23 ms·
Like Tweeting, but You Can't Use the Letter E
- Programmatic 9y agoHow would you talk about an unfamiliar individual known by a noun you can't say?
- throwaway9475 9y agoIndividual who is not I and whom I do not know. :)
- Programmatic 9y agoThat's not hard, but what about a missing third individual that both must understand to carry on?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Magnap 9y agoThat/said individual who is not any of us.
- throwaway9475 9y ago"Missing third individual that both must grasp to carry on."
- Programmatic 9y agoBut you still don't instill that actual individual in minds, and an actual, non-abstract, particular individual is occasionally crucial to a thought. Without that word you would basically go back to that activity in which pairs of folks try to find out a thing without using words. This is a bit of an auto-proof as I can't say its word. It's not as if you can simply work around and pick similar words for that individual's particular noun, you miss almost all of a thought by dancing around it vs. using a fast shortcut that quickly aligns thoughts with low odds of ambiguity.
- itazula 9y agoThat guy lon. You know, the spacx guy. Oh yah, why didn't you say so? Musk.
- Programmatic 9y agoI wouldn't say that using a word such as "spacx" is in spirit.
- schoen 9y agoYou could point to Mr. Musk by using his South African origins, but also with circumlocutions such as: Zip2 collaborator X.com collaborator (by and by, part of PayPal, of which a principal and also a primary joint stock-holding guy, and so an original PayPal Mafia "mafioso") Mars colony instigator, for which aim's promotion also principal of orbital propulsion firm with first major victory involving launching an orbital craft propulsion unit again and again Popular luxury voltaic-propulsion motorcar firm kingpin SolarCity capitalist Scary fast monorailish-but-not vacuum transport plan originator and champion Philanthropic patron of folks with a major fascination for AI, apologists for both caution and gusto about it Boring Company instigator with plans to dig subways in L.A. plus additional stuff (that guy has had a hand in astonishingly many things...)
- nebabyte 9y agoBut for fact that said individual was said prior, and that I am slightly in a similar domain to him, I would not know which (singular) particular individual half of that points to
- schoen 9y agoI think "had a hand in PayPal, is making cars that run without gas, and wants to go to Mars" is an apt approach for broad public familiarity.
- gpawl 9y ago
- asdfologist 9y agoNooo... you said undErstand.
- Joeboy 9y agoI find I do this sort of thing a surprising amount. You'd think spurious symbols would jump out at you, but actually it turns out that's not how it is. Luckily oulipo.social automatically stops you posting bad sigils.
- tripofmice 9y agothis kind of broad situation is hard to fix; usually a particular thought has a particular solution. Similarly, using a synonym lookup may hold you back. Look at what you want to say, not what individual words you'd pick without any constraints.
- Programmatic 9y agoBut a mutual thought of a non-abstract individual aids in a lot of situations.
- skdfhksdf 9y agono doubt about it.
- isaacremuant 9y agoThat was funny. I had a bit of a laught. Thanks for that, guys.
- schoen 9y agoMost difficult is accounting for, and introducing into a chat, folks wholly unknown to anybody you talk to. A trick is to try to say how you know of such folks, finding a path or paths along which you can form a link, such as "my dad's mom's son" or "my pal's husband's pal" or "a woman who knows my boss from an old job" or "I know of a particular lady's writings from a class I had at school". This social platform's author own account within said platform shows an additional gimmick or option, viz., translation, insofar as you'd normally hail said author as "[small gray animal with a tail]", but within this platform's constraints as "[said animal, only in Latin]". This is not so hard for participants whom you call with words common to kinds of things, kinds of animals, jobs, and so on, but possibly difficult for folks lacking a commonality of naming of this sort (viz., with "nomina propria"). (Sorry if "viz." is illicit on account of what it actually stands for... you can just think of it as "in particular" if you want.)
- deleted 9y ago
- ClassyJacket 9y agoIt's limiting in a big way. Occasionally, you can say a string of words without that symbol that flows without worry, but an individual word trips you up and brings much difficulty, as any of its obvious synonyms all contain that symbol too.
- nebabyte 9y agoThat's... just a hacky workaround... Imo such would warrant a distinct class of "non-format" strings, just for that noun class; that you might talk about it as-is without violation? Or for purists... commonalization of a particular 'magic' shorthand, such as 'xqx', that is uncommon in that noun class thus can act as a quick shorthand. Though such has additional 'logic' to say initially, it and similar shorthands form a basis for a community 'pidgin' within constraints. Also, I am now full of irk. Continually colliding with taboo words containing (un)said symbol. Ugh. (WHY MUST SO MANY WORDS FINISH WITH TABOO GLYPH?!)
- igravious 9y agoDon't say. Point.
- nebabyte 9y agoNon proximal individual. Now what?
- notgood 9y agoSomeone pulled my chair at the restaurant, how rude -> What a day, I'm just lunching and a random prick pulls my chair, how crazy!
- emmelaich 9y agoAn guy my in-laws know can do this as a party trick. Just talk on and on without using that char.
- nebabyte 9y agoAnd why not? Can trivially construct a toolbox of known-good variants of 'standard' words, and think of synonyms for nonstandard words as you go, to string into minimal-but-functional-communication. Simply a function of your... uh, surplus chronological units.
- kem 9y agoIt seems to me that Vice casually mentioning Mastodon suggests something about a level of achieved status as a communication platform.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- orblivion 9y agoThis sounds like a fun gimmick, but it makes me more excited about the concept of Mastodon (GNU Social). I think this creates a really fun use case for federation. Hell I never thought of it before, but maybe now I'll want accounts on multiple servers now.
- rocky1138 9y agoOne of the constraints of GNU Social is that you shouldn't have two identical usernames on two separate instances. I did that and I don't know how to fix it. rocky1138@kwat.chat rocky1138@gnusocial.no Does Mastadon suffer the same problem?
- teleclimber 9y agoDo you have a reference for that? It seems hard for a federated system to enforce such a constraint. And what would be the use? that's what the @domain is for.
- franzpeterstein 9y agoMastodon have the same problem. > https://social.tchncs.de/@voidnill https://social.tchncs.de/@voidnill > https://mastodon.cloud/@voidnill https://mastodon.cloud/@voidnill are the same user (me) on two different instances.
- jobigoud 9y agoWhat do you mean by "problem"? Email has the same "problem".
- r3bl 9y agoMind elaborating what problems are you facing now?
- ghostDancer 9y agoYou can address them differently if you add the server like this @rocky1138@kwat.chat @rocky1138@gnusocial.no, at least on gnusocial
- SlySherZ 9y agoThis website is slugish as hell. Every time I scroll my cpu usage jumps to ~30% and I have ~2FPS, using the latest version of Firefox. On Chrome the CPU still spikes, but it's no nearly as bad.
- j4_james 9y agoIf you're willing to turn off JavaScript, you can have all the same content, but with silky smooth performance. On the "downside", though, you miss out on the social media sharing buttons, and auto-loading of the next article when you get to the bottom of the page.
- nebabyte 9y ago> you miss out on the social media sharing buttons Oh, sad day... :)
- hashhar 9y agoIf you have the time could you try reproducing it on the Firefox Nightly? I'm able to repro on v51 but not on Nightly.
- SlySherZ 9y agoI just tried it out and it's very smooth with Nightly. The CPU spikes, but it doesn't lag at all.
- tjr 9y agoAlso of interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)
- tyingq 9y agoNow I remember where I'd heard of that Gadsby book before. It's referenced in one of the exercises in the Think Python book: Write a function called has_no_e that returns True if the given word doesn’t have the letter “e” in it. http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/thinkpython010.html http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/thinkpython010...
- whitepoplar 9y agoIf we want something like Twitter, but in the form of an open source protocol, we need to name it and brand it well. I remember when I first used Linux, I didn't "trust" it. There wasn't a singular OS called Linux and the GUI applications looked low quality because they didn't have good design or branding. To most people, the UI and branding is the product, so when they see it poorly implemented, it simply feels like a bad product. If you make open source feel expensive and luxurious, they will come.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- themodelplumber 9y ago> If you make open source feel expensive and luxurious, they will come Hmmm...So: let's ask a bunch of objective, analytical, concrete techies to pivot themselves over to a subjective, abstract, feelings-based judgment process which requires a great sensitivity and sense of cultural refinement.
- cardiffspaceman 9y agoI'm not sure what this ad hominem comment was supposed to accomplish. Don't we already have people who appreciate subjective and cultural concerns involved?
- zimpenfish 9y ago> The cybre.space instance calls each post a “florp” instead of a “toot.” I'm not entirely convinced that we do, no.
- erkose 9y agoMastodon is just an implementation of OStatus which has been around form many years.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- d_j_b 9y agoSilly Vice: it's "Perec", not "Pereca".
- ryanschneider 9y agoRather than rejecting e it should delete your account if you happen to enter one. And announce the fact in impact font on your followers' timelines.
- cmdrfred 9y agoThat would be a great game. Try and trick others into using it while abstaining yourself.
- forgotpwtomain 9y ago> Reeve replied to my email in less than an hour, with nearly 300 words and no appearance of the banned character. I attempted to write this article without using the letter "e" and gave up after five minutes of weak effort. 0x7265657665 did dispatch back as to my communication in duration not in surplus of an hour with almost 300 words and without a taboo glyph in sight. Although I did try to author this column without using said taboo glyph "0x65", against apathy and sloth I could not triumph and did submit for my stab at it, as short in duration as to boil liquid in a pot, was a dud.
- komali2 9y agoIn what encoding does "0x65" represent "e" ?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tomjakubowski 9y agoASCII, UTF-8, ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1), Shift JIS, among others.
- nightski 9y agoSo just lav out the "e"? The human brain would b prfctly capabl of undrstanding it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ZeroManArmy 9y agoThat isn't why this is a thing. It's a way to be more fruitful with words.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Dylan16807 9y agoThough it does give a good bar. If the posts altering word choice end up roundabout and less comprehensible than simply throwing out the letter, they are doing a poor job.
- evincarofautumn 9y agoY dn’t vn prtclrl nd vwls n gnrl, bcs cnsnnts hld mr smntc nfrmtn.
- thr0waway1239 9y agodpnds n th lngth f th wrds. vr shrt wrds r t hrd t rd
- evincarofautumn 9y agoTr-, m-b- pl-ch-ld-rs f-r v-wl s-nds w-ld h-lp? /-sp-ʃ-l- -f j- r-t f-n-t-kl-/. Wəθ ʃwə (ə) ənstəd əv dəʃ əz ðə pləshəldr, ət əvən ləks lək ə rəl rətəŋ səstəm.
- zem 9y agoit's not that hard to simply pick out words that do not contain it; just not trivial. it's a fun constraint to play with.
- biot 9y agoTranslation of posting without using 'E': It's Similar to That Bird Social App, But Without a Fifth Symbol Mastodon has an app with particular quirks and many humans find it joyful. Mastodon boffins did it again. A particular boffin going by initials M.R. works as a digital craftsman at a corporation with initials I.A. (that has http archival capability), did craft a social app oulipo.social with an odd quirk: said app disallows applying of fifth anglo-saxon linguistic symbol or "any variant of it". Said individual found motivation via book "A Void" by author G.P. This lipogrammatic book did apply all anglo-saxon linguistic symbols but that particular symbol. It follows a Francophonic philosophy of Oulipo, a constraint form of writing that is a combination of both math and book study. Banning of this symbol is Oulipo's most famous limitation: "It limits writing without making it too hard," M.R. said. "You can still sound natural and say what you want to say, though you may think on it a bit in a way that you wouldn't without constraints." Such limitation can push you to think hard and apply imagination about words, M.R. said. M.R. had no anticipation that oulipo.social would attain popularity — as it got its start as a trial of skills application of Ruby on Rails and to attain a sharp mind in OS capability — but said app did gain many additional accounts (singular digit with two nought digits) within about six days of starting. "It's a joy to watch folks do things I wouldn't think of—#drilipo, and applying oulipo constraints to famous writing and songs—and just chat about day to day stuff," M.R. said. "It's also gratifying that folks will look at oulipo.social and go on to think up constraints or gimmicks for additional variant Mastodons." M.R. did post back to my communication within an hour, with almost 300 words and without said taboo symbol. I suck at thinking by using my imagination to avoid said symbol and quit not long post-starting as my mind is frail.
- DonHopkins 9y ago"A little glob becomes a globe instantly, if you just add silent e!" - T o m L * h r * r https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gHPaVxkdPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gHPaVxkdPA
- owenversteeg 9y agoLink to the actual "social sharing hub", which is a mod of Mastodon: https://oulipo.social/about https://oulipo.social/about
- rspeer 9y agoThat's a login form. Can you not look at posts on Mastodon without signing up for it? That sounds fatal for adoption.
- Joeboy 9y agoNo you can't. I also think that's a pity, although I don't doubt this policy has its fans.
- JeremyBanks 9y agoYou can see any users public timeline and posts at /@username, but the complete public timeline requires authentication (with this or any instance it's federated with).
- sebringj 9y agoI think I need help understanding why this is in any way relevant or interesting. I'm actually serious and open to listening. Obviously it got on the front page.
- gbaygon 9y agoPersonally I find interesting the general idea that adding constraints to a system leads to creative outlets, forcing the participants to break entablished thinking patterns. The fun stuff here is not the content, but the alternative paths the writer has to take to convey the message.
- confounded 9y agoIndeed, the 140 character constraint was one of the things that made Twitter novel.
- feld 9y agoNo that's what makes it suck. The limitation was for SMS compatibility, but the reality is that it makes it impossible to have meaningful discourse.
- lolsal 9y agoSo don't have meaningful discourse over SMS/twitter. Use email/phone/forums/...
- feld 9y agoToo much email. Too many people I know don't want to share their phone numbers. Forums are generally terrible. Try using Mastodon and you'll find it's twitter with meaningful conversations. 500 characters is a game changer.
- porpoisemonkey 9y agoWouldn't the asy workaround b to writ what you wantd to writ but drop th "3"? Even without the e's you can probably infer meaning with a high probability of success.
- zapdrive 9y agoSlightly related. Reddit user IHateLetterF never uses the letter F.
- jl6 9y agoTwatting?
- egypturnash 9y agoOulipo.social now has a mirror image: dolphin.town, where you can only use the letter E.
- OscarCunningham 9y agoTwitter is like blogging, but you can't use more than 140 characters. Clearly the more constraints we add, the better it is!
- adynatos 9y agoJust use 3, 31337 nerds. Hey, people were writing like that in the '90!
- dkurth 9y agoThere's a musician named Andrew Huang who sometimes makes music based on song challenges from his fans. Years ago, I asked him to write a rap song in which none of the lyrics contain the letter "e." Like the person in the article, I had read "A Void" by Georges Perec, so that's where the idea came from. And about a day later, he posted this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8-WtH4ujps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8-WtH4ujps
- schoen 9y agoWow, that musician has amazing skills! Thank you for sharing this.
- amenghra 9y agoAlso of interest, "A Void": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void