Ep. 65: Flagpoles and Flag Polls w/ Alan Hardy

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've got and.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
A few much matters. Will you might even get to
standards and what they're represent to. Just take my voices
hand a little. We'll try to understand this logic podcast
because the facto counts.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
That wood count. What's up, becks heads and welcome to
episode sixty five of Flagged for Content. It's the only
flag podcast that is promising you an episode every two
weeks this year in twenty twenty five. That is right,
I promise every two weeks.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Man.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
It gives me something fun to do take my mind
off stuff, so you know how that goes. Anyway. It
is also a Flags for Good podcast, kind of speaking
of that. You can go over there. They've got a
bunch of new of a bunch of new like political flags,
a bunch of new activism flags, as well as the
flag of Greenland. I actually texted Michael directly and I

(01:04):
was like, hey, I think you need to think you
need to stock this so like next day, actually within
hours I think he added up for presale on the
site and yeah, you can join me in owning one.
It's still I guess being made, but should get here soon. Anyway,
When you get that flag, the Panama flag, Mexico flag
any of those flags you can use code flagged four,

(01:27):
content flagged four like the number content at checkout and
get yourself like I think it's like a sweet ten
percent off. Helps the show out as well. This is
a super sized episode. I won't lie, so I'm going
to keep the kind of housekeeping short here up top
pretty much. Yeah, I don't have a whole lot to say.
I haven't said. Go to our link tree, check out

(01:49):
all the links over there, join the discussion on discord,
starting to use blue Sky a little bit more, and
join the Patreon because we have a lot of a
lot of bonus content on there, including one a couple
of weeks ago and one this week, so you know
every two week guarantee. I guess that I'm doing now,

(02:10):
and I think that's it. Let's go ahead and get
into the episode. This was a lovely chat that I
had with Alan Hardy, who you may know from his
Facebook page which he'll promote, or you may know him
from Nava. You may know him from a lot of places,
but I know him as a good easy chat So
without any further ado, let's get into it, folks. We

(02:33):
have an absolute pillar of the vexolology community on today
you know him as user rotten Alley. On Reddit. You
may know him on YouTube comments as pilot Why but
if you know the Instagram account of Alan Hardy sixty six,
you also know his name and what year he was born.
It's Alan Hardy.

Speaker 4 (02:55):
Fantastic, thanks very much inviting me on Andy, very much
of a pleasure.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
To Yeah, thanks for coming.

Speaker 4 (03:02):
I enjoyed watching all you your videos and to date
and so really happy to be part of your crowd.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Thank you, right, No, I yeah, I very much appreciate that.
As the listeners won't have heard. I I just asked Alan,
you know how familiar he was with the show, and
he was like immediately, he was like, I've seen every
single one, including at recording date, the one that came
out yesterday, so the one with Max Feldman. So yeah, no, yeah,
the honors all mine. Man, Like you've been a huge,

(03:29):
as I mentioned, pillar of the community for years. I've yeah,
I know, and people tend to hate when I'd say
luminary or pillar or anything like related, but but yeah,
it was. It was so nice to finally meet you
at nab A fifty seven and then again at fifty
eight and hang out and and all that stuff. Yeah,
it feels surreal at times. But anyway, enough about that,

(03:52):
how are things in your neck of the woods?

Speaker 4 (03:54):
Yeah, Joddy good, thank you of course at the time
of recording and running up to Christmas, and yes, hopefully
everyone will have had a wonderful time by the time
this comes out. So looking forward a course to twenty
twenty five, see what we've got in store for flags
in the brand new year.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, and it seems like it's going to be a
big one. But I feel like every and I'm sure
we'll talk more on this too, but every year gets
bigger and bigger for this community and this you know,
I used to call it a hobby, but it really
is like a It's transcended that I think for most
of us at this point. So yeah, with states getting

(04:32):
new flags, it used to be cities, but now it's
states and bigger and bigger, and you knows, as the
New York flag says, Excelsia are ever upward. So yeah,
it's an exciting time to be in the community, for sure.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
And I think and all this started really with Roman
Mars just oh yeah, go around his interest and how
much he increased the focus on city flags in the US, Well,
that actually is now I think pushed through and now
we're getting state flag change. And on the back of that,
don't be surprised if we start saying nations say, actually

(05:08):
our flag isn't good enough. Really, we want something better.
Had that with Fiji a number of years back, and
ted Ted went and tried to help them out, but
they're more insistent on keeping the flag because they had
a great Olympics. But I think we're going to see
an awful lot of flag change. That's that's coming through.
Beyond regime change. We're going to see something interesting in

(05:31):
Chickers Down just changed their waves of their around their
star just because I thought it looked a lot of
neater a bit. And you're going to find this from
some of the people who run governments say actually it's
not quite what we want. We want something different, a
bit more. You never know, you might find a Monaco
saying well, actually we don't want this situation where we've

(05:53):
got and we can actually do something nice or something.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah exactly, Yeah, no, it's it's it's a very exciting
time to be a vexhead. And yeah, I think we're
we're not just the VEX community is benefiting from it,
but like everyone is, from having a better flag, you
get a better sense of community. Blah blah blah. I
won't go into all of it, but you know, if
you're listening and watching the show, you know how that goes. So, Alan,

(06:19):
we have a lot to talk about today, So I'm
going to go ahead and get into what is on
the flagpole and vexheads, we've got a lot for you.
We've got our usual over and underrated. The bulk of
the show is going to be spent on Alan's tolling
processes inside of his Facebook group. We will of course
talk about the community that he's growing over there, and

(06:41):
chat about what designs tend to do better, which ones
do worse, and have some listener questions near the end.
But before we get to any of that, Alan, I
like to ask my guests, what's the flag that got
you into flags?

Speaker 4 (06:56):
I think it's quite often the case you get in
in a school situation you are asked to do something
cover your French book, you know, in class, and with
some artwork and what have you. Of course, nothing simpler
than cutting out the shape of France and coloring it.
And we felt depends, I guess you know, when you've

(07:18):
you've done a bit of something like that, you've got
a bit of interest and they're telling you what you're
going to learn sort of thing, and yeah, definitely you've
got a burgeoning interest somehow. There you've got this blue white.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah is that what?

Speaker 4 (07:35):
They've got? A flag sort of thing, and it's like
then you get an interest in other people go off
and doing German and who knows what. Yeah, no, for sure,
you felt depends on you're coloring and you're in there,
You're you're invested in it.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, I'm glad that like spans generations and the Atlantic
and every because we had to do the exact same
thing in my French class. It was like the first
thing you do with this old, tattered, used book is
you put a cover on it, and then you decorate
that cover. Obviously the flag is a big part of that,
and if you need a reference for the flag, you
can just lift up the what you're drawing on and

(08:14):
it's probably on the actual cover there too. So okay,
so the French flag, So what about it other than
and that exercise that you just said.

Speaker 4 (08:24):
Yeah, it's really stark, it's there it is three panels
equidistant trikilla. It's impactful. You also get this situation now
we know more about all the world of flags, and
you find out the French have got some fantastic other
sort of offshoots nations parts of France, and they've even

(08:46):
got a part of Canada up there with a very
very interesting flag. But yeah, they've got different sorts of
flags that aren't any longer a flag that's visual, it's
more scripted. So we can get some change in there
and we can push some of this back to you know,
reverting to previous lags. What's happened in England. We've had

(09:10):
a big raft of changes about our county flags and
whether they're fit for for use and we have you know,
the historical county flags. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, England is so confusing. I've talked to Tariff and
a few of the other English Scottish folks that have
been on the show about like the difference between like
historic counties and ceremonial counties and this that and the other.

Speaker 4 (09:35):
And there's the county counts will have a different flag
and it's you know right right, and.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Then there's like regional ones like the flag of the
Fenlands is on the up and up right now too.
I think I'm going to have them on in well
record it in January. I don't know when it will
come out, but yeah, like they're on the up and up,
probably I would say more than the US States are,
although we're trying to keep pace with that at this point.
So yeah, absolutely. But okay, so you had something in

(10:04):
the notes about the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games.

Speaker 4 (10:09):
Indeed, well flag of course that sort of art project
you have in class and you're you're there with your pens.
But of course everybody watched the Olympic ceremonies and you
see the teams marching in with their flags and going
off on holiday to Greece, and you got Olympics and
all this, that and the other, all sort of you know,

(10:32):
the history, real history of Athens. So you're flying over
on Olympic Airways, flag flag flying on your tailplane as
you've got for an Olympic flag, and the way their
emblem was or teared up like Olympic rings interchange into

(10:54):
linked it was quite interesting. And how they've done that
through the whole fleet, different planes, and you've got this
postcard and your information pack in front of you and
you take away your little postcards of their plane. So yeah,
that was very impactful. See again, how Greece we're using

(11:14):
their Olympics not only for promotion, yeah, but also promotion
of their.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Enterprise, right and and for the viewers, I'll have a
photo of that up on the screen as well. That's
an Olympic Airways seven forty seven. I think you sent
the notes. Yeah, very cool. Yeah, hard not to get
into flags when they're when there's anything related to like
Olympics or like the World Cup or anything like that

(11:42):
kind of present or near you, especially if the host
country is near you that you can get to, et cetera. Yeah, awesome,
all right, so let's get into all right, So we've
got a few notes here before we get into your
under and over rated flags. I was going to ask

(12:02):
you about, like what are your interests in flags right now?
And we'll we'll obviously get more into the Facebook group
and stuff. But I know we mentioned in the intro
that you are on Reddit quite a bit, so like
what do you do exactly over there?

Speaker 4 (12:20):
My own studies crossover a lot of state flags, so
obviously I post up to Reddit quite often the same
sort of flag that links in with what we're doing. Obviously,
I'll do a few other things, and my interest is varied,
but quite often I'll take a viewpoint, not necessarily within

(12:43):
the vexiology reddit subreddit, but I'll go to the state
that we're looking at and we'll put an agree a
request that maybe they want to be able to put
some local designs into our contest. I'll look through all
the historic posts about, you know, doing one of the
search engine situations, what they've previously said previous five years,

(13:07):
and find those and promote those as at the earliest
entrance in their own flag competition. The study that we
do will hunt and look for whatever. But obviously i'll
find something good. I'll put that to Reddit. Particularly on
the Illinois situation, I must say, Andy, We've got we

(13:28):
had two big contests before because in you Illinois, we're
going to do a contest, and we were looking at
ourselves and we're going to you know, study it down
and what we're going to try and find. We're going
to try and find a commonality about this. We're going
to try and find what really works, what chimes well.
Of course, when you were doing a study for a
month at a time, and you've done it twice, you've

(13:50):
done it five years prior, and you've done it just
this last year. Through you find something in the back
of your mind just twinks and goes, that's a really
good design. Actually, that's probably the best designs. So let's
make a post about that and see how it runs.
And then no one likes it, and no one you know,
gets hold of it and says, actually, that's the best

(14:12):
design I've seen. And it's up in the air. You
can you can test these things out and so you
can see what the how how it you know comes together?

Speaker 1 (14:21):
But sure, yeah, no, totally so all right, awesome, Yeah,
let's all right, we'll get more into that in part two.
I just kind of wanted to get that out there
since it was in the intro and everything, and I
was curious since most of where I know you from
is Facebook, I did not know exactly how active you
were on Reddit. But that makes total sense turn out. Yeah, yeah,

(14:46):
all right, as I said, yeah, we'll get more into
a bit of that. But let's well, we're still in
segment one. Here go over your under and overrated flags.
And now, as I usually say, you can do these
in either order. I usually tell people end on a
high note, but what's a high note is different to everyone,
So I'll let you take it away.

Speaker 4 (15:08):
Even within the underrated flags, hm, you'll find some good ones.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Oh for sure. That's why they're underrated.

Speaker 4 (15:15):
Even so, the big place point about Switzerland is it's different.
So you've got this very very truncated square flag. It's
got a good lot of visual impact. It's you know,
it's got symmetry this way, that way, whatever, whichever symmetry,

(15:36):
and it's different. Even at the u N when they
have the flag outside and the polls for the for
the General Assembly, they've got a square flag for Switzerland.
It's the only one. It's more or less the only
one that I think with the Vatican City is also
and they wanted.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
That, Yeah it's Vatican City. At the u N, I wouldn't.

Speaker 4 (15:56):
Because of observer status. And so when Switzerland actually properly joined,
they said, we cannot, we can't, We can't have anything
other than a square flag. So every other flag is
in ratio two three outside, irrespective whether it's guitar it's
a huge thing, or it's right Monaco four or five.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yeah, So I was gonna say, it's the only I'm.

Speaker 4 (16:23):
Having a holiday there and back in the nineteen seventies
and my first holiday is out and there a British UK.
We've got a situation where we're in a different country
and we can see mountains and this, that and the other,
and your one takes a picture of your eating a

(16:43):
piece of cheese and it's in the background there's a
there's a flag pole by the time, looks like a
toothpick flag and it's like you're eating a piece of
cheese or a toothpick flag on it.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
Oh that is clever. Yeah, okay, so all right, so
France got you into flags, which was before that trip
to Switzerland, so you're already into flags. You over there,
you're eating some wreck let or whatever kind of cheese.
They got a million different times types, and uh yeah,
you get a cool picture where it looks like it's
a little toothpick or whatever, and that just kind of like,

(17:17):
I don't know furthers things, I guess for you. So
have you been back to Switzerland in the meantime to
take in any of the I mean not just the
national but like the canton flags and any of that.

Speaker 4 (17:32):
Last time we were skating, we went into a church.
You know, you have to see what the local church
is like. I think we're.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
More I don't think you're supposed to ski in church,
even in Swiss.

Speaker 4 (17:46):
You take them off outside.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Okay, okay, gotcha, gotcha?

Speaker 4 (17:49):
Got yeah inside this church that got all the counting
flags around the whole set. That's right, yeah, before properly
into flags. And when you get one of these things
where you actually realize all this interest in early life
through you know till later life, and you've you've you've

(18:12):
got all the other interests and everything's going off, and
you find out actually, one of the deepest interests you
have have all of these other things you've been looking
at space or motor racing or or doing other things
like you're working or burning a living. It's it's a
common someone said it's it's a visual form of music.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
That makes sense. Did somebody on the show say that
or somebody else?

Speaker 4 (18:40):
I must I should have threatened that down about who
said that it was. I think it might have been
at the last never somebody said that was okay.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
I was going to say, yeah, like it rings a bell?

Speaker 4 (18:51):
Just does it ring a bell? Did you hear the
same thing. It's a visual visual equivalent to music.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
I I feel like I have If I amn't, I'm
just well. I was going to say going notes, but
continuing down that path, I guess yeah.

Speaker 4 (19:09):
I'll say one other thing, handy.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
It makes inherent sense m hm.

Speaker 4 (19:12):
And this is probably going back about ten years or so.
We had a quick city visits to Barcelona and you
go up to the top of the castle and you're looking.
Of course, they've got a very big flag up there,
and the wind is just gentle, and it's these stripes
cat Land stripes across the top of the fisty. You've

(19:34):
got a couple of trees and photograph it and actually
put it on filming and what have you. And it's
quite fantastic. It's like big fills the frame.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
Oh man, Yeah, it's it's so nice when you get
a good wind day. There's there's only very small tangent
I hope anyway, but there's only one chat Yuga flag
that I've ever seen anywhere here in Chattanooga, basically, and
it's on just like some random I assumed it was

(20:07):
a government building because that's the only place I would
expect to find a seal on bedsheet, boring flag like that,
especially having not seen it anywhere else. But it's actually
like a strip mall is the wrong word, but like
there's I don't know, there's like shop fronts and stuff,
and it's recently built. And I went by there the
other day to try and get like a good photo

(20:28):
or video of the one Chattanooga flag I've ever seen,
and it was a bad wind day, and I, you know,
part of you, like a lot of us, can identify
with this like stick around hoping like maybe it'll pick
up and it doesn't usually and it didn't that to either,
But yeah, when you get a good one, though, there's
nothing quite like that for anyone who's watched this far.

Speaker 4 (20:50):
And also I must say we did a study about
your Tennessee flag just a couple months back. On month
it was something about when the order one, not initially
they said, well we'll have this for thirteen dollars, we'll
order it for we'll have two of these whatever they are,
eight foot by twelve foot, must have gone like, we

(21:16):
need it bigger, can you do it bigger? Okay, well
bigger obviously by what measurement they've sent out to reorder
it's four times bigger. Good lord, fifty dollars. We'll have
two fifty dollars please, yeah for two yeah, back nineteen

(21:38):
oh five, you know the first.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
Of course, I've got one on the way to me
that was flown over the Tennessee capital. But by the
time this comes out, it will have been given away
as a Christmas present. So if it arrives in time,
I should say I ordered it a while ago, and
they are dragging their feet. But anyway, all right, okay,
so that was your underrated. That was Switzerland. You've got

(22:06):
You've got a confusing overrated to me, and only in
the sense that I haven't heard about it being very
highly rated in the first place. But I'll let you
take this one away and make your argument on that.

Speaker 4 (22:19):
Ah, yes, okay, we all make mention of this well.
Ted put it down as a good flag. Unfortunately, I
can't see myself that Bangladesh is a good flag. Overrated.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
I agree with you, I definitely agree with you. It's yeah.
I mean, like Japan works because of the contrast between
the red and the white, I would argue, what is it?
Palau work for a similar reason, the contrast between the
yellow and the blue, but Bangla doesn't quite have that.

(23:01):
It gets a little bit lost, I guess, like, how
would you describe.

Speaker 4 (23:04):
Like it's simply a bad tinkerature. You come down to
a situation, you're looking at things with heraldic viewpoint. You've
got a agreeing against a color. There's no way, you know,
you can distinguish that circle quite so as well as
you could if it got an amount of either white

(23:27):
or gold around it. And so having seen that, the
like a Bangladesh was originally a different design back in
nineteen seventy one. It had a map of the nation.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yes, actually yeah, maps.

Speaker 4 (23:42):
Aren't terribly good about, you know, conveying anything other than
a bit of a blodgy sort of situation what your
shape of your country is.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
And.

Speaker 4 (23:53):
Very quickly changed it.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Yeah, I was gonna say. Map sell and flags are
usually only used in like politically kind of dodgy situations
like Kosovo, Cyprus, maybe Bangladesh, like I don't or was
it like East Pakistan, Pala it was Pakistan.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
Is yeah, East Pakistan?

Speaker 1 (24:13):
Yeah, yeah, but I know, okay.

Speaker 4 (24:16):
So like.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
I know, there's no way for you to put them
up on the screen right now, but I've got them
like here looking at me, and I'm looking at them
right now. You have a couple, Well you've got one.
You've got a better version of Bangladesh. Basically, we'll put
it that way and the viewers will see it on
the screen, the listeners will find it in the show notes.
But just describe to me. I mean you kind of

(24:39):
already have, but like, describe to me what you did
that kind of makes it better.

Speaker 4 (24:45):
We took that amount of area effectively, was the nation
put in the middle of the circle, and we spread
it around the outside of the circle just so as
it chops the area so much nicer and green. It
was a gold ring around a nice red sun.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, I mean yeah, because it's yeah, it's like what
is it? Ted Ca says like every bad flag and
I know he doesn't qualify this as a bad flag
specifically based on what you said, but he was like,
every bad flag has a good flag waiting to get
out him. Or was that Roman It was not?

Speaker 4 (25:19):
I'm pretty much sure it was as well.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yes, yeah, And and and to your exact point, I mean,
the color scheme in that one that had the map
was not bad. The red green and that gold. But
what you've done like by taking it, taking the gold
that was the map color and putting it around it
to fimbriate the I guess it's the sun, but the
red disk in any case, I think makes this like

(25:45):
miles better, like it just streets ahead, if you will.

Speaker 4 (25:51):
And the strangest thing is they're actually deciding now to
have another look at the national flag.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
Really, I did not know that this is.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
It's almost new to me as we're recording this. If
only about a week or so ago some news item
came up and said, the Muslim population of Bangladesh don't
see enough continuity between what is originally Pakistan and what
was East Pakistan. They want something on the flag to show,
you know, Muslim majority and because I think probably the

(26:24):
local Indian sort of Pakistani sort of situation is changing
a little bit more in the nation, they said, well,
we'll look at it, so we don't know. We could
be a bit of a crescent and why not put
a crescent around the sun that is there? And I
moved that across. But it's not for me to do it.
I just saw it. We thought about it, made one

(26:49):
up as a prototype to get along to the Bangladeshi
Embassy in London and said we've done this little project.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Here we are, oh night, So what did they say?

Speaker 4 (27:01):
Huge?

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Got you back? No, okay, so this is pretty recent though.

Speaker 4 (27:06):
This was a year after we did We did ICB
twenty seven Imperial College, London and directly across looking out
the windows the Bangladeshi Embassy. So one of us said, well,
it's pretty awful flag. We can do something better than that.
And I nipped across and I've done a few designs
and I wanted to know necessarily which of these bottled

(27:33):
green colors did they recognize as their flag and they
would know. We got so many different sorts of different
colors of bangledesh as part of my paper that I
was delivering ICV twenty seven. So I thought, this is
can't pass this up. We can nip over there just
from a quarter an hour and I will see if
the ambassadors in and he wants to give us an indication,

(27:56):
but military attache there and handed me as card, So
thank you very much. It's this one.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
Right on. Well, if you get any phone calls from
like a country code you don't recognize coming up, you
better pick those up, because yeah, it's probably that no,
that's awesome. And as I said, like I mentioned this
every show, but definitely for listeners check the show notes.
Viewers will see this on screen, but it's really visually pleasing,

(28:28):
especially I mean just in general. But the contrast between
it and the current one is stark. So anyway, all right,
so we'll go ahead. Actually, what we'll do is we'll
go ahead and move into our first commercial break here,
but when we come back, we will have the bulk

(28:50):
of the show here in the middle, which is going
to be Alan talking about kind of you know, honing
the processes that we've sprinkled in a little bit here
in the intro and what he does with the Facebook group,
getting all the design notes, all that good stuff. And yeah,
we will be right back.

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We're doing this.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Anyway. So that's how they make a cat dog. So
we are back with Alan Hardy here uh and this
is part two. This is the main part here where
we get into the bulk of it, which for mister
Hardy is you know, the Facebook group, I mean, the

(31:08):
polls that you do, the I don't know, tears, the
all of it, really, the changing flags. I've got one
here behind me, Florida for example. So given all of that,
what is your history in flag studies?

Speaker 4 (31:24):
So again, the deeply you know interest has sort of
only happened in the last few years. So having joined
the UK Flag Institute around twenty sixteen, I think I've
been to all but one in person meeting since then.
So I've done two icvs obviously London twenty seven, Slavenia
twenty nine. I've done two NAVA meetings, the one we

(31:47):
are at Philadelphia for fifty seven. We've done Saint Paul
fifty eight. Yeah'd be nice to get along to Washington.
That fifty nine will be a great one. We did
some great work with that little meeting flag that when
we did the Flag Forum Force that would be really great.
So yeah, lots of great people at those meetings, and

(32:09):
it's like, you know, you like, really really really great
asked to present the paper. So I've got you to
thank for getting me out of that hole and my
slid ideas I wasn't working so well, And thanks very much, Andy.

Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah, it turns out like the left one goes back,
the right one goes far. No that, yeah, you weren't
the only one, trust me.

Speaker 4 (32:36):
Thank you. Well, we stood in front of like one
hundred people and you don't want to to waste their
time or you know you so thank you.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
No thanks necessary. So given given all of that, would
you like to mentioned where you actually talked about or
are we only going to talk about tech issues? If
I must, Well, it's the fucking idea of the show.

Speaker 4 (33:03):
So yeah, okay, Well, and uh, that blessed paper is
like you know, it's like about the core of my
core study of flags state flags, and I've been looking
at that for like six years or more. So you know,
I run loads of these bloody pointless contests and proposed
flags or you know, near to a near empty desert

(33:25):
that is Facebook now. So yeah, sorry, tend to emotions
and all that.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
It happens, thank you. But so yeah, so do you
have this page called was it? We have?

Speaker 4 (33:40):
We have a page it's called US state Flags Current
Historical Proposed That's right, So we've we've got six years
or more history now going into looking at what effectively
would but underperforming state flags mostly quite a lot of

(34:02):
people say bad, but let's not let's not go there.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yeah, so we've got a.

Speaker 4 (34:10):
Little crowd together to start with. Dean Thomas set the
page up. We've got four of the four of us
on the Adamin side are NAVE members, so we've got
a lot of history. Jim Ferrigan there the Cup of Movich.
So between the four of us, me being more interested
in the proposed side of it, Jim being more interested

(34:32):
in historical and Nick also you know, offering viewpoints. So
between what we have as visitors to the site, I
think we do quite well to you know, verse our
whole project about state flags. We don't veer off terribly.
We sometimes go and do a special project around Christmas time,

(34:54):
but we haven't done one of those a couple of years. So, Yeah,
these these contests are all sorts of sizes. Some can
be just for islands, you know, someone inhabited islands. We've
done a number of those sorts of contests, and then
we've we've had others that are thousands of images we've
found because somewhere, like you know, when we've looked at

(35:15):
real state flag change Mississippi, Utah, Minnesota, some of these
now the images that we're holding is they're probably in
the eleven hundred images of interesting designs, And of course
we've got the similar sort of a situation with an
annoying no one's seen these eight thousand, sorry, five thousand images,

(35:36):
so everyone's like, well, what are we actually going to
be looking at? What can we choose between? Are these
the only ones we're looking at? And so be nice
to see what we're sent into the Illinois contests and
to see what's what actually comes to that. But of
course all all of this is coming down and what
we're looking at as sort of situation. CpG Gray has

(36:02):
suggested about what makes a really good flag and tiered
list you mentioned tear list. It's not really the the
be all and end all. But of course my own
personal view is there are three groups, and there's a
great group, some of them maybe a little bit underperforming,
but they're solid flags. And then there's an average group,

(36:24):
and then there's a terrible group. And of course getting
into that terrible group, your buzzword is we're putting on
the name of the state that we're actually living in,
so Wisconsin.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Kansas, Montana, Arkansas.

Speaker 4 (36:41):
There are twenty four of these out of the fifty
stuck their state name on.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
Yeah, yeah, which is unfortunate. Also, like as a brief aside,
like just going back to what you were talking about
and all the different designs for every single one, I
cannot imagine what your hard drive must look like or
what you're like, how you've got everything categorized in folders
and stuff. And I'm assuming you do, because you'd have

(37:07):
to or you'd go completely nuts. But like, hats off
to you for doing for doing all of this stuff,
not just yeah full stop, I guess in that in
that respect. But so you're talking about, right, So you're
talking about like the tears, and I think we've all
seen those like tierless online where it's like S tier A,

(37:29):
tier BC, et cetera. And you're kind of putting you're
kind of like tiering within tiers.

Speaker 4 (37:38):
I guess, yes, particularly looked more as what's in the flag? Yeah,
is the repetitive imagery? How many stars that flag's got,
what colors are in the you know all these situations,
how many arrows that the flag's got on, has it
got text on it? How many words on the text,

(37:58):
how many letters on the text? How long is the text,
Does it have barn, does it have smoke coming up?
Does it have water, does it have you know, all
those sorts of things. But I was teered through about
fifty or so different parts of my spreadsheet actually logging
what was actually imagery within the flag that you could

(38:20):
see and verifiable. So if a flag had that as
well as another state and another state though, all that
was compounded so you get a negative figure for that.
So all the tier lists that I'm going to be
able to show you actually, okay, it takes good points,
some unique points, gives positive points for them, all the

(38:43):
repetitive generalized sort of you know miss Marshay put something
there of a bear. Well, yeah, we're going to have
one bear on California and that's negative point California and
three negative points for Missouri. So all this sort of

(39:07):
averaged out into three groups good average and includes its
state name.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
Yeah, ok so where do you want to start?

Speaker 4 (39:18):
Where are we going to start? We're going to give
some prizes out and after all that calculation, my one
of my favorite flags has actually won it. I've put
the mathematics together and for some reason, the mathematics of
Maryland give them the best US state flag.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
Nope, nope, nope, not accepting that. I don't know what.
Mathematics for one thing, it's mathematicals nat looking at that
flag for one thing. Math is the buzzword. Maryland is
not the well maybe it's the flag I would use
for that, but in the sense of like, don't don't

(40:06):
be like Maryland.

Speaker 4 (40:08):
Mm hmm. Well there's another twelve up there that are
you know, justifiable. Ie we'd say also in orders that
they're position, but you know, yours is there. We've only
just looked because we've looked mostly at the flags that
needed work. The best ones have been left last. We've

(40:29):
only just done your your Tennessee and Tennessee. Effectively, tours
is the third best flag in the nation. We've only
got two more to study in depth, and that's Colorado
and New Mexico when they're all brilliant flags. Yeah, the
ones that we haven't done until this last year through.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 4 (40:48):
It was.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
It was interesting with the Tennessee one. Sorry to go
quote unquote offscript as it were, but it was interesting
seeing the Tennessee one. How how often the votes kind
of like I don't know, funneled things back towards like
a mean, the mean being kind of what it already is.

(41:11):
And I'm wording this bad because I don't have math
words in my head. No, I just don't know, But
like it seems like they kind of tend to revert
to the mean in cases where the flag is already good,
like Tennessee. I think the one that ended up winning
yours was the Flags for Good version, which is basically
the Tennessee flag, but with a slightly larger blue stripe

(41:36):
on the fly.

Speaker 4 (41:37):
Right Is that?

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Am I correct that?

Speaker 4 (41:39):
Right? Yep? Okay, Yeah, the flag that Michael Green is
retailing apparently has a little bit more blue in the
fly and I don't know where they put that in
for a reason.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
I I have a theory, if you're open to it, please.
My theory on that one is that Michael likes to
make the like flags for each state, and where he
put the pride stripe on the Tennessee one is that
fly stripe, and I think he wanted more real estate
to do that in That is not something I've actually
talked to him about, but it would be my guess

(42:13):
because his his has more of an extended blue fly
than most I've ever seen natively here in Tennessee. Uh
again just a guess. So yeah, but I don't hate it.
I mean it won for a reason. You know, these
aren't super scientific, which we'll get into, I guess, so
like at the end of the day, more people voted

(42:34):
for that one for a reason. So uh, you know,
as a Tennessee you got to kind of take.

Speaker 4 (42:42):
Sorry, you actually see a bit of wear and tear
on a flag within the area you're in. That blue
gets damaged more so because it's a little weighty. If
it's been a sown flag, it's pulling on with the
air and actually on picks itself.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Yeah yeah, I think I've even got some good pictures
from this barbecue place down the road that usually has
one outside that so their credit recently replaced their Tennessee
flag because of what we're talking about. The fly strip
was it must have been a sown one. The fly
strip was kind of hanging on literally by a thread

(43:21):
or two.

Speaker 4 (43:23):
But yeah, yeah, that's a good aspect of a flag.
Actually you can sew something back on there. You were
using the flag and you're not throwing the whole thing away.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
And that's why I don't hate like Ted will disagree
with me on this, you may, I mean, plenty of
people disagree with me on this, but I like the
blue fly. I like. I don't know, I've never minded
the size of it. Of course, I never really thought
about the size of it, I guess until I saw
Michaels from Flags for Good. I was like, oh, that's
a little wider. But I don't hate it either. But yeah,

(43:52):
at the end of the day, even with the fly
trailing off and as I said, literally hanging by a thread,
you still know what flag it is. So I don't know.
I don't know, but it makes sense, like when we're
talking about these good flags that we're talking about up
top here, that when you do these poles and everything,
the end results tend to be, if not the exact

(44:16):
state flag in question, they tend to skew very close
to it for probably several reasons, but one being that
it's just good design.

Speaker 4 (44:26):
I think, do you find a familiality with the design?
Everyone's happy with it to a degree.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Yeah, it's hard to kind of pluck that out of
your head when you're voting and be completely unbiased, but yes, yeah,
for sure. All right, So okay, so all right, So
we've got these tiers you've got we just talked about
some of the good ones. Do you want to throw
any of these up on the screen here.

Speaker 4 (44:54):
Yeah, let's have a look at some then screenshat.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
Because I think speaking of these.

Speaker 4 (45:01):
Share this is what we've got a vision of this
tiers of I don't see my pointer. The good group
thirteen currently without any text. Some of them a bit
complicated in a number of aspects. You've got a higher

(45:22):
that's got an awful lot of stars in there, and
have you there's a mathematics version of how you do
the big dipper and how far the star is away
from that consolation that distance between the big Dipper and
the star that is placed in the flag is not
the correct distance. It's not pointing to the right place.

(45:44):
And they've done something within the the one that's issued
to Wikipedia that is not fathomable.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah, that's yes.

Speaker 4 (45:55):
And the complexity of how the flag of Arizona was
originally designed. The very first one was before it was
a state, issued as a flag for their rifle team.
When it went off to a contest in Ohio, everyone
turned up with a flag for their team, but Arizona

(46:16):
and Arizona territory quickly sewed something up, and of course
they got their tincerature right when they first did it,
and they put the very first, very first ray as
light yellow, and then they went red. And then somewhere
in the wartime period of the First World War and
they hadn't got enough red material. It looks as though

(46:38):
they've done stripes that don't actually align any longer. These
were dark material and light material, and you've got a
copper colored star, and of course then it comes back
to being redrawn, and then they've got the wrong number
of colors and the wrong order, and it's been the

(47:00):
same ever since.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Yeah, a Cay, the less I say about Arizona is
the better I think it's I think that's so close
I just can't Well, Okay, so let's talk about Actually,
let's use that as an opportunity again, I know, going
a little offscript, but let's use Arizona as an opportunity
to talk about what you do on the Facebook page.

(47:25):
I know we've briefly talked about it. I've discussed it,
but when you get one like Arizona, what do you Well,
you explained the process to me, like the process where
you're talking about voting with emojis and everything. Could you
line up like? Kind of explain how that works to
those who haven't seen it are part of the group.

Speaker 4 (47:48):
Facebook has a particular front end packaged whereby you can
leave emotion reactions against any comment or any post that's
starters as a thread. So you leave a like, a
thumbs up. You want to show a caring aspect, so
you've got this heart sort of showing emotion. You've got

(48:13):
to cry, you've got an angry emotion. All these seven
different sort of emojis can then be utilized by putting
a slide together that shows up something like a set
of six images. And we all know that using a
within our group, using a thumbs up like is to
like all of them or to hate all of them,

(48:36):
depending on how we have originally configured that part of
the process and the other. Because you'd normally press like first,
and it's always the default thing, it's not a real vote,
so you wouldn't put an image up with a like
to be voted on. You'd have to go into the
emoji bar, come across the emojis to pick the one

(49:00):
that picks within the vision that the slide that is
with that image. So we have typically six images whereby
you have to particularly pick one of six that ties
in with how you think which were these six or
is the better one out of the group. And then

(49:21):
after that round has finished, I totaled all the scores
and we get a thinning out through the process. We're
bringing in many cases a couple of hundred, a couple
of well maybe one thousand images to this first round,
and that will thin out to a couple of hundred
in a second round, a third round get down within

(49:44):
fifty to one hundred, a fourth round sort of quarterfinals,
semi finals, final of six, and typically I'll always try
to make a final of six. So every time we
see a state flag contest like this a study, it's
always a definitive marketing point of these are the six

(50:04):
designs that our group are promoted through to get to
a final. And then we'll take that to another part
of Facebook. We'll get votes from there, or we'll be
talking we've read it at certain points, and we'll put
these votes back in and by the end of the time,
we've gone through all the process of going from the

(50:24):
very first images that we've found through to the very
last images we've gotten a very broad viewpoint. All that viewpoint,
we've got specialty things. We will always see sort of
something looking like a California flag, or some always see
a slide looking like the Texas flag. There will always

(50:46):
be those because we've got a catalog back catalog of
all collections people have done in this nature of saying
I want to redesign all the flags of America and
I'm happy with this design, and we've put everybody's been
putting posts and leaving them around corners of the internet,
and then I've trying to scrape that information back make

(51:07):
it because all everyone designs and different sizes as well. Yeah,
that's half of the problem. Because I'll take the image,
know that needs to be within our scope of our contest,
take it into inkscape, resize it down to exactly as
much as we can a three by five ratio because
majority of flags are sold in three by five. Resize

(51:28):
the six hundred pixels in length three hundred and sixty
pixels in width, so effectively ten pixels as an inch
that'tually five foot by three foot flag. And then we'll
put those images into the contest and everyone will be
voting on them. So as they can see them very
rave and very very controlled fashion, and they can pick

(51:51):
between them so much easier once on that little process
has happened.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Yeah. Yeah, so you funnel it down and down and
down and down and kind of distill the best, the
highest voted upon anyone or anyway one out of a group.
And yeah, I did not realize, like it makes inherent
sense when you're talking about you don't want the thumbs
up like the blue just little thumbs up like thing

(52:16):
to be one of the things, because like people will
scroll past that not even realizing that it's something to
vote on in the first place, like oh, those look
like good designs, I'm gonna I'm gonna like that or
whatever you know, et cetera, et cetera. I do worry
that some people do that with the heart one, which
is where a little bit well, actually I had I

(52:37):
had a decent question from one of our listeners. I'm
gonna have to pull it up, but it was basically
talking about like how do you control for four things
like that, and for Facebook's algorithm, which tends to if
a lot of people put like an angry emotion on something,
it tends to get shown less least in like the

(53:01):
broader Facebook sphere.

Speaker 4 (53:05):
In the group, but we then I group, I think
we're quite controlled. We have probably about typically about thirty
people or so popping in and out, and I might
necessarily vote on every round, but there'll be in and
around and voting, and they then a process. We've got
a bit of an upfront pin to comment and I
days gone past when we've changed the procedure, I've looked

(53:29):
down the list of the people who have voted in
such a way and saying, you know, you understand actually
using the emojis rather than just liking it slide.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
I've seen a few of those.

Speaker 4 (53:43):
And what then happens is that person then knows, oh,
there's some trick about this and actually not only can
I like this slide or dislike the slide if the
light button is against all this slide, what we can
now do is vote for none of the by using
the thumbs up. Now that's a different trick that most

(54:05):
people have caught on quite nicely, because when are totally
up and everything and I'll put how many likes effectively
seven x, you can see very quickly then that all
of that slide wasn't liked and then the winner of
that slide. If the winner of that slide only got
four positive votes, it's not going to go into the

(54:28):
A grade group of the next round. It will go
into a wild card group of the next round. It's
a winner, it's a qualifying image down vote, okay. And
so consequently that next round when there's a wild card,

(54:50):
will be a larger six images, and you have to
win the wild card to get back into the A
grade group. So you can see it's a bit more
of an aggressive situation to come around the outside and
then to progress as an unfavored design.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Right right, And I would imagine that those wild cards seldom,
if ever actually win. It's kind of or have there
been anything.

Speaker 4 (55:16):
I've been surprised because this route is more tortuous. Once
you start seeing one good design that's been passed over
and we were working into the process, into the study,
and most people understand, actually, that's quite good. I think
I like that more so than in the other five.

(55:38):
Winning the slide, and that goes forward and then actually, yeah,
we brought this one through strangely and it has done well,
and we'll get a lot of top threes, might not
get very many winners, but a wild card route actually
because it's seen maybe once more in that scenario. Somehow
it werrahaps around the outside. Sometimes a winner will be

(56:01):
so obvious. I won't put it in the first round.
There was one or two that I was so obvious,
like the which one would it be? There's one or two,
one or two. We had South Carolina I think, missed

(56:24):
out on the first round, and it's so obvious. The
Wikipedia one it didn't need to be in there, so
it's never been assessed, and that sort of thing. Or
there been one or two of the other ones. When
we knew we were starting and we're starting with a
poor design. I never put it in as Image one.

(56:44):
It became Image three hundred and something or other, and
it failed straight away. We knew already that it wasn't
going to do anything, and there were so many more
better visually impactful designs.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
So is that, like, is that an instance of kind
of putting your thumb on the scales a little bit?
Or I mean, I guess it seems like it would
be other than just completely randomizing it, because I understand
the want and need to not completely randomize it based

(57:20):
on like past results and things like that. But I'm wondering,
you know, how much of that is kind of a
little bit of intervention and how much is left a chance.

Speaker 4 (57:31):
I guess I think it was New Hampshire, and I
actually did the whole contest as randomized. So I gave
each and every image that I was going to put
into the contest a number, and then that first round
was a randomized pick, and those numbers were the images,
and they went to the first round contest completely randomized.

(57:55):
It was such a difficult thing to do to get,
you know, three hundred images. Initially, sure, yeah, and then
give them, give them a number, and then pull that
out of the hat and what have you. Recently, I've
gone more the scheme of setting up at each every slide,
I've got a theme. Some will be fecie designs, some

(58:15):
will be pally, you'll fine the usual sort of suspects.
And as the slide gets populated by the fags that
I look at, I'll then say, well that's good enough,
I've got six images here. I'll put a number too
that that will be slide number three, This will be
slide number four, slide number five, And sometimes I get

(58:37):
to about sixteen slides I'm pretty much into a situation
whereby know the Fezi design here, we're doing this.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
Okay, so yeah, it's.

Speaker 4 (58:48):
Interesting how it's interesting to me how it goes. I
don't know how much that comes over when people are
viewing eight slides tonight, and it can get a bit
repetitive that I've been working too much and I'm bringing
these things together.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
There are sometimes when I'm voting, I'm like, wait, didn't
I see this one two slides ago? And then I
go two slides ago and I'm like, oh no, it
actually what it's different in this way. It may not
be a hugely appreciable way, but it's different in this
way or whatever. Okay, all right, so we've talked about
like the kind of the format of it. You vote
with the emojis among these six options, you whittle it down,

(59:28):
et cetera, and then you pick a winner. I've seen
your PowerPoint or your your sheets on it, because you
post those publicly too, which I actually do really appreciate
because well, for the obvious reasons, if it's just me
taking you at your word, like I'm not going to
go back and check how many hearts this one got
and how many angry faces. This one got and be like, wait,

(59:50):
why is that? You know I'm not going to do that,
So I appreciate that you post those publicly, of course.
So anyway, that's the process and basically how it works.
I was gonna ask you, I'm pretty interested to know,
especially given this Florida one that I have hanging behind me.
I don't normally, as I said, by redesigns that they

(01:00:14):
don't like. I have a copy of like the Keystone
flag for Pennsylvania, right, things like that. But I don't
normally buy redesigns just on a whim because they look good.
I can't think of a better way to put this,
but I just don't. But then I went to nab
A fifty seven I saw this Florida redesign and I thought,
that's gorgeous that I don't know whether I will definitively

(01:00:36):
say should be the flag of Florida, but that is
definitely a top contender for the flag of Florida. And
so I've got it obviously it's hanging behind me right here.
But I'm curious, do you have any maybe not just
favorites and least favorites, but also like, well, favorites and
least favorites. You don't have to mention your least favorites,

(01:00:59):
I guess, but if you have any favorites, and then
if you have any like maybe underdog stories or ones
that you didn't think we're gonna make it as far
as they did, came out of nowhere, anything kind of
like anything narrative that we can get into here on
the podcast interesting. We start with favorites of that, that's
probably the easiest place to start.

Speaker 4 (01:01:21):
My favorite, of course, is the Keystone flag. We not
only had redesigns for Pennsylvania, we've also had a contest
for favorite redesign, and of course everyone liked Keystone Flag
and there's absolutely no reason why it shouldn't be the
state flag.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Yeah, agreed, Uh, yeah, I have zero notes on that.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on that. So okay, so
that's a favorite. Do you have any that are maybe
even underdogs that when further than you thought they might.

Speaker 4 (01:01:55):
I don't know that I've got in this slides.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
The keep in mind like particular one I didn't like.

Speaker 4 (01:02:04):
Yeah, I'll send you through one that I didn't particularly like,
and that was our original West Virginia. It looks very understated,
very planned. We tried to boost up a bit by
doing something with it, but even so I don't think

(01:02:28):
it comes over terribly well. Of course, we did a
second design contest with West Virginia on the basis that
I think quite a lot of other people didn't think
much of that design. When we were looking at again
doing repeak contests, and we've done that quite recently. Within
the scope of things, the original contest was maybe resigned

(01:02:49):
half of these, like Ted says, as good flags and
as bad flags, so we might only do twenty five contests.
At that point, quite a number of people say, well,
you're going to do anymore. We've got Maine here, We've
got you know, all these others that might a study,
And so of course we expanded and expanded until we're

(01:03:11):
done the whole set at least once. And in between
the good ones that we're doing now we're interspersing and
we're coming back and saying, is there any of these
that we've we probably should have a look at. And
the last set of this, this current contest that we're
doing at the moment, it really isn't a contest, it's
more looking at the current flag and seeing what options
there are here, and we're looking at the group that

(01:03:33):
are we haven't looked at twice. We're looking at these
and we're saying, are there any of these that we've
we've under you know, under focused on. And so we've
got six or so such as Michigan, Delaware. We've only
done Pennsylvania once, but of course it's not a situation.

(01:03:55):
New York we've done now twice because of looking at everything.
We're looking at New Jersey. I've seen a wonderful new
redesigned for New Jersey and I'm just upset that we're
not doing another contest for it because I think we'd
have a winner there.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
Yeah, I was gonna ask, well, I was writing it down,
but I guess I didn't need to, uh, but I
was gonna ask about So you've you've messaged me a
couple of times as far as efforts to affect actual
flag change, and New York was one of those. I
unfortunately was very busy, did not did not have as

(01:04:32):
much time or energy as I would have liked to
kind of give that other than just saying, you know,
maybe ask Dan McKay. Dan McKay can probably help, but
what I was gonna kind of shift to you here
a little bit if we could, is a real life
efforts to affect that change, because as you you said,

(01:04:53):
you you showed us that letter from Governor Younkin of
Virginia earlier, and I know you've been in touch with
at least one line maker from New York State? Do
you is that? Well, I'll start here. Is that something
that you envisaged this kind of project doing when you
started it? Or is that something that kind of happily

(01:05:13):
came along came along the way.

Speaker 4 (01:05:16):
Nearly the big out of all of this is people.
Chris Maddish was was one person who says, what what
you're going to do out of this situation?

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
Four years? Incidentally?

Speaker 4 (01:05:28):
Wonderful, wonderful, great book. He says, what's your big out? Well,
I hadn't necessarily thought necessarily of what is the big out?
You know, is there a book in this? Is there
a are there or the lessons to be learned? But
of course, being stateside last year going around New England,

(01:05:50):
I dropped a number of flags in of course on
my trips was a trip to Virginia.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
Actually, do you mind unscreen sharing really quick street a
larger shan that how do I do the be near
the bottom, But nothing isn't too.

Speaker 4 (01:06:08):
An the bottom it could be stop sharing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
There we go. Yeah, I would love to get a
good a good shot of that or as much as
you know, as much as you don't need to blur. Okay, yeah,
so you want, I can blow your address.

Speaker 4 (01:06:22):
Well it doesn't really matter necessarily, but my name's on
on the top there of course. But yeah, there we go.
Governor of Virginia, thank you very much. You're your flag
is worthy of a letter of thanks. Yeah, very nice
of him to answer. And of course I've done the

(01:06:43):
same thing this last time is to do with Nava
in and out of Saint Paul. So nip down to
Wisconsin very late at night, is on the way down
and take too much time to figure out where I
was going and end up going in the out quarter
to five.

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
Oh wow, yeah, the.

Speaker 4 (01:07:02):
Secretary of State's office here, I might be able to
put this to the gone anyway, the troop was very helpful.
Let me have the the proper drop box to put it,
and we put the flag that we've done for Wisconsin
too to their secretary of state, and of course then

(01:07:23):
followed that down to Springfield. Great meeting with Micah, who
was doing great work putting in the Illinois contest images together.
I wasn't intended to put a design in. Not really
necessarily interesting right in taking any blund blaudits or whatever
putting a design in, But of course I got one

(01:07:46):
on me just in case you wanted to see what
be doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
Why not, of course go anywhere without one.

Speaker 4 (01:07:53):
Want to take our winners in. We've done Illinois contest twice,
so we've got an Illinois winner one Ken Morton Magnum
Draco twenty five I think has doddenly the last one through.
So both those went into the contest. So again, nice
out direction for finishing off those states. And looped around

(01:08:17):
and Missouri knocked on the door sort of effectively.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
If I do like the Missouri and all again, Missouri.

Speaker 4 (01:08:27):
Is a nice design. There was a building across the
road that I thought was the administration building, and there's
a giant bear. Wonderful post. I've never seen this image
of this outside that one of their administration blocks, and
that image of a bear will be so much better
than any of the others that I've seen around. But
of course we're not doing Missouri again. We've closed that off.

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
I think we've all effectively as a nation said we're
not doing Missouri again.

Speaker 4 (01:08:56):
We don't renize Missouri. There's plenty of chokes along that way.
But yeah, but the Secondary States Assistant said, I'm not
going to accept it from you. We'd we'd sooner hear
it from a local who's raising this with the with
their congressman or whatever it is, So I would sooner

(01:09:21):
use all of this airtime and say one thing. There's
a key point. If you're happy with your state flag,
please contact your assembly person, your various representative. It doesn't
matter where you put the design to them, but if
you can key them into saying if it's a bad flag,

(01:09:45):
if it's an underperforming flag, there are plenty out of
designs out there and using utilization of NAVA, utilization of
flag forums like ourselves talking about these. These forums almost
cost nothing. There's no need necessarily to go to a
flag commission. We've got expertise, we've got plenty of people

(01:10:09):
we know, oh in NAVA, like seventy members of NAVA
in New York. When we're going to start talking about
New York, ask us, it was it was a crazy
situation to be looking at legislations, see what they've been
doing about their state flag, and especially the situation with
extra Latin being put on by the governor and back

(01:10:30):
in two thousand, a lot of people didn't like that
and it was snuck in and it was and it's
come up to be redesigned back to where it should
have been.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
Oh yeah, So, so what you're telling us is if
we don't like our local flag, our state flag, contact
our representative or Alan will first.

Speaker 4 (01:10:54):
I won't be able to do much Before I can.
I can show people what a group of flag fans
rather fancy for their redesign, but actually choosing something it's
very much so for a local interest group to do.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
So yeah, absolutely, all right, I think it's time we
have to take one more ad break. We will come
back after this ad break, kind of wrap up that
segment a little bit. And I think I did get
one listener question in there. We will get the rest
of them in after this break, and yeah, more with
Alan Hardy, more on these redesign efforts and all that

(01:11:35):
good stuff. Catch you then, So, yeah, it's professor utonium
he accidentally puts the chemical X in the mixture. And

(01:11:57):
then they're oh shit, we're back, all right, Hey more
with Alan Hardy here. We just got done talking about
a lot of the kind of process, a lot of
what goes on behind the scenes indie Facebook group that
does these redesigns, and we wanted to dig a little deeper,
so we got some listener questions, which I think is

(01:12:20):
pretty much going to be this entire third segment here. Now,
I've tried to pick a strategic order for these, and
I thought it could be fun since you were currently
doing Minnesota. Let me see who it was that asked this,
but I believe it was Yeah, okay, we'll start with
Brandon Hunt, who designed the starflak one for Minnesota. And oh,

(01:12:46):
excuse me, he's asking now that you're revisiting Minnesota designs,
first off, why and why not the outlined starflake that
he kind of finished with.

Speaker 4 (01:13:03):
Thank you, Brandon, good question. Quite often, you know, Teddy's
versing every time he's talks to somebody about Minnesota, and
he says it's growing on people, and I've been following
it as well as trying to keep an eye on
how interested people are about the new design. He asked

(01:13:24):
the question again through only a month or two ago.
I'm sure I'll put it up for a vote again.
So we've revisited the situation. We've we've brought all the
designs that we discussed around at various you know, themes,
and of course on that trip through the Midwest that

(01:13:44):
I've just done after the NAVA meeting and dropped in
a Lee Herald, of course, the north Star flag. It's
still a very well regarded flag, still selling well for him.
And he just said, you know, we're doing a survey
of all our customers. We're keeping a note of, you know,

(01:14:05):
which flags they like. Of the flags that we're retailing.
We're retailing all the usual ones, the current brand new
flag I refer to it somehow as the two Blue flag.
We're retailing the north Star flag, and we're returning the
originals sailing on the bedsheet flag. And he keeps a

(01:14:26):
note of his customers as they come in and they
put down a vote on his little chart of all
the designs is looking for. So that was the basis
of this last question through to the visitors to our page,
which of these or a combination of them do you like?
Of course, he'd put a number of green ones on

(01:14:47):
there were maybe taking a vote whether we have a
green hoist or a green fly and Brandon's designs as
it was it left as it exited, the contest wasn't
necessarily the same designs as it was when it came

(01:15:07):
into it, but Lee put down the design that was
it was noted as okay, star flag is a great flag.
It really is really really nice flag, and especially with
that extra fimbriation is it's it's stunning, absolutely stunning. I
know you've got.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
As I've previously talked about, I don't normally own ones
that aren't.

Speaker 4 (01:15:27):
Normally it's a great, great flag. I would like one
to really would it. It's a nice, nice flag.

Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
You can use code flagged for a kind.

Speaker 4 (01:15:42):
In the In the makeup of the Minnesota contest, we've
done a lot of work with and I've been on Facebook.
It's a different group and Minnesota is for a better
state flag. John Good have put one design up there
and I said, it's really good design. John, that's very
very big, very very good. When we had Minnesota contest

(01:16:03):
and see no he didn't make it, didn't make it.
I think he got the states mixed up and it
wasn't able to get along at the end of the
day when we figured out what was which happens happens
right on your doorstep, and okay, so that's the situation.

(01:16:24):
So we had, I think in all about sixty designs
or so put into the content. It's a mini contest
and we're gonna look at everything and go and look
at everything. But this was just to answer the question
is Lee Herald barking up the wrong tree for saying about,
you know, local sentiment and what's the international sentiment? What
what are people who are saying, you know, we like

(01:16:45):
better state flags? And how's it going? And then we've
put this contest together and it's processed through only this evening.
I put the final four up for contest for the
for the final situation. The new flag's not in four.
It's just exited. It was in the top eight, but
it's not in the top four that we've looked at,

(01:17:07):
and we've looked at sixty designs, so you can see
it's it's it greats a little bit. And as Christophe say,
you shouldn't have two blues, and I and most people
would say you shouldn't put two colors next to one another.
I know it's in the field and everything other than
the next party per chevron, but it should have some

(01:17:31):
white in there. And that's really what Lee has done
with most of his designs. He's put some white in
there and ask people which they like we've done that.
We're doing the contest. A majority of ours have a
white chevron. So who.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
Right, yeah, no, yeah that if you haven't, well, I
guess by the time the airs that contest will have concluded,
or that contest is the wrong word, but that that
pole will have concluded. But yeah, I share most of
your sentiments on that. I am curious about. Like I
saw one at the bottom there that looks like the

(01:18:11):
starflake design but with almost a Canadian Canadian pay Is
that like the invention or.

Speaker 4 (01:18:20):
Think so? Maybe someone who's mentioned to him that it
would look better as gold and he thinks, yeah, it
would look better as golden. When I'm doing my survey sheet,
I'll put down another variant for that. Maybe that takes
more votes. But he's obviously looking at it himself and saying,
there are better ways of doing an emblem on a
blue sheet, and you can actually put a bit of

(01:18:41):
extra color in there and it looks a more fancy.

Speaker 1 (01:18:44):
Yeah, yeah, I won't mind. My original criticism of the
starflake was that it was not far enough removed from
a seal on a bedsheet like obviously it isn't, but
it is a central element on blue like I don't know,
like in aca of flags, which is what we often
talk about, you know, any big state flag display where

(01:19:07):
all the blue sobs get lost into each other. I
could have seen that one falling into that same trap,
even though it's not technically a seal on a bed sheet,
and despite the fact that I really liked it, so
I guess I could understand putting the yellow stripes there.
It just seems like a weird like I don't know,
it seems like a bold swing by Lee. I don't know,

(01:19:30):
in one direction or another. In any case, So since
we are on Minnesota though, and we've gone through that,
I did tariff one of your countrymen, I wanted to ask.
I mean, I guess like he's putting this very broadly,
but just ask about your thought of the new Minnesota design,

(01:19:54):
and I guess like I would expound on that, Like,
whatever your thought of the new Minnesota design was when
it was announced, have any of the Facebook calls changed
or swayed at in any.

Speaker 4 (01:20:07):
Sense, only just starting to. It's the thing about familiality
with a design, and we've tracked it in the past.
When it was first announced, it was about a three
to one ratio. Most people like the Preka, very few
like the two Blue. Yeah, we did the survey six
months or so ago. That was about two to one ratio.

(01:20:31):
Most people like the Precker. But now you can see
the waiting on that too, Blue. It's become more familiar,
it's risen, and that ratio is just as tilted. We've
just done it again as a one off on its
own same We repeated exactly the same thing from six
months ago. Now it switched around. It switched around only

(01:20:53):
in the last month or two, somewhere in between six
months ago and now that's flipped. Most people are accepting
of the two Blue a fewer are accepting the Prakker.
We've done the contest through just this last interesting couple
of weeks, and yet the two Blue flags still can't
beat others around. Being questioned, yeah, that's not my of

(01:21:19):
the top four.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
Yeah, that is interesting. Like I mean, I'll anecdotally, I
can say that my opinion has changed a bit on it.
You said you've seen all the episodes, which I assume
it includes a couple of the like live ones that
we did.

Speaker 4 (01:21:35):
The round table.

Speaker 1 (01:21:36):
Yeah, the roundtable one that we did as far as Minnesota.
I wish I could have had Precker on there, but
or well, a lot of the people I wished could
have been on there were under like an NDA type thing.
But anyway, and as you'll remember, I was fairly harsh
on it, as was Krishtov, as you mentioned, for the
two blue thing, the two blues touching each other, et cetera.

(01:21:56):
Obviously Krishtov comes from a more heraldic fact round than
I do. But but to my eye, it just didn't
I don't know, it just it didn't look as good
or whatever I will say. While it is never going
to be in my I don't know, maybe even top ten,
it has grown on me quite a bit despite well,

(01:22:21):
I guess despite maybe because well, no, probably despite like
a lot of your poles that have the two blues
being fimbriated by white, like a white kind of side
chevron like that or in verse. While I do prefer them,
it somehow weirdly makes me like the new one more.
I don't know. It's it's hard to explain, and it's

(01:22:42):
again anecdotal, as like you've you've mentioned how like other
people's opinions have shifted on it. How has yours personally
shifted or has.

Speaker 4 (01:22:52):
It it has a little Yeah, I most admit I'm
warming to it. It isn't still my preferred and I
don't know that it ever will be. But I'm warming
to it a bit more. But it still won't break
out of the situation. You've got two hundred years or

(01:23:15):
however many years nights have been on horses of heraldry
and doing whatever. It's something. Some of these heraldry, heraldic
things in England go back to about twelve hundred. Yeah,
it predates so much, so there is reason for the
choices they made. You've got two metals of gold and silver,

(01:23:36):
you've got colors, and you've got first because everyone was
pulling a piece of lambs well around that. Yeah, fantastic
keeps the cold out. People knew about these things, and
then the hoy PERLOI got some some nicerffur, and then
you designed ermine for it, and all these things, and

(01:23:58):
there's so much intrigue about heraldry.

Speaker 1 (01:24:02):
Yeah that I have not.

Speaker 4 (01:24:03):
I've only just scratched the surface of this thing, and
it's it's really very in depth.

Speaker 1 (01:24:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:24:15):
If anybody would like to answer a question of mine,
I'm still unsure.

Speaker 1 (01:24:21):
I'm still sure what the fucking format is.

Speaker 4 (01:24:23):
Dude, If anybody wants to, I have this question. It's
a nagging question.

Speaker 1 (01:24:28):
No, please, this would be great.

Speaker 4 (01:24:31):
Why have some flags got a layout of a horizontal
or a layout of tricklor vertical? Is there any meaning
of it being vertical or being horizontal? Is there any
implied reason rationale behind that? I can't find one, And

(01:24:51):
yet I can find information about a chevron. A chevron
usually this way coming up from the base, the hemline
going up that way. Maybe chevronel with three of them.
It's implying farming. It's implying the plow cutting through the earth,
the metal, earth being part the earth being parked away

(01:25:13):
from the metal, So that chevron is a plow action.
So it means agriculture.

Speaker 1 (01:25:19):
Hmm yeah, I yeah, I'd be obviously lying if I
said I knew the answers to That'll carry on reading.
Think about I can think of a few historic cases
that aren't worth going into and also eventually would still

(01:25:40):
lead me to not having an answer. So like, it's
probably not worth going down that road if it's not
ultimately going to lead anywhere. But that is a good question.

Speaker 4 (01:25:50):
Like the Dutch are supposed to have the first tricola,
they wanted it different, so they put their stripes in
a different order. That's not the reason there's something else
before them, because people have put in the heraldry a
chief of one third or a base of one third
and usually cut up the flag in aspects a party

(01:26:15):
per pale or party per fess some lost rationale behind
how the party goes is. I'd love to know more.

Speaker 1 (01:26:31):
I would too, Honestly, I'm wondering if Yeah, anything I
say would be very much spitballing, and khrushtav will probably
come after me for it. But like I am wondering if, say,
like if we take the Dutch and French flags as
an example, and I know we're talking about heraldry, but
say that they're both like the shield in the in

(01:26:52):
the middle. I could understand the French flag being more
It's going to sound weird and maybe lefty of me
or whatever, but like more like equal because it's like
one side one side, but neither is like higher than
the other. And then there's white in the middle, in
this case, white being peace or whatever you want it

(01:27:13):
to be, whereas I could see the Dutch one being like, okay,
this has hierarchy over this, and then in between the
two there is hees or concord or whatever. Again, that
is me talking purely out of my ass. I do
not know, but it's something that doesn't not make sense
to me. If that attracts I guess even a little bit.

Speaker 4 (01:27:34):
Oh it does. You even find it in places like China,
whereby the put the notifications on the stars. This is
for the hoi POLOI, this is for the general person,
and this is for the underclass. There's a notification of
which star is for which class a person.

Speaker 1 (01:27:53):
Yeah, no, you're right. And on just a sort of
tangent from that. Since you said China, I started to
think about the Buddhist flag, which effectively does both, right,
Like when you think about it, the bist and I
know that's not heraldry, but the Buddhist flag does have
what is it four or five? I think gets five
stripes that I if I'm remembering right on the hoist

(01:28:17):
side are vertical and then are horizontal toward the fly.
But the orange one is the one that connects and
it forms like what we would see in the west
as an L but it kind of like effectively does both.
But I don't know if that's I'm sure it's intentional.
I just don't know what the intent behind it is, right,

(01:28:39):
But I do wonder if it's not something. My instinct
is that I haven't suddenly become a genius and stumbled
upon something, So it's probably either something else or something
that people smarter than me have figured out before or
designed for.

Speaker 4 (01:28:58):
Rather, there different versions that buddhisquacked that that too. Yeah yeah,
different orders of colors and different playouts.

Speaker 1 (01:29:06):
Yes, yes, not too. Yeah, yeah that's true. I said
the orange one because that's kind of the one you
see the most. Yeah, I don't know that. That is
a very interesting question that I did not think we
were going to get into and did not have on
our question list here. So but honestly this is great
for I mean one for just the show and racking

(01:29:27):
my brain, but too like engagement wise, if you guys
know on YouTube, if you're watching this, you have any
kind of insight on anything that we just said, please
like let us know in the comments, because I will
definitely use that and shout you out on future episodes.
Always happy for the engagement, even kind of when it
comes well maybe especially when it's organically, but when it's organic.

(01:29:50):
But yeah, okay, well, all right, let's get into a
different question before we go too far down a rabbit hole.
We only had I think we got like two or
three more to get to. A few of them are
by Alex Tumberland, who's a previous guest as well, which
means that you've seen his episode. But he said, okay,

(01:30:10):
let me go through these in a good order. Let's
start with he'd like to hear about the demographics of
the Facebook group going back there and whether you think
it may affect the results of the flag studies. So
I don't know, like how many people you have or
not how many people you have. I don't know how

(01:30:31):
much access you have to like what your demo like.
I know on YouTube, when I look, I can see
who's in what country and stuff and age range. I
don't know what you can do on Facebook. But do
you think that like it skews overwhelmingly one way or another.
And if so, do you think that affects it.

Speaker 4 (01:30:49):
We've always tried to get as many members of that
state doing you know, picking out I'm sure, yeah, and
doing in their own state flag. It's much more difficult
to get it happening on the fly sort of thing.
We do have a lot of American members, of course,
very interested in their own state flags, but also have

(01:31:13):
a number of international members. It's not really you know, exclusionary.
If you've got an interest in state flags and you
want to put your or in and say, look up America.
You've got all the Canadian flags with no texts. You've
got all the Australian flags and no texts. You've got
all the British historical counties flags with no texts. Why

(01:31:34):
have twenty four or fifty got their own state name
on it? Yeah, so now we haven't kept the demographics.
I don't see it as an important thing. The guy
who set the page up is ex New Zealand, whero
is living in the States. I'm putting an amount of

(01:31:58):
time in just pure British and only across to America
for holidays and high days and that sort of thing.
Of course, We've got two American admin so it's moderately even.
We've got a Brazilian member that votes on almost every contest.
We've got a number of other people Tariff sometimes joins us.
We've got Dave and Tracy who come along every now

(01:32:20):
and again and are interested. They're in New Zealand and
Expex British. So yeah, we get a number of people
coming through and we're very happy to see people getting
very interesting in state flags. It's a very interesting topic
or we think it's interesting. You're you come in every again.
We're happy for you to come along, and that's true

(01:32:42):
and vote on any other states that aren't necessarily you know,
beyond your own. So no, it's you can you can
vote on to a degree places that haven't got population,
you know Navasa Island in the Caribbean, or you know
Jarvis Island in the Pacific. And we do these strange

(01:33:05):
contests and we've had a few ideas and might not
be the most popular contest, but we've done everything beyond.
For some reason, we've not done Swain's Island.

Speaker 1 (01:33:17):
Yeah, and that's honestly why I can't take you seriously
as age, because it's like until then what are we
even doing here? You know? Uh, all that aside, I'll
let it go this time a thank you. You did
have one other question, which was he would like to

(01:33:39):
hear what you plan to do for the future or
what you have planned for the future of the Facebook
uh state flag group studies once every state is finished?

Speaker 4 (01:33:51):
Good question? Not sure?

Speaker 1 (01:33:54):
Rename it? I guess kidding.

Speaker 4 (01:33:59):
Could read I've renamed it already. I've taken a comra
out of its original name. Yeah, it was a comma
before the word and it was it was. It didn't
really set very well with me, so I had to
change the name of the Facebook group. I know what,
I know. We ought to do something more. One of

(01:34:23):
the things we did quite early on was every well
once we did it once. When we finished the state
the study, I wrote up a document to show how
we've done it, what we've progressed, and I sent that
through the Secretary of State of Nebraska and I got

(01:34:44):
email back saying, oh, thanks very much, We've filed it
in case we need it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:52):
Okay, thanks, great, Thanks. Do you want my car or
my number?

Speaker 2 (01:34:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:34:59):
Okay, great, yeah, fair enough. Are you have you actually?
I feel like i've seen have you done the the territories,
and like overseas, it's gonna say, I know you've done
at least.

Speaker 3 (01:35:14):
We have done everything we have we didn't do. We
did quite a lot all in one go with Guam,
two Virgin Islands, and we did all those smaller islands
as one. But then we came back to the better
flags because a lot of those hadn't got.

Speaker 4 (01:35:37):
The thought. We did American separately.

Speaker 1 (01:35:40):
You're saying, so you did American like overseas territories as
a flat like a.

Speaker 4 (01:35:47):
One big contest with many smaller contests.

Speaker 1 (01:35:50):
Right right, right, Okay, that makes sense, And then you
did American Samoa separately.

Speaker 4 (01:35:57):
But you have favor as well as Palmyra Island and
mid Midway because they've both got nice flags or the
unofficial flags. It's banded. It's got a couple of bands,
a bit like think of Columbia, but it's red sun

(01:36:18):
sort of gold sun rising across the horizon sort of thing.
I'm sure you bashed something in it. It's only occupied
every now and again for US fisheries, and they have
a couple of students go out every year sort of
thing and see what fauna and flora on the islands. Nowhere.

Speaker 1 (01:36:43):
Yeah, you know, literally, you know, kind of the original Well,
one of.

Speaker 4 (01:36:47):
The things was very very strange situation. I think somebody
actually was murdered there, even though the population was about
two or three allegedly, it could be allegedly. I don't know.
It's one of those.

Speaker 1 (01:36:59):
Yeah, I mean they haven't comment him yet. So anyway, Yeah,
I've never heard of those islands and never been there. No,
it definitely wasn't there. Shipwrecked in October of twenty twenty two,
So don't even ask. I think that's I think that's

(01:37:20):
more or less the extent of the questions. Other than
there are several folks that would love to hear more
about the official flag of that Facebook group, which I'm
not wrong. You've got Narya.

Speaker 4 (01:37:36):
I have been made aware there's a question about our flag.
We do have every day flag. We do have a flag.
What maybe I should stand.

Speaker 1 (01:37:47):
It further away, whatever's comfy, so.

Speaker 4 (01:37:50):
As it hangs against its islets and technical strip. The
whole layout of the flag produces a V for of
vexiology in a similar way that Whitney Smith did his
Golden V for Guiana. The emblem is designed by Dean

(01:38:12):
Thomas basically three hexicans Mexican is typically seen again in
Utah for industry. So each hexagon stands for one stands
for current, one stands for historical, one stands for proposed.
So it all fits in quite nicely, forward facing progress and.

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
Neither over the other because they're kind of interwoven.

Speaker 4 (01:38:38):
Okay, say which one's which? But yes, it's for that
nature that's.

Speaker 1 (01:38:44):
And where the color is chosen because it is because
the American Colors Group is US flags et cetera. Is
it is it like old glory blue and all that.

Speaker 4 (01:38:54):
That's the intention. Yeah, that's the way we've yeah, put
the design out to have made.

Speaker 1 (01:38:58):
Yes, gotcha? So okay, since the answer to that question
was pretty short, But I have a follow up, do
you do you own the only extant copy of that?

Speaker 4 (01:39:10):
Do like?

Speaker 1 (01:39:10):
Does Dean have one too like?

Speaker 4 (01:39:12):
Or have made one for each?

Speaker 1 (01:39:14):
Okay?

Speaker 4 (01:39:15):
Okay, so they're like four admin I had six made Okay,
so I'm still holding two for any future admin that
we might take on. Now there's been talk that we might,
you know, would uh you know, give an admin role
to someone in future if the Facebook page grew. There's

(01:39:38):
no point in putting an admin for a group that's
only got passing trade of eight hundred or so in total.
So we've got no intention necessarily of putting another admin
towards sorting out all that we need to unless it significantly.

Speaker 1 (01:39:57):
Grew, right, right, Yeah, two to spare Is that spare case?

Speaker 4 (01:40:03):
So I give I fall under the bus or something
like that.

Speaker 1 (01:40:06):
Yeah, yeah, I was just gonna say, like, uh, I
don't know. We're trying to think of an example. If
like a podcaster came through and was like, hey, I'd
love to kind of like platform you a little bit
and maybe talk about what you do with the page.
I'm very interested in the flag things like that.

Speaker 4 (01:40:30):
That would be reason enough. And if the customer base
grew to to sort of more in depth study some
of these some of the designs actually now because we're
going back and having an to look at the some
of the states, some of the flags that I can
search against, I've got this gap of about a year now.

(01:40:50):
I think it was the New York Contest. When we
did the New York Contest, we did it to a
certain date and all that to that date. When we've
looked back at the what's been done since I can't
quite get back. There's a bit of a gap there
because redd it only holds so many images, so we're
actually losing out the ether some valid designs that could
have been quite worthwhile.

Speaker 1 (01:41:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:41:12):
If any we've got more people on it or looking
at these sorts of things, maybe we could roll very
many more contests together, or maybe have a monthly magazine
that looks at each navery stage and in certain fashion
you look at it in a you know, overview, or
you look at in depth.

Speaker 1 (01:41:30):
That would be awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:41:30):
Because it would be nice, but it's very involved.

Speaker 1 (01:41:34):
That does seem very involved. I did. I know, I
said that was the last question, but but I think
like generally, like across these questions there's been a through
line of not just like what you're going to do
excuse me with the Facebook group when you've gone through
every flag, but like if you, generally speaking, have plans

(01:41:55):
to move this to any other platform at any point,
or even maybe like duplicate it onto another platform, which
a lot of things do where it's like, all right,
we got the Facebook votes, the Reddit votes whatever, like
and combine things like that. Some people use tumbler still
like for a weird example, Alex but yeah, I didn't

(01:42:18):
know if there was. Like the listeners and I were
kind of wondering, like, yeah, just where do we go
from here? Not just once we've exhausted the stays, just
where does it grow?

Speaker 4 (01:42:31):
Absolutely, Andy werb and all good ideas that one or
two of these apps where you are on your phone
and you're seeing an image and you'll swipe one way
for putting it in a bin, or a different way
for keeping it for later, or one way. I really
like that sort of thing. Remember, go through it, you
can throw it away or you can keep it. And
that would be a very good way of allowing someone

(01:42:54):
to vote in some of these state flags. I wouldn't
doubt so if all the images were loaded individually and
everybody were getting a random eyed view of the contest.
Maybe it's got ten thousand entries, but you haven't got
the chance to look through so many. It gives you
a random situation. You just scroll through, scroll through, scroll through,

(01:43:15):
Well this way, this way, this way, this way, you
can you can be you can be useful.

Speaker 1 (01:43:20):
Oh my god, I'm going full mass right now. Thinking
of like a tender version, like basically tender but for
flags where it's like.

Speaker 4 (01:43:34):
It could be about it I don't want to do
you like it?

Speaker 1 (01:43:37):
Yes or no?

Speaker 4 (01:43:38):
Or I don't doubt that these things are in the whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:43:44):
Cut all that, editor cut, all that.

Speaker 4 (01:43:48):
Yeah, no, love a deally, love a Deally.

Speaker 3 (01:43:52):
No.

Speaker 4 (01:43:53):
When I get on her nerves, she goes, haven't you
got a factor?

Speaker 1 (01:43:56):
Draw familiar? And I suspect a lot of the listeners
and viewers are as well. But all right, cool, Well,
I think that's the end of the questions. Yeah, I
think that's the end of our time here other than
the little bit of bonus stuff we're going to go
over for the Patreon but wonderful till we get to that.

(01:44:19):
It probably is a good time to get some of
those plugs out of the way. And I know you
have a few, considering you run these groups and everything,
so like, where can people find these groups? Follow these groups?
Or yourself, Alan Hardy find and follow you.

Speaker 4 (01:44:34):
Well, occasionally post to Instagram, but that's by the bye.
The only really active way of doing this is going
on to the Facebook site and dialing in either doing
a general search U S, state flags, current, historical, and proposed.

(01:44:55):
So just have a go trying to find us. There
is a similar group out there similar nature, but that's
not aus. So look out for that flag that I showed,
and we'll be happy to have you along and putting
your ideas together. Even even sometimes you only get an
indication somebody says, well, actually a design to this sort

(01:45:16):
of description, but it's never been actually made as an image,
and I'll take the time and draw that idea up
and that will come in and somebody credited to it
came up with that idea. But so it is that
really the Facebook group? And yeah, yeah, which excellent if
we get a few more more than Mary.

Speaker 1 (01:45:36):
Oh absolutely, yeah. I was going to say, the link
to that will be peppered throughout the you know, show
notes description probably here on screen for the viewers, et cetera,
et cetera. So yeah, definitely go follow that, not just
follow it, but like go vote on all the polls
and everything. We will admit it's less than scientific, but
the more people that are in there of a varied nature,

(01:46:00):
the better it gets. So it's an everyone's interest I
think for all of us to go do this. And
as far as our plugs, you probably know them already.
They are well anywhere with an AT sign, we are
at flagged for content for like the number of the digit.
We have a link tree, which is linktree dot com
slash flagged for content all spelled out. It's like the

(01:46:23):
one place where it's all spelled out. I'm a master
of social media and uh yeah. But if you do
go to the link tree, it has all those ads
and it has even more like a requests to be
on the show, things to follow the Patreon, get in
the discord where we talk where a lot of these
questions came from, to be honest, so go follow us

(01:46:44):
over there as well. And Alan, I took a lot
of notes on this episode, but the one note I
did not take was how to close this fucker out.
So if you got any ideas, I'm all ears.

Speaker 4 (01:46:58):
Oh just sail, say good bye in a in a
typical Midlanders way and say tatar and then echo that
with qatar tatara.

Speaker 3 (01:47:17):
You know what.

Speaker 1 (01:47:19):
I think that's the best we're gonna get. So let's
take thank you, Alan, Thank you so much for coming on.
That was fantastic talk. It works better in your accent
than mine, but I'll take it back, SAIDs. Thank you
so much for listening, for watching, Alan, thanks so much
for being on here and we will catch you off
on the fly side. Take care, it took me a

(01:47:46):
good half second to see what you're here and over there.
Flag for Content is proud to be sponsored by Flags
for Good. Go to Flags for Good for more information.

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