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dudus·

I had my "What are they thinking?" moment when I found out about snowman.

http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/index.htm

After that the only one to shock me was "Pile of poo"

http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm

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Is 'PILE OF POO' (U+1F4A9) more shocking than 'LOVE HOTEL' (U+1F3E9)?

http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f3e9/index.htm

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hotel

Both were readily in common use on Japanese phones. Most of Unicode is existing character sets being incorporated.

Looks like they're part of the Emoji set

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Emoji_in_the_Unicode_stan...

Well, exactly. Emoji are the pictographic emoticons that were in common use on Japanese phones in proprietary encodings.

Well sure, but since when is emoji part of unicode?

Emoji is a lot more mainstream now, too. Both Android and iOS support them, not just 'Japanese phones'.

Uh, what?

>since when is emoji part of unicode?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Emoji_in_the_Unicode_stan...

>Emoji is a lot more mainstream now, too. Both Android and iOS support them, not just 'Japanese phones'.

Um, yes. I said "that were". I realise it is now mainstream now because it is now in Unicode.

You may be interested in this wonderful article [1] about how these and many other unusual symbols ended up in Unicode. I personally had never considered how much of an issue including flags could be. Quite an interesting discussion around it on HN as well. [2]

[1] - http://www.reigndesign.com/blog/love-hotels-and-unicode/ [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3792247

Theres not anything seedy about a love hotel. In Japan sometimes it's nicer for couples to go there rather than try and have a romantic evening in a tiny 1 room flat on a futon.

The snowman is an old meteorological symbol for snow. Predates Unicode by decades. I assume it's because a snowman is easier to render by hand than an actual snowflake. (Or like how rain is symbolized not by trying to draw recognizable rain itself, but by an umbrella.)

the diversity in font implementation is interesting to see: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/fontsuppor...

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