Tech companies aren’t moving fast enough for America’s most sensitive politicians.
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.
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.
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 Mexico. 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.
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.
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.
As the first matter of business I need to immediately address, my resignation. No one man is equipped to weild the power of the lemexcutive for much longer than I have.
Farewell lemmings. Until we shit post together again.
Anyone else remember "freedom fries"? That's what we were supposed to call french fries when conservatives were upset that the French were not supporting the US invasion of Iraq.
From a 1976 interview with German-American T. Max Kniesche, who moved to San Francisco in 1907, and worked in restaurants and cafes there:
Teiser: What was it like in San Francisco for Germans during the first world war? You were working at a clearly German restaurant. [...]
Teiser: Did you change the kind of food that you served, or the decorations?
Kniesche: Well, the hamburger steak was Liberty Steak. French-fried potatoes were Liberty Potatoes. [laughter] We called it Liberty, but the liberty wasn't there. Anyhow, everything went to "Liberty." [laughter]
Ahem. Umm, conservatives are angry that others are not calling something what THEY want it to be called?
Hmm. So.... I just feel like... perhaps, there's a similarity here. Some people... want to be referred to a specific way... but usually conservatives have a problem with that.
That's literally what the headline is. "Deadnaming" is a term for referring to transgender people by their previous names, rather than their current names.
what's funny is Trump didn't directly change the name. that takes time. the relevant naming-people have to take it up and formally do it. All Trump did was order them to, and, uh, that only affects goverment things.
Everybody else, Apple included, are going to be using the familiar name. because Trump is a moron.
Maybe, but this is all a distraction from the actions that matter. They don't want to debate the anti-trans stuff or the immigration stuff, which is objectively bad. They want to debate people not going with a made up name for a thing, which has no objectivity. The longer they can argue about this the less time there is to discuss anything important.
Its not just being thin skinned. It's a strategy of distraction.
They say they want an efficient government not wasting time and resources on unnecessary things. What they actually want is a government that makes them feel superior to all the people they've been convinced to hate, in this case Mexicans and Leftists. Trump knows this, and gives them what they want so that he can get what he wants, which is free reign to exploit his position and his country for profit while his loyal voter base blindly supports his efforts to usher in their demise.
Exactly. They just want to feel superior without actually doing anything to be better than anyone. Nobody is stopping them from self improvement. Nobody is stopping them from volunteering in ways that are really meaningful. But that's hard and takes time and effort. It feels more immediately satisfying to hate. It's just that it makes you feel emptier bit by bit as you do it. It's like using casual sex to cope with romantic loneliness, except lust actually has its place jn a healthy life.
Their job is to do nothing and cede power and influence to unregulated, uncontrolled private interests of billionaires. It is now, was last week, and was years back. It is the merging and takeover of state power by corporate power.
Indeed. It is the hurricane class five generating hot tub. How else could nature teach the most boneheaded MAGA-brains that climate change and global warming is real but by depopulating the coastal states...
The earliest known use of the name America dates to April 25, 1507, when it was applied to what is now known as South America. It is generally accepted that the name derives from Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer, who explored the new continents in the following years on behalf of Spain and Portugal, with the name given by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller.
For all the non-Germans, Herr Waldseemüller or one of his ancestors probably was a miller at a lake in the forest. That's what the components of his name say, and we already have a body of water here.
Wait, that really happened? I thought the gulf of Mexico renamed shit was just memeing. Google maps still shows the proper name instead of the tantrum name.
I mean, in this case, he has the rest of the English-speaking world to stop him with stupid renaming. If everyone just refuses to call it anything other than the Gulf of Mexico, it's not like he can do anything about it, especially if they're outside of the US.
It will be interesting to see what openstreetmap do - they have an "on the ground principle" that says to look at what the local signs say when naming something, but the data is tagged with a load of references to NOAA pages on historical treaties that the US signed (which obviously used the normal name for that area)
I thought "we'll build a wall and have Mexico pay for it" was just shit-talking, too.
Trump has the habit of saying shit like this. His opponents will say "Oh god the cringe, it hurts". His supporters will say "Oh shit, I didn't think that we have to actually implement this? This will cause all sorts of expensive problems."
Honestly that makes more sense than Gulf of America because at least it is a bit more descriptive. Looking forward to Mexico renaming Gulf of California next.
EOs are not laws and can only direct the federal government's actions. The President has no authority to unilaterally control a company, except for scenarios where it is interacting with the federal government. Just like the "two genders" EO, it only applies to the federal government. States and companies can continue to support non-binary and other options for sex and gender identity.
No, executive orders are not laws, and they apply only to the federal government. The reason for that is the president is not a king, and so their word cannot be law. That requires congress to make the law, and the Supreme Court to uphold it, if that law is challenged.
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?
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).
I just checked there, and they have not renamed it, nor have they listed the new name as a recognized alternate name.
Whether of not an executive order can override the government agency specifically granted that authority by congress is of no concern to them. By law, the Board of Geographic Names is the final authority on geographic names. If they don't go along with this change, then the Trump admin would have to file an inter-government lawsuit about it.
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.
Executive Orders are closer to press releases than they are to law. They can say pretty much anything - whether those things are enforceable or even consistent with reality is up to the courts.
Executive Orders are more like a corporate memo to the government. It’s not a law passed by congress, but it can direct the government in how to administer existing laws or regulations.
Real question here: It is titled “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.” - Has the Gulf of Mexico ever been named "Gulf of America" in any reasonable historical context, or is this just the usual made-up "fact" from Donald the Jester?
Actually, the Gulf of Mexico appears called like that around 1500 AD, when the United States were not even an idea of a nation. So no, it never was called like that because it was named centuries before the US existed.
In this vein, I'm ok with calling it Gulf of America, the (super)continent, so long as the denonym for people of the USA also changes, since it's a continent.
Executive orders have no control over non-government entities. They are just official instructions given to lower executive office departments on how to operate.
Private business, with wealth exceeding that of nations, then hire mercenaries and assassins, and within a week the Senate, House, Judiciary and Executive branches are empty. Now the Federal government can decide if they want to try anything.
An executive order is just official instructions to a lower office on how they are to operate. They have no legal authority outside of that purpose. They are not laws. They do not apply to the public or other businesses.
It's the equivalent of a supervisor writing memo to the staff that the department break room should have tea instead of coffee. No one outside the company, or even the department, has to obey it
Google Maps still calls it Gulf of Mexico also. And they still call that mountain "Denali". It isn't just Apple that didn't drop everything to push out a software update to hundreds of million of devices in less than 24 hours for nonsense.
Surprised he hasn't tried to slap his name on something by EO yet, like a blue state.
"New York is such a weak name-- you know it, I know it-- I had an uncle that went to New York folks, great man, smart man. He told me once with tears in his eyes, New York could be great, but it's so sad, could be great though. So it needs a biglier name, powerful name, not weak, powerful. From today I've decided it's now called, Trump Trork."
Only about a third of the Gulf of Mexico is US territory, so how can the US president unilaterally rename it? Seems Mexico has the larger claim to naming rights.
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.
A: Ashamed to be in this country, so when are you leaving somewhere else?
B: Don't live in this country and have spent too much time on Lemmy/Reddit where the USA is constantly attacked as the big bad wolf... until someone needs us, like Ukraine...
The Gulf of Mexico didn't choose its supposed new name. This is not deadnaming. Unless there is a positive definition of the word that I'm not aware of, this attempt to rename is the opposite of the meaning. The use of the deadnaming in this context trivializes and distorts what it means. Shame on Gizmodo.
Its making fun of how Conservatives will deadname actual people but then throw a hissy fit when folks dont immediately change how they refer to something of little relevance. Its drawing attention to their braindead hypocrisy.