MACHIAVELLIAN- The term comes from a 16th-century Italian political writer. It means using clever, cunning, and often dishonest methods to achieve power or control, while ignoring traditional morals or ethics.

Machiavellianism describes a personality trait marked by a lack of empathy, grand self-interest, and hidden manipulation.

FROM THE CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY AND WIKIPEDIA

Truer words have NEVER been plucked from History and applied to modern times for one man; “Individual One,” leader of the largest and most corrupt crime syndicate the world has ever known…but that’s not why “We’re” here today. It’s because Google has broken my heart…..again!

Last week, “Individual One,” in yet, another petulant meltdown, over tariffs with Canada, renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America. It’s not his first venture into Cartography (the art, science, and technique of making and using maps), no, he changed the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America, and had been known to whip out Sharpie Pens to redraw the paths of hurricanes on prediction maps. For “changes” to the Gulf and the Lake, it is estimated that each of the pompous and delusion acts could cost the United States anywhere from millions to billions to update maps, GPS systems, education questions, branding, and signage.

🗺️ Projected Public & Private System Costs for the change from Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America

While the federal administrative budget is small, independent analysts, cartographers, and local representatives emphasize that the broader, systemic costs of a full rollout are massive:

• Cartography & GPS Infrastructure ($300M–$700M): Revising physical maps, commercial aviation and maritime GPS systems, and corporate online mapping engines.
• Signage & Public Infrastructure ($200M–$500M): Updating thousands of coastal road signs, park markers, and tourist information boards across Gulf Coast states.
• State & Local Rebranding: Local municipalities have faced direct losses. For example, the city of Mobile, Alabama, had just spent $100,000 rebranding a maritime museum to include the words “Gulf of Mexico” right before the decree, forcing them into another immediate, costly name pivot.
• Education & Testing ($50M): Rewriting standardized test questions, digital curricula, and state geography assessments.

AI Generated from none other than Google itself! Multiple sources.

No sane person would agree to such an irrational and costly hissy fit; but a greedy corporation like Google definitely would!

The truth is, I love Google, and Google Maps, and Google Earth. As an explorer, navigator, and individual with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, it’s extremely difficult to give up such services.

Apparently, I’m in the midst of a personal ADR……Abusive Digital Relationship. I’m trying to get out.

Something has to be done, because right after the “lake change,” Google, in a sycophantic and cowardly move, changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in Google Maps.

In the interest of brevity for this blog, I will skip the temptation to dive into other Map Madness; the renaming of various places due to changes in ownership, religion, war spoils, and clever protection. Such places include Istanbul/Constantinople, New Amsterdam/New York, Greenland/Iceland and the confusion of what happened to the “Old” one, a favorite Chinese Restaurant in San Francisco; the “New Woey Loy Goey.”

“Back In The Day…We used to print out 9 pages from

MapQuest and travel the World like Pirates!” Anonymous

Google Maps was not the first online “turn by turn” map service. That was MapQuest; a service that started almost 30 years ago……Before Google Maps, Apple, and even my-then favorite, Yahoo Maps. I have deleted Google Maps from my phone and will experiment with a MapQuest App. I’m not sure how it will work out, but in an age of “limited and effective regime resistance options,” I have to try something.

Maps and Nautical Charts are “everything” to me. I have on occasion, translated- EVERY SINGLE DAY found myself on Google Maps. I’m often joyfully looking at everything from bike cycling routes (don’t get me started on a recent Google Map horror show about the “New London Turnpike;” a dirt path as well as a swamp and malaria-infested drainage ditch passed off as a legitimate road in the deep backwoods of Rhode Island) to the directions to the nearest pizza place. That’s why it’s so upsetting to me. I viewed Google Maps as the Modern Rand McNally…..the all knowing Map King of modern times. The authority whose knowledge and credibility are beyond all reproach. The Alpha and the Omega….the…….”OK,OK Zulu…..we get it.”

I’m not holding out hope that Google will gather up some moral integrity and reject the ridiculous notion that the name of a Great Lake will be changed to soothe the ego of a “little man,” but I also can’t shake the feeling of what it would be like back in high school learning Geography in modern times. Imagine preparing for a test; studying hard, memorizing a particular map and entering the proper name for Lake Ontario on the exam. Meanwhile, the moronic rich kid next to you enters Lake America. He demands the teacher not mark his entry incorrect, because in America, he’s welcome to invoke “Alternative Facts,” and freedom of choice. He has also whined to his parents who threaten to withdraw the large monetary donation to the school over the harassment of poor little Johnny. The School/Google whole-heartedly agrees and kicks out young Zulu Delta…………well, figuratively speaking anyway.

Lessons to be learned…..don’t cheat off any moronic rich kids in school, and learning your own way around the world is probably better for you than trusting the school, and getting your heart broken.