The Toast

From the post:

Since emojis often bear graphic resemblances to our real faces, the understanding has often been that there would be no problems in interpreting them, and that the sender and the recipient would agree on such interpretation.

As someone fairly immersed in the emoji community, this is a strawman argument (i.e., no one really tries to argue this).

People love and use emoji not in spite of their ambiguity but rather because of it.

Even Unicode encourages emoji to have multiple meanings:

http://unicode.org/emoji/selection.html

Does the candidate emoji have notable metaphorical references or symbolism?

And from their FAQ:

http://www.unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html

Do emoji characters have single semantics?

A: No. Because emoji characters are treated as pictographs, they are encoded in Unicode based primarily on their general appearance, not on an intended semantic.

Many people want to think there are some folks out there like myself who are seriously arguing Emoji are a language, but this isn't really true. And I say that as the author of a book called "How to Speak Emoji". The thing is, it's a humor book designed to be sold in Urban Outfitters. It's not a real language guide.

If you're curious about more nuanced takes on how emoji are actually being used, here are some good resources:

Tyler Schnoebelen's talk at Emojicon: http://www.slideshare.net/TylerSchnoebelen/emoji-linguistics

Gretchen McCulloch on how Emoji aren't really threatening…

> "Do you have data on this? Anecdotally it isn't hard to think of Asians in the upper echelons (e.g. Satya Nadella)."

In the same way Barack Obama is evidence that black people have it pretty easy around here ;) There are definitely some high-profile Asians in tech, they're not exactly rare like unicorns, but the underrepresentation is plenty real.

I dug up the original article I was reading: http://the-toast.net/2014/10/23/asian-americans-media/view-all/?utm_content=buffere0bba&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer - btw, this is IMO the most approachable/parseable summary of where Asian-Americans fit into the greater American race relations landscape I've seen yet. It's well worth a read.

It's a more general look at Asian-Americans, but there is a section specifically addressing tech.

More concretely giving numbers to the representation deficit:

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23100254/glass-ceiling-asian-americans-still-under-represented-silicon

Even in Google's own numbers Asians represent 34% of the tech workforce and 23% in leadership roles.

Facebook's a bit worse - 41% of tech workforce Asian, 19% leadership.

Yahoo is particularly egregious - 57% Asian, 17% leadership.

Even Twitter isn't particularly great: 34% Asians in tech, 24% in leadership from their own report: https://blog.twitter.com/2014/building-a-twitter-we-can-be-proud-of

I'm guessing many HN readers aren't going to be familiar with the Toast (though I might be wrong?) and just wanted to preemptively defend it. Browsing the front page right now, it's easy to mistake it for clickbait-y sites pandering to 20 or 30-something women like Jezebel or Bustle. It's so much better than its peers, though. In some ways I actually see it as kindred with some of my favorite elements of the HN community: an unusually thoughtful and respectful comment section (relatively speaking), and an openness to the eclectic so long as it's interesting. For instance, among other things on the front page, there's this little snippet on "How to Politely Decline a Proposal from a Byzantine Emperor," which is exactly what it sounds like:

http://the-toast.net/2016/05/09/how-to-politely-decline-a-proposal-from-the-emperor-of-byzantium/

It was also one of the only independently run online publications that seemed to me to be on its way to being quietly successful in a "two or three people can make a small profit on it indefinitely" sort of way. Guess I was too optimistic. Anyway, RIP the Toast. I'll miss it.

Also:

"Ayn Rand’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" [1]

"Ayn Rand’s Harry Potter and the Prisoners of Collectivism" [2]

"Ayn Rand’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" [3]

"Ayn Rand’s Harry Potter and The Order of Psycho-epistemology" [4]

"Ayn Rand’s Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince" [5]

"Ayn Rand’s Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows" [6]

[1] http://the-toast.net/2014/06/02/ayn-rands-harry-potter-chamber-secrets/

[2] http://the-toast.net/2014/06/18/ayn-rands-harry-potter-prisoners-collectivism/

[3] http://the-toast.net/2014/07/29/ayn-rands-harry-potter/

[4] http://the-toast.net/2014/09/10/ayn-rands-harry-potter-order-psycho-epistemology/

[5] http://the-toast.net/2015/02/12/ayn-rands-harry-potter-half-blood-prince/

[6] http://the-toast.net/2015/04/09/ayn-rands-harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows/

One of my favorite posts on such matters is Ortberg’s listicle “ Reasons I Would Not Have Been Burned As A Witch In The Early Modern Era No Matter What I Would Like To Believe About Myself And Would Have In Fact Been Among The Witch-Burners”:

I would have named names, too. And I’d have been especially good at intuiting what names my interrogators wanted to hear (they would not have to torture or even threaten to torture me) – sharp-tongued gossips and independent-minded widows and all kinds of people who get described as “unruly” in modern academic essays. Throw them under the god damn Witch Bus. Does it disappoint you to hear this? I never asked you to have faith in me, Goody Watson.

http://the-toast.net/2016/02/09/reasons-i-would-not-have-been-burned-as-a-witch/

The text is wrong for doge-speak.

"So hot right now" is some Paris Hilton catchphrase, and way too grammatical.

Your intensifier words fit too appropriately to their objects:

"Such matching" should be "Many matching"

"So good" is correct English. "Much good" would be better doge-ese.

Anyway, see here: http://the-toast.net/2014/02/06/linguist-explains-grammar-doge-wow/