Matt, thank you so much for including my email and the pics of Uncle Sam; I think he'll get a kick out of Mailbucket #7 when I send it to him :-). Here's a few more tidbits:
As opposed to having the burnished educational credentials of our current media class, Sam never went to college; after a short stint in the Navy he began his career while still a teenager, probably as stringer, then worked his way into the profession. Throughout all the civil unrest he covered his plea to his sisters (my mother & aunt), was always "Don't tell Mom". Their father, my grandfather Big Sam, was the Night Manager at the Downtown Atlanta Western Union offices throughout the turbulent '60's so he might have seen a lot of historic goings-on himself; the office was in the lower floor of the Atlanta Constitution building and his friend, the legendary anti-segregationist editor and publisher of the paper, Ralph McGill, used to sleep off the occasional late night out on Big Sam's office sofa before heading upstairs to do his brave and noble job. There's a good Wikipedia page about him (McGill).
When we took our kids to the Kennedy Space Center years ago we spotted Sam in the movie that as far as I know still runs in the old mission control center they use for a theatre: 'fro in all it's glory, camera in hand and a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. We were able to confirm it was really him because our son was testing out our new video camera at the time and was able to catch the moment on tape.
I've never seen my Uncle Sam drink anything stronger than sweet iced tea but he smoked unfiltered Camels for decades until he quit cold turkey many years ago. The 'fro is the stuff of family legends, and while it's just a little bit shorter and a little bit gray today, he still has it :-).
I think the Smithsonian is definitely more prestigious, but have you also considered Story Corps? With Story Corps, *you* could interview him which would also be very cool.
Other than that you could try searching local universities for history profs who specialize in modern American history (or the civil rights era specifically). I bet one of them would absolutely love to meet and talk with your uncle.
That's a great idea thanks; he lives in Nashville now so of course there's Vanderbilt, or Univ of TN in Knoxville where he used to meet us for dinner after the Vols games he would cover (just us & 100K+ orange-clad fans :-). Or he could come back to Atlanta where there's Emory, GSU, Tech & numerous HBCU's; he & my aunt come down often to see my mom and they were here for a special Civil Rights Movement exhibit at the High Museum that included some of his pics. Thanks again for the idea💡!
My Aunt, who was a nurse in WWII, was interviewed for the Folklore dept at the library of congress. One of her nephews recorded her stories and submitted it. They have a vast collection of oral histories. The recording is pretty amazing.
That's wonderful Molly, thank you so much for the heads up on another possible avenue for us. I know you're glad to have your aunt's amazing stories immortalized; what a wonderful tribute to her and a gift to your family and others. There are no history book substitutes for these first-hand accounts❤️
Matt, I loved this David Sacks rant so much it hurts. This is the argument I end up having with people who thing I’m a squish because I don’t like Trump.
I love your analogy with your dad. I often think of it like Plato’s Apology where Socrates is basically says “I’m a wise man because I know that I’m a fool”
it seems like men like Sacks have never met a person who’s willing to tell him how small he is. The arrogance of Silicon Valley is breathtaking. Moynihan’s interview with Altman is such a perfect example of this ideas.
People often think Silicon Valley types are libertarians because they want less regulations, but many of them simply feel (correctly) that the regulators are dumber than them, and that they would do much better job if they were in charge (wrongly). It's a kind of old school modernist collectivism. I have had so many arguments with very smart people who thought that a powerful enough AI could just manage the economy for us. I think every physics and engineering program should require a course on Hayek to beat this tendency out of the smart kids.
I’ll have to disagree that they are correct in thinking they’re smarter, I think they’re correct in thinking that they have much more knowledge in a narrow band of expertise, and I will not give them an ounce more than that. They however have never had any moral instruction that would give them enough wisdom for that narrow expertise to be useful to them as public intellectuals or civic leaders of any kind. They’re closer to calculators than men with the requisite virtues and skills to be societal leaders.
In my opinion without epistemic humility, no amount of knowledge can release man from the fact that he’s a fool.
David Sacks, Chalmath Palihipitya, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, they’re all hammers that have no idea what a hammer is for. So yeah when they hit nails it’s impressive and when they hit anything else it’s a fuck story. I have not a shred of respect for a single one of these men, they are fools drunk on conceit.
History is full of men of this exact same kind of foolishness, and it isn’t kind to them.
If you define "smart" as "having superior cognitive ability", then I think you're exactly right. A lot of very smart people have this astonishing capability for generating overwrought (and facially wrong) models for answering questions to which normies see the obvious answers. They do this because that ability is why they're successful in whatever their native field is: they are so good at handling complex technical scenarios with lots of detail and complications that they have lost the ability to make obvious judgments based on big picture considerations. It's the "missing the forest for the trees" phenomenon that many very smart people fall victim to.
A story from college, where I was an electrical engineering major:
My lab partner and I were walking to the lab, carrying our large backpacks filled with books, tools and supplies. It began to rain, and we had to hurry to the lab so none of our things got wrecked. My partner turns to me and says with complete seriousness "somebody should invent some sort of device that deflects the rain away from you automatically."
They don't have "superior cognitive ability," they have overdeveloped right brain thinking. I don't think they're "neurodivergent" either, rather I think they're poorly socialized and disinterested by choice.
To put it another way, I don't care how complex some model is, if it doesn't connect to the concept it's supposed to connect to then the person who created it doesn't count as smart.
In fact, a lot of these people can't even recognize something if it is put simply, they *have* to make it complicated in order to reason and talk about it, which sounds to me less like intelligence and more like brain damage.
Honestly, I don't think the SV people are actually any smarter than the employees of regulatory agencies. In fact, I think the SV people we are talking about are *alarmingly ignorant* in ways that your average government regulatory employee is not.
I am so sick of the assumption that someone in STEM must be so much smarter, the way STEM education is done now churns out people who can apply exactly one formula and nothing else. They know *zero* about history, and even less about philosophy, culture, the people around them, and themselves. Listening to these people about anything other than the one formula they learned in school is madness.
The big punchline of the "ai revolution" of the last ten years is ALL of it was due to hardware advances, none of it had anything to do with any advance in understanding in mathematics or intelligence. What the "ai revolution" should have been called was the "parallelized computation revolution."
On a related note, open AI's lead scientist is currently lecturing on the theme of "we don't create AI, neural networks create AI," which makes it sound to me like he's gone full AI messiah and completely lost his mind. Intellectually there's no new content, but now he has this weird look in his eye.
As always Matt, well done! I love TFC so much. Like the current Olympians, you all make this journalism thing look so easy- Gold medals to team TFC. (Trite, I know)
Kinda crazy that Vucci also snapped an action pic of the dude tossing shoes at W back in the day. My one brush with fame is being elementary school friends with Evan. #OlneyRepresent
Ranjith, thanks for your letter and your reasons you are voting for trump. It explained my reasons as well. After 1/6, trump was so on my shit list that I would not have given the time of day much less vote for him. After these past few years, I am more concerned for the country if democrats take the White House and congress for four years than trump having another 4 years.
I agree. I would say I am an independent but lean conservative. At least the republicans had a primary where maybe 10% voted. Instead, under 12 people decided on who would be the democratic nominee. Then, when that was a bad choice, tossed him aside (after he did everything they told him to do) and picked Harris. Now, who is a threat to democracy?
Only 18 million voted for Trump in the ‘20 primary. Low turnout in incumbent primaries is standard. The whole only 12 million voted for Biden thing is such a dull point and it was well known by democrats that he was too old and that his VP would not be switched with Kamala more likely they just about any VP to take over the presidency. That’s what was decided via a new incumbent primary that was just on par with every incumbent primary before aside from the candidates age and signs of oldness.
The answer to your question remains that the person who is a threat to democracy is the guy who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election with a fake electors scheme.
Regarding the wedding in Israel…did the writer refrain from wedding, birthday, graduation, and all other celebrations during our 20-year wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Or even during the most acute early years? Probably not. I don’t know anyone who did, and it would’ve been rightly seen as maladaptive.
In Jewish teaching, if a funeral party and a wedding party meet on a road, the mourners must make way for the celebrants. Death must yield to life.
Funny story. I had a Jewish wedding (I'm Catholic) and the day before we got a call that we couldn't arrive until 215 for a 245 ketubah signing because of a funeral. It was also a shared space with the episcopalians so it was a real trip. Especially when the priest showed up. :)
I laughed when I read about “ED”. I have noticed the same thing with doctors.
I’m a nurse- and I admire the shit out of doctors. Particularly internists, who have to look at the whole situation and figure it out. They work punishing hours, and are often selfless.
Here comes my big but: sweet Jesus they think all that specialized knowledge makes them smart about other shit and most of them just aren’t. I was married to one who exemplified this.
On the other hand, I think most lawyers are smart about most things. I think the way they are trained to think makes all the difference.
Anyway- thanks for everything lads! I am looking forward to the show in Chicago! I just have to find a place to stay.
“…The wedding was about celebrating love for its own sake. Would you?”
I’m no expert, but it seems important that people celebrate beautiful things at home during war. Otherwise there would be less to be fighting for. Just one man’s opinion.
Man, what a ride since I wrote that email. Glad you included it, glad you got something from it, but what a month where an assassination attempt against a presidential candidate was barely top 5 most news worthy events. America's July Days.
Not a lot, not so far. I think the big issue with it is parts might not be falsifiable. If I'm right about ROEs, they'll likely never tell the public for security reasons, which I think is fair actually. About the SS head being fired, she should have walked in there ready to resign on the first day of testimony. And about the local police knowing he was up there... I mean, I knew comms breakdown was in my bingo cards somewhere, but jeez.
I’m stealing Matt’s “E.D.” phrase, but changing it to AD (Academic’s Disease). Being a denizen of academia for 10+ years now, it’s always bothered me how often I run into academics who think the same way Matt described engineers suffering from ED.
Matt, I'm sorry about using 'labile' as the word of choice. I guess I've been pronouncing labile wrong all along. Thankfully the 'la' in Kamala was not the syllable in contention and everyone says it the right way.
I enjoyed reading my fellow mailbag travelers, Jonathan's message brought to mind the title of the Dave Eggers novel "What is the What" (interesting and based on the true story of the Lost Boys from Sudan but that's neither here nor there :-)
As for Ranjith & Ameya re: name mispronunciation, I too have one of those almost always mispronounced last names; apologies if this is appropriation of an immigrant's burden by a whyte lady (the family crest proudly displayed by our Swiss Italian cousin in Ticino features a very dark-skinned Moor if that helps? No?). Italians and those of Latin descent usually get it right; I say "it's More-A-Z, kind of rhymes with crazy" but I'm not sure my husband (the original name bearer in our family) is all that fond of that explanation🧐. Many, many of his patients have last names 10-15 letters long; I'm not sure how he handles this but to my knowledge no one has ever gotten irritated with him over pronunciation; *grace* is the best way to handle being on either end of this situation imho
My wife's maiden name is an Italian name whose pronunciation they've Americanized for at least three generations. I think my brother-in-law is halfheartedly trying to revive the correct pronunciation for his family. When it comes to immigrants, this whole white/POC narrative makes no sense. I can't ask him because he predeceased our marriage, but I would bet my wife's Italian grandpa faced a lot more racial prejudice in his 1920s childhood than I ever did.
My last name is always mispronounced as it's similar to a inappropriate word. Imagine if someone had the last name "negger" and that's about where we are at. People will bend over backward to avoid the obvious pronunciation
Ranjit is 100% right of course about Kamala's pronunciation, and I have to say that as a person whose name is often pronounced incorrectly, the most infuriating instance of this is when people WITH THE SAME FUCKING NAME AS ME pronounce it wrong. Everybody else I chalk up to a lack of phonics education.
I saw the most American thing ever today while listening to the latest episode during a run: an African-American chap driving a white surplus police Crown Vic (unmarked, but it still had the push bar) with a "Don't Tread on Me" sticker on the rear bumper.
Is that because of the transliteration? I am American-born and maybe a little confused, but I would think that अमेय has a pretty unambiguous pronunciation. For some names there is ambiguity in whether to pronounce the terminal vowel (Siddharth vs. Siddhartha), but that doesn't seem to be the case here. (The typical Indian alternative pronunciations of my name sound like आमे or अमै.)
Yes, it's not that common a name you would see in South India, so I wasn't sure if the long syllable is the first or the second. Either way, to your point, transliterating names from another language to English is always going to be a challenge to readers not familiar with the name. (Kamala for example). And English as a written script can be quite deceptive for pronunciation- (blow vs how vs sew)
There is a professional wrestling board I try not to frequent anymore because of posts like the following. They wondered if Trump purposely mispronouncing Harris's name was a reference to old territory days wrestling heel Kamala The Ugandan Giant and thus trying to associate Harris with a cannibal from deepest, darkest Africa. The really funny thing is this almost hits on Poe territory because I can actually see someone like Joy Reid bringing this up on an end of show segment with a nod and a wink.
In that scenario, Joe Biden would be manager The Wizard (no moniker could be less fitting), and Doug Emhoff would be valet Friday, or Kim Chee, depending on the era.
As I’m sure you know, the surname of the man who portrayed Kamala was, coincidently, Harris. He went to the squared circle in the sky four years ago next week, RIP. He wasn’t actually Ugandan. Word is still out on the other Kamala’s ethnic origin. Zing!
Matt, thank you so much for including my email and the pics of Uncle Sam; I think he'll get a kick out of Mailbucket #7 when I send it to him :-). Here's a few more tidbits:
As opposed to having the burnished educational credentials of our current media class, Sam never went to college; after a short stint in the Navy he began his career while still a teenager, probably as stringer, then worked his way into the profession. Throughout all the civil unrest he covered his plea to his sisters (my mother & aunt), was always "Don't tell Mom". Their father, my grandfather Big Sam, was the Night Manager at the Downtown Atlanta Western Union offices throughout the turbulent '60's so he might have seen a lot of historic goings-on himself; the office was in the lower floor of the Atlanta Constitution building and his friend, the legendary anti-segregationist editor and publisher of the paper, Ralph McGill, used to sleep off the occasional late night out on Big Sam's office sofa before heading upstairs to do his brave and noble job. There's a good Wikipedia page about him (McGill).
When we took our kids to the Kennedy Space Center years ago we spotted Sam in the movie that as far as I know still runs in the old mission control center they use for a theatre: 'fro in all it's glory, camera in hand and a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. We were able to confirm it was really him because our son was testing out our new video camera at the time and was able to catch the moment on tape.
I've never seen my Uncle Sam drink anything stronger than sweet iced tea but he smoked unfiltered Camels for decades until he quit cold turkey many years ago. The 'fro is the stuff of family legends, and while it's just a little bit shorter and a little bit gray today, he still has it :-).
Thanks again, Matt!
Legend.
I think the Smithsonian is definitely more prestigious, but have you also considered Story Corps? With Story Corps, *you* could interview him which would also be very cool.
https://storycorps.org/participate/
Other than that you could try searching local universities for history profs who specialize in modern American history (or the civil rights era specifically). I bet one of them would absolutely love to meet and talk with your uncle.
That's a great idea thanks; he lives in Nashville now so of course there's Vanderbilt, or Univ of TN in Knoxville where he used to meet us for dinner after the Vols games he would cover (just us & 100K+ orange-clad fans :-). Or he could come back to Atlanta where there's Emory, GSU, Tech & numerous HBCU's; he & my aunt come down often to see my mom and they were here for a special Civil Rights Movement exhibit at the High Museum that included some of his pics. Thanks again for the idea💡!
My Aunt, who was a nurse in WWII, was interviewed for the Folklore dept at the library of congress. One of her nephews recorded her stories and submitted it. They have a vast collection of oral histories. The recording is pretty amazing.
That's wonderful Molly, thank you so much for the heads up on another possible avenue for us. I know you're glad to have your aunt's amazing stories immortalized; what a wonderful tribute to her and a gift to your family and others. There are no history book substitutes for these first-hand accounts❤️
Woot woot go Big Orange!
😅🧡👍🍊🏈🤞!!
Very cool email, thanks for sharing
What an awesome story! Thanks for sharing!
tysm Nika😍❤️
Matt, I loved this David Sacks rant so much it hurts. This is the argument I end up having with people who thing I’m a squish because I don’t like Trump.
I love your analogy with your dad. I often think of it like Plato’s Apology where Socrates is basically says “I’m a wise man because I know that I’m a fool”
it seems like men like Sacks have never met a person who’s willing to tell him how small he is. The arrogance of Silicon Valley is breathtaking. Moynihan’s interview with Altman is such a perfect example of this ideas.
People often think Silicon Valley types are libertarians because they want less regulations, but many of them simply feel (correctly) that the regulators are dumber than them, and that they would do much better job if they were in charge (wrongly). It's a kind of old school modernist collectivism. I have had so many arguments with very smart people who thought that a powerful enough AI could just manage the economy for us. I think every physics and engineering program should require a course on Hayek to beat this tendency out of the smart kids.
I’ll have to disagree that they are correct in thinking they’re smarter, I think they’re correct in thinking that they have much more knowledge in a narrow band of expertise, and I will not give them an ounce more than that. They however have never had any moral instruction that would give them enough wisdom for that narrow expertise to be useful to them as public intellectuals or civic leaders of any kind. They’re closer to calculators than men with the requisite virtues and skills to be societal leaders.
In my opinion without epistemic humility, no amount of knowledge can release man from the fact that he’s a fool.
David Sacks, Chalmath Palihipitya, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, they’re all hammers that have no idea what a hammer is for. So yeah when they hit nails it’s impressive and when they hit anything else it’s a fuck story. I have not a shred of respect for a single one of these men, they are fools drunk on conceit.
History is full of men of this exact same kind of foolishness, and it isn’t kind to them.
I'm saying they are specifically smarter than employees of regulatory agencies, which seems like a pretty low bar to clear, honestly.
But yes, David Sacks is pretty fucking stupid on Ukraine.
If you define "smart" as "having superior cognitive ability", then I think you're exactly right. A lot of very smart people have this astonishing capability for generating overwrought (and facially wrong) models for answering questions to which normies see the obvious answers. They do this because that ability is why they're successful in whatever their native field is: they are so good at handling complex technical scenarios with lots of detail and complications that they have lost the ability to make obvious judgments based on big picture considerations. It's the "missing the forest for the trees" phenomenon that many very smart people fall victim to.
A story from college, where I was an electrical engineering major:
My lab partner and I were walking to the lab, carrying our large backpacks filled with books, tools and supplies. It began to rain, and we had to hurry to the lab so none of our things got wrecked. My partner turns to me and says with complete seriousness "somebody should invent some sort of device that deflects the rain away from you automatically."
They don't have "superior cognitive ability," they have overdeveloped right brain thinking. I don't think they're "neurodivergent" either, rather I think they're poorly socialized and disinterested by choice.
To put it another way, I don't care how complex some model is, if it doesn't connect to the concept it's supposed to connect to then the person who created it doesn't count as smart.
In fact, a lot of these people can't even recognize something if it is put simply, they *have* to make it complicated in order to reason and talk about it, which sounds to me less like intelligence and more like brain damage.
I don’t really understand what about being a silicone valley type would necessarily make a person any smarter than any other class of people.
FYI: Silicone Valley is the San Fernando Valley. Silicon Valley is the one with all the tech bros
Honestly, I don't think the SV people are actually any smarter than the employees of regulatory agencies. In fact, I think the SV people we are talking about are *alarmingly ignorant* in ways that your average government regulatory employee is not.
I am so sick of the assumption that someone in STEM must be so much smarter, the way STEM education is done now churns out people who can apply exactly one formula and nothing else. They know *zero* about history, and even less about philosophy, culture, the people around them, and themselves. Listening to these people about anything other than the one formula they learned in school is madness.
The big punchline of the "ai revolution" of the last ten years is ALL of it was due to hardware advances, none of it had anything to do with any advance in understanding in mathematics or intelligence. What the "ai revolution" should have been called was the "parallelized computation revolution."
On a related note, open AI's lead scientist is currently lecturing on the theme of "we don't create AI, neural networks create AI," which makes it sound to me like he's gone full AI messiah and completely lost his mind. Intellectually there's no new content, but now he has this weird look in his eye.
As always Matt, well done! I love TFC so much. Like the current Olympians, you all make this journalism thing look so easy- Gold medals to team TFC. (Trite, I know)
Kinda crazy that Vucci also snapped an action pic of the dude tossing shoes at W back in the day. My one brush with fame is being elementary school friends with Evan. #OlneyRepresent
Ranjith, thanks for your letter and your reasons you are voting for trump. It explained my reasons as well. After 1/6, trump was so on my shit list that I would not have given the time of day much less vote for him. After these past few years, I am more concerned for the country if democrats take the White House and congress for four years than trump having another 4 years.
I had an interesting conversation with a young man who came to my door canvassing for Harris.
I expressed that I would grudgingly vote for Harris, but I hated a lot of the progressive shit. He sighed and said “Me too”.
If the Republicans had put up anyone but Trump this would be a cake walk for them.
I agree. I would say I am an independent but lean conservative. At least the republicans had a primary where maybe 10% voted. Instead, under 12 people decided on who would be the democratic nominee. Then, when that was a bad choice, tossed him aside (after he did everything they told him to do) and picked Harris. Now, who is a threat to democracy?
Only 18 million voted for Trump in the ‘20 primary. Low turnout in incumbent primaries is standard. The whole only 12 million voted for Biden thing is such a dull point and it was well known by democrats that he was too old and that his VP would not be switched with Kamala more likely they just about any VP to take over the presidency. That’s what was decided via a new incumbent primary that was just on par with every incumbent primary before aside from the candidates age and signs of oldness.
The answer to your question remains that the person who is a threat to democracy is the guy who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election with a fake electors scheme.
That is one righteous Dixiefro
🎯👏😍
“kkmoresi” is revealed! Good letter, Kristy.
😊👋tyvm
Regarding the wedding in Israel…did the writer refrain from wedding, birthday, graduation, and all other celebrations during our 20-year wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Or even during the most acute early years? Probably not. I don’t know anyone who did, and it would’ve been rightly seen as maladaptive.
In Jewish teaching, if a funeral party and a wedding party meet on a road, the mourners must make way for the celebrants. Death must yield to life.
There is always bad crap happening everywhere around the world, and none of us are getting out of this alive. We are all whistling in the graveyard.
Funny story. I had a Jewish wedding (I'm Catholic) and the day before we got a call that we couldn't arrive until 215 for a 245 ketubah signing because of a funeral. It was also a shared space with the episcopalians so it was a real trip. Especially when the priest showed up. :)
What a treat for a Sunday morning!
I laughed when I read about “ED”. I have noticed the same thing with doctors.
I’m a nurse- and I admire the shit out of doctors. Particularly internists, who have to look at the whole situation and figure it out. They work punishing hours, and are often selfless.
Here comes my big but: sweet Jesus they think all that specialized knowledge makes them smart about other shit and most of them just aren’t. I was married to one who exemplified this.
On the other hand, I think most lawyers are smart about most things. I think the way they are trained to think makes all the difference.
Anyway- thanks for everything lads! I am looking forward to the show in Chicago! I just have to find a place to stay.
“…The wedding was about celebrating love for its own sake. Would you?”
I’m no expert, but it seems important that people celebrate beautiful things at home during war. Otherwise there would be less to be fighting for. Just one man’s opinion.
Man, what a ride since I wrote that email. Glad you included it, glad you got something from it, but what a month where an assassination attempt against a presidential candidate was barely top 5 most news worthy events. America's July Days.
I liked your explanation. Has your opinion evolved since you wrote it?
Not a lot, not so far. I think the big issue with it is parts might not be falsifiable. If I'm right about ROEs, they'll likely never tell the public for security reasons, which I think is fair actually. About the SS head being fired, she should have walked in there ready to resign on the first day of testimony. And about the local police knowing he was up there... I mean, I knew comms breakdown was in my bingo cards somewhere, but jeez.
I’m stealing Matt’s “E.D.” phrase, but changing it to AD (Academic’s Disease). Being a denizen of academia for 10+ years now, it’s always bothered me how often I run into academics who think the same way Matt described engineers suffering from ED.
Matt, I'm sorry about using 'labile' as the word of choice. I guess I've been pronouncing labile wrong all along. Thankfully the 'la' in Kamala was not the syllable in contention and everyone says it the right way.
I enjoyed reading my fellow mailbag travelers, Jonathan's message brought to mind the title of the Dave Eggers novel "What is the What" (interesting and based on the true story of the Lost Boys from Sudan but that's neither here nor there :-)
As for Ranjith & Ameya re: name mispronunciation, I too have one of those almost always mispronounced last names; apologies if this is appropriation of an immigrant's burden by a whyte lady (the family crest proudly displayed by our Swiss Italian cousin in Ticino features a very dark-skinned Moor if that helps? No?). Italians and those of Latin descent usually get it right; I say "it's More-A-Z, kind of rhymes with crazy" but I'm not sure my husband (the original name bearer in our family) is all that fond of that explanation🧐. Many, many of his patients have last names 10-15 letters long; I'm not sure how he handles this but to my knowledge no one has ever gotten irritated with him over pronunciation; *grace* is the best way to handle being on either end of this situation imho
My wife's maiden name is an Italian name whose pronunciation they've Americanized for at least three generations. I think my brother-in-law is halfheartedly trying to revive the correct pronunciation for his family. When it comes to immigrants, this whole white/POC narrative makes no sense. I can't ask him because he predeceased our marriage, but I would bet my wife's Italian grandpa faced a lot more racial prejudice in his 1920s childhood than I ever did.
My last name is always mispronounced as it's similar to a inappropriate word. Imagine if someone had the last name "negger" and that's about where we are at. People will bend over backward to avoid the obvious pronunciation
😅‼️
Ranjit is 100% right of course about Kamala's pronunciation, and I have to say that as a person whose name is often pronounced incorrectly, the most infuriating instance of this is when people WITH THE SAME FUCKING NAME AS ME pronounce it wrong. Everybody else I chalk up to a lack of phonics education.
I should admit, however, that I Americanize the fuck out of my last name. I think my kids don't even know the right way to pronounce it.
USA! USA!
I saw the most American thing ever today while listening to the latest episode during a run: an African-American chap driving a white surplus police Crown Vic (unmarked, but it still had the push bar) with a "Don't Tread on Me" sticker on the rear bumper.
I'll be honest, I am not sure if I know how to pronounce even your first name correctly. I'm sure different parts of India would say it differently.
Is that because of the transliteration? I am American-born and maybe a little confused, but I would think that अमेय has a pretty unambiguous pronunciation. For some names there is ambiguity in whether to pronounce the terminal vowel (Siddharth vs. Siddhartha), but that doesn't seem to be the case here. (The typical Indian alternative pronunciations of my name sound like आमे or अमै.)
Yes, it's not that common a name you would see in South India, so I wasn't sure if the long syllable is the first or the second. Either way, to your point, transliterating names from another language to English is always going to be a challenge to readers not familiar with the name. (Kamala for example). And English as a written script can be quite deceptive for pronunciation- (blow vs how vs sew)
There is a professional wrestling board I try not to frequent anymore because of posts like the following. They wondered if Trump purposely mispronouncing Harris's name was a reference to old territory days wrestling heel Kamala The Ugandan Giant and thus trying to associate Harris with a cannibal from deepest, darkest Africa. The really funny thing is this almost hits on Poe territory because I can actually see someone like Joy Reid bringing this up on an end of show segment with a nod and a wink.
In that scenario, Joe Biden would be manager The Wizard (no moniker could be less fitting), and Doug Emhoff would be valet Friday, or Kim Chee, depending on the era.
As I’m sure you know, the surname of the man who portrayed Kamala was, coincidently, Harris. He went to the squared circle in the sky four years ago next week, RIP. He wasn’t actually Ugandan. Word is still out on the other Kamala’s ethnic origin. Zing!