Why we won’t be getting U.S. state flag emoji
Plus: What if an artist doesn’t want you to use their name in an A.I. art generator?
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at…
Why we won’t be getting U.S. state flag emoji
Melania Trump has her own Christmas ornament collection
What if an artist doesn’t want you to use their name in an A.I. art generator?
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Why we won’t be getting U.S. state flag emoji
Sorry to everyone who wants state flag emoji, it’s not going to happen.
Today there are 258 flag emoji, the largest category, accounting for about 7% of all emoji. They’re also some of the least frequently used, and the Unicode Consortium, which approves new emoji, said it won’t accept any more new flag proposals.
Adding flags for every state, province, and other political subdivision would be a monumental task, because there are at least 3,681 subdivisions around the world as of 2017. That would more than double the emoji keyboard, which currently holds 3,633 emoji, but picking and choosing who gets a flag and who doesn’t is politically fraught.
“The Unicode Consortium isn’t in the business of determining what is a country and what isn’t,” Unicode Emoji subcommittee chair Jennifer Daniel wrote in a blog post about the decision.
There were originally just 10 flag emoji, for China, Germany, Spain, France, the U.K., Italy, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the U.S. 🇨🇳 🇩🇪 🇪🇸 🇫🇷 🇬🇧 🇮🇹 🇯🇵 🇰🇷 🇷🇺 🇺🇸These early flag emoji were available on two Japanese phone carriers, and believed to be used to communicate cuisine, as in American or Chinese food, Daniel wrote.
The number of flag emoji eventually grew, though, and beginning in 2015, it seemed like U.S. state flags might have a shot at being added. That year, the consortium approved the red flag 🚩, checkered flag 🏁, and the flag of Antarctica designed by Graham Bartram 🇦🇶, followed in 2016 by the rainbow Pride flag 🏳️🌈 and the U.N. flag 🇺🇳.
In 2017, the consortium added its only subdivision flags, for three of the four nations of the U.K.: England 🏴, Scotland 🏴, and Wales 🏴. In the proposal for the emoji, the authors argued that these nations oftentimes compete in international sporting events using their nation flags rather than the U.K.’s Union Jack, and they were the only competitors to not have their own flags.
“The flags of England, Scotland, and Wales are some of the most prominent flags that don't have emoji representation,” the authors wrote. “No other non-encoded flags see as frequent use in an international context in running text alongside other nation flags.”
While those three flags were approved, another proposal that year combined requests for flags for all 50 U.S. states, Northern Ireland, Catalonia and Basque Country in Spain, and Brittany in France, but none made the cut.
The final flag to be added came in 2020, with the pink, blue, and white transgender Pride flag 🏳️⚧️. Now, Daniel admitted, “adding a few flags seemed reasonable but in retrospect was short-sighted.”
“The inclusion of new flags will always continue to emphasize the exclusion of others,” she wrote. “They also tend to change over time! In the past six years since adding a Pride Flag to the Unicode Standard (2019) it’s already been redesigned. Many times. Identities are fluid and unstoppable which makes mapping them to a formal unchanging universal character set incompatible.”
The decision to stop adding new flag emoji is in line with the consortium’s general attitude towards adding fewer new emoji each year now. Rather than burdening keyboards with hyper-specific emoji that don’t get much use, they’re interested in versatile emoji that can be used to convey a broad range of concepts both literal and figurative.
The only way to add a new flag now, the consortium said, is for a country to get its own region code from the International Organization for Standardization, and that flag will be added automatically without the need for a proposal.
While U.S. state flags won’t be added by the Unicode Consortium, vendors are free to design their own flag emoji for states and other subdivisions. They would be visible on that specific platform, but won’t be universally supported and would look like a “missing flag” glyph on other platforms.
Melania Trump has her own Christmas ornament collection
Former first lady Melania Trump is starting her own Christmas ornament line.
Trump announced seven limited-edition IRL brass ornaments last week that come packaged with animated NFTs of the ornaments. The line includes $35 “American Christmas” ornaments that depict Christmas symbols and the logo for her “Best Best” initiative. A $45 “Christmas Star” ornament available on Trump’s website includes an engraving of the former FLOTUS’ signature.
Trump’s decision to sell holiday decor has reignited controversy over leaked audio in which she said “who gives a f*** about the Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right?” Trump said Tuesday the audio, recorded by Trump inauguration chief creative officer Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, was misleading.
In a statement to right-wing publisher Breitbart, Trump called Wolkoff “untrustworthy” and said the audio left out part of the conversation about reuniting migrant children with their parents being more important than Christmas decorations.
Trump’s post-White House commercial ventures have been criticized by East Wing observers, and these ornaments have been no exception. They also take a page out of the playbook for the nonprofit White House Historical Association.
The historical association — which also funds the official White House portraits — has sold annual White House ornaments since 1981, including this year’s gingerbread White House. It comes with a gingerbread-scented booklet and former first lady Pat Nixon’s gingerbread recipe.
What if an artist doesn’t want you to use their name in an A.I. art generator?
Polish artist Greg Rutkowski is known for his fantasy artwork for franchises including Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, but it’s getting harder to know whether artwork attributed to him is actually his or if it was generated by artificial intelligence.