| Translation of posting without using 'E': It's Similar to That Bird Social App, But Without a Fifth Symbol Mastodon has an app with particular quirks and many humans find it joyful. Mastodon boffins did it again. A particular boffin going by initials M.R. works as a digital craftsman at a corporation with initials I.A. (that has http archival capability), did craft a social app oulipo.social with an odd quirk: said app disallows applying of fifth anglo-saxon linguistic symbol or "any variant of it". Said individual found motivation via book "A Void" by author G.P. This lipogrammatic book did apply all anglo-saxon linguistic symbols but that particular symbol. It follows a Francophonic philosophy of Oulipo, a constraint form of writing that is a combination of both math and book study. Banning of this symbol is Oulipo's most famous limitation: "It limits writing without making it too hard," M.R. said. "You can still sound natural and say what you want to say, though you may think on it a bit in a way that you wouldn't without constraints." Such limitation can push you to think hard and apply imagination about words, M.R. said. M.R. had no anticipation that oulipo.social would attain popularity — as it got its start as a trial of skills application of Ruby on Rails and to attain a sharp mind in OS capability — but said app did gain many additional accounts (singular digit with two nought digits) within about six days of starting. "It's a joy to watch folks do things I wouldn't think of—#drilipo, and applying oulipo constraints to famous writing and songs—and just chat about day to day stuff," M.R. said. "It's also gratifying that folks will look at oulipo.social and go on to think up constraints or gimmicks for additional variant Mastodons." M.R. did post back to my communication within an hour, with almost 300 words and without said taboo symbol. I suck at thinking by using my imagination to avoid said symbol and quit not long post-starting as my mind is frail. |