e.g. Chicago) in conservative zones. Or what about somewhere like New Mexico? We’d be grouped with Arizona and Texas? New Mexico is liberal and that’d kill us. The arrangement also gives even more power to sparsely populated sections of the country vs highly populated sections. It is almost like you are suggesting gerrymandering at a regional level.

Keep in mind that we already have regional representation - state governments. They don’t work great because of the lack of attention they get vs presidental elections. The here part is that states need to have power, but there are things they are insane to declare as “states rights” issues. How do we divide them up? I don’t know. We even have “majority agree” as you suggested via constitutional amendments.

The legal decision is important for a slew of reasons including taxation, SNAP benefits, etc. The decision was less about science and more about the reality of how tomatoes are used in our society.

I am an avid collector and drinker of Chinese teas, particularly oolongs and puerh. I had been drinking them for years when suddenly the absolute asshole Dr. Oz went on TV claiming that puerh tea was some magical cure for anything and everything that you might have.

Normally, I get excited for new people to share tea with, but this fad caused prices to rise across the board and caused the market to get flooded with awful quality tea. These people were drinking some of the worst quality (fishy, shou/cooked puerh) teas and were more obsessed with how to mask the flavors with milk and sugar than actually slowing down and enjoying the tea.

The fad faded and people went back to putting matcha in their morning milkshakes. Even so, I still run into people that reflexively associate incredible tea with Dr. Oz and the disgusting teas he foisted upon his audience. Sad.