Not everybody knows everything. Would you be so kind to share what's up with the Iranian flag? It's seems interesting. I happen to not know much about it and I love when people bring up some interesting curiosities here (sometimes unfortunately obscured by sarcasm or other convolutions)
The U.S. Soccer Federation tweeted about Iran, intentionally using a pre-Islamic-Revolution version of the country's flag. (Or, one might imagine, what it hoped will be the post-Islamic-Revolution version.)
The Iranian protestors have brought back the old flag, featuring the lion and the sun at center, and often make shows of removing the Islamic State’s symbol from the center of the current “official” flag (the word Allah in Persian calligraphy).
It was front page shit for two days, sorry. I think others explained it well enough but I still insist that it was perfectly relevant.
I can only assume that this is a 3rd rail of sorts for “Western” types who seem to be 100% anti-Iran lately, even though I remember about half a decade ago the same sorts of people were pro-Iran when it came to giving back their money that would eventually be used to fund terrorism, but would love to take Russia’s money for doing the same thing.
It was a unilateral Apple decision. Other platforms were forced to follow them over the next few years to avoid situations like kids texting each other "Can't want for our class trip to the water park tomorrow <insert squirt gun or real gun depending on font>"
Apple made that change around the same time as the Rio Olympics. In the leadup to the Olympics, there was a push to create an emoji for every event. Unicode 9 added emojis for handball, wrestling, water polo, fencing, etc.
However the almost comprehensive set still had some gaps, because Apple veto'd the marksmanship/air rifle and pentathlon emojis... but not in time to prevent the creation of the corresponding unicode glyphs
I found a summary on what motivated the change, I don't know how accurate that is, but sounds legit
https://youtu.be/7SBJr3Zfgl8 - Why Apple removed the gun emoji
That would be because IRA remains the sole government of Afghanistan recognized by relevant agencies such as UN. Which companies generally defer to when they came, because it cuts down on a lot of individual political decisions they'd have to make otherwise.
Yandex is an interesting showcase of how bad this can get - they literally dropped country borders from their maps last year "for better user experience". And I don't mean just lines that you normally see while browsing the map, but even when you ask for it deliberately. For example, if you look up a city, you get its territory highlighted on the map - but that's not the case for countries, it just puts a marker "somewhere in the middle".
They also removed administrative regional boundaries without announcing that change - probably because looking up regions at the border would have to include a part of said border into the displayed boundary, making it discoverable.
> That would be because IRA remains the sole government of Afghanistan recognized by relevant agencies such as UN. Which companies generally defer to when they came, because it cuts down on a lot of individual political decisions they'd have to make otherwise.
Perhaps Yandex maps could be perceived as representing an ideal future devoid of essentially arbitrary political boundaries and silly notions of citizenship.
No matter how much you want such an utopia where everyone gets along, that is not the reality we are living in. Instead, borders are real and which country a particular location in matters in many contexts that involve looking at a map.
Google Maps also does this when the border is under contention. Selecting a country with a contested border like Ukraine or Russia will only highlight the country name, but selecting a country with uncontested borders like Poland or Germany will draw a red outline around the country.
“The maritime border is disputed in a part of the Ems estuary outside the Dollart bay, where Germany has the view that the state border runs on the left bank of the Ems, while the Netherlands regards the Thalweg as its border.
[…]
In 2014 the two nations' foreign ministers met to put an end to the dispute. It was decided that the border should remain ambiguous and responsibility for the region in question shared”
They don't, for instance, have the flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, instead using the flag of the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
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