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[1] You know what that really weird.Id recently had the shock of my life when I came across an article just the other day.It concerned a girl I once knew of from my quaint city of Hereford. We'll why it piqued my interest more was the fact that this girl had become the first female hospitalisation case of the hill Billy, home made heroin called Krokodil.Now it struck me first because it was Emma Davies, who everyone kind of knew if you ran in them kind of circles, well that it was her that had become infamous for this, putting Hereford on the map, shit I mean I know things were bad but Krokodil, really Emma?Now seeing as the article was from the Daily Mail I didn't put too much weight in the Krokodil thing. Some crazy, fucked up home made heroin involving petrol, match heads and some other crap ingredients made by skint Russians?Id seen the YouTube videos, I'd also seen the videos that showed you what happens if you missed the vein and how it rotted you, the vids on YouTube of this are something else, I wouldn't say to be seen.Well and this was my second shock as I'd argued after seeing the piece to a mate of mine who also knows of Emma that it's a myth, Krokodil being in this country, and for sale, the idea seemed crazy and I said as much.Emma's stated rotten arm had come from the use of this incredibly attractive drug shouted the Daily Mail, "oh no it isn't" shouted I. Typical Mail was my thinking. Emma's arm has just come about through her fucked up lifestyle which I was fully aware off. I knew what she was like I'm afraid.That craps not for sale here, never.The ideas ludicrous. It was just some Daily Mail Anti Drug propaganda, who'd make it?, who'd supply sell that shite and hod take it.I just couldn't see it.That was until my friend informed that yes, he'd been offered it in the sleepy town of Momouth on the English side of the Welsh border.Well to say I was gobsmacked was/is to understate the emotion felt at this news.Krokodil openly for sale. He was approached on a stopover for him, some random dude thought my pal had the look of a contender (he does) and had approached him and offered it to him, on the streets at a bus stop. If it's available in Monmouth, it's available anywhere, it's so sleepy there.I had to stand corrected.The tragic figure of Emma Davies.Bit out of order for the Mail to throw her under the bus like they have for headlines but as it turns out it's true it seems, we do have cases of Krokodil use it tho I can ever see it catching on, then what do I know?I guess if there's buyers for prepared to take it there will be suppliers, I guess Emma's proof.Footnotes[1] Shoplifter, 41, becomes UK's first person to fall ill from KROKODIL

Groupon's S-1 lays out a lot of their success to date, but it provides scant clues about what will happen in the future. Here are the chief concerns I have:There are a number of questions which Groupon should have insight into already that aren't addressed. A key metric for me would be email open rates. Groupon damn well better have that metric in house. They might have left it out for competitive reasons, but it might also be because the numbers are declining.Another key metric would be the split between national and local deals. In my observation of Groupon, it's beginning to skew more national. That means lower margins as national merchants have the leverage to negotiate a better deal. Plus, there is a limit to the number of photo cards, mugs and custom T-shirts that someone can buy.High customer acquisition costs. The S-1 points out that acq costs are a concern, but doesn't provide it. Doing the math based on other numbers provided, I estimate the cost of a list subscriber at $6.40 and the cost of an actual purchaser at $26.50. That's a big number for a business with few barriers to entry. For Netflix, this number is $18.03 -- but Netflix has a subscription business with recurring revenue. Groupon's numbers should be lower than Netflix's. I estimate that in order for Groupon to be profitable on a customer, they need to sell three average deals.Decline in margin from Mar 10 to Mar 11. Cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue was 54.8% and 58.1% for the three months ended March 31, 2010 and 2011, respectively. I would expect this to go up as Google beefs up competition, the economy recovers and a larger percentage of deals are national retailers who have more negotiating power.Reliance on Google, Facebook and other competitors for growth. Groupon's growth is being driven by advertising on competing sites. If these providers choose to stop competitive advertising, it'll constrain Groupon's growth.Competitive pressure. Google just launched its Offers product in Portland. (This post was written at the first Google Offers venue.) Based on the initial set of merchants and offers, I believe that Google is aggressively subsidizing these offers. To the extent that Google continues to do this, it will put a lot of margin pressure on Groupon and others.Question of value to merchants. While Groupon clearly provides outstanding discounts to consumers, the value to the merchant has been hotly debated. In an example in the S-1, they cite a business sold Groupons and "more than half of the Groupons were sold to new customers." That means close to half were sold to existing customers -- a roughly ~75% revenue hit on existing customers is seriously expensive. In talking to merchants, they really resent seeing existing customers coming in with Groupons. If even 10% of customers using Groupon are existing customers of the merchant, that is a serious blow to the economics. (Ancedotally, I've seen some numbers as high as 90%.)Unusual accounting. The more I look at the accounting, the more I'm uncomfortable with it. The CSOI seems like they were sitting around a table and said "how can we make s**t smell like roses?" Groupon is also booking the entire value of the Groupon as revenue. Amazon Marketplace, PayPal and eBay book only the fees that they receive, not the gross transaction. By booking revenue in this way, it would be easy to manipulate topline. (Get your $100 AMEX gift cards for only $50!)For more on Groupon and the offers space, see:Why Daily Deals Are Becoming A Raw Deal http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/03/why-daily-deals-raw-deal/5 cases when it makes sense to run a Groupon http://redesignmobile.com/2011/04/24/5-cases-when-it-makes-sense-to-run-a-groupon/Initial thoughts on Google OffersHere are my notes:** I AM CONTINUALLY UPDATING THIS ANSWER AS I READ THROUGH THE S-1. BE SURE TO CHECK BACK AT THE END OF THE NIGHT FOR A SUMMARY AND CLEAN UP. **Live Quoraing my read and analysis of the Groupon S-1 http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1490281/000104746911005613/a2203913zs-1.htm Feel free to pose questions in the comments and I'll see if I can answer them.Incidentally, I'm doing it from the coffee shop that launched the first Google Offer. See Initial thoughts on Google Offers.They are currently losing money.Cash flow is being invested in growth.1 in 5 of mailing list subscribers have made a purchase. Although high by direct mail standards, this is lower than I expected.There are fewer Groupons sold (total) than mailing list subscribers. This indicates limited repeat usage. Repeat usage of course affects LTV, which affects what you can afford for SAC.Marketing is 32% of revenue. (Google is still making a lot of money off Groupon!)SG&A is another 28% of revenue.Average deal sold 494 units.They mention subscriber acquisition cost as an important metric (it is), but don't provide a number. Extrapolating from other data, it seems that SAC is $5.50 and the cost per customer who purchased at least one Groupon is $26.50. This makes LivingSocial's $10 per customer acquisition cost in the form of contribution to Amazon GC look like a steal. (Assuming similar customer quality.)First quarter 2011 revenue was $645million vs. $713million for all of 2010. Phenomenal revenue growth. (Though I'd like to see a same store sales type metric to see how much of this growth was due to expanding into new markets.)Cost of revenue is 58%, indicating that some merchants aren't doing the 50/50 split.Subscribers grew 64% from Dec through March, purchasers grew 71%.Featured almost as many merchants in 1Q2011 than all of 2010.Groupon's adjusted CSOI is greater for markets outside North American than North America. (I'll have to study this metric more to see if I buy it; it's nonstandard.) In Q1, 54% of revenue was outside US/Canada.Mean Groupon value in 1Q11 was $23. Combined with CAC above and 40% take, it would take three Groupon purchases to break even.Called out dependence on Google, Facebook, etc. for subscriber growth. "we are dependent on some of our existing or potential competitors, including Facebook, Google and Microsoft, for banner advertisements and other marketing initiatives to acquire new subscribers. Our ability to utilize their platforms to acquire new subscribers may be adversely affected if they choose to compete more directly with us.""In North America, we typically pay our merchants in installments within sixty days after the Groupon is sold. In most of our International markets, merchants are not paid until the customer redeems the Groupon." Interesting -- risk management strategy? -- eliminates my fifth reason here: http://redesignmobile.com/2011/04/24/5-cases-when-it-makes-sense-to-run-a-groupon/Part of Groupon's appeal is simplicity of the offer -- typically good on anything. But this also means that some of the offers don't comply with things like liquor laws, MAP. New California laws might treat Groupon as a stored value provider. Groupon could also fall under the CARD act, meaning they are liable for 5 years.Among their risks is a crappy economy. But my analysis is that the crappy economy was a key part of the Groupon success story. In a robust economy, businesses would have less incentive to deeply discount product. I consider a recovery bad news for the Groupon model. "during challenging economic times, our merchants may face issues gaining timely access to sufficient credit, which could result in their unwillingness to continue with our service or impair their ability to make timely payments to us." Selling Groupons is a form of very expensive credit because you get money up front in exchange for deep discounting over time.Cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue was 54.8% and 58.1% for the three months ended March 31, 2010 and 2011, respectively. I would expect this to go up as Google beefs up competition, the economy recovers and a larger percentage of deals are national retailers who have more negotiating power.In one of the examples, the % of Groupons sold to new customers was "more than half," with the implication being that close to half were sold to existing customers. When potential merchants do ROI analysis, they should include this ~75% lost revenue as a cost of running the Groupon.For the Q210 group that they tracked, ARPU through 1Q11 was $39.30 vs. a SAC of $4.85. (I'll buy subs like that all day!) There is no mention of subscriber attrition rates for this cohort.Mean Groupons sold per customer in Chicago 1.7, Boston 1.4, Berlin 3.3, London 2.8. Interesting that international markets did that much better.Mean Groupons sold per customer in Chicago beginning in June 2009, by quarter. 2.5, 2.0, 2.0, 2.1, 1.9, 1.9, 1.7, 1.7. To me, this is indicative of a) novelty wearing off and b) competitive pressure.As of March 31, 2011, we employed 925 editorial staff. That's a lot of writers! As a former journalist, I wonder how much they get paid compared with newspaper reporters.As a potential investor, I'd want to know:Similar market growth.Email open rate trends. I should note that today I noticed that the 1-click unsubscribe link on Groupon emails I receive changed to a subscription management link, which requires more work.Unsubscription rates.Refund rates and reserves.Split of local vs. national deals and trend over time. (As an observer of Groupon, it seems that many of the deals now are national.)No mention of:Application of sales taxes to Groupon deals. Many merchants are ignoring collection of sales tax on Groupons. Although this is likely the merchant's responsibility and not Groupon's it does affect the economics.Mercata group buying patents.

In the United States, there is something of an intense debate over how the word gyro is supposed to be pronounced. Many people pronounce it /ˈdʒaɪɹoʊ/ (or, to use fauxnetics, “JAI-roh’). Many other people, however, insist that it is supposed to be pronounced /ˈjiː.ɹoʊ/ (that is, “YEE-roh” in fauxnetics). This debate even made it into the recent Disney Pixar animated film Soul, which includes a flashback scene in which a mischievous unborn soul named “Twenty-Two” is portrayed as arguing with the spirit of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes (lived c. 287 – c. 212 BCE) over the correct pronunciation of the word.If I were an ordinary pedant, I would simply tell you that the pronunciation /ˈjiː.ɹoʊ/ is correct and that the people who say /ˈdʒaɪɹoʊ/ are wrong. I, however, am no ordinary pedant. On the contrary, I am the most obnoxious and loathsome kind of pedant: a pedant who has spent years studying the Greek language at the university level and who knows far too much about it for my own good.Therefore, I feel the need to point out that neither of the pronunciations given above is reflective of the actual pronunciation of the word in Modern Greek, since the nominative singular form of the word in Greek is actually γύρος (gýros), with an /s/ sound on the end, and the nominative plural form is actually γύροι (gýroi). Moreover, I feel the need to explain exactly why the way the word is spelled in English is so different from how it is pronounced in Greek and to explain precisely how the debate over the pronunciation of the word arose.A little backgroundIn order to understand the roots of the present controversy over how the word gyro should be pronounced, we need to understand why Greek words are often transliterated in ways that don’t reflect how they are actually pronounced.In order to understand this, we need to go all the way back to Classical Attic Greek, the dialect of the Greek language that was spoken in the region of Attike, which includes the city of Athens, in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, since, as strange as it may sound, the modern system of transliterating Greek words into English is based primarily on equivalences between Greek letters as they were pronounced in the Classical Attic dialect and Roman letters as they were pronounced in Classical Latin over two thousand years ago.In Classical Attic Greek, γυρός was not the name of a particular kind of sandwich, but rather simply an adjective meaning “round.” Here’s the breakdown of how the word would have been pronounced in Athens in the fifth century BCE:In Classical Attic Greek, the letter ⟨γ⟩ was usually pronounced as the voiced velar plosive /g/ like the letter ⟨g⟩ in the English word got.The letter ⟨υ⟩ was usually pronounced as the close front rounded vowel sound /y/ like the letter ⟨ü⟩ in the German word über.The letter ⟨ρ⟩ was pronounced as the voiced alveolar trill /r/ like the letter ⟨r⟩ in Modern Spanish or Italian.The letter ⟨o⟩ was pronounced as a short close-mid back rounded vowel /o/ similar to the sound made by the letter ⟨o⟩ in the English word tote.The letter ⟨σ⟩, which is conventionally written ⟨ς⟩ when it occurs at the end of a word, was pronounced as the voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ like the letter ⟨s⟩ in the English word this.Thus, in Classical Attic Greek, the word γυρός was pronounced /ɡyː.rós/.During the Hellenistic Period (lasted c. 323 – c. 30 BCE), a new dialect of the Greek language known as “Koine” developed. Koine Greek was based primarily on Classical Attic Greek, but it was also influenced to some extent by other ancient Greek dialects. It became widely spoken throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean.In Koine, the adjective γυρός was nominalized to become the second-declension masculine noun γῦρος, which means “circle,” “ring,” or “rotation.” Through this nominalization, the accent shifted from an acute accent on the ultima (i.e., the last syllable) to a circumflex accent on the penult (i.e., the second to last syllable), resulting in the noun form being pronounced /ɡŷː.ros/.ABOVE: Diagram from Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Circle-withsegments.svg) of a circle. The word γῦρος or γύρος in Greek literally means “circle” or “rotation.”Sound shifts in Koine and Medieval GreekAt some point between the second century BCE and the third century CE, the consonant sounds represented by the letter ⟨γ⟩ shifted. From roughly this period onwards, ⟨γ⟩ became pronounced as a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ before the vowels ⟨α⟩, ⟨ο⟩, and ⟨ω⟩. Meanwhile, it became pronounced as a voiced palatal fricative /ʝ/ before the front vowels ⟨ε⟩, ⟨η⟩, ⟨ι⟩, and ⟨υ⟩. This is a sound very similar to, but slightly different from, the voiced palatal approximant, which is generally represented in English by the consonantal ⟨y⟩.Other changes in the pronunciation of the Greek language took place during the Middle Ages. By the Middle Byzantine Period, it seems that uneducated people in the countryside of Greece had begun to pronounce the letter ⟨υ⟩ as the close front unrounded vowel /i/, which is the sound made by the letter ⟨i⟩ in the English word machine. This shift occurred as part of a well-attested process known as “iotacism,” which resulted in the letters ⟨ι⟩, ⟨η⟩, and ⟨υ⟩, which had originally represented three different sounds in Classical Attic Greek, coming to all eventually represent the same sound in Standard Modern Greek.This shift in the popular rural pronunciation seems to have greatly perturbed the educated elites at the time. In around the eleventh century CE, the Greek writer Michael the Grammarian wrote a satirical poem in which a speaker complains about the way uneducated people in the countryside were pronouncing the letter upsilon. He declares:“Ἐμοὶ πατρίς, βέλτιστε, τραχὺ χωρίον,ὅπου περ ἀνδρῶν καὶ βοῶν ἶσαι φρένες,οἳ το κρύον λέγουσιν ἀφρόνως κρίον,καὶ τὸ ξύλον λέγουσιν ἀγροίκως ξίλον.”This means (in my own translation):“My fatherland, oh dearest one, is a coarse village,where the minds of men and cows are just the same.They foolishly say ‘κρίον’ instead of ‘κρύον’and they boorishly say ‘ξίλον’ instead of ‘ξύλον.’”Over time, the pronunciation that Michael derided as coarse and uncivilized seems to have won out; in Standard Modern Greek, the letters ⟨υ⟩ and ⟨ι⟩ are both pronounced /i/. Thus, in Standard Modern Greek, the word γύρος is pronounced /ˈʝiros/.ABOVE: Scene of everyday agricultural workers from an eleventh-century Greek manuscript of the gospels. It’s very likely that such laborers would have pronounced ⟨υ⟩ as /i/, while the scribe who copied the manuscript probably pronounced it /y/.Origin of the gyros sandwichNow that I’ve explained the origin of the Greek word γύρος and the history of its pronunciation, I should probably explain where the sandwich of this name originates from and how the name came to be applied to the sandwich.Today in modern Greece, a cook who is preparing a gyros begins by roasting the meat vertically on a skewer and slicing pieces of meat away when they are done cooking. In Greece and Kypros, gyroi are normally made using pork, but a cook may sometimes choose to use chicken, beef, or lamb meat instead. Once the meat has been removed from the skewer, the cook usually serves it wrapped in pita bread as a sandwich. Often, it is served with tzatziki sauce, onions, and tomatoes.The modern gyros didn’t arise all at once; many innovations had to be made before the gyros as we know it today could be invented. The first of these innovations was the invention of the idea of cooking meat on spits. This idea is extremely ancient; we know that people in the Aegean Islands were already roasting meat on horizontal spits at least over 3,600 years ago, and they were probably doing it long before that as well. Archaeologists excavating the Bronze Age site of Akrotiri on the Greek island of Thera unearthed stone firedogs dating to the seventeenth century BCE or earlier with notches clearly designed to hold skewers for roasting meats.The Iliad, an ancient Greek epic poem that was most likely composed in around the early seventh century BCE, describes Chryses, the Trojan priest of the god Apollon, roasting meat on horizontal wooden skewers in book one, lines 458–466. The Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes (lived c. 446 – c. 386 BCE) references similar cooking practices in his plays Acharnians (line 1007), The Clouds (line 178), The Wasps (line 354), and The Birds (lines 388 and 672). Today, meats grilled on horizontal spits are known in Greece as souvlakia; they are distinct from, but similar, to gyroi.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a pair of stone firedogs used for roasting meat on skewers, discovered at the site of Akrotiri on the Greek island of Thera, dating to the seventeenth century BCE or earlierThe various other ingredients that are used in gyroi today also had to be introduced to Greece. Some of these ingredients were introduced to the Greek diet relatively early. Notably, pita bread—or at least a very similar kind of flatbread—is known to have existed in ancient Greece. The Greek Egyptian writer Athenaios of Naukratis, who wrote sometime in around the late second or early third century CE, quotes a description of the cooking process for a kind of flatbread known as apanthrakis in his book Wise Men at Dinner 3.110b. The description reads as follows, as translated by S. Douglas Olson:“The apanthrakis is more delicate than wafer bread. This type too is probably produced on top of coals, like what Attic authors refer to as an enkryphia. The inhabitants of Alexandria offer it to Kronos and put it out in his temple for anyone who wants some to eat.”Similarly, onions, which are often served on gyroi today, were fairly common in ancient Greek cuisine and they are often mentioned as an ingredient in surviving ancient Greek recipes.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of loaves of pita bread in the city of Nablus in the West Bank. Similar flatbreads are known to have already existed in ancient times.Cucumbers and garlic—which are among the main ingredients used in the making of tzatziki sauce—were certainly well known to the ancient Greeks, since they are mentioned in various ancient Greek and Roman texts. The other main ingredient in tzatziki is yoghurt, which the ancient Greeks may have eaten also; ancient sources describe a kind of dairy product known as ὀξύγαλα (oxýgala), which seems to have been a kind of thick yoghurt. The Greek medical writer Galenos of Pergamon (lived c. 129 – c. 210 CE) mentions that it was apparently often sweetened with honey.In any case, we have no evidence to suggest that the ancient Greeks ever combined yoghurt and cucumbers to make tzatziki. Instead, the earliest reference to tzatziki seems to come from the French writer Pierre Belon (lived 1517 – 1564), who mentions in his Observations 1.66 that Greek and Turkish people living in the Ottoman Empire during his time would sometimes grind cloves of garlic and mix them with oxygala to make a dish that sounds like tzatziki, only without the cucumbers. It is unclear exactly when cucumbers were finally added to the mix.Meanwhile, the practice of cooking meat vertically in the style of a döner kebap seems to have originated in western Asia Minor. The city of Bursa in northwest Turkey is reported to be the exact city in which the döner kebap was invented. We don’t know exactly when the process of vertically roasting meat originated, but it certainly originated before the middle of the nineteenth century. The earliest surviving photograph of anyone cooking meat in the döner kebap style was taken in the Ottoman Empire in 1855.ABOVE: Photograph taken in the Ottoman Empire in 1855 showing a cook roasting meat vertically in a döner kebap styleThe very last ingredient used in the making of gyroi to be introduced to the Greek-speaking world were tomatoes, which originate from the Americas and were first introduced to Greece in around 1815. At first, tomatoes weren’t very well known or very popular; they only started to become prominent in Greek cooking towards the very end of the nineteenth century.In 1923, Greece and Turkey conducted a “population exchange” along religious lines, in which Greece expelled most of its Muslim citizens for them to be resettled in Turkey and Turkey expelled most of its Greek Orthodox citizenships for them to be resettled in Greece. Many of the Greek Orthodox people expelled from Turkey were resettled in the region of Attike, which includes the city of Athens, and the region of Makedonia in northern Greece, which includes the city of Thessaloniki.The Greek Orthodox people who came to Greece as part of the “population exchange” brought with them many cultural traditions and, crucially, culinary traditions. They played an important role in popularizing döner kebap-style vertically-roasted meats in Greece. Over the course of the next few decades, the gyros as we know it today developed: a distinctly Greek sandwich made with vertically-roasted pork wrapped in pita bread, often served with tzatziki sauce, onions, and tomatoes.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a man cooking gyros meat in a Greek fast food restaurantHow the name γύρος became more common than the name ντονέρAs I mentioned earlier, the word γύρος literally means “circle” or “rotation.” The name derives from the fact that the meats used in the sandwich are literally rotated in a circular motion on a vertical spit. γύρος, however, is not the only name for this kind of meat that is used in the Greek language; the dish has historically also been known as a ντονέρ (donér), which comes from the Turkish word döner. This name, however, fell out of favor in the Greek-speaking world over the course of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, when relations between Greece and Turkey, which had never been good to begin with, rapidly deteriorated.One major event in this process began in early September 1955, when the Turkish press began promoting a false report that Greek terrorists had bombed the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki. In reality, a bomb had been planted by a Turkish usher and university student named Oktay Engin, who had been acting under the orders of the Turkish consul M. Ali Balin himself. Both Engin and Balin were later arrested and confessed to their crimes.On 6 September, a massive pogrom erupted in the city of İstanbul in which a violent mob of Turkish nationalists—many of whom had come to İstanbul from the countryside and didn’t actually live in the city—destroyed and looted over 5,300 properties owned by Greek residents, including homes, businesses, and Greek Orthodox churches. The mob brutally assaulted Greek residents themselves, raped Greek women, and forcibly circumcised Greek Othodox priests in the streets.In addition to targeting ethnic Greeks, the mob also targeted ethnic Armenian and Jewish people. In total, the mob is thought to have killed at least thirty people, but the exact number is uncertain, since an accurate death toll was never taken. An article written by a journalist named Noel Barber published in The Daily Mail on 14 September 1955 describes the violence:“The church of Yedikule was utterly smashed, and one priest was dragged from bed, the hair torn from his head and the beard literally torn from his chin. Another old Greek priest [Father Mantas] in a house belonging to the church and who was too ill to be moved was left in bed, and the house was set on fire and he was burned alive. At the church of Yeniköy, a lovely spot on the edge of the Bosporus, a priest of 75 was taken out into the street, stripped of every stitch of clothing, tied behind a car and dragged through the streets. They tried to tear the hair of another priest, but failing that, they scalped him, as they did many others.”Many Turkish residents of İstanbul tried to protect their Greek, Armenian, and Jewish neighbors from the nationalist mob. Nonetheless, the pogrom caused enormous destruction—to such an extent that it has been described as “Turkey’s Kristallnacht.” The pogrom greatly accelerated the mass exodus of ethnic Greek people from İstanbul. In 1955, the number of Greek people in İstanbul was 65,108. By 1960, the number had fallen to 49,081. Today, the total Greek population in İstanbul is only around 2,000 people.ABOVE: Photograph of the Turkish nationalist mob looting and destroying the property of Greek residents during the 1955 pogrom in İstanbulABOVE: Photograph of a street in İstanbul filled with wreckage after the infamous anti-Hellenic pogrom in 1955Another series of events that greatly damaged Greek-Turkish relations occurred in 1974. On 15 July 1974, the Regime of the Colonels, an unpopular far-right military junta that had seized power in Greece with the support of the United States federal government, conducted a coup d'état in Kypros in which they ousted the legitimate, democratically-elected Kypriot president Archbishop Makarios III. The junta replaced Makarios III with an avowed Greek nationalist named Nikos Sampson, who supported Enosis (i.e., the idea that Kypros should be incorporated as part of the Greek nation-state).Turkey immediately responded by invading Kypros on 20 July. Three days later, on 23 July, the Regime of the Colonels collapsed and, on 24 July, Konstantinos Karamanlis, a Greek center-right political leader who had been exiled by the junta, returned and was sworn in as interim prime minister, marking the beginning of metapolitefsi and Greece’s transition from a military dictatorship to a stable democracy.The regime change in Greece led to a cease-fire, but, on 14 August, Turkey launched a second, much larger invasion of Kypros in which the Turkish military managed to seize control of the northeastern part of the island, amounting to a little more than a third of the island’s total land area. Approximately 80% of inhabitants of northern Kypros before the Turkish invasion were ethnic Greeks, but, in a blatant act of ethnic cleansing, the occupying Turkish forces violently expelled somewhere between 140,000 and 160,000 Greek Kypriots from the part of the island that they controlled.The Turkish government began promoting an aggressive policy of settler-colonialism, pushing for ethnic Turks from mainland Turkey to settle in northern Kypros on lands that had been illegally stolen from native Greek Kypriots. In 1983, the Turkish-occupied northern part of Kypros declared itself the “Turkish Republic of Northern Kypros,” which remains a de facto state recognized only by the Republic of Turkey. All other countries and international organizations consider Northern Kypros illegally occupied Kypriot territory.Naturally, in the midst of this international crisis, Greek people came to increasingly reject the Turkish name ντονέρ for the popular sandwich in favor of the etymologically Greek name γύρος.ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the partition of Kypros. The southern part of the island is controlled by the legitimate government of the Republic of Kypros, while the northern part is illegally occupied by the Turkish military and operates as an unrecognized de jure state.From Greek street stalls to mass productionAround the same time that the Kypriot crisis was unfolding, companies in the United States began to mass-produce ingredients for making gyros. While gyroi in Greece and Kypros are generally made from pieces of roasted pork, mass-produced gyros in the United States are usually made from cones of highly processed meat, manufactured from assorted ground-up beef and lamb trimmings, mixed with bread crumbs, water, oregano, and other seasonings.According to an investigative article published in The New York Times on 14 July 2009, the first person in the United States to establish a plant for the mass-production of gyros cones was a Jewish former Marine and Cadillac salesman with the rather ironic name John Garlic, who reportedly set up an assembly line producing gyros cones in a rented space in a sausage plant in Chicago sometime before 1973. Supposedly, his wife saw a Greek restaurant owner demonstrate how to cook gyroi on television and suggested to her husband that he should find a way to mass-produce them.Currently, the largest company in the United States producing gyros meats is Kronos Foods Incorporated, which was founded in Chicago in 1975 by a Greek man named Chris Tomaras. I honestly have no idea what he was thinking when he named his company, considering the fact that, in Greek mythology, the Titan Kronos is probably most famous for devouring his own children. Thus, “Kronos” seems like pretty much the worst name a person could possibly pick for a company that produces ambiguous cones of highly processed mystery meats. Somehow, though, despite the horrible name, the company is extremely successful.ABOVE: Photograph from a 2009 article for The New York Times of Chris Tomaras, the founder of Kronos Foods Incorporated, which is the largest manufacturer of gyros meats in the United States, posing with a cart of uncooked gyros cones in a Kronos factoryThe origins of the modern pronunciation controversyIn any case, as gyros meats began to be mass-produced and sold all over the United States, many Americans who didn’t know much about the Greek language began to look at the name gyros and assume that it was plural because it has the letter ⟨s⟩ on the end and, in English, ⟨s⟩ is often appended to the ends of words as a plural marker. Thus, these ignorant Americans invented the word gyro as a backformation, incorrectly assuming that it was the singular form of the word.The controversy over how the word gyro should be pronounced arises from the discrepancy between how Greek words are normally transliterated into English and how they are actually pronounced in Greek. As I have mentioned, in Modern Greek, when the letter ⟨γ⟩ occurs before a front vowel, it becomes the voiced palatal fricative /ʝ/, but, in English, when the letter ⟨g⟩ occurs before a front vowel, it often becomes the voiced postalveolar affricate /dʒ/, which is more typically represented in English by the letter ⟨j⟩.Meanwhile, in Modern Greek, the letter ⟨υ⟩ on its own always makes the vowel sound /i/ like the letter ⟨i⟩ in the English word machine, but, in English, the letter ⟨y⟩ sometimes represents the /aɪ/ diphthong instead, including in English words that are themselves derived from the Greek word γῦρος, such as gyre, gyrate, and gyroscope. This creates a situation in which the instinctive English pronunciation based on the spelling of the word does not line up with how the word is pronounced in Greek.ConclusionNow that we’ve covered all the necessary background information, I suppose that I should return to the question that I originally started with: “How should the name of the Greek sandwich made with vertically-roasted meat be pronounced?” I personally always pronounce it /ˈʝiros/, but that’s just because I am, as I have already mentioned, a complete Greek language nerd; I can’t very well insist that this is the only correct pronunciation when it is a pronunciation that very few people in the English-speaking world ever use.If you use the pronunciation /ˈdʒaɪɹoʊ/ around me, I’ll probably wince, but I can’t say that it’s objectively “wrong,” since it’s really just an Americanized pronunciation. The word gyro itself is already Americanized due its lack of an ⟨s⟩ and there are plenty of other Greek words that have been given fully Americanized pronunciations that sound very little like their pronunciations in Greek.In short, I suppose the answer is that you can pronounce the name however you feel like pronouncing it.If you’ve enjoyed this article, you may also enjoyed my article I wrote in September 2020 about why the city of Constantinople is now known as İstanbul.(NOTE: I have also published a version of this article on my website titled “What Is the Correct Pronunciation of ‘Gyro’?” Here is a link to the version of the article on my website.)