Because…why not?
@infobeautiful for every state but one (California), this is just a coincidence.
@infobeautiful ... is that alt text LLM generated? Because it doesn't make sense.
@http_error_418 @infobeautiful
This, yes. There's no comparison happening in the image, just sorting. The alt text doesn't even get the labels on the two ovals correct.
@infobeautiful because it's us defaultism

@infobeautiful What about a third bubble for ISO 3166 country codes?

AL: aluminum, A̶l̶a̶s̶k̶a̶ Alabama, Albania
CA: calcium, California, Canada
GA: gallium, Georgia, Gabon
IN: indium, Indiana, India
MO: molybdenum, Missouri, Macao

There might be others, but these are my guesses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_3166_country_codes?wprov=sfla1

List of ISO 3166 country codes - Wikipedia

Gary Gulman On How The States Got Their Abbreviations | CONAN on TBS

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