#Geography of Europe

[etchif]

Inspired by the USA states poll I just reblogged! Take this quiz to see how many European countries you can name in 8 minutes :^)

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[flagsofeuropeshowdown]

European Flag Showdown Round 5: THE FINAL

North Macedonia

Estonia

Albania

Reminder that this is not about the countries the flags represent, just the flags themselves.

[candela888]

Same-sex marriage in 2003 vs. 2013 vs. 2023

(20 years of change)

More info below:

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2003:

Marriage : Netherlands, Belgium, British Columbia (CA), Ontario (CA)

Civil unions : France (including overseas territories), Germany, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Greenland, Rio Negro (AR), Ciudad de Buenos Aires (AR), California (US), New York (US), Hawaii (US), Vermont (US), Canary Islands (ES), Aragon (ES), Catalonia (ES), Andalusia (ES), Extremadura (ES), Castilla-La Mancha (ES), Castilla-Leon (ES), Madrid (ES), Valencia (ES), Asturias (ES), Basque Country (ES), Navarre (ES), Balearics (ES), Quebec (CA), Alberta (CA), Manitoba (CA), Nova Scotia (CA), Geneva (CH), Zurich (CH), Portugal.

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2013:

Marriage : Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, South Africa, Spain, Portugal, France (including overseas territories), Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, New Zealand, Washington (US), California (US), New Mexico (US), Minnesota (US), Iowa (US), Maryland (US), DC (US), New Jersey (US), Delaware (US), New York (US), Connecticut (US), Rhode Island (US), Vermont (US), Massachusetts (US), New Hampshire (US), Maine (US), Hawaii (US), Mexico City (MX), Quintana Roo (MX).

Civil unions : Greenland, Colombia, Ecuador, Merida (VZ), United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Finland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Australia

Recognizes marriages performed abroad : All 32 Mexican states and Israel

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2023:

Marriage : Netherlands (including overseas territories), Belgium, United States, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia, US Virgin Islands, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Malvinas/Falklands, France (including overseas territories), Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland, Austria, Malta, Guernsey, Jersey, United Kingdom, Isle of Man, Ireland, Gibraltar, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Greenland, Luxembourg, Faroe Islands, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, St. Helena, Pitcairn Islands, Gibraltar.

Civil unions : Bolivia, Italy, Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Aruba, Curaçao, Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Montenegro, Greece, Cyprus, Estonia, Liechtenstein 

Recognizes marriages performed abroad : Namibia, Israel, Nepal, American Samoa

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Future :

Same-sex marriage is under consideration by the legislature or the courts in Aruba, Curaçao, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, India, Japan, Liechtenstein, Namibia, the Navajo Nation, Nepal, Thailand, and Venezuela, and all countries bound by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), which includes Barbados, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Suriname.

Civil unions are being considered in a number of countries, including Lithuania, Peru, the Philippines, South Korea, Ukraine, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Latvia, Panama, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Thailand, and Venezuela.

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[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

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[geoazie]

Aesthetic of the languages on earth : Ukrainian

Ukrainian is a Slavic language spoken by around 39 million people over Ukraine and Eastern Europe. It is the official language of Ukraine. It is also a recognized minority language in Belarus, Bosnia an Herzegovina, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Slovakia.

[worst-of-facebook]

[vintage-russia]

Cards from a "Deck of cards to familiarize children with the geography of the Russian Empire" (19th century)

[doctorslippery]

[augmentedpolls]

What continent do you live on?

-North America

-South America

-Europe

-Asia

-Oceania

-Africa

-Other/I don’t live on a continent/results/bald

Thanks anon for submitting! If you want your own question answered, feel free to submit polls via my ask box

[bioluminescencia]

Pantheon and the moon

Rome, Italy

January, 2023

@bioluminescencia

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The natural wall of Finestres, La Franja.

These rocks are called Roques de la Vila ("the town's rocks") but many people call them "The Great Wall of Finestres". The eroded limestone is a completely natural occurrence, but it looks like a human-made or even giant-made wall. Taking advantage of it, Medieval inhabitants of the area built a little castle and a chapel dedicated to Saint Vincent between the two "walls".

Photos from Montsec de Aragón.

[flagsofeuropeshowdown]

European Flag Showdown Round 3

Finland

Estonia

Reminder that this is not about the countries the flags represent, just the flags themselves.

[candela888]

Countries where cheek kissing is a common way of greeting people

Number of cheek kisses when greeting somebody in the Americas and Europe

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Hi there, your Europe without trade, a worldbuilding exercise was a fascinating and educational read, kudos for all the insights!

One section has left me with dual questions however, namely:

The other rule is that the Gulf Stream still exists, so you can have that unusual European climate which is a fluke. (This also ticked off people? But seriously, to get the gradient of Europe that far north, you need to Gulf of Mexico otherwise the latitude range would look more like the US than Europe, more south, and larger, much larger. And most people don't make a continent that large. Why people get ticked off at true facts is a whole thing.)

I am rather curious about how these factors interplay with one another, IE, how the Gulf of Mexico creates an unusual climate in Europe, what about the climate is unusual and most integrally, what would the climate look like without it?

Sorry if this is a Wikipedia question, weather science is not my forte and I've love to see your take specifically on it, but not pressure.

I learned this in geography class and covered this in my worldbuilding posts, so short cutted it.

See that red arrow going to Europe from Florida-ish. That's the gulf of Mexico Stream. Hot, wet air travels from Mexico to Europe, giving you climates like the Mediterranean, the rain that Brits complain about, but also things like the South of France, Spainish warm agriculture weather.

If you want to build it super racist and cut off all PoC influence, which some people were cursing me about mentioning the Gulf of Mexico and how dare I at the time I made the original post (which was years back)

Then as my Geography professor succinctly put it, you get Siberia. Siberia, has high continentality, is extremely cold in the winter and extremely hot in the summer. You'd be able to grow NOTHING. No Europe for you. Most of the Siberian people or this reason, without the world food supply were Pastoral Nomadic people who lived in chiefdoms and tribes and survived mostly on grasslands.

The majority of maps, including Tolkien's does not include a Gulf of Mexico structure, which means high continentality and miserable weather. You're looking at only Evenk-type of people in Europe year round with probably diminishing trees, and BTW, shamanism is most likely. (or Totemism, if you follow the whole worldbuilding series I did)

If you do want an Agricultural state without The Gulf, you're more looking at China or the United States in terms of latitude, but you'd have to study China closely. This means larger latitude range with a gradual shift towards Mediterranean. But also more extreme weather, such as more deserts, more swamps, etc. And absolutely, you'd need cooperation.

There's environmental politics about China too,but you'll have to research that on your own.

This, BTW, is why I say as the first thing you probably should do is draw a map, the entire world, map the currents, and then you can figure it out. But notice Europe is really far North and the South of Spain, which is typically Warm is about equal to Newfoundland in Canada which is really cold.

And that's what you're going to get if you melt those ice caps. The summer is going to get worse. The winter is going to get even more miserable. You'll get less warm hot rain for England, etc, but crop failure rate is going to skyrocket. Unfortunately, you need those polar ice caps back ASAP because if it desalinates too much, the Earth will do everything to try to rebalance itself. And do you want that?

Read the geography worldbuilding post I put up. I got up through government loosely.

To get monsoons, you do need high continentality, which is why India, China, etc gets monsoon weather. So if you want that weather feature, understand you need more land mass, but there is the trade off of some place being like Siberia.

BTW, it's climate, not weather. Only saying it because my geography prof would be on my case if I didn't differentiate. You're looking for climate differences which are dictated by latitude, physical features and currents. Another way to screw over Europe is to Destroy the land bridge on the tip of Mexico, thus changing all of the currents and flood it.