You sound like you’re an authority on sexy ferrets, dream_weasel! :)

Maybe there’s a desk just out of frame, and when she’s sitting at the desk, it’s facing her.

From a pure practicality-for-the-comic standpoint, having it oriented the way it does lets us clearly see the cord from the handset leading to the phone - not that that’s super important, but it maybe helps with clarity?

She is about to get hit by that ship and probably die!

The issue was never about cultural differences or history (though I would argue that different US states have quite different cultures, too) - it was purely about geographical knowledge. In that case specifically it was Europeans ragging on Americans for not being able to find smaller European countries on a map. I tried to compare being able to point to a country like Moldova as a European to being able to point to Kansas as an American and that was apparently the wrong thing to suggest, let me tell you, but the point I was trying to make is that of course Americans aren’t going to be as well-versed in European geography as a European, because we simply don’t need to know where those countries are regularly. Meanwhile I’d wager most Americans can point to Kansas or Colorado on a map, but I wouldn’t expect Europeans to be able to.

Europeans think of any European country as an equivalent to America as a whole. That’s simply stupid. America as a whole is equivalent to Europe as a whole, and American states roughly equivalent to European countries. States are on average half as big as countries in Europe, but America as a whole is roughly equivalent to the EU. So, yes, a European should know what the capital city of Florida is if they expect an American to know the capital of Poland. (Only Germans and people from Montana can reliably tell you the state capital of Montana, though.)

I tried to make a very similar point in one of the European communities on Lemmy earlier this year (in response to a post about Americans being bad at European geography) and basically the whole community jumped on me for it. Watch your back. They’re rabid over there if you dare suggest that a US state is comparable to a European country. :P

The Decemberists have a rock opera called Hazards of Love and in one song, Annan Water, the main character is trying to strike a bargain with a river to allow him passage across it. It includes the line:

Though my mother cries that if I try I sure will drowned be

For the longest time, I would have sworn the lyric was:

Though my mother cries that if I try I sure will drown in pee

Have a listen and tell me you don’t hear that, too.

Or the entire Spire would be the story the uncles are telling Walt, from their perspective having experienced it in their younger days. Then Walt follows in their footsteps and after he completes the third run, they find The Heart hidden away in the barn cellar, instead of piles of cash, and they all go down to fight it but Jasmine comes to save them from certain death.

Then Walt’s mother comes back with a CPS worker and they take him away, and arrest the uncles for child endangerment. Roll credits.