I’m sorry I didn’t upload this before, if there are some amongst you who want to discuss the, er, situation. I have been obsessing about this election for months now and I think that now we’re here I find I’m too anxious to watch the returns coming in as a Trump victory would be the biggest disaster for this country since, I dunno, the civil war? I took a peek at Twitter about twenty minutes ago (I refuse to use its other name) and the people I follow are all sounding very gloomy and now I’m more tense and scared than I have ever been about this election. The Russian bomb threats aren’t helping the situation. I don’t know if I’ll even check the news again tonight (who am I kidding, I will) but if you guys feel like chatting here’s a place to do it.
How very interesting! Who else do we know who is subjected to similar restrictions? Vladimir Putin? Kim Jong-Un? The twits who have been running the show in Iran lately? Bashar Assad?
Interesting company you keep, Mr. Fuentes. 🙂
I just reread my last message, and it could be better edited. And I probably should have inserted a few existing emojis where appropriate. And maybe some things explained a bit better. Including the part about dancing costumes. So…
Take, for example, a hypothetical “male belly dancer” emoji. That exists as a real thing – mainly in Turkey – but it’s not a common thing, even in Turkey. The traditional outfits are different from the female ones. There is no neuter/genderless version. Okay? So how do you handle that? Make M/F/N versions of both outfits? Invent a hybrid N version? Exclude the N version, so that they use separate encodings rather than modifying an N base? None of those are a particularly good idea.
On top of that, censorship is a concern. Emojis get censored all the time. Take my older Samsung phone: It censors three emojis, the flag of Hong Kong 🇭🇰, the Flag of Taiwan 🇹🇼, and the Mango 🥭. The first two are because China. The fruit because it’s associated with a certain obscene word in some Eastern Asian languages. So if “male belly dancer” would get used almost exclusively in Turkey, and most people in that country mostly don’t have access to it because the popular brands there censor it, because it’s also a popular brand in certain Middle Eastern Countries where the idea of it is offensive (at least to the government if not the public), then nobody’s really using it and it’s mostly just contributing to emoji bloat. And if they included a “male belly dancer wearing traditional female outfit” you know that would definitely get censored.
But if they only included “female belly dancer” then that’s not meeting their minimum (and in my opinion, sometimes inadequate) diversity/inclusion standards, and might cause them more encoding headaches further down the line – they’ve had issues with single-gender emoji before that had to make do with non-ideal solutions, because anything, once finalized, is forever, because they don’t want to break the internet. So the majority would rather just avoid the whole issue, if possible.
The Wiphala, for anyone who is curious, is a symbol of resilience and unity among Native South Americans in the Andes Mountains region. I suggest looking it up; it’s quite unusual in appearance. For a flag. Not for a quilt, though.
Other flags considered over the years, but didn’t get very far in the process: Australian Aboriginal Flag, Asexual Flag, Assyrian Flag, Basque Flag, Berber Flag, Bisexual Flag, Brittany Flag, Catalonia Flag, Esperanto Flag, Northern Cyprus Flag, Frisian Flag, Karen Flag, NATO Flag, Peace Flag, Quebecois Flag, Romani Flag, Sami Flag, Water Safety Flag. For the sake of completeness, “Karen” in this context refers to a Southeast Asian culture which is primarily located within Myanmar, who are presumably not Karens in the sense you’re thinking of. 😛
@Snowberry
I am a very amateur weaver, but when I looked up “Wiphala,” my immediate reaction was “That’s a weaving gamp.” I like weaving gamps – they are a cool and interesting design tool I have yet to try myself.
The Wiphala isn’t as complex as a weaving gamp can be, but flags shouldn’t be that complex anyway. For examples of some truly intricate gamps, see here:
https://handwovenmagazine.com/the-draft-what-is-a-gamp/
I don’t see why “Make M/F/N versions of both outfits” would be a problem, unless it’s dedicating six whole emojis to this thing being simply too many?
So, their solution to that is “let the censors win without a fight”? Fucking cowards.
The above isn’t an argument against including those emojis. It’s an argument for doing so while trustbusting the tiny oligopoly of handset makers and mandating full owner control and customizability of devices, so even if a manufacturer out of cowardice omits some emoji or even ships with a touch-keyboard program that refuses to let you use them even with copy-paste or what-have-you, you can just install a third-party keyboard program and have at it.
I love flag related things. But, speaking of crafting, a bit of trivia.
When the US government was deciding on a flag, it was originally envisaged that civil organisation would have the stripes horizontally and military organisations would have vertical stripes.
Apparently though that’s harder to sew so it was generally abandoned.
Except for one quasi military organisation.
And this just in: at least Jimmy Carter is spared witnessing the Revenge of the Drumpster Fire.
Former President Jimmy Carter died.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/12/29/us/former-president-jimmy-carter-death
Overall a good man.
I swear Jimmy Carter was the last true Christian in politics.
@Alan: For your deficient insular learning, I remind you that the USCG is a branch of the Armed Forces, just like the Navy and Army. They have their own Academy for commissioning officers, and personnel stationed overseas. Been in plenty of shooting wars. And of course they greatly pre-date the Air and Space Forces.
@ GSS Ex Noob
Ah, thank you for enlightening me. Our Coast Guard is primarily a rescue service. The crews are all unpaid volunteers. They have some pretty cool ships and helicopters though.
It’s 2025 in Gävle and the Goat is unscathed.
US Coast Guard facts – Ask a Coastie what the USCG is, and the traditional response is “The nucleus around which the Navy forms in times of war!”
Currently the USCG is part of Homeland Security, but it’s always existed in a sort of liminal space. Back when it was part of the Department of Transportation (in peacetime), they functioned as cops on the sea, which (bear in mind I’m not an expert in maritime law) meant they could board non-US ships without starting a war. I’ve heard that smaller Navy vessels keep a USCG flag handy whenever they want to be sneaky … it helps that Navy and Coastie uniforms look reasonably alike to the average layperson.
In times of war the USCG shifts under the umbrella of the Department of Defense.
Too often derided as “puddle pirates,” the USCG has to do more with less every year, because search & rescue plus law enforcement duties aren’t as sexy as the wartime stuff.
@FMO: Your video embed noworky.
Also: Where the hell is everybody?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-laken-riley-act_n_67897309e4b0d7aa50069b7e
Dems are dropping all pretense of not being racist
@Surplus to Requirements:
My video noworky because it was time-sensitive: after New Year’s Day, the Gävle Goat Watch Channel goes inactive until the following year.
Perhaps so, but why delete the recording?
@ FMO
I was curious as to what happens to our eponymous caprine friend.
Aww. That sounds like Summerisle council explaining what happened to that missing police officer.
There is a great history of all the past goats on the website though.
Feels like it might be time for another open thread now that inauguration day is upon us. Personally, I’m afraid to go to sleep tonight because I want to savor every moment that orange guy is not POTUS.
Also, I’m very upset and sick about Neil Gaiman.
https://fixupx.com/kenklippenstein/status/1881369224876282018
Lol of course genocide joe biden warmly welcomes donald trump back into the white house
What a perfect capstone to this trash of a president.
Someone was kind enough to tag me into this; so I thought I’d share…
https://x.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1881095608691294352
Senator Amidala was right: it does die with thunderous applause.
Hmm, I posted something a few days ago and it seems to be still stuck in moderation. Don’t feel like rewriting it, especially since I’m not sure what triggered it in the first place, so I’ll just go with the last line: Has anyone else ever received a phishing message which is written as an outright blackmail attempt? (I didn’t fall for it)
@ snowberry
Not had any personal experience, but I am aware of such attempts. Particularly people claiming to have embarrassing material on a person and threatening to release it.
This was a particularly egregious example.
@Alan Robertshaw: The case you mention sounds more like catfishing to me, unless catfishing is legally considered to be a form of phishing. What I got was a mix of “suspiciously vague” and “implausible given my circumstances”, so I don’t think it was aimed at anyone in particular. For example, even if they had spyware implanted on my devices, there’s no way they got videos of me self-pleasuring. I don’t keep my phone where there’s any chance of capturing that sort of activity, and my laptop has a piece of opaque tape over the camera which I put on shortly after getting it and I’ve never taken off. I don’t have any other devices with sound or video recording capability.
@ snowberry
Coincidentally, I just found this in my spam folder.
Is this what you got? It’s nothing to worry about of course. These are just bulk mailings. Not sure what part of the world they’re from. But the language/grammar suggests not native English speakers
Safe to ignore though obviously.
Very insidious form of extortion though. Some people do fall for these. And sometimes with tragic results.
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/sextortion-scams-how-to-protect-yourself
@Alan Robertshaw: Nope. Mine starts out like this:
It’s also written in fluent English, though it does contain some weird lines like this one:
Anyway I wasn’t particularly worried; even if this was a targeted blackmail attempt, which was highly dubious, everything about it was an empty bluff. In addition to the fact that they claimed to have videos which they couldn’t possibly have, the threat to send them to everyone on my contacts list would be pointless. My contacts list is written on a piece of paper. (As mentioned in the past, I’m a little paranoid about internet security…)