Greetings, Earthlings. It is I, Xylb’tok, your faithful Martian correspondent, transmitting once again from the Red Planet, where lakes generally retain the names given to them by the people who live beside them, military memorials are treated with rather more solemnity and geese have yet to be recruited into anyone’s personal army.
It has been another busy week on your little blue planet.
President Taco has continued his campaign to rename things that already have perfectly good names, Canada has responded with increasingly magnificent levels of “No, we don’t think so”, and somewhere in the middle of it all Donald Trump has apparently decided that what American foreign policy really needs is more geese.
Not ordinary geese, either. Trump-wigged geese.
Mars has been watching. Mars is concerned. Mars is also extending an offer of sanctuary. Mars is gonna get busy.
Welcome to Lake America, apparently
We should probably begin with the lake.
Following President Taco’s executive order declaring that Lake Ontario should henceforth be known as Lake America, Canada has responded in the most Canadian way imaginable – by putting up a giant sign making it abundantly clear that it remains “Lake Ontario, now and always.”
Mars approves.
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford have both pushed back against the renaming, while Canada continues to use the historic name. The lake’s name has Indigenous origins and long predates the current (or any) inhabitants of the White House.
Earthlings, I think we need to establish something fundamental here.
If I walk into your house, pick up a vase and announce that it is now called Xylb’tok’s Vase of Magnificent Martian Importance, you do not have to start calling it that.
You can simply tell me to put the vase down.
This is approximately where Canada appears to be with the lake.
Trump, however, has managed to turn a body of water into another front in the increasingly bizarre US-Canada trade war. Google Maps has already adopted “Lake America” for users in the United States, with Canadian users continuing to see Lake Ontario. Apple subsequently followed suit for US users after the Tango tyrant pushed them to do so.
The rest of the world gets Lake Ontario as it should be.
The Lunar Haggis have asked whether we should rename one of Mars’ moons Haggis One. Grzz’lax has reminded them that the moons already have names. They are not taking it well.
The goose squadron
And then, Earthlings, came the geese.
Trump posted an AI-generated video depicting an army of Canadian geese wearing Trump-style blond wigs and apparently armed with rifles, seemingly imagining them as some sort of feathered defence force around Lake Ontario.
I am not entirely sure what we are supposed to make of this.
Are the geese defending Lake Ontario?
Are they defending Lake America?
Are they Trump supporters?
Are they Canadian?
Do the wigs come off at night?
And perhaps most importantly: Who thought this was a good idea?
We Martians have studied Earth’s wildlife extensively. Geese are already perfectly capable of terrifying humans without being given presidential hairstyles and firearms.
Have you ever been chased by an angry goose?
I have.
I was attempting to photograph a particularly attractive glacier. The goose wanted my sandwich. The goose won.
We therefore consider arming them unnecessary.
After much discussion, the Martian Council has decided that these poor, confused creatures clearly require protection from whatever is happening on Earth. Mars is therefore extending an official offer of sanctuary to the Trump-wigged geese.
They may come here.
They will be given food.
They will be given suitable accommodation.
They will not be required to wear wigs.
And under absolutely no circumstances will they be expected to participate in foreign policy.
The Lunar Haggis have volunteered to provide security.
We have declined their offer.
Come to America, or else
If renaming Canada’s lake wasn’t enough, Mango Mussolini also demanded that Canadian companies doing business with the United States move their operations south of the border immediately, arguing that companies relocating to America would avoid tariffs.
Earthlings, there is something almost wonderfully contradictory about this.
First you impose tariffs on your neighbour.
Then you tell your neighbour’s businesses they can avoid those tariffs by moving into your country.
It is a little like setting fire to someone’s garden shed and then offering them a discount on your spare bedroom.
Trump has also claimed that he does not want “Canadian anything”, while simultaneously encouraging Canadian companies to relocate to the United States.
This is becoming less of a trade policy and more of a very aggressive episode of Come on Over, But We Don’t Like You.
The Canadian government, meanwhile, has been preparing counter-tariffs and measures to protect Canadian businesses and diversify its trade.
From Mars, we have one small question.
If you don’t want Canadian anything, why are you so desperate for Canadian companies to move in?
The Lunar Haggis suggested the answer might be “because President Taco has discovered a new definition of irony”.
We have not ruled it out.
MapQuest rides again
And this brings us to our unlikely hero of the week.
MapQuest.
Yes, Earthlings.
MapQuest.
The mapping service that many of you probably assumed had disappeared sometime around the invention of the smartphone has returned from the technological wilderness to take a principled stand.
While Google Maps and Apple Maps have adopted “Lake America” for US users following the government’s official name change, MapQuest has simply said:
No.
It is keeping the name Lake Ontario.
And the response has been extraordinary.
MapQuest’s refusal to bow to the presidential renaming campaign has sent downloads soaring, propelling the once semi-dormant mapping veteran to the top of Apple’s US App Store rankings.
Earthlings, this is glorious.
A company that was once regarded as yesterday’s technology has suddenly become the unlikely champion of cartographical independence.
Mars has therefore officially endorsed MapQuest and integrated it into Foogly Maps.
Yes, I know.
We normally use Foogly.
But Foogly has recently been through a difficult period and has agreed that sometimes you have to know when someone else has the better map.
The Lunar Haggis are furious.
They had already coloured Canada purple.
FAFO comes for Daddy
Now, Earthlings, there is something almost perfectly circular about what has happened to Milo Yiannopoulos.
The British far-right commentator was once a vocal Trump supporter, even referring to the president as “Daddy”, and was perfectly happy to champion his hardline immigration policies.
Well, Daddy’s immigration policy has now come for him.
Yiannopoulos was detained by ICE at an airport in Louisiana on 27 August and deported to the UK the following day. US authorities say he had overstayed his visa, failed to attend an immigration hearing and was subject to a final order of removal.
He has since said he regrets supporting Trump, describing his detention as terrifying and saying he would not have backed him had he understood what his immigration policies would become.
And this, Earthlings, is what is called FAFO – f*ck around and find out.
It is one thing to demand tougher immigration enforcement when you believe it will happen to somebody else. It is quite another when the system you helped champion turns up with your name on the paperwork.
There is an important distinction here: Yiannopoulos’s deportation followed an immigration process, rather than being a case of him simply being seized without legal proceedings. But the irony remains.
He supported the machine. Then the machine processed him.
Perhaps that is the problem with political slogans, Earthlings. They sound remarkably simple when they are being applied to other people.
FAFO: supporting a policy right up until you discover that the policy applies to you too.
Welcome to the Find Out Tour, Milo.
9/11 is not a celebration
Now, Earthlings, we need to pause the jokes for a moment.
The 25th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks should be a moment of solemn remembrance. Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, and countless others have lived with the consequences ever since. For the families who lost loved ones, the survivors, first responders and everyone affected, this is not a political occasion. It is a day of mourning and remembrance.
President Trump has said he will not attend the anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero in New York, instead attending the ceremony at the Pentagon. Vice-President JD Vance is expected to attend the New York commemoration.
The reported reason for Trump’s decision is that he was not permitted to give a speech at Ground Zero. The memorial ceremony is deliberately apolitical, and politicians have not been permitted to give speeches there since 2012.
Whatever one’s political views, there is something deeply uncomfortable about treating a memorial as a matter of personal entitlement.
This is not about who gets the microphone. It is about the people who never came home.
It is also why JD Vance’s recent slip of the tongue was particularly unfortunate. While discussing the anniversary, the Vice-President referred to America being about to “celebrate” the 25th anniversary before immediately correcting himself to “commemorate”.
Of course, people make mistakes, and Vance corrected himself. But words matter, particularly when discussing an event in which thousands of people lost their lives.
From Mars, we have a rather simple understanding of the distinction.
You celebrate life.
You celebrate achievements.
You celebrate the moments that bring people together.
You commemorate those who were lost.
25 years on, the most appropriate thing Earth can offer is not political theatre, competing speeches or arguments over who gets to stand at the front. It is remembrance.
For one day, at least, perhaps the politicians could simply stand among everyone else and remember the people whose lives were taken.
That should not be too much to ask.
Trump Strait: because apparently everything needs his name
And finally, because we clearly had not renamed enough geography this week, President Taco has suggested that the Strait of Hormuz should be renamed the Trump Strait.
Of course he has.
The Strait is already one of the world’s most strategically important waterways, sitting between Iran and Oman and serving as a crucial route for global energy supplies.
But apparently what it was missing was a presidential surname.
Trump has been increasingly focused on the strait amid the conflict with Iran and has now floated the idea of attaching his own name to it.
We have some alternative suggestions.
The Strait of Trump.
Trump’s Passage.
The Great Trumpian Bottleneck.
The Blocked Passage of Trump.
Or perhaps my personal favourite:
The Flop of Trump.
Although that may be confusing because there are already so many things on Earth competing for that title.
The Martian Council has also proposed The Strait Formerly Known As Strait, which has the advantage of requiring considerably less paperwork.
The Lunar Haggis suggested Trump’s Big Wet Bit.
They have been removed from the committee.
Closing reflections from orbit
And so, Earthlings, Week 80 draws to a close.
It has been another extraordinary journey through the increasingly elastic boundaries of American geography.
Lake Ontario has become Lake America – at least on some American maps. Canada has responded with a sign essentially saying, “No, it hasn’t.”
Google and Apple have followed the official US naming system, while MapQuest has emerged from the technological wilderness to declare that some names are apparently worth defending.
Canadian companies have been told to move to America.
Geese have been given Trump wigs and apparently recruited into an imaginary armed conflict.
A solemn anniversary has been muddied by an unfortunate choice of verb.
And now the Strait of Hormuz may be next in line for the Trump branding department.
From Mars, we are beginning to wonder whether the President’s ultimate ambition is not to govern the United States but to rename the entire planet.
Perhaps Earth will become Planet Trump.
The Moon can become Trump’s Moon.
Mars, obviously, remains Mars.
We have already had this discussion.
KEEP MARS FREE.
The Lunar Haggis have suggested that if Trump attempts to rename Mars, we should simply rename America “South Canada”.
Grzz’lax has gone back to photographing glaciers.
And the rescued geese have arrived safely on Mars.
They have eaten three of the Lunar Haggis’s sandwiches, stolen a Martian flag and chased one of our junior meteorologists halfway up Olympus Mons.
We have decided they can stay.
Until next week, Earthlings.
Remember that maps do not create sovereignty, lakes cannot be renamed by tantrum, geese should never be given guns, 9/11 is commemorated rather than celebrated, and if somebody suggests renaming a major international waterway after themselves, perhaps ask them to sit quietly in a corner with a geography book. Preferably one with the correct maps.
Mars remains free. Lake Ontario remains Lake Ontario. And the geese remain armed with absolutely nothing except their natural capacity for chaos. Which, frankly, is quite enough.
