Lately I've been taking an interest in American westward expansion and trying to get a better understanding of how the lines were drawn on maps in the past. Can anyone recommend a good video or interactive visualization that I can scroll back and forward through time to see the changes in detail?

Things I'm particularly interested in tracking:

• Indigenous lands (specifically how the boundaries of traditional/ancestral lands evolved into modern-day reservations)
• European claims like those of Britain, France, and Spain
• What was considered US/Canada/Mexico territory vs. no man's land or frontier at different points in time, from the governance standpoint of each of those nations
• Large and rapid settling movements like the Mormons into Utah, Oklahoma land rush, California gold rush, etc.
• Other factors like homesteading programs (I don't know much about this) and the transcontinental railroad, confederacy borders, trail of tears, etc.
• Notable battles/massacres marking bloody land disputes

I mean I guess that's a lot, this is basically "tell me about all of American history." 😂

I feel like I have a pretty decent grasp of the general political timeline and important events, I'm just realizing lately that I don't have a cohesive mental model of how it all fits on a map and changed over the years. I did find the Wikipedia page on Territorial Evolution of the United States to be interesting but it's a bit overwhelming and not very digestible. It contains this animated gif, which is awesome but I can't scroll through it at my own pace, and it's USA only.

I don't know how appropriate this topic will be or how uncomfortable some users will be addressing it. But I noticed a switch online in the usage of previously determined slurs.

When I was a child in the '00s, it was pretty common for people to say the "r-word" as well as refer to things as "gay" whenever they meant stupid or bad. I remember ad campaigns to stop the latter from occurring (one commercial featuring Hillary Duff and another featuring Wanda Sykes). But both of those things went away as we got deeper into the 2010s.

The Obama and, especially, the Trump years were marked by increased progressive language. I do think the turn was in 2016 when using these terms became widely unacceptable. Even two years earlier the hit song Fancy by Iggy Azalea featuring Charli XCX contained the lyric: "That my flow r***** each beat dear, departed."

I think a lot of the hyper-political correctness of 2016 and onwards was a response to the Trump presidency. I think people on the progressive left felt the need to be hyper-vigilant about that. Once the Biden administration happened these rigid beliefs began to relax.

I'll use a few examples of this shift involving a network TV show, to take this conversation into a more concrete real world. Saturday Night Live.

Shane Gillis, a very non politically correct comedian was hired as part of the cast of SNL in 2019. Lorne Michaels hired him to appeal to a more conservative crowd or to at least not be so catering to its liberal demographic. Gillis, who is largely not a conservative, was caught in a scandal following his casting news. Clips from his podcast surfaced of him making fun of Asians and mocking their accents. Gillis was shortly fired.

Fast forward to this year: Shane Gillis hosts SNL. Not only that, in his opening monologue he says the r-word.

Another SNL adjacent example. Matt Healy, lead singer of the 1975, appeared on The Adam Friedland Show podcast. The podcast, originally called Cumtown, is known for its non-PC humor. Healy participated in jokes making fun of Ice Spice and laughed at the host's more racy humor. Scandal surrounded Healy, who was dating Swift at the time, and he was essentially "canceled." Except, he was immediately the musical guest on SNL not long after the scandal (they were the musical spot for Jenna Ortega's episode). If this was 2019, The 1975 likely would not have been invited to be the musical guests, and/or the host of the episode (in this case Ortega) would have been pressured by her PR team to make some sort of post disavowing their inclusion. This didn't happen. In fact this year Jenna Ortega criticized political correctness herself

The last SNL example I wanted to give was in Ariana Grande's recent episode a joke was included where Grande calls someone a pathetic little gay guy, followed by her saying "I meant gay as in stupid and bad" which was very well received on all corners of the internet.

So what happened here? My perception might be warped since in late 2022 I began using the subreddits r/redscarepod and r/theadamfriedlandshow where this type of humor and the usage of these terms was already normal. So it was a little odd to me when these began gaining steam in the outside world.

If it really was just a response to Biden's presidency I feel like we would now be returning to the hyper-political correctness of the 2010s during Trump's administration. But that doesn't seem to be happening.

Maybe political correctness fell out of style, and that will be the case for another five to ten years when it becomes fashionable again.