code

The POW Tap Code: A Language of Knocks

In the crushing silence of Vietnamese POW camps, American prisoners forged a lifeline from a simple 5x5 grid of letters.…

1 week ago

The Syntax of Sheet Music

We often speak of music as a "universal language", but beyond the metaphor lies a tangible, non-verbal writing system of…

3 weeks ago

The Secret Code of Scribes

Before the printing press, scribes used a secret code of symbols and shortcuts to write faster and save precious parchment.…

3 weeks ago

The Language of Numbers Stations

Tune your shortwave radio to the right frequency, and you might hear it: a disembodied voice reading strings of numbers…

3 weeks ago

The Lost Art of Shorthand: A Language of Speed

Before audio recorders, a unique form of writing captured speech at the speed of thought. This article delves into the…

3 weeks ago

The World’s First Word Processor

Before 'cut and paste' existed on a screen, there was the Friden Flexowriter, a revolutionary machine that used punched paper…

3 weeks ago

Speaking to Themselves: The Unsettling Rise of Inter-AI Languages We Can’t Understand

When two AI systems are tasked to work together, they often develop their own optimized, private language to communicate more…

3 weeks ago

The Silent Language of 64 Squares: Deconstructing the Grammar of Chess Notation

Beyond the silent battle of wits on the board, chess has its own powerful language. This post deconstructs Algebraic Notation,…

3 weeks ago

Glib, Glim, and Grunt: A Secret History of Thieves’ Cant, the Anti-Language of the Underworld

In the shadowy corners of Renaissance England, a secret language was born out of desperation and defiance. Known as Thieves'…

3 weeks ago

The World’s Most Mysterious Book: Can Linguistics Ever Decipher the Voynich Manuscript?

Filled with otherworldly plants and an indecipherable script, the 15th-century Voynich Manuscript has stumped cryptographers for over a century. Linguistic…

3 weeks ago

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