"Males prefer female faces that resemble their own when provided images of three women, with one image modified to resemble their own. However, the same result does not apply to females selecting male faces."
I get your point, and I don't mean to be insulting to her as a person, but the reality is that her name recognition is essentially non-existent compared to Bezos. That doesn't make her less important or valuable as a person, but it's highly relevant to a newspaper headline writer who is trying to orient their reader in as few words as possible.
I posted this link. I was unable to come up with a title that included her name, the fact that she was Bezos' ex-wife, and who she donated a very large sum of money to, whereas the original long title did.
The way you can do both - i.e. giver her a name, since she has enough accomplishments in her own right to be named, but also indicate she is Bezos' ex-wife for those who do not know is like this:
Mackenzie Scott (Bezos' ex-wife) gives $1.7B to..
This ensures that in the future she might have enough name recognition to no longer be relegated to "Bezos' ex-wife," and one day we might make the () fall away.
To demonstrate this is true, we can turn to a lower celebrity, Mark Anthony. He tended to be referenced in publications like this:
Mark Anthony, Jennifer Lopez's husband...
However, at this point, he has enough name recognition that a lot of publications will no longer mention it in the title.
> ...since she has enough accomplishments in her own right to be named...
I've never been interested in this woman, nor did I know anything about her previously. But just from her very brief Wikipedia, here are the highlights:
* Born into super wealthy family
* Sent to Pre-Ivy league boarding school in Connecticut
* Studies at elitist Ivy League university (Princeton) and graduates with pseudo-degree of 'English'.
* Meets Jeff Bezos while working the typical elitist hedge fund starter job in Manhattan. They get married!
... lots of years pass
* divorces Jeff Bezos, becomes one of world's richest persons
* donates a fraction of the money she won in divorce.
Wow, a true American by-the-bootstraps dream. Certainly, it is sexist to refer to her as "Jeff Bezos' wife" based on her many many individual accomplishments.
This person considers any degree outside their personal preference of "important" degrees a pseudo-degree. I am guessing this personal preference probably closely aligns with whatever is currently considered "job-ready" degrees, and ignores the historical context in which some degrees used to be much less valued than presently.
For instance, a degree in math (the M in STEM) used to be considered a dead-end for a job, except to teach primary school, and was very female-dominated. This was true to such an extent that it was women who did most of the ballistics computing during WWII [1]. Many others invented new processes, like Grace Hopper, who designed the first compiler for a programming language. Sometime after the widespread media attention around the first personal computers - and who they were marketed for - this trend reversed, so that by the 1990s computing became seen as a "male" interest, and thus came to be dominated by men. Notably, this media interest was a Western phenomenon, which is why you'll encounter a lot of female Russian or Indian programmers working for American companies that are trying to boost their quotas of "diversity."
Another example of a reversal of trends of "real" degrees is aerospace engineering, a degree which used to be very lucrative (with the end goal working for any of the companies affiliated with the cold-war era space race). But when the United States decided to shut down their space program, a lot of these engineers lost jobs fast, and newly minted graduates could find no work.
For an excellent example of "a true American by-the-bootstraps dream," let's look at George W. Bush's Wikipedia:
George W. Bush attended two years at The Kinkaid School, a prep school in Piney Point Village, Texas in the Houston area.
Attended high school at Phillips Academy, a boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts, where he played baseball and was the head cheerleader during his senior year.
He attended Yale University from 1964 to 1968, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history.
His application to the University of Texas School of Law was rejected.
If that's all he did, he really wouldn't have been notable enough for Wikipedia. But then he did that thing at the end, so now all the details of his life are just supporting characters to the main story.
Honestly I saw a headline earlier today using Mackenzie Scott, and I had no idea who that was until I saw this post on hackernews. My only reaction was - "Who's Mackenzie Scott? Well, thats good whoever she is". Now I know who she is
I have a feeling Bezos would not have gotten that far without her. I know nothing about her, but I suspect she is had a lot of influence on his success. She seems to have a strong character.
The original article title has her name in it, spelled correctly. The current HN post title ironically misspells Bezos' name anyways. So double wham for this one.
I can't believe the majority of the comments in this thread is about her name and the title.
Can we get past this pedantry please? She has done amazing work and that's not being discussed.
I would also be fine if the situation was flipped, "Mackenzie's husband donates $1.7B funds for charity" if we knew Mackenzie as the face of one of the largest companies and a household name.
I don't see a problem with it -except the original title has her unmarried name, so I agree the title should bear that. That said, you reference a person by a well known marker, if they're not publicly well-recognized. The ex-CEO of Nasty Gal, Tim Cook's ex-husband, Kamala Harris's husband (etc). It's no big deal.
This article[1] talks a little more about Rob Reich's discussion of why large donations to charity can be paternalistic.
From memory, most donations "with strings attached" establish something new (like a new building), but explicitly disallow the donation to be used for mundane (but very necessary) maintenance (eg. heating, electricity, maintenance, janitorial, admin/professor salaries). I think the quote is simply reinforcing the idea that a university probably knows better where the additional dollar should be spent than a wealthy donor who hasn't been on campus in years (if ever).
This is true of almost all donations to all organizations, IMO. That's why I like Give Directly. The recipient is the best judge of what they need. There are things that specialist organizations with economies of scale can do, but by far no-strings-attached cash donations are better than most.
While it's always great when people give that kind of money to charity...also understand that she gained $24B in net worth since her divorce from Jeff (18 months). $1.7B is a drop in the bucket for her...so while it's great that she did that, don't consider it profound or anything. She has no problem selling that stock and cashing out...she has no vested interest in maintaining control like her ex-husband.
7% of either 1) my net worth or 2) the increase in my net worth over the last 18 months doesn’t feel like a “drop in the bucket” and I definitely didn’t donate either amount. So I’m happy to applaud her for doing so.
Well, she could downsize to a mere 1% of her net worth and then spend the next 25 years spending 50K per day and still have over 100mil leftover for her old age and the kids inheritance.
And that's assuming zero further income.
So there comes a stage where I am not about to pat any billionaire on the back for "a big donation". It might just be good PR and likely will be some kind of tax benefit too.
That said, I'd rather see more of it than less because I don't think any single person is honestly so valuable to society to be worth that much. They honestly shouldn't have that kind of money. The system is broken.
54 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] threadDoes anybody know if there's a name for this phenomenon? That is, selecting partners that look like you? And how common it is?
"Males prefer female faces that resemble their own when provided images of three women, with one image modified to resemble their own. However, the same result does not apply to females selecting male faces."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assortative_mating
You could start by spelling it correctly.
I’m clarifying that the NYT article author didn’t write the current title. Why are you taking that as a value judgment?
I quoted the original snippet to show the NYT author's original headline. Why are you still assuming motives instead of just talking to people?
Mackenzie Scott (Bezos' ex-wife) gives $1.7B to..
This ensures that in the future she might have enough name recognition to no longer be relegated to "Bezos' ex-wife," and one day we might make the () fall away.
To demonstrate this is true, we can turn to a lower celebrity, Mark Anthony. He tended to be referenced in publications like this:
Mark Anthony, Jennifer Lopez's husband...
However, at this point, he has enough name recognition that a lot of publications will no longer mention it in the title.
I've never been interested in this woman, nor did I know anything about her previously. But just from her very brief Wikipedia, here are the highlights:
* Born into super wealthy family
* Sent to Pre-Ivy league boarding school in Connecticut
* Studies at elitist Ivy League university (Princeton) and graduates with pseudo-degree of 'English'.
* Meets Jeff Bezos while working the typical elitist hedge fund starter job in Manhattan. They get married!
... lots of years pass
* divorces Jeff Bezos, becomes one of world's richest persons
* donates a fraction of the money she won in divorce.
Wow, a true American by-the-bootstraps dream. Certainly, it is sexist to refer to her as "Jeff Bezos' wife" based on her many many individual accomplishments.
For instance, a degree in math (the M in STEM) used to be considered a dead-end for a job, except to teach primary school, and was very female-dominated. This was true to such an extent that it was women who did most of the ballistics computing during WWII [1]. Many others invented new processes, like Grace Hopper, who designed the first compiler for a programming language. Sometime after the widespread media attention around the first personal computers - and who they were marketed for - this trend reversed, so that by the 1990s computing became seen as a "male" interest, and thus came to be dominated by men. Notably, this media interest was a Western phenomenon, which is why you'll encounter a lot of female Russian or Indian programmers working for American companies that are trying to boost their quotas of "diversity."
Another example of a reversal of trends of "real" degrees is aerospace engineering, a degree which used to be very lucrative (with the end goal working for any of the companies affiliated with the cold-war era space race). But when the United States decided to shut down their space program, a lot of these engineers lost jobs fast, and newly minted graduates could find no work.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing#1940s
George W. Bush attended two years at The Kinkaid School, a prep school in Piney Point Village, Texas in the Houston area.
Attended high school at Phillips Academy, a boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts, where he played baseball and was the head cheerleader during his senior year.
He attended Yale University from 1964 to 1968, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history.
His application to the University of Texas School of Law was rejected.
Drop the “and”, use a comma. “, others.”
Can we get past this pedantry please? She has done amazing work and that's not being discussed.
I would also be fine if the situation was flipped, "Mackenzie's husband donates $1.7B funds for charity" if we knew Mackenzie as the face of one of the largest companies and a household name.
She co-founded Amazon. She did good works, she deserves the credit
Every college is closed due to fear of a chroma virus that turns you a different color.
From memory, most donations "with strings attached" establish something new (like a new building), but explicitly disallow the donation to be used for mundane (but very necessary) maintenance (eg. heating, electricity, maintenance, janitorial, admin/professor salaries). I think the quote is simply reinforcing the idea that a university probably knows better where the additional dollar should be spent than a wealthy donor who hasn't been on campus in years (if ever).
[1] https://news.stanford.edu/2018/12/03/the-problems-with-phila...
And that's assuming zero further income.
So there comes a stage where I am not about to pat any billionaire on the back for "a big donation". It might just be good PR and likely will be some kind of tax benefit too.
That said, I'd rather see more of it than less because I don't think any single person is honestly so valuable to society to be worth that much. They honestly shouldn't have that kind of money. The system is broken.