site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   4262 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 24, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I've been playing an online game where you just try to name as many US cities as you can. Here's my map. My goal was to name all the cities over 500,000 people. I am stubbornly short one such city. I haven't looked up the correct answer yet.

Can you guess which one American city over 500,000 people I'm missing?

I've been canoodling around with it for a week or so, and I've been listing generic city names and getting a surprising number of correct answers that way, including some big cities.

You named 2,826 cities, with a total population of 120,814,720 (46.35% of the national urban population in 2020).

I also got 234 of 339 cities over 100,000 people (69.0%).

Edit: I checked, here's the city I missed: Mesa, Arizona

I'm guessing it's one of those overgrown suburbs in Texas, Florida, or California that no one has ever heard of yet it's quietly getting huge.

I gave up and got the answer. It's not one of those states, but I think it is a suburb. I had heard of it though. Mesa, Arizona

I should have gotten that one, as I tried all the other generic landforms I could think of -- Volcano, Plateau, Forest, etc. Missed that one.

Who the hell would name a city Volcano? A Bond villain?

About 2000 Hawaiians. But I can't rule out the possibility that they are a supervillain and his lackeys. Still counts.

Probably, but there’s also a surprising number of smaller cities in Texas with technically more than 50k people but everyone thinks it’s a small town for whatever reason(eg Tyler, Lubbock, San Angelo)- probably because it’s within driving distance of something huge and much, much bluer.

From my experience there, I'd be sure to simply guess all the Texan cities I could think of connected to the energy industry. Lubbock, for instance, isn't in reasonable driving distance from anything except oil, but that's enough to get a lot of people there.

The ones I always forget are the ones which have not been that big for very long. Fresno, Phoenix, the various ones in Texas. It's hard to tell from your map which ones you've already got, unfortunately.

Can you share the game with us? I'd like to have a go myself.

Sure, it's Cityquiz.io They have other places besides the US too.

Yeah, it's hard to see from the map. Most of the major cities are surrounded by smaller ones with generic names that were easy to guess, like Glendale, etc. So they get crowded.

Texas has a bunch of big cities with very generic, forgettable names (like Garland). Also, every single place mentioned in King of the Hill is apparently fictional.

The Dakotas are sparsely populated but full of easily guessed names, towns with like 6 people in them. Lotta towns named after people's names -- Pierre, for example.

Most landforms and terrains that are famous have a city named after them, eg Everglades. The exception is Hawaii, where there is no Maui, Oahu, Mauna Loa, Waikiki Beach, etc. Luckily you can guess a couple towns just by combining the relatively few letters in the Hawaiian language. I got a couple I've never heard of that way.

Spanish-language placenames seem harder to guess. English-origin names like Michael usually have a town named after them. There's no town named Miguel though. Of course any saint most likely has a San Whatever or Santa Whatever town, but other than that, Spanish names are hard to guess. Also, if a county has an English-origin name, there's likely a town of that name too. If a county has a Spanish-origin name, it probably does not have a town of that name.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats