In the space of a fortnight Europe got hacked freezers in hundreds of supermarkets, thirty-odd hoax bomb threats on airliners, and a British government telling families to keep three days of food and water at home. It all looked like one story. I spent days trying to work out whether it is – and the answer is: partly, and not in the way it looks.

In Sjöbo, in southern Sweden, on the morning of 2 November the staff of the local ICA Kvantum open the shop and find the frozen food thawed. No door forced, no alarm tripped, no power cut. Somebody, somewhere in the world, in the middle of the night, told the freezers to go to 50 degrees, and the freezers obeyed. The manager writes it on Facebook with the resignation of a man who has just thrown away a stockroom: we've been hacked, they set the temperature to 50.

In the same hours, in Brussels, Stephan Moelans, managing director of Sabcobel, the company that runs the refrigeration for Delhaize supermarkets, is waking up his technicians. At one in the morning. He sends them out across Belgium and Luxembourg to do something that in 2026 sounds almost medieval: physically unplug the fridges from the network, shop by shop, before the rest of the stock melts. As he told the Belga news agency afterwards:

We began mobilizing technicians at 1 a.m. to get the situation under control

Three days later an Aer Lingus Airbus from Dublin to Rome lands at a French military base at Évreux, under fighter escort, while bomb disposal teams search it. They find nothing. On the same day some twenty other flights across Europe receive the same threat, and meanwhile the British tabloids are explaining to their readers which fourteen items to buy in order to survive an emergency nobody has declared.

Within a week you get the feeling of being inside a dystopian novel that somebody is writing too fast. I spent days collecting the pieces. This article is an attempt to put them in a row, separating what we know from what we think we understand. Because the two, as we'll see, don't coincide.

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The week

Let's rewind the tape. In mid-October, in France, the fridges of a few hundred supermarkets (between 250 and 350 stores according to the technical reconstructions, up to 700 according to others, across the Intermarché, Coopérative U, Carrefour Market and Leclerc chains) are driven overnight up to 50 degrees. Stock to throw away, and in a few shops the beginnings of a fire, because a fridge that heats is an appliance doing something it was never designed to do. The attack gets told as a French story, but the analysis by Sekoia picked up by Reuters finds units hit in Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany and Belgium too: the continent was already in it, nobody had counted it yet.

On the night between 2 and 3 November it happens again, this time on a continental scale: at least nine countries. Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, Estonia. Among the brands hit, Ikea, Delhaize, Carrefour, SuperValu (thirteen shops in Ireland). In Estonia the technicians step in within minutes and contain the damage; in Sweden ICA talks of “a limited number” of stores, which is the formula you use when you'd rather not say the number. In Athens a butcher tells the TV that his display fridge was set to 150 degrees, and that it took the technician two hours to get it back under control. And it isn't only frozen food: the same night Coolworld is attacked, the refrigeration supplier of the Établissement français du sang, the French blood transfusion service. Blood bags are not something anyone resells on the black market.

Then the emails. On Monday 2 November Hungary scrambles a Gripen to escort a Wizz Air flight from Luton to Budapest, threatened while already airborne. By Tuesday 3 the threats are already around thirty, twenty-seven according to the AP, plus a cruise ship; a Warsaw airport closes for a few hours. On Thursday 5 at least twenty-six are reported across Europe, on flights departing from sixteen countries. On Friday 6 another seventeen by noon, nine in Prague alone. Hungary scrambles its Gripens three times within an hour to escort a Brussels-Sofia and two flights out of Prague bound for Cyprus and Romania. In Dublin the headquarters of RTÉ, the Irish public broadcaster, is evacuated, and two other broadcasters receive threats the same day. Not a single device is found. Anywhere.

And finally London. On 22 October the Cabinet Office launches “Be Ready”, a three-year campaign asking families to keep enough at home for three days of self-sufficiency: water, food, a torch, a wind-up radio, cash, copies of documents. The same day the Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, backs it with a line about “increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks”, and the next day the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, defends it in person at a wildfire summit (and tells the Guardian about his own stash: beans, soup and Twiglets). From 27 October the papers start turning the same page of the government website over and over: the Independent headlines on the “attacks”, the Express on the “14 items to stockpile”, one news site on the “4 foods to have at home” (declared source: a Reddit thread...), another on the “13 things” to buy. Barclays publishes a survey: one Briton in four is stockpiling.

Four facts in fifteen days. Three of them are true. One is half true. And the question worth asking is whether they have anything to do with one another.

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The radiator

To understand what happened in the supermarkets you need to know something supermarkets would rather not tell you: the fridge in a modern shop doesn't have a thermostat, it has a computer. It's called a controller, and in this case it's almost always a Danfoss of the AK-SM 800A series, a Danish box whose job is to let the maintenance technician check the temperatures of fifty shops from his sofa instead of driving round in a van. Convenient, and sensible too: if a display cabinet fails at three in the morning, somebody sees it straight away.

The problem is that this computer has a web page, and that web page, in hundreds of shops, was reachable by anyone on the internet. It's as if the thermostat in your house had a door onto the landing, with the key left in the lock. And as if the key were also printed in the instruction manual: many of the logins used factory passwords, the ones written in the manual you download from the manufacturer's website. After the French attack, researchers put fake controllers online to see who came knocking, and whoever came knocking tried exactly those passwords.

There was no stroke of genius. The main flaw, catalogued as CVE-2025-41450, lets you skip the controller's login screen. It was found by researchers at a security firm, Claroty, along with two others. Danfoss disclosed them in March 2025, published the fix in August 2025, and the American CISA issued an advisory the same year; Claroty's detailed technical report came out in August 2026, complete with a count of the controllers reachable from the internet: thousands. It wasn't even the first time: back in 2023 Dutch researchers had found three vulnerabilities in the same family of devices. Danfoss itself admitted that most of the systems hit were old products no longer receiving updates, and another manufacturer, Copeland, found a flaw in its own end-of-life controllers. A researcher interviewed by the Associated Press put it better than I could:

Nobody broke into these refrigeration systems with a zero-day

And the NCSC, the British cybersecurity agency, in its statement to the AP:

The cyberattack on French supermarkets was a result of exploitation of known vulnerabilities

Translated for those who don't do this for a living: the door had been open for a year and a half, everyone who needed to know knew, and in the end somebody walked in. Surprising, isn't it?

Once inside, the attacker didn't even have to write a malicious program. They pressed “defrost”, the de-icing function every industrial fridge has as standard, and held it down all night. A security expert interviewed by Gizmodo, Lamplmair, put it like this:

A freezer should never accept an instruction to heat to 50°C

Who did it, nobody knows. Two pro-Russian groups, NoName057(16) and Z-Pentest Alliance, claimed it on Telegram, posting what they say are 2,500 lines of data stolen from Danfoss, and then deleted the posts. It's worth what it's worth: NoName habitually claims anything that happens in Europe, and no security agency has confirmed. What the agencies have confirmed is that this isn't a bored teenager: researchers at Lupovis saw days of reconnaissance before the night of 2 November, with login attempts coming from “bulletproof” hosting, the kind that doesn't answer police requests. Somebody did their homework, and chose targets that don't earn a penny. The Pentagon, meanwhile, is still investigating the freezers of more than half a dozen American military commissaries that went haywire in late August, and is coordinating with the French. The FBI and four other federal agencies have published an advisory to cold-chain operators. And the head of British cybersecurity confirmed that in the UK too there has been “a small number” of incidents of the same kind.

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The emails

The mechanism behind the threats against aircraft, as far as the police have said, is disarmingly banal: anonymous emails, sent in bulk to several airports with the list of “mined” flights. The Czech police said the email that reached Prague was addressed to the airport and that similar emails had reached other European hubs. The Danish police, on Friday, in a statement picked up by Reuters:

We are once again at Copenhagen Airport today in connection with threats directed at air traffic

And the office of the French Prime Minister:

An investigation is underway to determine the source of these alerts

In Spain the Guardia Civil received three in twenty minutes, on Air Europa departures from Madrid and Iberia arrivals from Rome and Milan. In Rome, on the other hand, one threat came by telephone to the control tower at Fiumicino. The protocol, at that point, leaves no room: the aircraft lands where it can, fighters escort it if needed, bomb disposal searches it, passengers wait on the apron. It costs tens of thousands of euros per flight and it's done anyway, because the alternative isn't on the table. In the Aer Lingus case, by the way, things went less smoothly than the press told it: according to Prime Minister Lecornu's office the fighters were sent after the pilot had failed to cooperate as expected, and pilot and co-pilot were questioned by the Évreux prosecutor before being allowed to leave. Aer Lingus says they acted impeccably. That too is part of the cost.

The number that puts things back in proportion came from Eurocontrol, the European air traffic body: the 14 flights affected on Thursday were 0.05% of the 26,300 flights on the European network that day. “Minimal” disruption, says Eurocontrol. The “flights in chaos” of the headlines never existed: the thousands of delays circulating in the same days were the normal delays of Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle and Schiphol, which produce them by the hundred every day with or without threats. The real effect of the emails isn't on air traffic. It's on people's heads, and on the coffers of the states.

Who did it, here too, nobody knows. The British government called them “malicious hoax threats”. The European transport commissioner said it's “too early” to say who is behind them, and even whether the episodes are linked to one another. Moscow denied, and there is no evidence of Russian or Iranian involvement, or of groups tied to them. There is actually one jarring note, reported by a single source and which I couldn't verify elsewhere: the threats against flights bound for Rome supposedly came from a group calling itself anti-feminist, which would suggest either several different hands jumping on the bandwagon, or a signature planted there to mislead. A private security analyst, Borie, told the AP that the European focus “could have a Russian angle”, adding straight away:

Iranian hybrid warfare is just as active in certain pockets of Europe

Experts from the various countries will meet in Brussels next week. Allow me to be sceptical: either the data exists, and then it should be made public, or it doesn't, and then there are only suspicions. And filling the headlines with a Russian threat on the basis of suspicions, I don't know whether that's more irresponsible or more reckless.

That said, the precedent everyone has in mind, without saying it too loudly, is 2024: waves of bomb threats against schools and courts in Czechia and Slovakia, about which the head of the Czech intelligence service Michal Koudelka spoke publicly like this:

There is clearly a visible Russian trace

And before that the incendiary parcels in DHL depots in Germany, Poland and the UK, where the European investigation identified 22 suspects recruited in Russia, the Baltics and Ukraine, often people in financial trouble paid for an odd job. That is evidence. This, for now, is an analogy. The difference between the two is the only thing that matters, and it's worth holding on to.

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The leaflet

And then there is the United Kingdom, where for two weeks you get the impression that the government is talking to its citizens non-stop. It isn't. The “Be Ready” campaign wasn't born this week. It had been planned at the start of the year by the Starmer government, announced in September, and was published on 22 October. And it's the British version of something the Nordic countries have done for decades: Sweden sends every household a leaflet titled “If crisis or war comes”, and has done so since 1943. A report by former Finnish president Sauli Niinistö to the European Commission, two years ago, recommended exactly those 72 hours of household self-sufficiency to all member states, and Brussels adopted it. The context is declared: last year's British national security strategy explicitly names Russian aggression, hostile cyber activity and sabotage. It's no secret, it's a public document.

On 23 October the Prime Minister defended the advice saying that “unexpected events” are becoming more common, and the Defence Secretary had his say. From there on, though, it's no longer the government talking. It's the press parroting (if only it were stochastic...) whatever sells copies. A site that checks these things, Prepared Britain, looked at the GOV.UK page on 3, 4, 5 and 6 November: no new guidance, no emergency instruction, no department telling anyone to prepare for a war. The “attacks” in the Independent's headline were a word lifted from the campaign's original text, which talks about bad weather, blackouts, water and phone outages. The Express's “14 items” were the list of 22 October. The “4 foods” came from Reddit. And in the middle of all this, the Met Office's ordinary weather bulletins ended up in the same notification stream, indistinguishable from the rest.

The only truly new thing on the British front is the speech by the head of the NCSC, the cybersecurity agency, who in the same week as the fridges talked about empty shelves and lights going out:

When food isn't on shelves, lights aren't on, businesses have gone under

He said that one day we might have to explain why we had seen the signs and not chosen well, and confirmed the British incidents tied to the controllers. That one is an explicit link between the fridges and the wind-up radio. Made by someone who has the data to make it.

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Three actors, but no director?

Having got this far, the temptation is strong, and I admit I was the first to feel it: all of this looks orchestrated. Fridges, planes, leaflets, all in the same fortnight, all pushing in the same direction: get used to it, get ready, something is about to happen that we know about and you don't. It's a legitimate hypothesis, and I put it on the table as such.

Let's call it hypothesis A: the alarms are manufactured, or inflated, to prepare the population for a crisis someone has already decided on or already sees coming. In its favour: the timing, the convergence of interests, the fact that Europe's military chiefs openly talk about a possible confrontation with Russia within a few years. The German chief of defence Carsten Breuer, in May:

Various indicators all point to one possible date of a Russian attack on NATO: 2029

and he adds “or even earlier”. His minister Boris Pistorius:

By 2029 or 2030, Putin could strengthen his army to the point where Russia would be capable of striking NATO

The French chief, Burkhard, says 2030. And the Czech general Karel Řehka:

Most of us, defense chiefs, share a similar view

Against it, though, weigh the fridges. There you have stock destroyed by the million, private companies losing real money, a supplier sending technicians out at one in the morning, blood bags at risk, American bases hit since August. It's a physical event, with real economic victims and a technical vector that anyone with a search engine for connected devices and the Danfoss manual can verify for themselves. No European government has any interest in burning its own supermarkets to educate public opinion, and it would be a strangely expensive and traceable way of doing it. The same goes for the emails: every diversion with Gripens in the air costs the state money and embarrassment, and the day one of those emails were traced back to a friendly service the political damage would be devastating. The cost-benefit ratio of “doing it to yourself” is terrible.

Then there's a number that weighs against the very premise of a “fortnight of stage direction”. Forescout counted more than twenty claimed attacks on refrigeration systems between January and October 2026, and the most active groups were precisely Z-Pentest and NoName057(16). This isn't a sudden escalation: it's the visible tail of a campaign that has been running for a year, and that only became news when it hit enough supermarkets on the same night. The feeling of orchestration comes from the media's attention threshold, not from the real density of events.

Hypothesis B: an adversary, or more than one, does real things that cost next to nothing. One email to twenty airports costs zero and moves the fighters of three countries. One manual password on a 2015 controller empties a hundred supermarkets in a night. Governments, which have long expected this phase and have written it into their documents, use the incidents to push a preparedness they already had on the agenda. It's called communicative opportunism, and it needs no director. And the media, which live on repetition, multiply the same web page into ten headlines. Three different trades, three different interests, nobody coordinating with anybody. It looks orchestrated because the interests converge, not because somebody aligned them.

And there's a third box the two-way scheme doesn't allow for. Call it hypothesis A': there is a single director, but it's the adversary. Fridges and emails are one package of low-cost hybrid warfare, calibrated to produce in democracies exactly the effect “the government is preparing us for something”. In that case the timing would be deliberate, and hypothesis B would be true for the governments and false for the attackers. It's cheaper than hypothesis A, because it doesn't require anyone to burn their own supermarkets, and more unsettling than hypothesis B, because the target isn't the stock but the trust.

The problem with hypothesis A is that it can't be refuted: any alarm confirms it, and the absence of alarms doesn't weaken it. That old genius Popper would say that a hypothesis which cannot be refuted is not a scientific hypothesis; I'd say, more simply, that it's a feeling. To keep it alive honestly you have to turn it into predictions that can fail.

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What to watch carefully, from here to six months out

If hypothesis A is true, we should see: threats that are never attributed to anyone, or attributed vaguely and without names; claims like NoName's taken at face value without verification; preparedness campaigns that accelerate regardless of whether the incidents continue or stop. Careful, though: the first two would happen even if B were true and the investigations were simply slow or classified. The only prediction that truly tells A from B is the third: if the incidents fall off and Be Ready accelerates anyway, changes tone or finds new emergencies to cite, column A fills up for real. If hypothesis B is true, we should see: arrests with first and last names, like the 22 of the incendiary parcels; a public technical report on the controllers, with the addresses and infrastructure of whoever got in; and a drop in the British alarms once the media window closes and the GOV.UK page goes back to being a GOV.UK page.

Keep count. I will too, and if in six months the column that has filled up is the wrong one, I'll try to write it here.

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References and further reading

The fridges

• Gizmodo, supermarket freezers across Europe hit with another cyberattack – the second wave, 2-3 November, with the Lamplmair quote.
• CNBC, supermarket fridges hack and Axios, Europe supermarket fridges attacks – overview of the countries and chains hit.
• PBS NewsHour, what to know about another cyberattack on European supermarket fridges – the AP piece with the NCSC statement and the “no zero-day” quote.
• The Hacker News, attackers heat French supermarket fridges – the October French attack, first technical account.
• SentinelOne Labs, Defrost and Disrupt – assessment of the refrigeration attacks, the Forescout count and the claiming groups.
• Aviatrix threat research, Danfoss controllers and Archyde, attackers target Danfoss controllers – the AK-SM 800A, CVE-2025-41450 and the default passwords.
• IndexBox, hackers targeted Europe's internet-connected fridges before the coordinated attacks and Tildee, cyberattacks target refrigeration systems – the Lupovis reconnaissance and the blood bank supplier.
• Newsweek, FBI issues warning as hackers target grocery store refrigerators and Latin Times, cyberattack on refrigeration systems – the FBI advisory and the US military commissaries.

The hoax threats

• CNN live, bomb threats on flights across Europe and Al Jazeera, hoax or bomb threats: what we know – day-by-day count of the threats.
• NPR, Europe flights hoaxes and ABC News, bomb threats targeting flights and media outlets continue – the AP reporting with the Eurocontrol figure and the Borie quote.
• NBC News, Dublin-Rome flight diverted, Euronews, Airbus from Dublin to Rome diverted to France and Irish Times, Aer Lingus pilots questioned – the Évreux diversion and what followed.

Be Ready

• Prepared Britain, government preparedness campaign and Prepared Britain, UK government stockpile food and water – the daily checks on the GOV.UK page.
• ADS Advance, UK national resilience campaign and The National, UK government advises stockpiling water and food – the launch of 22 October.
• Nation.Cymru, Burnham defends stockpiling advice and LBC, Burnham on flooding and stockpiling – the “unexpected events” line and the beans.
• NationalWorld, UK cyber attack warning and emergency kit – an example of how the page was re-headlined.
• Met Office, UK warnings – the ordinary bulletins that ended up in the same stream.
• Swedish government, the new edition of “If crisis or war comes” and MSB press release on the leaflet (in Swedish).
• EU Law Live, civil and military preparedness after the Niinistö report and European Parliament briefing on preparedness – the 72-hour recommendation.

The precedents and the generals

• Euronews, Slovakia detains two over alleged hybrid attacks – the 2024 bomb threats in Czechia and Slovakia.
• Yahoo News, Russia behind parcel fires in UK – the DHL incendiary parcels and the 22 suspects.
• European Pravda, Breuer on 2029, NV, Czech general warns Russia could attack NATO by 2029 and United24, French military chief warns Russia could strike NATO by 2030 – the defence chiefs' statements.

#Europe #Cybersecurity #HybridWarfare #BeReady #Danfoss #Infrastructure #Media #Journalism #Writing

La vie solitaire de É. Sambòko prend la suite des #Didascalies de Fenêtre sur ville. Un personnage est apparu, qui déplace la perspective de la ville et de son écriteur. Sambòko veut dire “chaussure” mais aussi “énigme” si l’on oriente autrement l’accent. Où va É. Sambòko ? L’on ne sait.

La vie solitaire de É. Sambòko – 5.1

Parfois rien n’advient du vide, celui de soi ou du dehors, qui est le même. Une forme de l’attente se glisse dans le corps d’Éros. L’œil se tient seul à la fenêtre, au bord du trou de la ville où débaroulent les choses. Et demeure à regarder le quoi, cette matière du monde, la multiple surface de ce quoi, aussi profonde que l’insensé d’un rêve. Durant des jours ou des semaines d’une éternité désœuvrée sous la pesanteur de l’air.

Courte liste d’oiseaux que dévorent les nuages, l’aréquier planté là dans une cour odorée par les eaux de vaisselle, les mousses d’un savon contre les vers de peau, le champ tendu des tôles entre manguiers : image devant Éros, que détrempent les pluies, racornit le soleil. Image dans la tête, trou de la ville ou puits des orpailleurs tombés sous le ciel blanc, on y traque le fil, la veine, on s’y ensevelit à déganguer les mots, en ne tirant souvent que terre et d’anciens os de captifs ou de chiens.

#LaviesolitairedeÉSambòko

Doom Slayer Across Fiction- Intro

I've always been a big fan of the Doom series. The Doom Guy, and later evolved to the the Doom Slayer, has something refreshing about the simplicity of his character. Rip and Tear until it is done. That's it. A guy so angry he can't die, whose soul purpose is to tear through demons and crush evil. Other protagonist have foibles, weaknesses, character flaws, conflicting motives, complex personalities, etc. Not the Doom Slayer. He is completely uncompromising, and the only thing they fear (they being the demons of hell) is him. He's heavy metal music distilled into a living being. If you took energy drinks and a nuclear bomb and put them into a Horadric cube. He gives no quarter, and his idea of diplomacy is it to kill God and summon the Dark Lord... so that he can kill him.

This type of character only really works in the Doom Universe, which is just a first person shooter focused on killing hoards of demons and undead with a plot to provide it some form of structure. But what if.... what if he was dropped in other fictional universes (or multiverses) to take on evil empires and factions. How would it go? I'm going to have a series of posts looking into just that. Full fledged fan fiction of the Doom Slayer entering other realms, just for fun. Some of these will run long so I'll break them into multiple posts. Here is a list of some of the universes I'm considering, though I will certainly could add more and may remove a few:

-A Song of Ice and Fire -Lord of the Rings -Star Trek -Starwars -Starcraft -Hyperion -The Dark Tower -The Wheel of Time -Warhammer 40K -Halo -Terminator (or Matrix) -Mass Effect

So stay tuned!

I sometimes get frustrated by all the things that I need to do after I get out of bed, and before I can sit down here to do this. Sometimes it paralyzes me in bed, and I linger there under the warm blankets longer than I should. Now that I'm sitting here doing this, after doing all the things; I don't know what to type.

Pills, work, vaccines, therapy and doctor visits are my life right now. I suppose I'm getting shit done. Flu and covid shots last weekend. 3rd Hepatitis AB vax later today. I have had all the shots I can get now I suppose. Covid, flu, shingles, tetanus, and hepatitis all within a year.

Over three weeks now with these pills. Venlafaxine XR 37.5. Selective serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. Yesterday was my appointment to reassess the dosage, and to see how things are going. My response to them is pretty typical. Felt like shit at first, and now I don't feel much different, but sort of. Not necessarily better. Just weird. Still just weird. Tired. It has not been long enough to really know for sure how, or if, they are going to help me. Another 30 days at the lowest dose possible. By then I will know more. These pills are a subtle and slow altering of brain chemistry balance. Not like the instantaneous euphoric effects of narcotics, or a few quick shots of whiskey. The waiting to see is annoying.

It makes me think of weight loss and fitness. How when you begin altering eating habits and exercising, there are no results for quite awhile at first. You have to be consistent with it all for days and days, and have faith in the process.

I don't think I'm any more fucked up than I have been since I started thinking. So why now? Why am I getting therapy and taking pills now? Today is day 676 of sobriety, and I'm old(er). I don't have the option of medicating with dangerous amounts of alcohol. Well, I suppose that is not exactly true. The option is always there. But no. Realistically, if I want to continue being alive it is not an option. I think of this as like having strains and injury at 55 compared to at 30 or younger. Strains and injury take longer to heal now. It seems the same with these mental issues, or w'tvr'tf this should be called. Only not like it at all. This is not an achy muscle impairing my range of motion for more days than it used to when I was younger. I can work through that. This thing has become too much. I can't get over it. Or work through it. I don't even really know what IT is. I am not out of, or in control. Constantly tripping and stumbling but never falling. I need help, so I'm getting help.

Assis par terre. Regardant les fossoyeurs. Pas de larmes. Le regard épuisé et stoïque. Le regard de quelqu’un qui semble avoir tout vu.

Quand on a vu partir tant de personnes, comment trouver la force de continuer. Il y arrive.

Enterrer la personne avec qui l’on a passé 70 ans de sa vie. C’est une sensation que je ne connaîtrai jamais.

L’univers de mes grands-parents n’est pas le mien. Nos prismes sont differents. Notre vie est différente. Mais je ne sais pas si d’aujourd’hui est la meilleure époque face.

I just finished this book and thought it was great, in parts outstanding . The author went to a special school program for autistic kids in 1982 and he tracked down a few of his former students and teachers in the early 2000s and writes about them. But since he's autistic himself and has made a career in government policy analysis, he is also able to think through aspects of the autistic experience of the world. It's really insightful, sweet and – in parts – sad. Also quite interesting how the general notion of autism from 20 years ago is already very outdated. The title seems a little heavy tongue-in-cheek, but it refers to a phrase one of the kids repeated over and over back in school as echolalia.

Everyone seems to want to talk to me lately. out of nowhere. i dont want to talk to anyone. not sure why this is so difficult for people to understand. i had a fight last night. very sucessful evening. came home with an ice pack on my head, i guess thats the prize for winning. great. i dont know what else to say. i think i did quite well. could’ve been worse. people could’ve spoken to me, but i guess they couldnt speak. how funny. i was waiting for a reply too. embarrasing.

I hope everyone had a wonderful evening. i, on the other hand, really did. wish i couldve said the same for them, but seeing me for the last time mustve been really, really upsetting. ill probably sleep with an ice pack and hope people stay away from me. ill appreciate it.

Sincerely, Perfectly harmless.

If you’ve ever published a book, you’ve probably gotten one of these AI-generated emails all “I love your book [insert AI slop summary here] would you like me to work on publicizing it for you?”

I now get at least five of these a week. I’ve gotten them for Shutout, Losing My Faculties, It Takes a Worried Man, Donorboy, and Forever Changes. So all books that are in the neighborhood of 2 decades old. I wonder if I’m being targeted because they think I’m old and will fall for scams more easily.

In any case, these have recently started to get better. I got one asking if they could add my book to a Goodreads list, which, like, they don’t need my permission for, but I could see someone engaging, going “well, sure, knock yourself out,” and then presumably they come back and say “here’s all the other stuff I can do for you, send me some money.”

But today I got one pretending to be from Kate Tuttle, who writes about books for the Boston Globe. The email address it came from was info.kate.tuttle@gmail.com. Which is kind of weird but at least semi plausible as a real email. The email asks if I’d be interested in having a feature written about me, includes some AI-generated pap about Losing My Faculties, and does not ask for money. Presumably that comes with the next email.

I know enough about how books and book publicity works to know that writers do not just randomly reach out to authors asking if they could write a feature because the author wrote a book 20 years ago. I’m sure the real Kate Tuttle is inundated with requests from actual book publicists and has no need to be cold emailing obscure authors. But, again, I can imagine someone falling for this.

So, PSA. Don’t fall for this.

Also: this shit is exhausting. You just have to be constantly on guard for scams, which are coming at you through every communication method you ever use. AI didn’t create scamming, but it does seem to be facilitating it. One more reason to close the data centers.

I've made a discovery that excites the hell out of me. It's not a guarantee at the moment, but there's high probability. If it happens, I'm not sure how ecstatic I might become. I'll update near this time next year. 😸

Once upon a time, I was highly competitive and considered quite skilled in a certain field. I loved it beyond reason. The technical skill it took to win competitions really got my blood buzzing. I found the act to be very flow inviting, though I didn't recognize it at the time.

I just discovered that if I can get myself close to back where I was, I can potentially pursue a dream I once had. Like realistically do so. Even compete!

I know someone who is going to be working on her breath control for the next many months. This makes me so happy!

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

Hola!

Me quiero deshacer de estos libros. Pero antes de liberarlos en un parque o venderlos al peso siempre intento regalarlos a alguien que los quiera.

Si vienes el 22 a La Mirador, el 27 a charlar de Yesteryear en Mujeres & Compañía o a Filomelas o a Furias o a dónde sea que te cruces conmigo avisa y tuyo es por riguroso orden de petición.

Aquí la lista

1. El factor Rachel. Una chavala irlandesa y el amor romántico y salir de ahí. Con humor pero tb con una mirada política

2. El estado del mar. Toda la oscuridad del amor romántico y la masculinidad peor. Narrar tu cosificación paulatina.

3. La península de las cuatro estaciones. Lirismo sobre el paso del tiempo, la felicidad, la vejez, la calma

4. Sputnik mi amor. Tras la sorpresa inicial de Tokio Blues en mis 20 lo cierto es que a mi personalmente no me gusta cómo escribe Murakami

5. Agua negra. Novelón y encima breve. Su autora no me cae bien. No lo quiero en casa pero lo recomiendo

6. Una jaula en un jardín de verano. Adoro este libro. Si ninguna lo quiere me lo quedo, pero quiero que la gente se lo lea. Este es para Tindri!

7. La fiesta. Típica novela de asesino en grupo cerrado. Bien escrita. Entretenida. Este es para Mami

8. Black water Sister. Violencia defensiva. Feminismo desde lo que no es occidente.

9. Cuentos de Terramar. Relatos de Ursula. Todo bien.

10. Then things went dark. Realities y violencia machista.

11. Mi marido es de otra especie. Relatos lentos y silenciosos. Este es para Mami

12. Por qué no soy feminista. Una bazofia, para qué engañaros

13. El rey en la sombra. Las mujeres desaparecen de la historia siempre. En Etiopía también. Este libro recupera su presencia

14. Chica brillantes. Best seller que le da una vuelta al tropo misógino de las novelas sobre chicas jóvenes que asesinan salvajemente

15. Las hijas horribles. Sobre la hijidad

16. Guía de autodefensa feminista. Si tienes jóvenes cerca igual te interesa. También para Mami

17. Las vidas secretas de las mujeres de los asesinos. Maravilla de novela sobre sororidad de verdad. Para Tindri

Stay entertained thanks to our Weekly Tracker giving you next week's Anticipated Movies & Shows, Most Watched & Returning Favorites, and Shows Changes & Popular Trailers.

Anticipated Movies

• Madden
• Ghost Soldier
• Victorian Psycho
• Paper Tiger
• How to Rob a Bank
• ☆ Ebenezer

Anticipated Shows

• The Body
• The Good Daughter
• ☆ 12 12 12
• Cunk on Cinema

Returing Favorites

• The Institute — Season 2
• The Devil's Plan — Season 3
• The Curse of Oak Island — Season 14
• ☆ The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power — Season 3
• The Empress — Season 3
• Ethos — Season 2
• Shetland — Season 11
• Astrid: Murder in Paris — Season 7
• The Chosen — Season 6
• La que se avecina — Season 17

Trending Shows Status Changes

• Taken: Natalee Holloway — Returning Series → Ended
• The Greatest — Returning Series → Ended
• Bass X Machina — Returning Series → Ended
• Where the Mask Ends — Returning Series → Ended

Most Watched Movies this Week

• new Resident Evil
• +1 Verity
• -2 The Dog Stars
• new Primetime
• new Heart of the Beast
• -4 Spider-Man: Brand New Day
• new A Story of Derry
• new Apocalypse Z: New World
• -5 Ali G: Who Iz I?
• new The Odyssey

Most Watched Shows this Week

• +1 MobLand
• -1 VisionQuest
• new Dexter: Resurrection
• -1 Tulsa King
• +4 Marshals
• new Tracker
• new Nocturne
• -3 Dark Matter
• -5 South Park
• -2 Lupin

Popular Trailers

• Now Playing in Theaters — Wild Horse Nine
• The love for our Peter Parker keeps swinging! — Spider-Man: Brand New Day
• The Doomsday Global Tour Is Coming. — Avengers: Doomsday
• That’s our cat! — The Cat in the Hat
• Don't Miss the Season Finale — VisionQuest
• Charming — Wicker
• The wait is over. The legend begins. — Ramayana: Rise of a Legend
• October Vs November — Ebenezer
• Watch at Home November 3 — Sense and Sensibility
• Watch at Home November 10 — Other Mommy

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Hi, I’m Kevin 👋. Product Manager at Trakt and creator of Rippple. If you’d like to support what I'm building, you can download Rippple for Trakt, explore the open source project, or go Trakt VIP.

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Once as I was walking, crossing the tall bridge on my way home from work in the warm summer evening, on the bike lane, I was passed by someone who had a sourdough loaf strapped to the back of his backpack.

As he speeded past me on his bicycle, I saw the loaf of bread and his butt crack

And I thought, that that is what freedom looks like

De MOPeS

Olivia

Satellieten zijn handige dingen eenmaal ter plekke en werkzaam zoals vooraf beoogd, liefst op geruime afstand van de werkelijkheid bestuurbaar maar zodra ze niet meer lekker mee doen aan meegeleverde gebruiksaanwijzing zijn het hopeloze objecten zwevend op een lastige plek voor reparaties op locatie, dat was heel mild gedacht, het zijn gewoon kut apparaten op een klote plek waar meer mis mee gaat dan alle makers vooraf kunnen bedenken, willen weten. Weer zo'n tot falen gedoemd project van nutteloos ijverige mensen en hun passie voor vervorming van hun rede voor opstaan. Rotzooi herstellen voor een malende monoloog in een dwaas brein in stand houden. De holle ruimte in hun kop reis faciliteren met dergelijke instrumenten, op een scherm turen naar wat je met je ogen kunt zien, van voren en van onderen, instrumenten sturen signalen naar instrumenten en dan, nou dat is het maar zolang ze signalen sturen en ontvangen is het goed. Zodra ze daar een probleem mee hebben, de eigenaar gefrustreerd, haar baas, Zaadtellied kapitein Kurk van Kurk Ruimte llc moet Olivia opdraven en zo snel mogelijk deze kwakkelende Kurk zaadtellied tot de orde der zakenlieden repareren, de Kurk Kerk weer tevreden is over de connectie met het spul zwervend hemelruim. Olivia had geen hekel aan dit werk ze haatte het, maar ze was er wel goed in, goed genoeg om Kurks ruimte rotzooi zo te repareren dat het een poosje zou duren voor er een oproep kwam voor rereparatie, die klote tochtjes richting buitenaardse atmosferen moesten worden geminimaliseerd.

Ze betaalden, hadden eerst de opleiding betaald, na de ineenstorting van het ruimtevaart voor het volk project waar ze toen nog vol enthousiasme over alles rondom en in de ruimte aan mee werkte, waar ze weinig meer aan overhield dan voldoening en zich daar prima mee redde, kwam ze via via een scala aan ruimte commercie cowboys terecht bij Kurk, net zo'n hufter als de rest maar ze was op het moment van aanmelden, aannemen het job hoppen zat en zo werd ze een van Kurks overbetaalde Zaadtellieden, met schroevendraaier en knijptang zonder zwaartekracht zijn rotzooi in leven houdend zodat het kon zenden en ontvangen wat het moest. Deze saaie, suffe reparatie trip duurde anderhalve week, ze moest zeven of acht van die krengen weer tot de orders roepen of na een poosje draaien en knijpen erkennen dat ze waren verworden tot schroot, nog meer schroot van de afval maatschappij, het enigste dat de mens nalaat is rommel, overal en ergens in hun nest, eens zo weldadige levensbron, nu een schroothoop, mensen rijden ingepakt in opgedirkte containers naar andere containers, orderen voor de orde duizendenéén afval producten zelf ook weer verpakt in afval, driedubbel, en dat aan één stuk door, en om dergelijke processen te stroomlijnen gebruikten ze Kurks Zaadtellieden, en Dicks, en Riks en Achmets en Rons en zo voorts, en dan nog de op overheids brandstof aangedreven ruimte rommel rommelend met meters van het meetbare, volgens de huidige tekenaars des tijds belangrijke om te weten via passen en meten, zij het pasje ervoor, voor hun in zweeftuigjes verpakt meet gereedschap, gepopnageld, last, niet en gedraaid in een gevleugelde IT krijger, hebberig kreng voor vrekken zoals Kurk, Dick, Rik en de rest. God helpe hun want niemand anders echt wil het echt.

Ze zat al een half uur te wrikken aan spul waaraan anders spul vast zat, zelfs haar favoriete tang kreeg de juiste moer niet los, bij oudere modellen kon ze gewoon de niet juiste losdraaien, kwam ze er ook wel, de nieuwe makers hadden les gehad van IT Bill en lieten de kern van hun probleem liefst ongestoord voortkreupelen zonder kans op verbetering, vooral geen enigszins bereikbare los te wrikken schroefjes waarmee anderen hun konden redden als er nog meer mis ging dan gewoonlijk, de makers dus veroordeeld tot een vlot afstootbaar lot, ze had menig op zich nog aardig deugdelijk apparaat tot schroot verklaard alleen maar omdat ze de haperende kern niet kon bereiken en daarna dan vrij eenvoudig repareren. Dat deed ze zonder wroeging. Het is ook wonderlijk grut de rommel bouwende als modern omschreven mens, hoe veiliger ze iets denken te maken des te sneller raak je het door wissewasjes kwijt, moet je ze afschrijven ruim voor houdbaarheidsdata. Het lijkt alsof ze bang zijn voor herstel, of het is op Titanic lijkende overmoed, ons product is zo ontzettend degelijk, kan niet stuk gaan, nooit, dus waarom reparatie opties toevoegen dan zeg je meteen dat het object omdeugdelijk is.

Ze had twee van die nieuwbakken zweef kisten op de lijst zien staan en bij voorbaat afgeschreven, ze ging minimum aandacht eraan besteden, 11 minuten maximaal, was het probleem dan nog onduidelijk, onoplosbaar met normaal gereedschap dan duwde ze de krengen in een andere baan, volkomen uit koers, op koers naar de zon of zo, met de mededeling dat de kern was aangetast door ruimte algen en door die confrontatie met alien onkruid zichzelf niet langer kon beschouwen als een complex intelligent algoritme drummer maar enkel als een zwakte niet in staat zich te weren tegen een simpele schimmel. Iets dergelijks maar dan geloofwaardig voor de afdeling IT dus met cijfers, afkortingen rondom meeteenheden en een paar grafische voorstellingen in cirkels, staven en diagrammen, niet te vergeten formule representatie, zonder dat gedoe is niks meer geloofwaardig voor een kliekje ...schappers.

Het was onnodig veel moeite omdat de afdeling IT allang niet meer omviel van berichten van kapotte Kurk zaadtellieden, ze waren blij dat ze lang genoeg capabel bleken om iets bij ons registreren, meten of verzenden zodat het leek alsof dat schroot zinvol met ons om eigen as draaide. Kurk was blij dat hij er wat meer dan een jaarvoorraad wc papier in een uur aan verdiende tenminste zo liet hij rondom doorschemeren in het helle licht van de massa media. Olivia gaf een klap op een ouder model en die gaf een krimp waardoor een hoopje rommel, ruimte algen, heelal mos, verdween uit het kantelmechanisme en de zend apparatuur weer ongestoord verder kon gaan. Twee van de zeven, gerepareerd in 3 dagen, 2 ontslagen en weggeduwd uit de oude baan, nog 3 zwevende Kurken te gaan en dan terug naar haar tweede baan, de atmosfeer zijn voor Mees, de moeizame ontvanger van zijn affecties, haar duurzame stalker, inbreker in gevoelsleven, missie dadiger waarbij zij dus zijn missie was en zij inmiddels gehecht daaraan, jammer genoeg.

My beard is red, or orange frankly speaking. However, underneath the left nostril, it’s grayed, even white, resembling a trail of snot, sinking vertically down to my upper lip.

Today, just for fun, i licked at it, as a preschooler would.

of course it tasted of beard, not snot, but i think it is maybe also an early taste of the second childhood

You copy a “blank name” from a generator site. In one app it saves and your name disappears, exactly like the screenshot promised. In the next app the field just empties itself and refuses to save. In a game, it eats your rename card and then shows a box.

The sites that hand out these characters all swear theirs works, and they openly contradict each other, sometimes on the same character for the same app. I build text tools for a living, so I went looking for why. The honest answer is that the question everyone asks, “which character works?”, is the wrong question. The right question is what each of these characters actually is, because every app you paste into is silently asking exactly that.

Here is what the evidence supports as of late 2026, including the places where the evidence runs out and the tool sites are guessing.

First, the door that is closed everywhere

No invisible character works in a username. Not on Discord, not on Instagram, TikTok, X or Roblox. Handles are validated against a small set of allowed characters, usually lowercase letters, digits, underscores and periods. Anything outside that set is refused before it is even stored.

Everything in this article is about the other field: the display name, the nickname, the bio line, the message box. Those fields accept broad text, which is where invisible characters live. When a guide says “invisible name for Discord”, it always means the display name or a server nickname. Your @handle underneath stays exactly as visible as ever, which matters later when we talk about moderation.

A blank name is not an empty name

Here is the fact the whole topic rests on. In Unicode, the official list of whitespace characters, the ones software agrees count as “space”, has exactly 25 entries. The ordinary space is one of them. Of all the characters people use for blank names, only one, the no-break space U+00A0, is on that list.

The rest are not spaces at all. They are letters, symbols and format controls that happen to draw nothing. When you paste one into a name field, you are not submitting an empty name. You are submitting a name written in characters whose ink is invisible. Whether it survives depends entirely on which invisible thing you submitted, because apps filter by what a character is, not by what it looks like.

Meet the characters

U+3164, Hangul Filler, the letter that draws nothing. This is the workhorse of blank names, and its secret is mundane: in Unicode it is classified as a letter. It comes from Korean text processing, where it fills an empty slot inside a syllable block, so standing alone it renders as blank width. Name validators that ask “does this field contain at least one letter?” look at U+3164 and answer yes. Trimming functions that remove whitespace look at it and see a letter, so they leave it alone. It even has genuine width on screen, a full syllable's worth, which is why a name made of it can hold space open in a layout.

U+2800, Braille Pattern Blank, the symbol that is not a space. A Braille cell with no dots raised. The Unicode standard says about it, in plain words, that while it is imaged as a fixed-width blank in many fonts, it does not act as a space. It is classified as a symbol, not whitespace, not a format character, and it is the only popular blank character that passes almost every filter unchanged: trimming ignores it, normalisation ignores it, whitespace checks ignore it. That is why it is the standard answer for blank messages. A chat app asking “is this message empty?” checks for text, finds a symbol, and lets it send.

The zero-width family, U+200B, U+200C, U+200D, U+2060 and U+FEFF. These are format characters, instructions to the rendering engine (allow a line break here, join these letters, do not break here) rather than text. They have no width and draw nothing. They are also, in the words of the analysis that tested them, the first thing a sanitiser strips. Apps that clean incoming text remove format characters on principle, because they are a classic tool for hiding things inside text. A few survive in odd corners, but as a family they are the weakest choice for a name, and the first to break.

U+00A0, the no-break space, the only real space here. It is genuine whitespace, which cuts both ways. Most trimming code removes it, and when software normalises text it is commonly rewritten into an ordinary space, at which point it gets trimmed like any other space. Padding built from it simply evaporates in many apps. It has one strange claim to fame below, in Free Fire, where a version-specific report says it is now the only character left standing.

U+115F and U+1160, the filler twins. The modern Korean syllable fillers that U+3164 normalises into. You will rarely copy them directly, but an app that normalises your pasted U+3164 quietly turns it into U+1160, which is still invisible and still a letter. Normalisation re-spells these characters; it does not delete them. What deletes things is a separate filter, and the difference between those two mechanisms explains half the contradictory advice online.

Why apps keep a character or kill it

Every field you paste into runs some version of the same three checks.

First, trimming. The field removes whitespace from the ends, and often asks whether anything is left. Real spaces die here. So does a name made only of spaces, in every app, without exception. The blank characters above mostly survive this check precisely because Unicode does not classify them as whitespace. (One measured exception worth knowing: JavaScript's own trim also removes U+FEFF, so the byte order mark dies in most web-based fields before anything else runs.)

Second, character class filtering. Name systems increasingly follow the identifier security rules written for exactly this problem, which exclude format characters and invisible “default ignorable” characters. That is the standards-level reason the zero-width family keeps disappearing and why platforms tighten over time: they are adopting the documented rulebook, one update at a time.

Third, plain policy. Some platforms simply decide that a name nobody can read is a moderation problem, and block or reset it regardless of how clever the character is. Policy beats technique every time, eventually.

What actually works, app by app, late 2026

I am going to be careful here, because this is where the internet lies to you. Most “works!” claims come from tool sites with a copy button to sell, not from dated tests. The only dated, first-person platform testing I could find in this whole research was published on 23 October 2026, and it was also the most pessimistic source in the pile. Read the confident claims below with that in mind.

WhatsApp messages: U+2800 works, U+200B does not. The evidence here is unusually consistent. A message of only spaces cannot be sent at all; the send button never wakes up. A U+2800 message sends and arrives as an empty bubble. WhatsApp strips the zero-width space before checking, so a message made of U+200B is judged empty and refused. For a blank profile name or About line, guides converge on U+2800 (with U+3164 also reported), but note that WhatsApp requires at least one character in About, which is the entire reason the trick exists.

TikTok nickname: U+3164 yes, zero-widths stripped on save. The detailed failure reports are instructive: the zero-width characters appear to be accepted while you type, then the saved nickname quietly reverts, because TikTok filters U+200B, U+200C, U+200D and U+2060 at save time. The Hangul Filler survives, and U+2800 is the accepted fallback. Several sources note TikTok's filter tightens and loosens with app updates every few weeks, so treat any TikTok answer as having an expiry date.

Instagram name and bio: U+3164, with an argument about U+2800. A measured per-app table built by a developer who catalogued these characters says Instagram keeps U+3164 in the Name field and in bio lines, and, surprisingly, rejects U+2800 in bios while keeping it elsewhere. Other guides recommend U+2800 for bios as a spacing tool, which is a different job from being the whole bio. What is agreed: invisible characters in the bio still count toward the 150-character limit, and Instagram's background save process strips some characters some of the time, which is why the same paste works on Tuesday and not on Friday.

Discord: display names and server nicknames, not usernames. U+3164 and U+2800 are both widely reported as kept in display names and server nicknames, with a caution from one recent guide that the global display-name field is stricter than server nicknames and tightens after updates. One test table claims even U+200B works in nicknames, which contradicts everything known about how sanitisers treat format characters; I would not trust it. A blank Discord message is a U+2800 job, same as WhatsApp.

PUBG Mobile and BGMI: U+3164, and mind the rename card. Multiple sources, including the measured table, agree the Hangul Filler is the surviving character for a blank in-game name and that U+2800 likely does not survive there. Every change consumes a rename card, so this is the worst possible place to experiment blind. If you are setting a game name, work from tested styles, including blank-name options that are known to register, rather than pasting strangers' characters: this is exactly the problem I built the name-style lists at Fonti's PUBG name styles to avoid.

Free Fire: the guides are out of date, possibly including this paragraph soon. Most pages still tell you to use U+3164 in Free Fire, full stop. But the only source that ties its claims to actual game versions reports that U+3164 has been blocked since patch OB43, producing the “invalid name” error, and that in the current version only the no-break space U+00A0 still registers. Two other recent pages corroborate the OB43 claim independently. Rename attempts cost diamonds or a card. My honest advice: do not spend either on the strength of any guide, this one included, until you have seen a test dated after the current patch.

Roblox: believe the dated test, not the tutorials. Roblox's own help pages say display names are continuously filtered and that names breaking the rules may be reset to your username. The single dated hands-on test from October 2026 found Roblox's display-name check rejecting every blank character, the Hangul Filler and the Braille Blank included. Against that stand many tutorial sites saying U+3164 still saves, most of them older than the test. The fair conclusion is that if a blank Roblox name works on a given day, it is a gap in the filter, not a feature, and it can be reset whenever the filter catches up. Remember also that Roblox display names change only once every seven days, so a name that saves but renders as a box locks you in for a week.

Steam and X: reports genuinely disagree. Steam's profile name is reported working with U+3164 and U+2800 by several guides, and marked “reports disagree” by the dated test table. X's display name has the same split, though blank X posts with U+2800 (and, unusually, U+200B) are consistently reported. For both: possible, unproven, and liable to change without notice.

Facebook: the technique says yes, the policy says no. Tool sites claim U+3164 in both name fields passes the technical checks. One comparative study says Facebook is the exception among big platforms and blocks blank names outright under its real-name policy, with only partly-blank names (visible letters padded with invisible characters) surviving. Facebook can demand identity verification for a flagged name, and names change only once in 60 days. Whatever the validator allows today, the policy risk here is the highest on this list.

Why your working blank name will break

Among Us is the template. In October 2020 the blank-name trick went viral at the game's peak; within weeks the developer patched online play so a blank name returned an “Inappropriate name” error, and it survived only in local modes. The guides recommending it, however, are still up, still confident, and still wrong.

That is the lifecycle everywhere. A character slips through because the validator was written before anyone abused it. The trick spreads. The platform adds the character, or its whole Unicode category, to the filter. The guides do not get the memo. Free Fire's OB43 patch, TikTok's save-time stripping and Roblox's continuous filtering are all the same story at different chapters. When you adopt a blank name, you are borrowing it from the platform's next update.

The costs nobody lists on the copy-button pages

A blank name makes you unreachable in specific, practical ways. On Discord, server members cannot easily mention or search a name they cannot see or type, and moderators can simply reset nicknames that defeat moderation; several servers require recognisable names as a rule. Two blank-named players in one match are indistinguishable, which is why game publishers treat invisible names as an identification problem, not a joke: Krafton's rules for BGMI put inappropriate nicknames, which includes names designed to be unidentifiable, at a 90-day ban with the name changed without your consent.

Screen readers make the human cost concrete. Accessibility testers find that invisible characters in text are typically skipped entirely or announced as nothing useful, leaving blind users guessing at content sighted users can at least see is there. A blank display name is, to a blind person's reader, a person with no name at all.

Add the small print: devices whose fonts lack a glyph may render your invisible character as a visible box, the exact opposite of the effect you wanted; names pasted through invisible characters break simple text matching, so search, tagging and some support forms fail on a name their systems cannot match to what you typed; and in games, every failed experiment is priced in rename cards or diamonds.

If you still want one, do it the careful way

Test in a free field first. A bio line or a Discord server nickname costs nothing to change; a game name costs a card. Never spend currency on an unverified character.

Check the date on any guide you follow, including this one. Advice from before a game's latest patch is history, not instructions.

Prefer a name that is mostly visible. A short styled name with invisible characters used as spacing gives you the look, keeps you mentionable and searchable, and survives filters that exist specifically to catch fully blank names. It is also, not coincidentally, the version least likely to be reset by a moderator.

Keep your username, the part people actually use to find you, clean and typeable. The display name is decoration; the handle is your address.

And expect the patch. If a blank name matters to your identity somewhere, keep a fallback name ready, because the day it breaks will not be announced.

FAQ

What is the difference between a blank name and an empty name? An empty name contains nothing, and no major app accepts one. A blank name contains real characters, usually the Hangul Filler U+3164 or the Braille Blank U+2800, that render as nothing. The field is full; it just looks empty.

Which invisible character works in the most places? For names, U+3164, because validators classify it as a letter. For messages, U+2800, because validators classify it as printable content rather than an empty string. Neither works in usernames anywhere.

Why did my invisible name stop working? Almost always a patch. Platforms periodically add abused characters, or their whole format-character category, to their filters. Among Us did it in 2020, Free Fire reportedly did it in patch OB43, and TikTok adjusts its filter with ordinary app updates.

Can I get banned for a blank name? The blankness itself is rarely the listed offence. The exposure is the rules around it: impersonation and deceptive identity rules on Discord, real-name enforcement on Facebook, and inappropriate-nickname penalties in Krafton's games, where BGMI lists 90 days plus a forced rename. Server-level rules on Discord can also cost you the nickname on sight.

Is U+3164 the same as a space? No. Unicode does not classify it as whitespace at all. It is a letter with a wide advance that draws nothing, which is precisely why trimming and empty-field checks let it through.

Why does my blank name show as a box on my friend's phone? Their font has no drawing for that character, so the system substitutes a placeholder box. The character is present and correct; the rendering failed. This is most common with the less common characters and on older devices.

The short version

Invisible names are not a trick with spaces. They are real characters from the quiet corners of Unicode, and each app keeps or kills them based on what Unicode says they are: a letter survives name checks, a symbol survives empty-message checks, and format characters get swept out by the cleaners. The map above is the state of play in late 2026, drawn from the most careful sources I could find and flagged where the sources fight each other. It will age, because the platforms keep patching. That is not a flaw in the map; it is the territory.

Iris Khan builds Fonti, a free text styler at https://fonti.cool, and writes about how styled and invisible text behaves in the wild. A companion piece on the spacing side of this problem: why your Instagram line breaks keep disappearing.

#Unicode #InvisibleCharacters #BlankNames #Discord #Gaming

Getting things off your chest on the Cradle Loop

It was rumbling with thunder early this morning & I thought we’d skip the Cradle.

But after six it sounded clear. I glanced out the window, checked the weather on my phone, & it looked good.

“Let’s saddle up,” I told eddy, my Belgium Alumega.

(eddy always stays in lower case. Capitals slow him down. He’s more fast & aerodynamic that way.)

We rode out to the Cradle past all the ugly political posters still clinging to the lamp posts. It’s been a week & a half of politics.

“You know, eddy, I’m a liberal. A verligte.”

“Oh no,” said eddy. “Not this kak again.”

Politics is not eddy’s favourite subject.

“Well, I’m a cold-blooded mathematician. I dislike the fascist right & the woke left. But it’s always a binary choice for everyone & I’m stranded in the middle.

Jirre, here on the southern tip of Africa we have the ultimate in lack of integrity with the cadres or comrades or whatever they like to call themselves. They’re just a plain mafia club of thieves. Commission after judicial commission has laid that bare. Yet they fok voort noord, as we say.

In the States you can see how people were assimilated in much the same way the Germans were by Hitler. Dissent & you are attacked & humiliated. Fight, fight, fight.”

“No well, fine,” said eddy. “Glad you have that off your chest.”

“Well, eddy, you just have to humour me while I flip the bird at every political campaign poster we ride past.”

“Ok,” agreed eddy. “But do it silently.”

“Not even the odd ‘Jou ma se dinges?’”

“No!”

We landed at Biden. The place was packed again. Everyone still squeezing in their last bits of practice for the 94.7.

eddy & me didn’t mess around. We cranked down Stampede Hill & hit the junction to the Sterkfontein Caves in record time.

“eddy, this hill here I’m naming in your honour. eddy’s Bump.”

“Jabonga, Mastelek. We need to find a landmark for you as well.”

“Well, old friend, we have decades for that. No rush.”

The female boemelaars were out in force today. Walking around with beach towels as skirts.

“Must be on the bones of your ass to use your towel as a skirt, eddy?”

“Well Mastelek, how do you think the Scottish kilt developed? You sleep, live & work in that. It’s just a blanket or a woolly towel.”

“I haven’t worn mine for ages, eddy. Need a good reason. I think I’ll just wear my Elliot Tartan to work next week.”

“Everyone will think you eccentric.”

“I am.”

“You cannot cycle in a kilt, eddy. Must I explain?”

“Nooooooooooo, Mastelek. Spare me. I have your spandex kit on my saddle & going commando is too much. Case closed.”

On the final crank up to Biden we blew past the whole bunch of cyclists to the top. At the summit I turned to eddy.

“Let’s do that again?”

We freewheeled to the bottom & repeated the performance.

“Let’s go home, eddy, after a Freezo. If I did that again it would be a bridge too far!!!!”

While grabbing the Freezo, there was a bloke struggling with the bikes on the racks. It was an almighty tangle.

“You grabbing someone else’s bike by the hoods?” I asked.

“These damn things like to get amorous” he replied.

“Yeah! eddy has that problem with Bianchis!”

We loaded up & the radio played the Cranberries, Dreams.

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