This doesn't look much different from "The Nine Nations of North America"as broken out in a 1981 book (that I bought at the time). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Nations_of_North_America
Out of print, but you can still get used copies and the author revisited the concept rather recently http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/07/03/where-do-borders-need-to-be-redrawn/nine-nations-of-north-america-30-years-later

Things like this just remind us how AWFUL the "Pixels" movie is...

Because a diagonal line from the lower left to upper right is part of the universal "NO" symbol. Smart.

Way back in 1977, I was part of a hilariously failed secession effort.
http://donosdump.com/sweetdick/sweetdickUK.html
I was working as an Assistant/Sidekick to the oddly-named radio personality 'Sweet' Dick Whittington, who was doing mornings at a station based in the San Fernando Valley suburb of L.A. There were people at the time championing having The Valley secede from Los Angeles and form its own city. In a loose monologue, he jumped on the idea and took it to an extreme and absurd conclusion: have The Valley secede from the United States and give itself back to the British. (But that part of the country never belonged to Britain, you say, yes, that's where the absurd comes in) But when audience reaction prompted him to take the absurdity seriously, it ended up with over a dozen people from the radio station (plus the writer who wrote the above article) for a 3-day trip to London on the 4th of July. The highlight of the radio career of the Sidekick Formerly Known as Wendell, even if that picture of me hiding the tape recorder was unflattering.

I had a classmate in college (and the college radio station) who had contracted polio as an infant literally weeks before the vaccination became available. Ouch. But he was one of the most positive people I ever knew, even with a partially withered leg that made walking difficult and ungainly and a totally useless arm... well, almost useless. He did play disc jockey at the college radio station where the music was still on discs and was incredibly skillful at "slipcuing" by resting his bad arm's hand on the record while the turntable underneath it came up to speed, then, at the exact instant he wanted to start it, smoothly withdrawing his hand while with his good hand turning the volume on the new record up and the previous record down and off. It sounded seamless. I couldn't get nearly the perfect effect. He didn't become a pro DJ upon graduation; he didn't need to - his family had a packaged-food company and his older brother had just introduced a product line that has made his family name a supermarket staple. (Without his permission, I'm not going to mention it, but he also spoke about how proud he was of his big bro. Again, an incredibly positive guy.)

The best (not from an insider) explanation I've seen is that if they were all the same shape it would be too obvious that the nuggets were chopped and formed and not made from naturally occurring pieces. But the more different shapes they made the more trouble, so they settled on four, and these specific four, to obscure their makeup just enough for more people to be less conscious of their not-naturalness. It's a good theory, even if a kind of a 'conspiracy theory'.

Well, I try to keep an 'oh, pun' mind about jokes like these, but some of them have groan quite old.

The '90s was also the decade when "The Tick" was animated and put on Saturday Mornings for three glorious seasons, raising expectations SO HIGH for a live-action version a few years later that not even Patrick (Puddy/Kronk/BrockSamson) Warburton could make it good enough.

Meanwhile, Stephen Speilberg's cartoon group, after the success of Animaniacs, tried its hand at a funny superhero toon with "Freakazoid", which would've been more notable if The Tick wasn't upstaging it every Saturday. (But if you want to see something that really should've been on this list, find "Normadeus", the episode featuring the voice of This Old House's Norm Abram as Himself)

Well, they're not the first (or in my opinion the Best) to work that trope. About a dozen years ago, 'underground' comic artist Jason Yungbluth (who has since gone 'aboveground' enough to be featured in MAD Magazine) published the first adventure of "Weapon Brown", a post-apocalyptic Charlie B. all growed up, very bulked-up, and with a bionic arm, as well as the rest of the Peanuts cast, including Dr. Lucy, the Red Haired Girl and Linus and his Great Pumpkin (the stuff of Halloween nightmares). Very NSFKids for violence, sex and language. Then he expanded the universe into re-defined versions of much of the comics page, from Popeye, Orphan Annie and a Beetle Bailey who's a real Military Beetle, to his ultimate adversary, a bio-engineered supersoldier code-named "CAL-v.1N" (But then, if any two comic strip characters are going to be archenemies, it would have to be Calvin and Chuck). Insane, profane and way too much fun. So excuse me if I do not give too much respect to some other halfway-decent depiction of Post-Apocalyptic Charlie Brown.

BI's already one of my regular reads - it's also available on gocomics.com so I can catch it with Lio, Frazz and Pearls Before Swine. I think Meyer is contractually obligated to give them 3 comics a week but is only doing 2; of course, this and most of the other reruns predate the gocomics contract, so "it's new to them". (Has he done a "How to Deal With a Syndicator" yet?)

Also ,another blog was doing a survey of Superhero Parodies and somebody suggested BI's occasional "Adventures of Rocket Hat" as one of the best. Can't argue with that.

One more thing... the casting of Daniel Craig was controversial... "James Bond can't be played a guy with blond hair!"
And the personality change from Piers Brosnan to Craig was as big a change as the Doctor Who change from Matt Smith to Peter Capaldi (which has led some people to speculate that 007 is a Time Lord).
Or there's the theory considering the 50 year stretch of his adventures (so far) that "James Bond" is just the code name/alias of whoever the current operative to earn the 007 designation is. It does make a binge-watching of the movies a little less jarring.

When "the powers that be" change the race of a character, it is ALMOST ALWAYS changed to be WHITE. The Pharaoh in Exodus, Tonto in The Lone Ranger, all the heroes in The Last Airbender (but villains remained ethnic); even Katniss in The Hunger Games books was described as several shades darker than Jennifer Lawrence. But when the producers of the upcoming Fantastic Four movie picked Michael B. Jordan to play the Human Torch, comic book nerds went ballistic! For Hollywood, today just as much as for the last century, the "politically correct" thing to do is "whitewash".
But then, if I were to suggest a Black Brit to play James Bond, my first pick would be Richard Ayoade (but lose the hair, keep the glasses). :)

He had to be Mr. Pibb, he doesn't have the credentials yet to be Dr. Pepper. I once considered naming a dog "Mountain Dewey". Sprite, RC, Shasta, Fanta and Faygo are also good names for something cute and furry... PepsiBlue, notsomuch.

Well, for us Weird Al Yankovic fans (especially those of us who go back to his beginnings). the Accordion is a perfectly cromulent rock instrument (and Al is OUR Accordion Hero).