
Which Emoji Scissors Close? - _nhynes
https://wh0.github.io/2020/01/02/scissors.html
======
benatkin
I really enjoyed this. It is very similar to "Please, enough with the dead
butterflies!" [0] I'd like to see a list of everything like this. Similar to
Awesome falsehood [1] but not quite.

0: [https://emilydamstra.com/news/please-enough-dead-
butterflies...](https://emilydamstra.com/news/please-enough-dead-butterflies/)
( HN 1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460013)
HN 2:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21788356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21788356)
)

1: [https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-
falsehood](https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood)

~~~
Waterluvian
Yes!!! I live for these completely pointless obsessions into a topic.

~~~
benatkin
Profile checks out. todays.pointless.click looks good :D I started
[https://furious.engineering/](https://furious.engineering/) to add random
stuff, but so far there's only one which shows the spanish equivalent of 1st,
2nd, 3rd, 4th.

I think these ones could be added to awesome-falsehoods. I'd love a list that
was more centered on this idea, but for now awesome-falsehoods would probably
be the best place for it. Maybe a _design_ or _visual_ category?

~~~
Waterluvian
I had hoped that the internet, beyond the 90s, would be a place where almost
everyone has a webpage like ours populated with whatever it is the individual
decided was noteworthy.

To an extent it's come true in a small subset. But discovery is the hard part.
Right now discovery leads you to social media pages full of, for the most
part, a low budget substitute for air.

~~~
kickscondor
I track homemade weblogs and pages - there's actually a lot still going if you
know where to look. [https://kickscondor.com](https://kickscondor.com)

Thank you for your links, I'll cover them soon in my next 'href hunt'.

~~~
graphpapa
I too love your website thank you

------
ipsum2
Along those lines, horse emojis judged by a horse enthusiast:
[https://twitter.com/jelenawoehr/status/1191872816372600832?l...](https://twitter.com/jelenawoehr/status/1191872816372600832?lang=en)

~~~
Redoubts
> OpenMojij 12.0

> Believe it or not, this horse's lack of eyes may not limit athletic
> performance. Many blind horses do well under saddle. However, the missing
> right hindlimb will severely limit potential for soundness even as a
> companion. Discuss euthanasia with vet. -20/10

Nice

------
Gaelan
[0] is a twitter thread in a similar vein about train emojis.

[0]:
[https://twitter.com/BisTheFairy/status/1192557730709622790](https://twitter.com/BisTheFairy/status/1192557730709622790)

~~~
jcranmer
Interesting how almost everyone goes for a 4-4-0 style train with the
American-style balloon smokestack. It's funny that this is called "wild west"
because it's rather anachronistic for that design. In the 1870s and onward,
railroads are buying 4-6-0 trains instead of 4-4-0 trains. And the balloon
shape is a feature of wood-burning locomotives (which produce a lot more
embers and sparks than coal does). The Great Plains and Great Basin being
rather devoid of trees, western railroads generally favored coal-burning
designs, and so used much lower-profile smokestacks. The stereotypical "wild
west" design is therefore closer to what you'd see in 1850s Ohio than 1870s
Oklahoma.

~~~
na85
I know very little about the 1800s outside of European warfare. Was railway
technology really advancing so rapidly in the United States that missing the
mark by a mere 20 years and a few hundred miles counts as an anachronism?

~~~
jcranmer
Would a Minié rifle be an anachronism in the Franco-Prussian War, only 20
years and a few hundred miles from the Second War of Italian Independence?
(Yes, the Austrians discovered that they were outdated compared to the
Prussian guns, and so the French retooled to the chassepot rifles instead.)

It's not so much the fact that the technology was wildly obsolete as it is the
fact that there are distinct visual styles that are localized to particular
places in certain eras. If you know what those are, seeing people get it wrong
can be quite jarring. Imagine a scene supposedly set in Ancient Rome where one
character shows up in Prussian court dress.

~~~
kelnage
But your statement is about purchases, rather than common use. Just because
4-6-0 locomotives were being purchased then, it certainly doesn't follow that
you wouldn't see any 4-4-0 locomotives in 1870, does it? Especially since
4-4-0s were still being built in the US as late as 1893 according to Wikipedia
[1].

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-4-0#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-4-0#United_States)

~~~
zokier
Also "wild west era" is pretty vague to start with and can be considered to
cover almost whole 19th century. So the specific situation at 1870s might not
be even all that relevant

~~~
larrik
Even parts of the 20th century as well.

------
rasz
Reminds me of "Artist Asks People to Draw a Bicycle from Memory and Renders
the Results" [https://twistedsifter.com/2016/04/artist-asks-people-to-
draw...](https://twistedsifter.com/2016/04/artist-asks-people-to-draw-bicycle-
from-memory-and-renders-results/)

~~~
Calcite
In the MONA museum in Tasmania, they have real life versions of the “renders”.
It was amazing to see the inoperable bicycles in front of me.

------
valtism
An entomologist rates ant emojis:
[https://curlicuecal.tumblr.com/post/175362924100/an-
entomolo...](https://curlicuecal.tumblr.com/post/175362924100/an-entomologist-
rates-ant-emojis)

~~~
CGamesPlay
These are so weird. It is strange to me that complaints about number of legs
or the google ant's weird closer-middle leg passing under the closer-front leg
are eschewed.

------
btown
Even if you don’t care about scissor physics, read the article for the A-level
file pun, which is fully worth the price of admission.

~~~
jablan
I missed the pun initially because I associate that icon (U+1F4C1) with a
folder, not with a file. :(

~~~
mango7283
Are folders not a type of file? Or is it that files are types of folders?
Hmm...

------
mholt
This reminds me of how someone filed a bug against a quick illustration I did
of some cogs on my website because the cogs don't actually turn:
[https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/issues/2949](https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/issues/2949)

------
PhilippGille
Does anyone remember how Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, chimed in on the debate
regarding Google's Burger emoji?

[https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/924487551372615680](https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/924487551372615680)

------
pbhjpbhj
I don't know wh0 this person is but they do good marketing - the "last post is
either ..." is genius.

~~~
aasasd
Well, I hoped to read a similarly opinionated piece on transporting convex
objects on a camel :(

But then I went through a bunch more posts, including one on how SVG renderers
mix in background color _before_ figuring out the mixed colors of
objects—which seems obviously wrong.

------
K0SM0S
Goes to show that humor is a great tool to speak of _important_ things! :D

Also, funny that Apple should fail at skeuomorphism. [whistling face]

 _This post was sponsored by the text-emoticon resistance._

------
tempestn
> The handles on these collide very close to the hinge, so they barely close
> at all. If you could file those parts down, you could close them a lot more:

> But you couldn’t, because [edit: file emoji that HN strips out :( ] is the
> only file you can get in emoji, so this altered version doesn’t count.

------
darekkay
Inspired by this, I have written a similar post regarding the "parachute"
emoji [1].

[1] [https://darekkay.com/blog/parachute-
emoji/](https://darekkay.com/blog/parachute-emoji/)

------
haecceity
Why does Facebook have 3 sets of emojis?

~~~
Eikon
Different groups working on different projects, lack of communication and
global company vision or even internal competition leads to wasting money
producing the same thing multiple times.

Basically the "Not Invented Here" syndrome, at the company level.

~~~
tehlike
You could actually end up wasting more money if you get "alignment". Thats why
things take a shit ton of time for the most part.

~~~
thatsenough
Move fast and duplicate things.

~~~
mc3
Move fast and don't deduplicate things.

------
kensai
I just adore that someone went the lengths to write such an article and
someone else posted this on HN. So geeky and cool at the same time! :)

------
lifthrasiir
Unicode scissors emoji originate from two sources, and they both contribute to
this plethora of non-closing scissors.

First, Unicode scissors character (U+2702) originates from ITC Zapf Dingbats
series 100 [1]. As a result they have, unlike most Unicode characters, pretty
much standardized reference glyphs. And scissors glyphs do not completely
close too there.

Second, the original emojis were implemented in limited space (say, 16 by 16
pixels) and the design was constrained. In some platforms (especially
SoftBank) they were animated instead, and indeed there were some reference
emojis that close only in the animation [2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapf_Dingbats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapf_Dingbats)

[2] [https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-
list.html#2702](https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#2702)

------
pvaldes
On the other hand, there is no danger of stepping over a design copyrighted by
scissor makers if your scissors do not close.

~~~
junga
Makers of non closing scissors might sue you if their business is not running
well lately.

------
justinator
Now do, "what human figures in Renaissance paintings would not be absolute
monstrosities in the Real World"

------
userbinator
I'd never even realised that scissors could be right or left-handed, and now
that I do, I checked all the (physical) scissors I have, and it turns out I
have one left-handed pair and the other three are right-handed. I never used
one after the other, so didn't notice the difference.

~~~
matsemann
I don't really find that the way it's hinged make any big difference. So I've
never used that to consider if a scissor is left or right handed.

The problem is when it's not symmetrical. For instance the Fiskars [0], is
impossible to get the thumb through when using the left hand.

[0]: [https://imgur.com/a/bN3XkHp](https://imgur.com/a/bN3XkHp)

~~~
fanf2
It depends a lot on how much slop there is in the hinge. Your grip should pull
the blades together; if you use the scissors with the wrong hand it pulls the
blades apart. The shape of the grips is just for comfort, the geometry of the
blades is the true handedness.

------
karansarin1986
There can only be one #1. Joypixels or LG?

~~~
GuB-42
Depends if you are lefty or righty.

------
krick
So, not only LG is the only manufacturer of more or less usable smartphones up
to this point, but it is the single place that employs that only (as it seems)
graphic designer on the planet Earth that can actually draw a scissors? Huh.
It's a pity their advertising department sucks.

------
amelius
These are special scissors that have internal gears that allow them to be
closed, even though it doesn't seem like they can be closed. The advantage is
that you don't need to move the handles that much, and you train your hand to
become stronger.

------
rvz
The latest responses to the grand unsolved question of "Which Emoji Scissors
Close?"

> Designers: What were the design teams behind these scissor emojis thinking?
> Some of the designs break made important design principles these 'scissors'
> should be redesigned by an AI. Dieter Rams would call this another level of
> wrongness.

> HNers: Look at the intricate detail with all the designers from different
> companies attempting to create an emoji for a pair of open and closed
> scissors. Wow!, great analysis, so cool!

> Everyone: It's a scissors emoji.

> Me: Who cares? They are scissors emojis. Even if the designers can't create
> one closed so what, do a redraw later?

I'd side with the everyone else crowd here, since the change will be so tiny
that this storm in a tea cup will be a thing of the past.

------
mdrzn
I appreciate the "My last post was about either Wire toothbrushes or
Rasterization of coincident edges" bit at the end of the articles.

------
IgorPartola
This is super amusing but also isn’t this like “which emoji faces have an
anatomically correct bone structure?” Or “which floppy icons could be actual
floppies?”

------
walterkrankheit
This was cutting it close my best waste of time all day. :P

------
rendall
This analysis assumes only 2 dimensions! I think the handles should be able to
overlap somewhat. Some handles in real life do!

"Critique" aside, I adore this site!

~~~
Jolter
It's very unusual to find scissors in real life where the handles overlap, so
I think it makes sense to assume they don't.

Read the last few oddballs, they are indeed expected to overlap.

~~~
rendall
I just did now! And came back to comment how I had not read to the end! :)

------
adultSwim
Note that scissors cut well when kept partially closed (instead of repeatedly
fully opening and closing)

------
neop1x
What a nice century we live in that we have time for describing and discussing
these kind of problems. :)

------
weinzierl
Interesting and entertaining article, I enjoyed reading it. Now I want a _"
Which Emoji Weapons Shoot Real Bullets"_. I'm only half joking as many emoji
sets transitioned from the depiction of real weapons to some form of toy, like
a colorful water pistol. It would be interesting to find out who started it
and when the others followed.

~~~
surround
Apple started it. For a time, a text like this:

> Let’s meet at the park [pistol emoji]

Would have have very different meanings between platforms.

Eventually, all platforms followed Apple and switched to the water pistol.
(The ones that still show real pistols are obsolete fonts.)

[https://emojipedia.org/pistol](https://emojipedia.org/pistol)

At this point, Apple gets to decide what emojis look like, not the Unicode
Consortium.

~~~
mantap
Apple spearheaded this but you could imagine Facebook spearheading it and
everybody else following.

Honestly the original gun emoji was simply a bad idea because it makes it hard
to make apps that are age-rated for small children when there's a fricking gun
in the system keyboard.

~~~
read_if_gay_
I don't understand how "there's a fricking gun in the system keyboard" =>
"hard to make apps that are age-rated for small children". It's just a tiny
picture of a gun, hidden in a pile of hundreds of emojis at that. Where's the
problem?

~~~
hydgv
It was quite literally leftist virtue signalling. A way for those companies to
say "I support gun control".

~~~
nightcracker
I support gun control but do not support the censorship in emojis. So I don't
know about that.

------
q_eng_anon
take more adderal - you can't

------
starwarsguy
this is important

~~~
progx
Absolutly! First world problems are really important.

------
uptown
I realize this opinion is likely to be unpopular, but this industry wastes so
much time and energy on such irrelevant things.

~~~
robbrown451
Are you talking about the article? Because the people creating the emojis
clearly didn't spend a lot of time checking that the scissors would actually
work, which it seems like you'd approve of.

The article itself isn't so much "the industry" as a blogger just trying to
write something amusing.

~~~
sergiotapia
You know what he means dude.

~~~
robbrown451
I honestly don't.

------
kibbo
his is very funny scissors

