After centuries of humans stubbornly refusing to discover another continent, America finally found a way to put mapmakers back to work: rename the shit we already have.
Nobody is talking about the cartographers.
Typical.
For hundreds of years, these people had one of the most important jobs on Earth.
There was shit everywhere we hadn’t found yet.
Continents. Islands. Rivers. Oceans. Mountain ranges.
You could leave the house with a compass, wander around for a while, come back and announce you’d discovered something.
Boom.
Cartographer gets a job.
It was a booming industry.
Then humanity fucked it all up by finding everything.
Suddenly there were satellites. GPS. Google Earth.
We can now zoom in closely enough to determine that Gary three houses down really did build that shed over the property line.
What the hell is a cartographer supposed to do with that?
You spend years learning how to make maps only to discover that every goddamn continent has already been found.
Antarctica?
Got it.
Australia?
Apparently that’s been there the whole time.
Some tiny island twelve people and a goat live on?
Already mapped.
There hasn’t been any new landmass action in ages.
And then Donald Trump came along.
THE CARTOGRAPHY STIMULUS PACKAGE
Gulf of Mexico?
Gulf of America.
Somewhere, a cartographer’s phone rang.
“Honey? You’re not going to believe this. They need me at the office.”
And now we’ve got Lake America entering the conversation.
Do you understand what this means?
THE MAP PEOPLE ARE BACK.
They’re digging their drafting tables out of storage.
They’re sharpening pencils.
They’re calling former coworkers.
“Frank. It’s happening.”
“What’s happening?”
“GEOGRAPHY.”
Think about all the maps.
Classroom maps.
Road maps.
Atlases.
Globes.
Textbooks.
Government maps.
Tourist maps.
Those giant laminated maps your grandfather kept folded incorrectly in the glove compartment because apparently asking a gas station attendant how to get somewhere was once considered navigation.
They all potentially need changing.
That’s JOBS, people.
RAND MCNALLY MUST BE LOSING THEIR SHIT
I picture somebody bursting through the doors at Rand McNally headquarters like they’ve just discovered oil.
“WE GOT ANOTHER ONE!”
Champagne corks fly.
Someone starts crying.
An elderly mapmaker who hasn’t been needed since 1987 slowly removes a dusty T-square from a velvet-lined case.
“I knew this day would come.”
For decades we’ve worried about industries disappearing because of technological advancement.
Factories automated.
Travel agents replaced by websites.
Video stores vanished.
And cartographers?
Those poor bastards watched Google Maps roll up and basically announce:
“Thanks. We’ll take it from here.”
But technology never anticipated one thing:
America randomly renaming shit.
You can’t automate that kind of chaos.
THINK OF THE GLOBES
Nobody is considering the globes.
There are millions of innocent globes sitting in classrooms right now that apparently contain outdated information.
Some kid is going to raise their hand.
“Mrs. Henderson, my globe says Gulf of Mexico.”
And Mrs. Henderson is going to stare at the globe she has had since 1996 and realize she’s teaching geography with an antique.
Then there’s somebody’s decorative globe.
You know the one.
It sits in an office next to books nobody has actually read and exists solely to make the owner appear like they occasionally contemplate international affairs.
Worthless.
Congratulations.
Your globe is now vintage.
I ALREADY LEARNED THIS SHIT ONCE
And here’s where I personally have a problem.
I’m too old for this.
I already learned geography.
There was a test.
I’m pretty sure I passed it.
At some point in life, you should be allowed to declare certain information permanently learned and move on.
The Gulf of Mexico was the Gulf of Mexico.
I stored that information in my brain decades ago, filed it under THINGS I WILL NEVER NEED TO REVISIT, and used the remaining space for important things.
Like song lyrics from 1987.
Now I’m supposed to update geography?
No.
My internal map has reached end-of-support.
I am running Geography 1.0, and there will be no further software updates.
If somebody says Gulf of America, I’m going to have to mentally translate it.
“Oh. You mean the Gulf of Mexico.”
And apparently we’re doing lakes now, too.
At this rate, I’m going to need patch notes every morning.
GEOGRAPHY UPDATE 2026.8.29
- Gulf renamed.
- Lake renamed.
- Atlantic Ocean currently unchanged.
- Rocky Mountains safe for another 24 hours.
- Frank has been called back into work.
WE DON’T EVEN NEED TO DISCOVER ANYTHING ANYMORE
This is the genius part.
Historically, creating new geography was difficult.
You had to sail somewhere.
People got scurvy.
Ships sank.
Somebody inevitably got eaten.
It was a whole thing.
Now?
We just rename something.
No expedition required.
We don’t need a new continent.
We don’t need a mysterious island to rise from the Pacific.
We don’t even need tectonic plates to cooperate.
Just look at something we’ve already mapped and say:
“I don’t like that name.”
BOOM.
Cartography emergency.
Frank gets overtime.
THERE MAY BE NO LIMIT
Why stop now?
The Atlantic Ocean has had a pretty good run.
The Rocky Mountains are clearly getting complacent.
The Mississippi River has been coasting on name recognition for centuries.
I don’t want to start anything, but the Pacific Ocean isn’t even particularly peaceful.
I’m just saying.
There could be decades of cartographic employment sitting right in front of us.
We don’t need infrastructure spending.
We need a Sharpie and absolutely no emotional attachment to existing geography.
NOBODY ASKED JUDY, BUT…
I disagree with Donald Trump about plenty.
And I absolutely resent being assigned remedial geography at this stage of my life.
I learned the names.
I remembered the names.
I fulfilled my end of the educational agreement.
Changing them now feels like somebody showing up thirty years later and announcing there was actually another page on the test.
But I can’t ignore what this has done for the cartographers.
Humanity spent centuries exploring the planet until we’d mapped damn near everything.
We left an entire profession staring at a finished product.
There was nowhere left to go.
Nothing left to discover.
No mysterious blank corner of the map marked:
HERE BE DRAGONS.
Then America found a solution.
If you can’t discover new geography…
rename the shit you’ve already got.
THE NAJ RATING: 4 CANS
Four NAJ cans.
I’m taking away one can because I’m too fucking old to relearn the geography I grew up with.
I learned it.
I passed the test.
I’m done.
The other four cans?
Those are for Frank.
Somewhere tonight, that magnificent bastard is sharpening his pencils, updating an atlas and putting food on the table again.
Welcome back to the workforce, Frank.
I’m happy for you.
But if somebody renames Texas before I die, we’re going down to three cans.