A Spectre is Haunting Unicode

allthingslinguistic:

An interesting article about Japanese and Unicode. Excerpt: 

In 1978 Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry established the encoding that would later be known as JIS X 0208, which still serves as an important reference for all Japanese encodings. However, after the JIS standard was released people noticed something strange – several of the added characters had no obvious sources, and nobody could tell what they meant or how they should be pronounced. Nobody was sure where they came from. These are what came to be known as the ghost characters (幽霊文字). […]

By interviewing the catalogers involved in the creation of the standard, the investigators established that some characters were inadvertently invented as mistakes in the cataloging process. For example, 妛 was an error introduced while trying to record “山 over 女”. “山 over 女” occurs in the name of a particular place and was thus suitable for inclusion in the JIS standard, but because they couldn’t print it as one character yet, 山 and 女 were printed separately, cut out, and pasted onto a sheet of paper, and then copied. When reading the copy, the line where the two little pieces of paper met looked like a stroke and was added to the character by mistake. The original character (𡚴) was not added to JIS or Unicode until much later and doesn’t display on most sites for me.

Read the whole thing

A Spectre is Haunting Unicode

elidyce:

the-erikalypse:

writing-prompt-s:

A single mom moves into a new apartment with her young son, only to find out it’s inhabited by a poltergeist. At first she’s spooked, but comes to realize that the poltergeist is helping to raise her son.

I’d watch it.

It’s like ‘The Others’, except that everyone just kind of… gets used to seeing each other. There are two families sharing one house, and okay, one family is a bit dead, but they’re all figuring things out as they go and it’s super handy to have a spare parent or two around.

*

“Mom, I’m home!” 

“She’s out shopping, go do your homework.”

“Aunt Ingrid, they didn’t even HAVE homework when you were alive, why are you BUGGING me – “ 

“When I was alive we churned butter instead of our mother going to the store to buy it, do you want to learn how to churn butter?”

“Fine, okay, homework it is.” 

*

“David, don’t walk through the walls.”

“Opening the door is too hard.”

“Then walk through the DOOR like your sister. Respect the conventions at least.”

“Fiiiiiinnne…” 

*

“Mom, what are you doing?”

“Fixing the fence.” 

“Uncle Roger, are you possessing my mom?”

“We tried just having me tell her how to do it, but it was taking too long and she got frustrated.” 

“It’s WEIRD, though.”

“Do you want to do this?”

“No, I – “

“Too late. Come and learn how to fix this. You’re the man of the house now.”

“NOBODY SAYS THAT ANY MORE, UNCLE ROGER.”

*

“Did you have a fight with David?”

“No.”

“Then why are you both making that face?”

“There’s no FACE.”

“That’s what he said.” 

“We didn’t have a FIGHT, okay…”

“Aunt Ingrid is worried, she says he’s been moping all morning. He’s barely visible half the time.” 

“Look, we didn’t have a fight, I just asked him how he died and then it got weird.” 

“STEVE YOU DO NOT ASK PEOPLE HOW THEY DIED THAT IS SO RUDE.” 

“Mom, it came up, okay, it wasn’t just out of nowhere!”

“YOU APOLOGIZE RIGHT NOW.” 

“Steve! David! Isobel! Who broke this vase?”

“Meteor did it.”

“It was not the dog! Which one of you was throwing things in the house?”

“No, really, Mom, it was Meteor.”

“And how did the dog get up on the mantlepiece?”

“Uh…”

“ISOBEL WERE YOU LEVITATING THE DOG AGAIN?”

*

“This is completely inaccurate.” 

“Roger…”

“I mean, look at those clothes. I’ve never seen *anyone* dressed like that.”

“They weren’t very careful about accurate costuming in these old movies.”

“I read ALL the Sherlock Holmes stories when they were first published and I ASSURE you he was a GENTLEMAN, not like – “

“Roger, will you just let us watch the moving pictures in peace?”

“But they’re WRONG.”

“We don’t care. Shush.”

*Roger mutters about bossy women and levitates popcorn*

*

“Steve, what happened to your face?”

“I got into a fight.” 

“I would surmise from your bruises that you lost.”

“I always lose.”

“Oh, we can’t have that! Come, I will teach you the manly art of fisticuffs.”

“ROGER NO.”

*

“Aunt Ingrid, can you teach me how to make pie?”

“Of course I can… why? I know boys do a lot of things now that girls used to, I understand that, but why pie?”

“I like pie.”

“I can make you a pie if you just want to eat pie.”

“… Ava likes pie too.”

“That girl who lives down the street?”

“Yeah…”

“Then I’ll help you make the pie. What kind?”

“She likes cherry.” 

This is basically what happened by the end of Beetlejuice.

cameoamalthea:

Legally a house can be haunted and failure to disclose that the property is haunted can constitute fraudulent misrepresentation and is grounds for recession of contract. Meaning poltergeists are legally treated the same as termites or other pests.

This sounds like a cryptid post but this is actual U.S. case law

The issue came up in a case where a family bought a house and later discovered it was on a ghost tour. The buyer had no way of knowing the house was haunted since that’s no something buyer’s usually ask, but the previous owner knew and should have disclosed it. Since the owner had reported paranormal activity in both local and national publications describing at length how  haunted the house was court decided they couldn’t very well say there’s no such thing as ghosts now.

This resulted in legal precedent that recognizes the existence of haunted houses. Also the court’s opinion is probably the most entertaining legal opinion you will ever read.

This post does not constitute legal advice