Face with Tears of Joy on 99% Invisible

I’ve always really enjoyed 99% Invisible, Roman Mars’ long-running podcast about design, which makes it all the more special to have appeared on three different episode in the past — on the octothorpe (#), the interrobang (‽), and pocket calculators respectively. Now, to mark the publication of Face with Tears of Joy, I’m pleased to say that I’m on it again!

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Miscellany № 108: emoji, for all the wrong reasons

Emoji have been in the news recently for a host of reasons, most of them bad — but all of them, I would submit, worthy of our attention.


First up is a Netflix series called Adolescence that has been garnering plaudits in the UK and elsewhere since it went on air last month. I won’t spoil the plot, but I note that Emojipedia has joined the clamour with a blog post titled “Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’, Emoji Codes & Emoji Repurposing”. In it, Keith Broni explores the programme’s use of an “emoji code” by so-called incels — a misogynistic online culture of men who blame women for their lack of sexual success — in which, for instance, ‘💯’ refers to the belief that 20% of men attract 80% of women. Adolescence moots other codes too, such as ‘🔵’ and ‘🔴’ to represent the blue and red pills made famous by The Matrix, the Wachowski sisters’ dystopian action film, and which in turn relate to being “blue pilled” or “red pilled” — either accepting of mainstream views or “seeing through” them to some alleged hidden truth.

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Miscellany № 106: pistols, punctuation and print

I came across a post last July on Emojipedia, in which Keith Broni noted that Twitter, or X, had redesigned its PISTOL emoji. PISTOL had always been controversial: most online platforms started off with PISTOLs drawn as realistic firearms, but, over the course of the mid-2010s, most of them moved to toylike renderings of water pistols instead. Twitter had followed suit.

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Miscellany № 104: new year, new miscellany

Hello, and welcome to 2025. Is it that time already?


The possessive apostrophe (or rather, the abuse of the possessive apostrophe) is a recurrent guest star here at Shady Characters, but usually in the English language. Recently, though, the Guardian reported that unneeded apostrophes are infecting German, too. The so-called Deppenapostroph, or “idiot’s apostrophe”, appears when a German-language expression uses it to indicate a possessive — despite the fact that it is more correct to add an “s” on its own rather than “’s”.

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