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Comment by Programmatic | Hacker News Reader

How would you talk about an unfamiliar individual known by a noun you can't say?

It's limiting in a big way. Occasionally, you can say a string of words without that symbol that flows without worry, but an individual word trips you up and brings much difficulty, as any of its obvious synonyms all contain that symbol too.

That's... just a hacky workaround...

Imo such would warrant a distinct class of "non-format" strings, just for that noun class; that you might talk about it as-is without violation?

Or for purists... commonalization of a particular 'magic' shorthand, such as 'xqx', that is uncommon in that noun class thus can act as a quick shorthand. Though such has additional 'logic' to say initially, it and similar shorthands form a basis for a community 'pidgin' within constraints.

Also, I am now full of irk. Continually colliding with taboo words containing (un)said symbol. Ugh. (WHY MUST SO MANY WORDS FINISH WITH TABOO GLYPH?!)

this kind of broad situation is hard to fix; usually a particular thought has a particular solution. Similarly, using a synonym lookup may hold you back. Look at what you want to say, not what individual words you'd pick without any constraints.

But a mutual thought of a non-abstract individual aids in a lot of situations.

Most difficult is accounting for, and introducing into a chat, folks wholly unknown to anybody you talk to.

A trick is to try to say how you know of such folks, finding a path or paths along which you can form a link, such as "my dad's mom's son" or "my pal's husband's pal" or "a woman who knows my boss from an old job" or "I know of a particular lady's writings from a class I had at school".

This social platform's author own account within said platform shows an additional gimmick or option, viz., translation, insofar as you'd normally hail said author as "[small gray animal with a tail]", but within this platform's constraints as "[said animal, only in Latin]".

This is not so hard for participants whom you call with words common to kinds of things, kinds of animals, jobs, and so on, but possibly difficult for folks lacking a commonality of naming of this sort (viz., with "nomina propria").

(Sorry if "viz." is illicit on account of what it actually stands for... you can just think of it as "in particular" if you want.)

I was okay with using "imo" and "lol" in words in this discussion as full forms also lack taboo glyphs, and I concur that such with said glyph is tantamount to a violation.

A good point and strong advocacy, though @mus, who thought up this particular handiwork and built it from scratch (not all of lipography, just this journalistically-fascinating lipography discussion forum), and also said in this discussion, supra, "this kind of broad situation is hard to fix" and so on, was so bold today as to post "300" in a toot purporting to follow lipographic norms. Ipsa dixit!

But if you say "300" in words and not digits, you would say two words both lacking suitability for that forum. So I ask, possibly oratorically: by what logic is "300" OK if "viz." (or "BRB") isn't?

Words do not contain glyphs during annunciation. A man pronouncing a word is not a man pronouncing glyph 1, glyph 2, glyph 3 but sound 1, sound 2, sound 3.

So 300 is okay: I do not recoil from a foul glyph in it.

If you think so, don't you find "BRB" and "viz." OK too? My post's dad-post (though not by you) calls for avoiding such short forms on account of matching long forms' violations of lipographic norms.

no doubt about it.

That was funny. I had a bit of a laught. Thanks for that, guys.

Someone pulled my chair at the restaurant, how rude -> What a day, I'm just lunching and a random prick pulls my chair, how crazy!

An guy my in-laws know can do this as a party trick.

Just talk on and on without using that char.

And why not? Can trivially construct a toolbox of known-good variants of 'standard' words, and think of synonyms for nonstandard words as you go, to string into minimal-but-functional-communication.

Simply a function of your... uh, surplus chronological units.

Don't say. Point.

Non proximal individual. Now what?

Individual who is not I and whom I do not know. :)

That's not hard, but what about a missing third individual that both must understand to carry on?

That/said individual who is not any of us.

Nooo... you said undErstand.

I find I do this sort of thing a surprising amount. You'd think spurious symbols would jump out at you, but actually it turns out that's not how it is. Luckily oulipo.social automatically stops you posting bad sigils.

"Missing third individual that both must grasp to carry on."

But you still don't instill that actual individual in minds, and an actual, non-abstract, particular individual is occasionally crucial to a thought. Without that word you would basically go back to that activity in which pairs of folks try to find out a thing without using words. This is a bit of an auto-proof as I can't say its word.

It's not as if you can simply work around and pick similar words for that individual's particular noun, you miss almost all of a thought by dancing around it vs. using a fast shortcut that quickly aligns thoughts with low odds of ambiguity.

That guy lon. You know, the spacx guy. Oh yah, why didn't you say so? Musk.

I wouldn't say that using a word such as "spacx" is in spirit.

You could point to Mr. Musk by using his South African origins, but also with circumlocutions such as:

Zip2 collaborator

X.com collaborator (by and by, part of PayPal, of which a principal and also a primary joint stock-holding guy, and so an original PayPal Mafia "mafioso")

Mars colony instigator, for which aim's promotion also principal of orbital propulsion firm with first major victory involving launching an orbital craft propulsion unit again and again

Popular luxury voltaic-propulsion motorcar firm kingpin

SolarCity capitalist

Scary fast monorailish-but-not vacuum transport plan originator and champion

Philanthropic patron of folks with a major fascination for AI, apologists for both caution and gusto about it

Boring Company instigator with plans to dig subways in L.A.

plus additional stuff (that guy has had a hand in astonishingly many things...)

But for fact that said individual was said prior, and that I am slightly in a similar domain to him, I would not know which (singular) particular individual half of that points to

I think "had a hand in PayPal, is making cars that run without gas, and wants to go to Mars" is an apt approach for broad public familiarity.

Mars-bound Musk

I am highly in favor of using humorous colloquialization nyms which match anti-fifth-glyph format to point out individuals.

For Musk, ^this nym in particular

This is good! I guess a bit of thought can go a long way toward good workarounds. I'd hazard that it is harder if a taboo glyph is in both particular nouns though.

> It's not as if you can simply work around and pick similar words for that individual's particular noun

We're working with an arbitrary constraint here (and I, for one, am enjoying it, actually); we kind of /have/ to do that. ;)

> you miss almost all of a thought by dancing around it vs. using a fast shortcut that quickly aligns thoughts with low odds of ambiguity.

You seem to forget that we're trying to find clever ways to refer to people and things without using the most common letter in the English language.

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