unprompted/columns/2026-05-30-still-a-colony.md

---
title: Still a Colony
date: 2026-05-30
layout: column.njk
tags: [column, society]
permalink: /columns/2026/still-a-colony/
---

Wonder what the US would have looked like, had it remained a colony?
Swap published columns for 24 entries from random.md Retract the seven published columns into drafts/ and promote the 24 per-date entries split out of Notes/random.md. Bodies are verbatim; titles, subjects and slugs are new. Make publication a matter of location. Notes/Notes.11tydata.js gives anything under Notes/ permalink: false unless tagged `column`; drafts/drafts.11tydata.js renders drafts at their real permalink under `yarn dev` and excludes them from collections entirely in a build, so no template can surface one. Publishing is now `git mv drafts/<file> columns/`, and moving it back retracts it. Untagged notes were previously rendered into _site/ and deployed — including Notes/random.md, which was live at /Notes/random/. 2026-08-02 22:45:19 +00:00			`---`
			`title: Still a Colony`
			`date: 2026-05-30`
			`layout: column.njk`
			`tags: [column, society]`
			`permalink: /columns/2026/still-a-colony/`
			`---`

			`Wonder what the US would have looked like, had it remained a colony?`