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.

  • @[email protected]
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    359 hours ago

    Fuck, I honestly thought this was the Onion. Somebody get me out of this timeline. I withdraw consent for this simulation!

  • @[email protected]
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    7512 hours ago

    Hey everyone, I just signed a lemmy order changing the name of maralago to gaping jizz hole. Enjoy!

    • slingstone
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      1110 hours ago

      Thank you for your service, sir/madam. You’re already a better executive than some presidents I can think of, thinking of what the people want.

      • @[email protected]
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        10 hours ago

        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.

        • slingstone
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          49 hours ago

          Good night, sweet prince(ss)! Though your reign in this (lemmy.) world was short, your reign in our hearts will last at least a few more minutes!

  • @[email protected]
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    119 hours ago

    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?

    • @[email protected]
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      21 hour ago

      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”.

      • @[email protected]
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        14 minutes ago

        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).

    • @vin
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      109 hours ago

      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.

  • @[email protected]
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    2312 hours ago

    Who’s gonna tell him?

    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.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_of_the_Americas

      • @[email protected]
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        11 hour ago

        Having a step dad from Buenos Aires, I’m offended you forgot Argentina. But they have their own kind of crazy MAGA there, currently…

    • @[email protected]
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      610 hours ago

      Waldseemüller

      It’s a good thing the continent wasn’t named after him instead!

      Then again, having a swim in the Gulf of Waldseemüller sounds kind of nice.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 hour ago

        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.

    • kadup
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      811 hours ago

      That’s a whole debate people from the US are not ready for

  • circuitfarmer
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    7716 hours ago

    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.

      • @[email protected]
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        1010 hours ago

        And that “frenched” is the way they’re cut, not that they have anything to do with the country.

    • @[email protected]
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      1713 hours ago

      Yeah, it started in WWI.

      https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/36579/did-the-u-s-government-try-to-rename-hamburgers-to-liberty-sandwiches

      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]

    • @[email protected]
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      1615 hours ago

      “Mission Accomplished” might be one of the greatest all time. And to think I thought that would be as low as it could get for our country.

      • @[email protected]
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        1115 hours ago

        Holy shit yes. I remember making fun of the doofus Bush Jr. But holy fuck do I wish him back compared to the current shit show.

    • Skeezix
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      1216 hours ago

      Remember how if you didn’t want our boys coming home in flag draped coffins then you “Didn’t support out troops?”

  • JaggedRobotPubes
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    1512 hours ago

    There is no gulf with that name anywhere in the world.

    You’ll have to go back and figure out what you mean. Feel free to let us know once you find the name of a real gulf.

  • Noxy
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    1814 hours ago

    I can’t with these neogulfnouns

  • @[email protected]
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    5517 hours ago

    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.

    • JaggedRobotPubes
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      1212 hours ago

      It never will happen. We all keep calling it what it is, the gulf of Mexico. Easy.

      • @[email protected]
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        2415 hours ago

        There is no legal mechanism to compel private companies to use the new name.

        There is also no legal mechanism to require any other country on the planet to pay attention to Trump’s stupid and pointless attempt at renaming it.

    • Flying Squid
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      2516 hours ago

      I thought the gulf of Mexico renamed shit was just memeing.

      I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot of “I didn’t think he would really do ____” in the coming weeks and months.

      I was under no such illusions. He has no one to stop him this time around.

      • wanderingmagus
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        111 hours ago

        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.

        • Flying Squid
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          132 minutes ago

          Any trade or boundary or treaty agreement from now on between the U.S. and another country is going to have to work this out. Yes, that’s a smaller issue than a lot of others, but it is an issue.

          Meanwhile, inside the U.S., this renaming is going to cost Americans billions of dollars in things like new signage, new official maps, etc.

    • @[email protected]
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      713 hours ago

      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)

    • @[email protected]
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      414 hours ago

      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.”

      • @[email protected]
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        614 hours ago

        To be fair, that was just shit talking. He may have started building the wall, but Mexico didn’t pay for it

  • @[email protected]
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    15520 hours ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      4819 hours ago

      How about the rest of the world rename it to the “Gulf of Snowflakes” and see what America does

      • Joelk111
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        819 hours ago

        Well that just wouldn’t make any sense, they hardly get any snow down there!

        • @[email protected]
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          1015 hours ago

          The three foot snow drift against my back door here in New Orleans would beg to differ.

          Tbf, nothing like that has ever happened here before. I wonder if any kind of change is causing this? Hmmm.

          • @[email protected]
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            513 hours ago

            What are the odds that a snowflake would rename the Gulf of Mexico and then it immediately actually snows on the Gulf of Mexico?!

            On a serious note, hope you all are doing OK down there and it will melt ASAP.

            • @[email protected]
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              313 hours ago

              Thanks, I think everything will be alright if people just stay off the roads for a few days. We’re used to driving through water but not on ice.

        • @[email protected]
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          2018 hours ago

          New Orleans, Louisiana is currently covered in snow, I think Gulf of Snowflakes might actually be accurate right now.

    • @[email protected]
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      719 hours ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
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      620 hours ago

      I mean yes they could be if the order affected them. I mean as everyone famously says they are beholden to the rules of the country they are in.

      • @[email protected]
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        6520 hours ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          515 hours ago

          One can more or less envision the President as the CEO of Federal Government, Inc. and executive orders as internal memos to the employees.

          If you don’t work there, following the memo is not your problem.

          But if you do any kind of business with someone who does work there, you can be hit by the secondhand effects.

      • @[email protected]
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        1919 hours ago

        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.

  • @[email protected]
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    24224 hours ago

    For people always calling the others “snowflakes” and “easily triggered”, they sure do have a thin skin.

    • Cethin
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      33 hours ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
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      10424 hours ago

      “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were so sensitive” is my response to these types IRL.

      • FuglyDuck
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        5724 hours ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          1520 hours ago

          They’ll follow suit. Apple is not the company people think it is. Tim was at the information along with all the other oligarchy. I know people well make excuses like he had to and blah blah blah. But no he did not. This a a openly gay man who chose to go support people who hate him why because he loves money more.

        • @[email protected]
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          1022 hours ago

          I don’t know… Isn’t naming (and even country boundaries) already localized based on where the users are? Isn’t a possible scenario that Apple and others could show Gulf of America to US users and Gulf of Mexico to everyone else without even spending too much effort?

          • veroxii
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            818 hours ago

            Yeah there’s already support to name things differently based on your locale. If you have an English locale you see “Germany”. Inside German it’s called Deutschland and if you’re in a Spanish speaking place it’s Alemania.

            You could probably distinguish between en-us and en-gb to have different names in the USA and UK.

            So yeah I totally think it’s possible.