What an excellent example of Brandolini's law: “ The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.”
For those just encountering this like me, the man in question was Sequoyah, a monolingual Cherokee. His own tribe put him on trial, being overseen by his Chief.
Slightly different from what I’d normally assume had happened from just reading the above comment.
Really impressive on his part, basically saw it was possible and looked as some examples of what others had done, then got to work.
The notion that Sequoyah was a monolingual Cherokee is dubious. He had a European father (though he was raised with his mother) and worked as a trader and served in the U.S. Army. His cousin, to whom he presented his syllabary, was also half European, “George Lowery.” He had extensive contact with Europeans. Moreover, his syllabary includes adaptations of Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic letters. Part of the story is that he copied some character shapes from his wife’s family’s Bible. (Presumably they could read English if they had a Bible.)
He was obviously exposed to a variety of European writing. He completed his syllabary in 1821, many years after his military service. It seems highly unlikely that someone who was so linguistically gifted to be able to invent a syllabary would not have picked up some familiarity with spoken and written English through that exposure.
This article does a good job of reviewing the conflicting narratives of his history: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26467045. It’s all very uncertain, and there’s a lot of mythology.
I found it interesting that you used the term European several times, but never once the term American. He served in the American military, lived in America, had an American father (according to the article).
So you consider 19th century America to be Europe, or is there another reason for your choice of words?
"American" would be ambiguous in this context, right? Both the Cherokee and the English-speaking residents of the USA are American, but the specific point here was about whether Sequoyah was only a Cherokee speaker or if he had any knowledge of English, Spanish, French, Latin or any other European language. In this context, saying that Sequoyah's father was "American" would not make any point - it wouldn't tell anyone reading the comment that he was not Cherokee nor from any other native population; whereas European makes that point succinctly.
I find it interesting that you think "served in the U.S. Army" isn't American enough for you.
Foreigners can serve in the US Army. Native Americans weren't automatically US citizens until 1924, but were considered citizens of their sovereign tribe.
European here clearly means both "from Europe" (eg, Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic letters are European, not American), as well as "European Americans" (ie, Americans of European ancestry, and often with cultural ties to Europe.) Just like how "Asian" doesn't always mean "born in Asia", or how "Anglo" can refer to non-Hispanic white Americans rather than being specifically related to England.
Trading with the Spanish in Florida, English ships, or French trappers would all count as "contact with Europeans", and not simply "Americans".
Finally, recall that at the time "American" was a state of mind. A Loyalist at the time would not consider themselves "American", and a Patriot considered a Loyalist to be "inimical to the liberties of America". How do you know if Sequoyah’s father was an American or a Loyalist?
Same, I hated when everything transitioned to it and became harder to read as a result. Frutiger Aero was a sterile sort of cheerful in a way only a CEO could think was relatable. It basically marked the turning point where the UI stopped being something janky that felt human made, into a mass produced corporate template.
Looking at it felt like the visual equivalent of licking soap.
Every time I see it now, I can only think “good riddance”.
I work I Ag retail (agronomic services, chemical sales) and while we have an IT department, a decade ago I’d occasionally act as “local” tech support and double a coworker’s RAM when their combination of browser/office/database front ends stopped gracefully fitting in 4GB (and later 8GB). I would also migrate them from HDD’s to SSD’s, and set them up with backups.
But even I haven’t done that in several years now, once IT moved to providing 16GB memory and SSD’s as a baseline, there’s really nothing left in a box to upgrade. I’m quite happy enough to not have to care.
Something as simple as adding a stick of RAM might be worthwhile, but some upgrades will take more money in salary (you and the person whose computer you're working on) than the upgrade is actually worth. This is especially true if you replace several components one at a time in a what would otherwise be a single replace cycle.
This is especially true if the business is writing down the replaced hardware as depreciated capital, compared to say simply adding a stick of RAM.
I really enjoyed it. I had no idea what a “backrooms movie” would end up being, but it was exactly what I could have hoped for having enjoyed his other work.
Honestly creators from youtube putting out movies recently has probably been the most interested in going out to see something in years.
Just to add, I also do my work from an M1 MacBook that I crammed Asahi onto. I got it used for a few hundred dollars last year and it's a perfectly fine experience (for me).
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