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points by emil-lp 22 hours ago | 0 comments

You also have three distinct concepts:

– country (geographically defined territory with something binding it)

– state (political entity with sovereign authority over a territory)

– nation-state (a state in which most people share some common identity)

Yeah, this is sometimes really interesting. For eg Scotland, Wales, NI and England are technically all different countries. Just like Aruba (and other Carribbean/island micro nations) which technically is still in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

[–] skrebbel 15 hours ago

People keep calling Scotland etc countries but really let's be honest everybody else calls it a federal state. There's really no huge sufficiently large functional difference between Wales and Niedersachsen, Kansas or Alberta. It's as if Nordrhein-Westfalen had their own world cup football team, it's nuts.

[–] mathgeek 14 hours ago

I love the terminology that we end up with. Scotland is a country within the UK, which is also a country and also a sovereign state.

[–] HPsquared 19 hours ago

Games like EU4 do have multiple views of the map for this reason. There are so many ways you can subdivide and draw borders differently. Language, culture, religion, imperial, etc.