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Border Message

|< < Prev #3236 (April 22, 2026)

Title text: Thanks to differences in logging regulations, the messages actually turned out to be visible from the air.

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Explanation

Many US states, counties, and smaller local administrative regions have long, straight borders. Regions whose borders evolved over time often reflect natural geographic features (such as bodies of water or mountain ranges), customary (pre-survey) tradition, or piecemeal growth (a city annexing selected nearby areas based on landowner requests or economic factors). Straight lines tend to be the result of a survey or administrative process that is more concerned with defining a boundary than optimizing for local conditions. However, this may be boring for legislators or surveyors who have the power to set the boundary. In this comic, the legislators in charge of the boundary between two geographic areas ("Southlake" to the southwest and "East Valley" to the northeast) livened up the process by arranging for the boundary to spell out a message when viewed on a map. It's unknown what kind of local areas (municipal regions, counties, etc.) are involved here. The boundary definition includes multiple discontinuities — such as the bottoms of the W and other letters with gaps at the bottom, the interior of the "O"s and other letters with "holes", the apostrophe, and so on — that are either exclaves (probably of the northern territory, that are surrounded by the southern one, in most cases) or (unlabeled) enclaved territories in their own right that are associated with no other disconnected area (possibly regarded as terra nullius). This would be very inconvenient for both tourists and locals, since they would have to constantly consult the map if they want to know whether they are in East Valley or Southlake. This would mean that, artistically (or ironically) enough, the message with a nice positive saying would almost certainly annoy people, defeating the purpose.

The title text implies that the area around the border is forested. Due to the different logging regulations in the two areas, the densities or types of trees on each side of the border are so different that one can see the border, and hence the messages, when looking down on the land. What logging would happen in the land within the exclaves is unclear (possibly none?), but evidently is sufficiently different to make these visible.

This comic may have been inspired by gerrymandering: defining voting districts to favor a particular group. This often results in districts with very unusual shapes. The comic was published on the day after Virginia voters passed a referendum approving redistricting that favored the Democratic Party. See also the Belgium-Netherlands border and the Google Maps outlines of many western land divisions, which can both be chaotic in places. This comic also happens to have been published on Earth Day.

Transcript

[A section of a map showing the border between two geographic areas, East Valley and Southlake (marked on the map). The border is shown as a dotted line, and it spells out a message, followed by a small diagonal part:]

WE HOPE YOU'RE ENJOYING THIS MAP

[Caption below comic:]

When local legislators get bored

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