112: Life in Exclusion Zones & Every Single Character

What happens to life inside exclusion zones like Chernobyl? Is it good? Bad? Or something much more interesting? And what happens when you try to codify every single character from human language? Well, it definitely leads to some fascinating linguistic rabbit holes!

Images we talk about:

Przewalski’s horse (yes that’s how it’s spelled) Frogs Character U+FDFD Arabic Text Decorative U+FDFD's Tom's Favorite Use of Kashida

Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:03:12) Life in Exclusion Zones (01:01:48) Every Single Character (01:52:06) Outro

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We also learn about: Actually defining it made it creepier, the zone rouge, we an area of Earth uninhabitable from war, chernobyl release over 100 radioactive elements, they really need to name the zone of alienation the zone of doing taxes, the liquidators actually did a good job of stopping the spread, is this a rewilding experiment? Ella deleted emails to poach this topic, Przewalski’s horse (yes that’s how it’s spelled), technically feral vs wild horses, I’ve reached the nuance center of my nuance pop, why isn’t it my job so sample chernobyl frogs, nearly all pine trees near chernobyl were wiped out, “the selective pressures of radiation”, bright birds used up their carotenoids for color, we’re doing nuclear ecological biochemistry, god that was an ugly laugh, maybe its counterintuitive for the small things - no this one sucks, the slow horror of a lack of decomposition, the ecosystem is not rewilded it’s entirely new, the Korean DMZ is like an ecological semi permeable membrane, DMZ ecology research institute, the DMZ has 40% of Korea’s endangered species, it’s a pitstop along the east asian australasian flyway, endangered cranes have bounced back in the DMZ, the DMZ crane watch, the cranes and natterjack toad require human farming to thrive, synonyms of nuance and thrive, Baarter economy standing ovation, conflictful chicken, Unicode is the ISO standard for text on computers, ASCII’s 128 characters is surely enough right? why do you have a period accurate phone? it turns out other cultures want to use the computer, there are 159,801 characters in unicode, the basic multilingual plane sounds like startrek shit and it kind of is, I mean it’s not like it has cuneiform except it does, braille unicode exists for a reason, braille doesn’t just map one to one with letters it also has contractions, contracted braille is a stenography, tweeting more in japanese, 101,996 CJK characters, Max Woolf’s Big List of Naughty Strings, after Mamdani was elected I had to learn how to pronounce the bismillah, “Bismillah is the Przewalski’s Horse of this topic”, I said we shouldn’t dive into the history of a language halfway through a topic but fuck it, LR0’s terrific Arabic typography essay, arabic script can be perfectly justified, “the justification lives inside the words”, Kashidas stretching across a map made it click for Tom, maing the bismillah beautiful, we all just want to make text look cool, the ottoman printing press ban myth, the cursed lost printed quran, oh my god is this the unifying thing, weirdly internet explorer had kashida justification for 1 year? Inshallah you find on the internet what you’re exploring for.

Sources:

Chernobyl Frogs Image Wikipedia: Exclusion Zones World Nuclear Association Wikipedia: Zone Rouge Explorers Web: Montserrat and its Exclusion Zone Guardian: UN Buffer Zone in Cyprus International Atomic Energy Agency: Chernobyl United Nations Development Programme: Chernobyl Recovery Development BBC Future: Chernobyl’s Wildlife Royal Society Proceedings B: The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone as a Wildlife Refuge Wikipedia: Red Forest Current Biology: Long-term Census Data Reveal Abundant Wildlife Populations at Chernobyl Science: Chernobyl Hits Birds Hard Microorganisms: Soil Microbes and Plant-Associated Microbes in Response to Radioactive Pollution The Conversation: The Mystery of Chernobyl’s Wild Horses San Diego Zoo: The Last Wild Horse Animals: Endangered Przewalski’s Horse, Equus przewalskii, Cloned from Historically Cryopreserved Cells San Diego Zoo: Birth of Cloned Przewalski’s Foal Korean Konsult: DMZ - Demilitarized Zone DMZ: The Civilian Control Line (CCL) towns of the Korean Peninsula Reuters: South Korea to Shift Civilian Restricted Line South China Morning Post: The Korean DMZ Guardian: How Wildlife is Thriving in the Korean DMZ Royal Society Notes and Records: From Warzone to Bioreserve Zooniverse: DMZ Crane Watch Biological Conservation: Winter Foraging of Threatened Cranes in the Demilitarized Zone of Korea Cultural Anthropology: Toward an Anthropology of Landmines KNews: Nature Thrives in Cyprus’ Forgotten Buffer Zone UFZ EuMon conference: Monitoring Biodiversity of the Buffer Zone in Cyprus Satoyama Initiative: The Cyprus Buffer Zone as a Socio-Ecological Landscape --- UC Berkley Unicode Overview Unicode's History Unicode on Braille RNIB Contracted Braille Buzzfeed on Japanese Tweets LR0's Incredible Arabic Type Essay Design Principles of Kashida Justification: A Unique Technique in Arabic and Persian Mapping The Lost Quran's Discovery Kathryn Schwartz's "Did Ottoman Sultans Ban Print?"

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