Trump trains crosshairs on Amazon
emoji. But for it to make it to phones and computers, it has to be approved by Unicode. The nonprofit group, mostly made up of people from large tech companies like Apple, Google and Facebook, translates emoji into one standard, so that a person in France, for example, can send an emoji or a text message to a person in the U.S. and it will look the same, no matter what brand of phone or operating system they use.
From the proposals to the design, a bevy of rules govern emojis. To submit a proposal to Unicode, you must follow a strict format, in writing, that includes your emoji’s expected usage level, whether it can be used as an archetype, a metaphor for a symbol (a pig face, for example, can mean more than the face of a pig and represent gluttony).
There are many reasons for exclusion, too. Emojis can’t be overly specific, logos or brands, specific people (living or dead) or deities. A swastika wouldn’t be approved either.
Each year, a new version of the Unicode Standard is released. This year we got Unicode 10.0, which adds 8,518 characters, for a total of 136,690. It added the bitcoin symbol, a set of 285 Hentaigana characters used in Japan and support for languages such as Masaram Gondi, used to write Gondi in Central and Southeast India.
And then there’s the dumpling.
An emoji takes shape
Back in August 2015, journalist and author Jennifer 8. Lee was texting with her friend Yiying Lu, the graphic designer behind the iconic “fail whale” illustration that used to pop up when Twitter’s network was down. It dawned on Lee that there was no dumpling emoji.
“There are so many weird Japanese food emoji,” she said, but she didn’t understand how there could be no dumpling. After all, dumplings are almost universal. Think about it — ravioli, empanada, pierogi, pot sticker — all dumplings.
The process took almost two years, including research, many meetings and a written, illustrated proposal that reads a bit like an academic paper, complete with research on dumpling history and popularity.
But thanks largely to her efforts, the dumpling emoji was added to the Unicode Standard this year. And as part of her dumpling emoji lobbying, Lee decided to join the Unicode Consortium. It was an eye-opener. When she showed up at her first quarterly meeting of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, she expected a big auditorium. Instead, it was just a conference room. Most people there, she said, were “older, white male engineers,” from the big tech companies.
The debates are as esoteric as they are quirky. Should “milk” be in a glass or a carton or a bottle? Pancake or pancakes? Many of the emoji decision-makers are engineers or have linguistic backgrounds, she said, but very few are designers, which can mean limitations on how they think about the images.
As part of their efforts to diversify emojis, Lee and Lu founded Emojination, a group promoting “emoji by the people, for the people.” While it all started with a dumpling, the group also helped other food, clothing, science and animal emoji, including the woman in the hijab, the sandwich and the fortune cookie. Emojination has worked with companies like China’s Baidu, GE and the Finnish government to help them submit emoji proposals.
What makes the cut
But when they proposed the frowning poop, they met with some resistance.
“Will we have a CRYING PILE OF POO next? PILE OF POO WITH TONGUE STICKING OUT? PILE OF POO WITH QUESTION MARKS FOR EYES? PILE OF POO WITH KARAOKE MIC? Will we have to encode a neutral FACELESS PILE OF POO? As an ordinary user, I don’t want this kind of crap on my phone,” wrote Michael Everson, a linguist, typographer, in a memo to the Unicode Technical Committee.
Another member, typographer Andrew West, wasn’t happy with a proposal for a sliced bagel emoji.
“Why are we prioritizing bagel over other bread products?” he wrote. Clearly he is not a New Yorker.
Got an idea for an emoji and are willing to fight for it? It’s not too late to submit one for the class of 2019. As for 2018, stay tuned. We’ll know in a few months which ones made the cut. And while there’s a desire to be funny and quirky, the diversity of emojis is a real issue. The Associated Press
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump returned to a familiar target Friday, saying that Amazon. com should be charged more by the U.S. Postal Service for the packages it sends around the world.
Amazon has been a consistent recipient of Trump’s ire. He has accused the company of failing to pay “internet taxes,” though it’s never been made clear by the White House what the president means by that.
In a tweet Friday, Trump said Amazon should be charged “MUCH MORE” by the post office because it’s “losing many billions of dollars a year” while it makes “Amazon richer.”
Amazon lives and dies by shipping, and an increase in the rates it pays could certainly do some damage. Amazon sends packages via the post office, FedEx, UPS and other services.
In the seconds after the tweet, shares of Amazon, which had been trading higher before the opening bell, began to fade and went into negative territory. The stock closed down more than 1 percent Friday. Broader markets also slipped.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. The Post, as well as other major media, has been labeled as “fake news” by Trump after reporting unfavorable developments during his campaign and presidency.
He has labeled Bezos’ Post the “AmazonWashingtonPost.”
The Seattle company did not respond to a request for comment Friday. A spokeswoman for the Postal Service said, “We’re looking into it.”
Between July and September, Amazon paid $5.4 billion in worldwide shipping costs, a 39 percent increase from the same period in the previous year. That amounts to nearly 11 percent of the $43.7 billion in total revenue it reported in that same period.
In 2014, Amazon reached a deal with the Postal Service to offer delivery on Sundays.
The Postal Service has lost money for 11 straight years, mostly because of pension and health care costs.
One part of the operation that is not suffering, however, is shipping and packages, which handles Amazon and other online orders from retailers. In the year that ended Sept. 30, the postal service reported higher-thanexpected revenue of $19.5 billion, “due to e-commerce growth.”
The post office does not break down what is driving that growth, but online orders from retailers, particularly Amazon. com, has revolutionized the way goods are bought and delivered. Analysts at Bain & Co. expected Amazon to capture 50 percent of all online shopping growth during the holiday shopping season.
Amazon has taken some steps toward becoming more self-reliant in shipping. Earlier this year it announced that it would build a worldwide air cargo hub in Kentucky, about 13 miles southwest of Cincinnati.
Shares of Amazon. com Inc. slipped 1.4 percent Friday to close at $1,169.47. The Seattle company’s stock is up more than 57 percent this year and surpassed $1,000 each for the first time in April.