Comment by doodlebugging
8 days ago
I'm not an insider. I'm a geophysicist. The USGS earthquake site is one of the sites that I cycle through multiple times a day if I get the opportunity.
I can't remember at time in at least the last 15 years when the site has not worked flawlessly serving data about new and historical seismicity from all over the globe in a way that allowed the user to customize the view to fit their own needs.
I agree with a couple of posters that think this may be an effort to rename the GoM to the GoA since all the place names are missing from the Ocean map and the places names that are present on the USGS topo map are full of stupid errors that suggest that they modified naming of water features and it broke something for their map layer.
As an oil and gas industry person I have to chuckle to think about all the things that have to happen for that industry to ever come into compliance with this bullshit renaming. There are thousands of wells in databases globally named with a Gulf of Mexico nomenclature. That's just the wells. Each of them likely has multiple dozen products with a GoM tag to identify the well it belongs to. There are probably millions of line miles of seismic data from dozens of large and small seismic data acquisition projects, all of which use GoM nomenclature since the standard nomenclature in the industry relates things to a Client, Line, Area, Survey or similar parameters so that if it happened in the Gulf it will have GoM in the name somewhere and in the metadata associated with the project since that is how you geolocate things in the industry. You reference it to an actual physical location known to less than a cm in many cases.
Sounds like a lot of busy work for anyone in the industry and possibly an opportunity for a consultant to step in and handle all the renaming that will need to happen if there is any effort to comply. They'll need to know multiple databases upside down and sideways since each operator manages things their own way. And they'll need to be comfortable sitting idle while the IT guys sort out access permissions for every legacy file and folder once they discover where the data management division has them stored. You'll also be the fall guy if some of the data gets corrupted but, shit happens. Sounds like a sweet gig.
Maybe it has to do with feature remaining. Maybe it's an upstream problem from a vendor dealing with the renaming. Either way it may or may not be DOGE specifically.
You seem resolved to absolve them of any responsibility. What's your undisclosed personal connection to this problem of map layers being deleted and others altered to fit a bullshit executive order?
Give us the inside view from your office chair.
You're mistaken about my intent. I don't think DOGE is competent and I do find Musk's slash and burn approach deeply offensive, ineffective. I hope that more of their stupidity will be exposed and that they will be held to account for wreaking havoc on govt. This is coming from a place of looking for more solid evidence of malfeasance and incompetence, not from a place of looking to absolve them.
I just think that there are lots of incompetent people in government to begin with who could have messed this up in an attempt to rename, and was interested in understanding whether you had inside info about whether it was the people in DOGE. You have a lot of insightful info in your response, but none that looks like a smoking gun to me like "I know someone at USGS who saw it being done", so to me it looks like an accusation that might not stick. That's all. But we're on the same side here.
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Yes. I was walking outside and realized I was wet. Definitely not the rain, there must be a kid with a squirt gun running around.
DOGE are not the only cloud in the sky, is what I'm saying.
It seems to me that the decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico isn't the crux of the matter. Whether this decision is useful/justified is a totally different matter.
Isn't renaming a place rather common? Even nations were recently renamed (Swaziland, Macedonia).
Therefore the software (database included) managing the data (used by the USGS earthquake's) probably offers a way to rename a place.
Is there any documentation exposing how to perform such a renaming? Is it up to date and accessible (or did someone modify/hide it in order to annoy DOGE)? Was it not strictly followed by the person(s) who tried to rename this Gulf? Are all technical thingies associated to such a renaming free of major bugs?
If all answers to those questions are "yes" then the person(s) who tried to rename is the sole culprit.
If there is a single "no" then at least another person should be put into scrutiny.
I completely agree with the hypothesis that it has to do with feature renaming. DOGE isn't the person who asked renaming, it's POTUS. I don't think DOGE looks competent. I also don't think that they're the only incompetent people in govt.
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We know that the administration ordered the name change for the Gulf of Mexico, and immediately following that order the data layers via USGS broke. Probably because someone (or some organization of geniuses) tried to change it directly without consulting anyone.
Trying to sea-lion your way through this convo after the person replying to you gave a detailed breakdown of the situation is gross. Don't be a sycophant.
See my response above. My intent to look for more info was misread as defense of DOGE. They're a bunch of clowns in a town that has lots of other clowns all entranced to the same person. There are lots of people who could have messed this up as well.