I think kaomoji have been a thing in Japan even before unicode was invented. The Japanese encodings and IME (input method esitors) allowed them to type a wide variety of characters, punctuation and symbols that aren’t available in most western encodings, so I feel like the Japanese folks had a head start on creative use of typography.

For example, if you want an eyeball you can just type “do” (degrees), and the IME will pull up °, and “omega” gives you ω, so it’s pretty easy to make (°ω°).

I don’t know what technically constitutes the most troublesome username, but surely some of the kaomoji Japanese folks have come up with are up there. Good luck trying to type these.

ଘ(੭ˊᵕˋ)੭ ੈ♡‧₊˚

I think the first person to use an obfuscated name like lIiḷ|ḷiIl was pretty clever.

Thank you for introducing me to Your Name. I just finished watching it. Absolutely wonderful film.

They should have sent a poet.

Dragostea Din Tei by O-Zone, though I think I heard it on NicoNico Douga before it became known as the NumaNuma Song.

Came here to say this. If you haven’t heard this remix yet do check it out!

https://youtu.be/oJhayhBh5JM

As an origami fan I would be very interested to see how they managed to fold this thing up.

It’s super important in Japan where jam packed trains are common during rush hours. They typically announce in Japanese and English, and may even have a visual displayed.

Great. Now I’m unsure of how to pronounce database as well.

Maybe this only works on certain fish, but if you stop the first long cut just short of the tail you can flip the fillet over and it stays connected to the body, making it easier to hold while you cut the fillet away from the skin.

I was really intrigued by the idea of short “jury duty” sessions with 12 random strangers in which you have to debate and try to come to a consensus on an issue. Disappointed to see it’s just a one-click opinion poll instead.

It’s not round, but it’s not flat either!

The Sony Mavica FD91 was the first digital camera I ever owned! I used it the last couple years of high school and during a short homestay in Japan. You could pick up a giant box of 3.5" floppies for cheap, and as long as you fed it a stead supply of batteries it worked pretty well.

Here are some photos I took that are at, I believe, the highest quality setting (1024 x 768 and about 170kb each). Though I think Lemmy shows them shrunk down in the feed, if you open the image in a new tab you can see the full resolution.

Zoomed in.

And a closeup.

The 14x optical zoom was pretty amazing back then.

Can they add a little speaker and have it play some smooth jazz when unzipping?

I feel like even AI will be able to emulate this kind of speech, but the upside is people with dementia won’t feel so alienated anymore.

I just got back from visiting my parents who were struggling to fix an unreliable dishwasher that keeps clogging, fails to dry, stinks, etc. This is PERFECT timing for that video!

A similar machine also plays a role in the 1997 movie Contact.