Summary
Rep. Dan Crenshaw criticized Apple Maps for not renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, as mandated by Trump’s recent executive order titled “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.”
Crenshaw’s complaint reflects broader conservative frustration, as tech platforms and the global community continue to use the original name.
Critics compare the move to past nationalist gestures like renaming french fries “freedom fries,” accusing conservatives of embracing identity politics and culture wars despite their political dominance.
The name change is unlikely to gain international traction.
The government can fuck right off with their Newspeak.
This is a huge distraction to get you worked up about a meaningless name change. Elon is heiling on stage like an edgy teen for further drama. Meanwhile EO are signed en masse and action is taken by the new administration. This time Trump and his cronies came well prepared with a plan.
Who says I’m worked up? You wrote a whole paragraph, I wrote a quip.
This is not about you.
Just because something has a purpose doesn’t mean it has succeeded at it. 👍
It’s one of the most upvoted posts on Lemmy at the moment. This is getting attention.
I couldn’t care less what the name of that gulf is, however, Trump is right when he says that the US is the ONLY country that pumps money into that entire region. We protect it, monitor it, and it all comes out of American tax dollars. Mexico is just riding our coat tails. I can see why he’d want to change it. Also, the name “Gulf of America” technically includes Mexico…
We freeload off of Mexico. They give us about $160 billion more dollars in goods and services than we give them. They give us about $467 billion worth of stuff, and in return we give them about $309 billion in stuff. In exchange we mostly give them IOUs and other pieces of paper.
Oh, and that’s before we talk about the billions of dollars we steal from the Mexican government. Think of all the talented workers that move from Mexico to the US. That’s millions of people raised and educated on the backs of Mexican taxpayers, who come to the US and never contribute a penny to the Mexican economy.
The US is a giant leech sucking the Mexican economy dry.
As someone who worked in mapping, many people don’t realize how much this kind of BS actually comes up.
The map you see in Google / Apple maps isn’t the map the whole world sees. What you see is what’s culturally / legally appropriate for viewers in your region.
For example, in parts of India it’s legally required that Jammu and Kashmir be displayed as being part of India on their maps. On Pakistan’s maps it’s legally required to be weirdly ambiguous, with a strange open border that doesn’t properly close. The rest of the world gets dotted lines indicating it’s complicated.
For most of the world the body of water between Korea, Japan and Vladivostok is labeled as “The Sea of Japan”, but users in Korea will see “The East Sea”. Is the body of water around Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, etc. the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf? Depends on where you are when you ask that question.
This even has a strange effect when all the countries involved agree that a certain geographic feature is the border, but that geographic feature is a river. Some rivers, especially ones like the Amazon river keep shifting. Sediment piles up, erosion happens, and the river shifts. The river is still the border, but now someone has to go in and adjust the political border to match the river’s new position.
So, if Trump does do something official to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the online mapping companies (and any offline ones that are left) will probably follow the rule and rename it… for their American users. The rest of the world will still see it as the Gulf of America. It will just be yet another one of those funny exceptions the companies have to keep track of while displaying maps for a certain subset of users.
The rest of the world will still see it as the Gulf of America.
of Mexico** I guess?
Er, yeah, that.
Thanks btw, really informative!
I forgot that apple was a department under the president
Tim Apple personally donated 1 million dollars to Trump
I feel sorry for Wozniak… Watching the company he helped build turn into what it has.
Probably a good time to try and sell maps and globes to red school districts.
You know some friend of the administration already took that spot. It was probably their idea in the first place.
I’m waiting to hear what they want to do with New Mexico
I feel like New Mexico would rather secede and join Mexico before they bow to the administration.
Rename it to New America then in 4 years whine about New America trying to steal the light from old America because Democrats
Only after they deport all the new Mexicans
Small dick energy.
Is this what small government looks like? I thought these guys were all about reducing regulations and allowing businesses to do as they please, free from government restrictions.
I thought these guys were all about reducing regulations
Did you really? Be honest.
You don’t understand. They should be free of your restrictions, you should be bound by their restrictions.
As a Trans person I feel soooo bad /s
Whoever obeys Nazis, I will boycott your platform. Plain and simple.
Google also didn’t. Oof.
That post also prompted me to check Google maps, and I got Gulf of Mexico, thankfully. However I’m sure there will soon be a US version with the proper denomination so that the new masters of the land can be placated.
Cause most google users aren’t americans and the mental illness of a few sex criminals would disrupt their service.
Users with other languages will see a different name anyway.
It doesn’t matter who their customers are, Google is a us based company.
However, hopefully they are able to depose, delay, deny this ridiculousness
Executive orders mean shit, show me all the freedom fries in american stores.
Fuck, I honestly thought this was the Onion. Somebody get me out of this timeline. I withdraw consent for this simulation!
Use “Oblast” instead of state for every single red shithole.
This should include the beautiful Oblast of New America if we are anyway in the process of renaming things.
Sorry if this has been asked elsewhere, but who even has the legal right to rename the gulf? It doesn’t belong to USA, right? So we can’t just rename it, right? If we did, everybody else in the world would keep calling it The Gulf of Mexico, right?
In the US, it’s the Board on Geographic Names.
I just checked there, and they have not renamed it, nor have they listed the new name as a recognized alternate name.
If we did, everybody else in the world would keep calling it The Gulf of Mexico, right?
Most countries don’t call it “The Gulf of Mexico”. For example in my country it’s “Mexický záliv”.
Did you know that Confucius was one of the rudest people to ever live? He never said “thank you” or “please” in his entire life.
Point is this is just Golf of Mexico in another language. Maybe not 100% literal, but it associates the site with the country Mexico, not America (which Mexico is a part of, but I’m not sure MAGAts understand or want to understand the nuance).
Mexico is a part of the continent of America. Not the country. Devil’s in the details and all.
I never claimed otherwise 😉 a country named “America” doesn’t exist to my knowledge.
The point is that the Czech name for the gulf has nothing to do with how Americans are calling it, it’s not even the same language. Why should be care Trump calls it different? He’s not our president, you know.
Yeah, it’s not like we English speakers call Germany Deutschland. And it’s not like we call the Persian Gulf the Iranian gulf after Iran changed it’s name.
To a certain degree countries respect other countries’ rights to nominative self determination. It’s actually pretty similar to how we respect people’s nominative self determination. When a country we interact with regularly significantly changes their name we generally adapt, but we typically do so in our own language, and we often don’t bother if they don’t mind the nickname we use.
Geographic features on the other hand, we usually need a good reason. There’s a reason they’re typically officially called whatever they’re actually called. The back and forth over the naming of Denali is weird in part because most Americans barely remembered it’s existence between name changes.
Every sovereign state can publish maps require everyone to use it as reference for further publication in its own territory. Hence you’ll see different maps on Google for different regions. There’s a UN committee to coordinate these and also to publish international water area names.
Pretty sure it’s called “Gulf of How The Fuck Does This Lower Grocery Prices”
If Apple changed the name to “Gulf of How The Fuck Does This Lower Grocery Prices” for a day in response I’d start using Apple Maps.
I’ll be happy with companies ignoring this to set the precedent that these executive orders are toothless.
