91
The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations
(www.mcsweeneys.net)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
91 points (95.0% liked)
Fuck AI
8110 readers
2688 users here now
"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
It's easy on a Mac — option-shift-hyphen.
And easy on Linux
compose+---.But I'm the guy who types
CTRL+MAJ+u202fto have thin non-breaking spaces, so I'm not sure I'm representative.I actually don't even have compose bound to a key because I simply never have to type anything that's not in the normal UTF-8 space on my PC lol
What is "the normal UTF-8 space"?
Why be representative when you can be exceptional? :)
You would like unexpected keyboard for your phone then. It supports en–dashes, em—dashes and non-breaking spaces without needing a symbol layer.
Does it permit easily to switch dictionaries and layouts? I type regularly in three different languages on my phone, that's why I use AnySoftKeyboard.
layouts is easy, but I'm afraid it does not support dictionaries, so that might be a dealbreaker for you
I mapped AltGr+Shift+Space to the thin non-breaking space, since it's the objectively best thousands separator. It's the norm in my country's locale (Czech) and understood everywhere (and I know you understand the decimal frustrations as a multilingual typist). Unless it's 4 digits or in ASCII-only contexts, in which case I don't use any.
I could have done.that, but the Unicode code works almost everywhere, so I just learnt it.
It's at the XKB level (
/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/cz_mod) so it works in all applications. And when would you be typing fancily on someone else's Linux machine?I can guarantee you that 99% of Mac users do not know about that.
Entirely possible, but then we're also talking in a thread about a subject that apparently 99% of humans don't know about either.