Summary

Gruber addresses Google and Apple's decision to update their maps with Trump's renamed 'Lake America' (formerly Lake Ontario), using the same regional approach they applied to the Gulf of Mexico renaming. He argues their solution is wrong in one specific way: the rest of the world outside the U.S. should see only the traditional names, with no parenthetical reference to the Trump-dictated names at all. He defends the companies' decision to comply with official U.S. government naming — calling critics who label them 'quislings' incoherent — while reserving his sharpest criticism for the decision to export American political nonsense globally. He draws a direct parallel to how Apple handles China's geographic dogma: Chinese propaganda is shown only within China, and so too should American geographic propaganda stay within America.

Key Insight

Google and Apple are right to reflect official U.S. government naming within the U.S., but wrong to spread Trump's geographic rebranding to the rest of the world even parenthetically — American political nonsense should be contained to America, exactly as Chinese cartographic propaganda is.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 9

  Bullshit inside parentheses is still bullshit.

• 7

  These names are nonsense, and they are Americans' nonsense to deal with.

• 5

  Directing your anger at Google and Apple for reflecting that change is shooting the messengers.

• 6

  It's not coherent to argue that Google and Apple should decide which names to put on their maps only when you want them to ignore the names from the official government database.

• 7

  Stay angry that our president continues to debase his office and embarrass our nation.

• 6

  Spreading the nonsense to the rest of the world only makes it more embarrassing.

• 6

  Applying the change to Google and Apple Maps while the GNIS database ink is still wet at least serves to remind who made this change and why. And whose change it rightfully is to make.

Tone

opinionated, principled, politically critical