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 Also quite interesting how the general notion of autism from 20 years ago is already very outdated.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

---

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.

---

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

Laptop doanh nhân đời cũ vẫn là lựa chọn hợp lý cho người cần máy bền, bàn phím tốt và giá vừa túi. Dòng ThinkPad, Latitude hay EliteBook được thiết kế cho văn phòng nên khung máy chắc, dễ thay pin, dễ nâng RAM.

Nên kiểm tra gì trước khi mua

• Pin: xem độ chai trong BIOS hoặc phần mềm, còn trên 80% là ổn.
• Màn hình: soi điểm chết, hở sáng ở bốn góc.
• Bản lề và vỏ: bản lề lỏng là dấu hiệu máy dùng nhiều.
• Cổng kết nối: cắm thử USB, HDMI, sạc Type-C.

Cấu hình đủ dùng năm nay

Chip Intel thế hệ 11 trở lên hoặc Ryzen 5000, RAM 16GB, SSD 512GB là đủ cho Word, Excel, họp online và chạy vài chục tab trình duyệt.

Muốn xem máy thật và được kiểm tra tại chỗ, anh chị có thể tham khảo các mẫu tại Hưng Phát Laptop, nơi máy được test kỹ trước khi giao.

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 latex 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.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

Finally got my hands on Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve last week. Sharing my thoughts on the game before I lose track of time doing something else, like playing more Ace Combat 8.

First off, the opening cinematics are interactive, which is pretty cool. I don't remember playing a game with this feature. Granted, I don't play that many games. But still, this was cool.

The opening cinematics also have this sort of Metal Gear feel to them. I don't know why, but I like it. It gave me goosebumps when I went through it.

I like that this game brought back some focus on your wingmen, or fellow pilots. The chatter during flight brings the game to life in a good way. I do not like the “voice in your head” approach to telling your character's story, though. If they're going to let you respond to dialogue in the game, then they might as well let you be your own character instead of having somebody else's voice in your head.

The graphics in the game are excellent, not just for the planes but for the character models as well. I can see why so many players are infatuated with Tasha.

I've played the first few missions, and the replay system and camera are much improved over Ace Combat 7. The replay camera includes some angles that make for great screenshots. And I already said the graphics are excellent, but my God, the planes in this game look really good!

You start the game in an F/A-18C. It seems slow to respond to roll inputs. Either that, or they decreased the sensitivity of the analog stick. I feel like they tried to slow the game down a bit, making it a little more simulation and a little less arcade.

But who am I kidding? This is still very much an arcade game.

Sorry I'm jumping back and forth, but back to the story. I much prefer the player's story and companions in this game over those in Ace Combat 7. It might be too early to compare the two games, though, considering I've only completed a few missions.

I'll end this post with a compilation of clips from my first few hours with the game.

https://youtu.be/ywwmeDA0c5g?si=8QykhkiHtzl7CKvi

Tags: #GameLog #AceCombat8

I spent the entire day with a today. We started around 11:20, and it is now 10:30 PM. I had fun, and I am happy with today, but I will say that I don’t think I’m interested in her anymore. There were several things that just made me less and less interested. I think the biggest one for sure was she mentioned that she had a dream about a guy that she talked to like two years ago, and so she asked him out next week. And this reminds me of I think the original reason why I kind of lost interest in Her. She had told me she was not really ready for a relationship, and while we were talking and flirting all that she kind of started flirting with someone else at something I invited her for. And I know that the number one thing that turns off a suitor is expressing interest into other people. But I also know that we have been friends for a while now and so she just might not be interested in me like that. But I think past that, there were a couple things that made me kind of feel like her caring about my birthday or me was more of an exception rather than the norm. She mentioned that she was happy. She got to do the stuff for my birthday because her brother doesn’t really celebrate his birthday either. And I kind of feel like in a way I was a proxy for him. And also, she didn’t notice that I had mentioned. I don’t like coconut a few times, as we apparently made a coconut cake. And it mostly just kind of felt like she wanted to bake for baking sake, rather than for me, which is not a bad thing, but just not necessarily a super strong indicator that she cares about me like that. But also we had talked about what we expect out of a relationship, or what we are looking for, and she couldn’t really articulate it well, but ended up, essentially saying that her demand was for the person to be chivalrous. And for her that meant things like opening her car door for her or giving her the princess treatment. And I felt like a bit of the ick from that, but we did talk about it a bit, and I think I kind of isolated my issue with that. I think that sort of stuff is putting an expectation on the man in the relationship, which is fine if there are other expectations put solely on the woman. And this mostly revolves around my belief that a relationship should fundamentally be equitable. Like skill based matchmaking. And when there are expectations like this, it feels like it is because the woman is performing her traditional, gender, roles, or expectations, but that is something that I don’t want in a relationship. I think all of the expectations that I have for a relationship are ones that they also have for me. And so if someone expects me to compensate in certain ways by being chivalrous, for example whether it’s financially, or in these small acts of services constantly, it feels bad to me because it feels like that will never be reciprocated. I can’t really think of anything that I would want my partner to do for me that I wouldn’t be doing for them. And I think that it just ends up feeling like a One Direction service towards this person. And I don’t think that’s what I look for in a relationship.

When did having a life worth inhabiting become so unfamiliar and strangely defined. The eagerness for popularity people have crushes me. I suppose it always has as I've never really understood it at all. The very idea of what should and shouldn't receive recognition confounds and saddens me.

I'm not really sure where my thoughts are, atm. A bit scrambled for sure. The priorities of our civilization consistently disappoint me. I keep fighting against shutting down, but there are moments where it's more challenging than others. This appears to be one of them.

How strange it is to both be at a loss but content in who you are simultaneously. I've been told aplenty that I'm either too unfocused or far too focused. I think, perhaps, the reality is that I'm simply not focused on what others wish I was. I think I am beginning to accept that I never will be.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

This is a hypothetical setup for the Brand New Shield. What would the league look like? What markets would be looked at? How would the ownership model work? Let's dive in.

I truly believe dominating the indoor game is the way to go here. The indoor game from a prominence standpoint has lost its way and is filled with a combination of fledgling and fly-by-night minor leagues. There isn't an exact number of teams in mind but it would have to be a number where a good schedule would make sense. A hypothetical situation would be a 12 team league split into two conferences and every team in the regular season would play every team in their conference twice. So, 12 team league with a 10 game regular season would work here. Conference winners would then face each other in a title game. In this scenario there'd be an 11 week season and every team has a week 6 bye. The universal week 6 bye would be a great opportunity to do mid-season fan fests and other activities to engage the communities the teams are located in. There could even be broadcasts from these fan fests with player and coach interviews and Q&As to make it a more interactive experience that could be broadcast through an official league app. You'd then have the championship game 2 weeks after the end of the regular season to give the teams an extra week to prepare.

The markets these teams would be located in is something that I have gone back and forth on. The easy way out is just to use major markets but in terms of being the major league for everybody else, that doesn't fit the vibe. It would be about researching great markets with great fan bases that get overlooked. Giving what people consider minor league markets their own major league team is personally what I'd rather do and I believe there is a way to make that work if this does ever get off the ground. I'd prefer places with a proper arena already in place to lower the initial infrastructure investment and focus more resources in other areas.

As far as the ownership model goes... A single ownership model is the way to go so that all things are created equal. However, a way to distribute Green Bay Packers or Saskatchewan Roughriders style shares of the teams that include some perks for the fans who purchase them is also something I would definitely consider.

There is a long way to go before this vision could ever come into fruition. Thank you all for reading this, I really do appreciate it.