A Theory About the Evolution of the One Bam Tile 2026 Jun 9    mahjongtreasures.com
In Mahjong's 'bamboo' suit, each of the tiles depicts a number of bamboo sticks corresponding to the tile's value: e.g. 3 Bamboo shows three sticks of bamboo, 4 Bamboo shows four, and so on. Except 1 Bamboo, which depicts... a bird. Why?

Nobody really knows. But this website proposes a theory, complete with having found very old examples of the 1 Bamboo tile artwork and its evolution from something sometimes resembling a bamboo sprout into a crane or peacock.

So what's the answer? Maybe the Mahjong tile makers just like it that way.

What's up with those "VEKS EVICT" stickers? 2026 Mar 26    blog.lauramichet.com
Inexplicable graffiti stickers are always everywhere, such as this one I spotted recently in Campbell, California: I don't know why I bother searching for deeper meaning, as if I live in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, yet I keep doing so. Los Angeles video game designer Laura Michet had a similar curiosity October a year ago:

I'm sure that this is a two-person project, since you can google up each of these graffiti writers individually and find traces of them online. I've wondered whether more than two people are putting them up, though - they're incredibly dense, all over the city. Most of the time when I'm riding on a major stroad or artery in the city, I'll see one of these at least once a minute - often more frequently! Apparently, you can find them in Toronto and SF too.

So you think you can read? 2025 Sep 22    en.wikipedia.org
I believe I can read. It's one of those things of which I believe myself capable, even when the language isn't English, of at least being able to match together similar words. And yet, when it comes to ancient Roman descriptions, what's on the inscription rarely seems to match what the scholar shows to me the words to mean.

And that's because of scribal abbreviations. Take normal abbreviations, and crank them up 1000% with steroids, and that's ancient scribal abbreviations. We have words in English common enough to be abbreviated (such as mister), but when you're engraving things in ancient times, every character is precious. And so, they would abbreviate any and every repeated phrase.

Most interesting to me, are the parts of the system that linger: such as the &, the @, the $, the % — just name a few. It's a Wikipedia link, so it's thorough to the point of banality, but there's plenty of juicy bits for a language nerd like me to feast upon.