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Von Fall zu Fall Ozette: The US' lost 2,000-year-old village good job

Why your voice assistant might be sexistFrom reinforcing entrenched gender roles to potentially even fuelling misogyny, ...
15/06/2022

Why your voice assistant might be sexist
From reinforcing entrenched gender roles to potentially even fuelling misogyny, choosing the right voice for a particular task can be a minefield.
J
James Bond flings open the door of his new BMW – which comes with hidden machine guns as standard – and immediately a feminine computerised voice announces, "Welcome! Please fasten seatbelt and obey all instructions for a safe trip."

Bond’s MI6 colleague and master of gadgets, Q, pipes up to explain: "Thought you’d pay more attention to a female voice." But, predictably, Bond later ignores repeated commands to wear his seatbelt and, using his mobile phone as a remote control, he subsequently drives the car off the top of a multi-storey car park in the 1997 blockbuster Tomorrow Never Dies.

Q's market research was wrong – and so was BMW’s. The firm famously recalled a feminine-voiced GPS system from its cars when German drivers complained that they didn't want to take instructions "from a woman".

Ozette: The US' lost 2,000-year-old villageIn 1970, a violent storm uncovered a Makah village that was buried by a mudsl...
08/06/2022

Ozette: The US' lost 2,000-year-old village
In 1970, a violent storm uncovered a Makah village that was buried by a mudslide more than 300 years earlier. A newly re-opened museum tells the fascinating story of the ancient site.
Coming to the end of a short, winding trail, I found myself standing in the extreme north-west corner of the contiguous US, a wild, forested realm where white-capped waves slam against the isolated Washington coast with a savage ferocity. Buttressed by vertiginous cliffs battling with the corrosive power of the Pacific, Cape Flattery has an elemental, edge-of-continent feel. No town adorns this stormy promontory. The nearest settlement, Neah Bay, sits eight miles away by road, a diminutive coast-hugging community that is home to the Makah, an indigenous tribe who have fished and thrived in this region for centuries.

The Makah are represented by the motif of a thunderbird perched atop a whale, and their story is closely linked to the sea.

"The Makah is the only tribe with explicit treaty rights to whale hunting in the US," explained Rebekah Monette, a tribal member and historic preservation programme manager. "Our expertise in whaling distinguished us from other tribes. It was very important culturally. In the stratification of Makah society, whaling was at the top of the hierarchy. Hunting had the capacity to supply food for a vast number of people and raw material for tools."

After reading recent news stories about the Makah's whaling rights and the impact of climate change on their traditional waters, I had come to their 27,000-acre reservation on Washington's Olympic Peninsula to learn more, by visiting a unique tribal museum that has just reopened after a two-year hiatus due to Covid-19.

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