New Minnesota Flag

[Max Rockatansky]

No wonder Peter was so great, he had bitchin flag designing skills.

[Scott5114]

I would totally rally around such flags as these:

Okay, now imagine you're in the woods near the border of one of these territories and you need to identify yourself as part of one of these territories using a flag...

[Rothman]

I would totally rally around such flags as these:

Okay, now imagine you're in the woods near the border of one of these territories and you need to identify yourself as part of one of these territories using a flag...

I've never had this experience.

[Scott5114]

I would totally rally around such flags as these:

Okay, now imagine you're in the woods near the border of one of these territories and you need to identify yourself as part of one of these territories using a flag...

I've never had this experience.

You need to get out more.

[formulanone]

I would totally rally around such flags as these:

Okay, now imagine you're in the woods near the border of one of these territories and you need to identify yourself as part of one of these territories using a flag...

I've never had this experience.

You need to get out more.

Best I can do is seeing companies fly their own on-site flag; as a vendor, these can be quite helpful if you've somehow missed the umpteen other signs, logos, and devices they've installed on their property.

[Molandfreak]

Pray tell, what do you think the point of state flags even is?

That is something I've often wondered myself.  Having state or city flags in modern times in the United States seems a little pointless to me.

In Mexico:

17 states (plus Mexico City) have no official state flag at all, so they typically just use the seal on a white background.

10 states have an official flag that's just the seal on a white background.  None of them were officially adopted before 2010.

1 state has an official flag that's the seal on a white background, plus — ooh! — a yellow border.

3 states have official flags of some other design, except two of them are still basically the seal on a plain background, but the background has two colors instead of one.  (One of them also slaps the state name on there.)  Only one of them eschews the seal altogether.

In real life, I'm not sure I've ever seen a state flag of any sort flying anywhere in Mexico.  I do own a white coffee mug with a Mexican town's municipal seal on it, but that's probably the closest I've seen.

Just decided to return to this topic, but the three states that have decided to use a flag that is significantly different from the standard seal on a white background have all done so within the past 15 years. Yucatán decided to use its former namesake republic's flag in 2024. So perhaps this represents a global shift in perspective away from a flag representing sovereignty or an old monarchal order into simple regional pride.

[TheCatalyst31]

I would totally rally around such flags as these:

Okay, now imagine you're in the woods near the border of one of these territories and you need to identify yourself as part of one of these territories using a flag...

I can't imagine that's much of a problem in Sri Lanka, unless the provinces go to war with each other.

[kphoger]

Okay, now imagine you're in the woods near the border of one of these territories and you need to identify yourself as part of one of these territories using a flag...

Cool.  (For the sake of this argument, I'll pretend that the Kingdom of Sikkim flag I posted is the regular state flag, even though it's actually the royal flag.)

I'm imagining myself along the border of Sikkim and Tibet.  For some reason I need to identify myself as part of one of those two territories, but for some reason I'm not allowed to say anything out loud and instead have to wave a flag around in the air.  Seems weird, but whatever, this is all make-believe anyway.  Fortunately, I happen to have a big folded-up flag taking up half the space in my backpack, and I'm surrounded by long tree branches on the ground that I can use as a flag pole.  How convenient!  So I find an appropriately sized tree branch, take my flag out of my backpack, and tie two corners of it to the branch.  Then I hoist it up into the air and wave it around for whatever reason prompted this imaginary situation.

It's one of these two:





What was your point, again?

[Scott5114]

Okay, now imagine you're in the woods near the border of one of these territories and you need to identify yourself as part of one of these territories using a flag...

Cool.  (For the sake of this argument, I'll pretend that the Kingdom of Sikkim flag I posted is the regular state flag, even though it's actually the royal flag.)

I'm imagining myself along the border of Sikkim and Tibet.  For some reason I need to identify myself as part of one of those two territories, but for some reason I'm not allowed to say anything out loud and instead have to wave a flag around in the air.  Seems weird, but whatever, this is all make-believe anyway.  Fortunately, I happen to have a big folded-up flag taking up half the space in my backpack, and I'm surrounded by long tree branches on the ground that I can use as a flag pole.  How convenient!  So I find an appropriately sized tree branch, take my flag out of my backpack, and tie two corners of it to the branch.  Then I hoist it up into the air and wave it around for whatever reason prompted this imaginary situation.

It's one of these two:





What was your point, again?

You don't have a premade flag. Just cloth.

[Scott5114]

For some reason I need to identify myself as part of one of those two territories, but for some reason I'm not allowed to say anything out loud and instead have to wave a flag around in the air.  Seems weird, but whatever, this is all make-believe anyway.

The reason is that if you are approaching an armed force that doesn't know whether you are their enemy or not, they may attack you before you can get close enough to declare your allegiance verbally. Or perhaps you don't know how to communicate with them verbally because they speak a language you don't know enough of to communicate the idea.

What was your point, again?

Suppose you don't happen to have a premade flag in this situation. Just cloth. Now what?

[kphoger]

Suppose you don't happen to have a premade flag in this situation. Just cloth. Now what?

Then I'd better hope my army's flag is just one color, and that the color happens to match whatever cloth I have on me at the time.  Unless I also have some bottles of dye bumping around in my backpack as well.  And/or a bunch of other colors of cloth in there too.

The reason is that if you are approaching an armed force that doesn't know whether you are their enemy or not, they may attack you before you can get close enough to declare your allegiance verbally. Or perhaps you don't know how to communicate with them verbally because they speak a language you don't know enough of to communicate the idea.

Battle flags have historically been used so that the soldiers on your own side know where their general is, and in which direction they need to be moving.  This was especially important in battle because vocal commands would often be drowned out by the din of the fighting.  Being seen by the enemy wasn't too terrible of a concern, because weapons were loaded manually with gunpowder, and because the battlefield would end up being filled with smoke from the close-range shooting.

That's simply not the world we live in anymore.  People know where their general is and which way to move because they have radios.  As soon as the military adopted walkie-talkie radio communication, armies stopped carrying flags into battle.  Nowadays, soldiers carry automatic rifles with a zillion rounds at the ready, and firing one doesn't produce a huge cloud of smoke.  Being seen is much more of a danger than it is an advantage nowadays.  As soon as you're seen by the enemy, who's probably crouched a long way away, and you're close enough to identify you by your uniform, you're dead.  Waving a lovely sheet of colored fabric in the air does not help your chances of survival.  By the time you've even noticed them, they've already made the decision about shooting you or not.

Already by WW2, carrying a flag into battle was a much less common occurrence, because it was no longer a smart thing to do.

And, again, none of this has anything to do with state flags, because state flags have never been used as battle flags.  Even back when states were occasionally going to war against each other, they didn't use state flags to fight under.