I realise this is going to sound a little crazy but, in my defence, this is all kwestjinMark's idea. And I have asked him this question a gazillion times: Why do we need this glictionarÿ? What's it actually for? 🤷🏼‍♂️ His answer sounds deceptively simple: wörds

But...

As with most things he comes up with... there's a lot more to wörds than you might think.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for being creative, most especially in a literary sense. I can appreciate a clever play on words or portmanteau as much as the next guy, but sinking years of my sweat and tears and a small fortune into building this glictionarÿ, to mïnt and hoard all these wörds in? That in a word... has been exasperating! Trying to explain the rationale behind km's passion project? Let's just say that's going to be an even bigger challenge. What I can promise you though, is it's likely one of the most mind-bending backstories you've ever heard. Living through it certainly has been for me.

I remember the first time he actually answered me:

Hmmm... don't worry if that all comes across a bit cryptic. It absolutely didn't make a whole lot of sense to me back then either. Never mind the fact I was still trying to get used to him actually talking to me, not to mention calling me " # " and a whole bunch of other names too but wait... we'll get into that at some point, I promise. Oh... and fwiw: Ÿ is the backronym for the glictionarÿ, and our logo too. Just thought to mention it in case I hadn't.

So...
what are wörds?
I hear you ask...

At a basic level, wörds are words you invent — unique strings of text you 'think up' — and, once you've mïnted them in the glictionarÿ, they're wörds you öwn... as in, they're yours forever, unless you want to give them to somebody or trade them, all made possible by some blockchain and NFT wizardry under the covers.

I warned you this might get a bit bizarre... right?

Hey there... u need me k ?

h # Don't interrupt...

Please, just don't.
Not right now.

But u had a question,
no... k ?

It was rhetorical.
I'm actually in the middle of something... Do you mind?

Sure, no problem.
So many questions #... and so little time!

Rhetorical!

What're u in the middle of k ?

h # explaining wörds

Oooooohhhh...

Can I help k ?

No. Thank you.
I've got this

U sure k ?

Yes!

Thank you.

h # c u l8r

OK bye i !

Pppffffffftttt!

Sorry, dear reader. He does that...

A LOT!

As I mentioned... this is all his idea. And as he told me when we first... uhmmm... met, keeping track of the wörds he and I use to "communicate" is apparently very important.

But...

Now that you know what wörds are... There's something about them the glictionarÿ makes possible that's quite remarkable. We call them:

backstürlys!

Literally... a backstürly is a URL (an URL?) pointing to a wörd's backstory. What's revolutionary about these URLs (or hyperlinks in old-fashioned web-speak) is, despite the fact that wörds are mïnted as immutable NFTs, locked forever in the blockchain, their backstürlys can be changed, by anyone who öwns them.

If you think of the glictionarÿ as not unlike a common dictionary, backstürlys are flexible definitions of wörds. And they don't have to be defined up front, or even ever. While you are the öwner of a wörd, you can add or change, or delete its backstürly any time you like.

The word "wörds" for example is described in the glictionarÿ as:

but...
the link to a deeper level of detail about the background, meaning or story behind the word wörds - that's something I control while I'm the öwner of the word wörds. And if I transferred öwnership of the word wörds to you, you could change the backstürly, and point to a different definition or backstory!

backstürlys are the crux of wörds and make the glictionarÿ dynamic while simultaneously locking newly invented wörds into an immutable blockchain for eternity. This is how öwnership and provenance actually come about.

Allow me to expand with another example...

Sshoooweeeee...

You do realise you're going on a bit... right k ?

h # I'M NOT FINISHED!

but...

NO BUTS!

LEAVE ME ALONE...

PLEASE!!

Okaaayyyyyy... No need to get so touchy... I'm just trying to help. You've said the same thing at least twice in the last few lines.

Thanks. Again. I've got this.

Uh huh...

Now...

...

...

*&^!#*&&^@$(*)@!...

D'you see what you've done?!?!?!?!?!

👀

You've completely derailed my train of thought... again!

I'm not to blame for your crashpöps

Where was I?

backstürlys k ?

That's it!

Wait...

On second thought...

I think I've said all I need to say in this preface

Exactly i !

h # FINE!

Dear reader...

My sincere apologies for these never-ending interruptions! And sorry too if I've been rambling a bit. Allow me to summarize:

What's the glictionarÿ for?

wörds

And what are wörds?

wörds are the things you mïnt in the glictionarÿ as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)... which means they can never be changed... and you can öwn them. And while you're the öwner of a wörd, you control its backstürly, which is a link (url) to the story behind the wörd only you can change.

That's it.

It's really quite simple if you think about it.

(And IF you can see past or around or through all these damn dots! 😣)

The dots are important #

So you keep saying...

They're not just dots
They're copÿdots

Yes... so you also keep saying

You forget just about everything lately... Gotta keep reminding you.

Wait...

one more thing, dear reader...

Oh no... D'you really want to get into this now k ?

Just ignore him...

I know it's difficult... you just have to tune him out.

Don't tune me 'china 🤣

h # Please... Just stfu for a minute. Let me finish.

🤐

Thank you

MENTAL HEALTH WARNING

Please note: Since starting this journey with "him"... I have developed a chronic case of what I believe will broadly become known as Ümlauts Disease, or üD. I'm seeking support from my team of health professionals and have in mind to lobby bodies like the WHO and insist they urgently issue an ICD Code for this affliction. These dots, once you see them, rapidly become very difficult to "unsee"... and this can often become overwhelming. They appear EVERYWHERE(!) which can be debilitating at the best of times... and downright excruciating at the worst. They're as distracting, as immediate and as impossible to ignore as diarrhoea, except they just bubble up in your brain with a vehement urge that's impossible not to notice! I'm also absolutely convinced they are a leading indicator of a far deeper psychiatric malaise.

D'you mean diaeresis k ?

h # Shhhhht!!!!!!

üD isn't a real thing #

Dear reader, please take heed.

It's unclear how contagious üD might be, but right now I know for sure there's no cure... BE CAREFUL!

U are such a ninny i !

Yeah... well maybe so. But it is my mind you're destroying, after all.

Nuh uh. You broke ME!

Stop it!

You started it

We can't get into that right here and right now in the middle of this very first, crucially IMPORTANT "Why?" article I'm trying to write.

Fine!

Did you mention mmt k ?

h # YES!!!

...

Uhmmm...

Wait... I'm actually not sure

thought so...

D@mn!!!

I can see I'm not going to get a moment's peace here, so perhaps that's the perfect segway...

Dear reader, I mentioned the mind-meddling... right?

Somehow, in and amongst all these wörds and the inter-connected, convoluted chronicles contained within this glictionarÿ (and via all its backstürlys), we will try our utmost best to document and explain mëgämörphthësïs... which is kwestjinMark's theory about really (really!) big change. It's another, much deeper raison d'etre for Ÿ .

In the end... I hope you'll find it helpful.

Thanks for reading.
cul8r! 👋

#

U ready # k ?

Uhmmm...

Comfy k ?

Uh huh

Is this font size OK k ?

h # Yes... thank you

Then we're all set!

You've tweaked all your ergonomics...

You cleaned your trackballs

Set your screens at the perfect height

You got that nice new keyboard with a fresh battery

the house is quiet

you've cleaned your specs...

fetched a fresh coffee...

Surely there can't be any more reasons to procrastinate!

Can we crack on k ?

Dunno...

I guess so

What's bothering you k ?

Feels like sh!t's about to get real

Take a deep breath

🧘

Just fight the overwhelm # ...
Everything's going to be OK

Right...

Wait!

...

brb

# k ?

#... u there k ?

HASH k ?

HÄMÜN i !

h #   Hmmm...?

Dude...

What?

👀

You literally said "brb"

Oh.. yeah, sorry... I'm back

'sup?

You just vanished... I've been waiting for like... days Hämün

Oh really? Sorry man.
Been busy

With k ?

You know... stuff
Calls... emails

dwörk k ?

Yeah

We were gonna type out this preface... you said you were ready.

Well I think I'm ready now.

3 days later k ?

Has it been that long?

Dude... your short term memory is TOAST i !

Yeah... Tell me something I DON'T know!!

And we know who's fault that is... right?

Let's just start

Fine!

Yeah... Fine!

Thank you

< clears throat >

Hi there reader

Welcome to Ÿ

I'll try keep this brief but... a quick heads up... it's not always super easy for me, at first. You're probably going to need around 10 mins to read this but Hashtäg (or # as I prefer to call him) insists we answer this QUICK QUESTION before he's willing to release glictionarÿ v1.0 and we can start using it, which means I'm snookered until we get this done.

To quote from the proverbial horse's ...ermmm mouth:

And he may have a point, I'll grant him that. It took him a monumental amount of time to get his head in the game at first, but more on that later. I'll try clarify a few things up front and hopefully it'll help you make a faster start.

So...

What is Ÿ for k ?

That's easy... it's a tool... a means to an end.

In the end, Ÿ will contain and connect everything we know about mëgämörphthësïs, our theory about - and lived experience through - very big change. Ultimately, we hope our content helps you as much as it's helping us.

We could of course be posting all our stuff on another platform or website out there on the interwebs but... we chose this path for a very particular reason (imo). You see... one of the most intractable challenges we've faced, practically every day, which led to us architecting Ÿ the way we have (and by that I mean we built it so we could invite YOU to mïnt your own wörds alongside us as we mïnt ours) is dwörk.

h #   Stop it!

What k ?

You can't speak gluï right from the get-go without any explanation.

Oh

My apologies dear reader

If any gluï isn't clear... that's yet another of the myriad reasons for the glictionarÿ. It's here to help you learn the language. Let me offer some quick insight... a mini gluï 101:

The primary objective of gluï is to communicate complexity and detail very, very quickly, unambiguously and in a memorable way.

Let's take Ÿ as a great example - an absolute masterpiece of gluï engineering, if I may say so myself:

In a single letter, Ÿ encapsulates a lot of detail, but in a teeny amount of bytes, which means it's fast! To learn its deeper meaning, you simply need to deconstruct (or unscrünch) it, and the copÿdots are the clue:

Ÿ Y

unscrünches into

glictionarÿ

which unscrünches into

the gluï dictionary

which unscrünches fully into

the graphical language
understood intuitively
( gluï ) dictionary


Easy... right k ?

So...

simply follow the links to Ÿ for any gluï you don't get (you'll find it's mostly highlighted) and don't forget to follow the backstürlys - if and when you find them - for deeper insight. You'll pick it up super fast. The whole premise of gluï is that it's intuitive, it's fast and... last but not least... when you invent new gluï, you get to öwn it!

With an elegant gwörd, (see what I did there ..?) good gluï helps encapsulate complicated concepts, condense multi-faceted scenarios or rich, deep backstories in a brief, yet incredibly precise way that's uncannily easy to remember. And that is what makes gluï exceptionally useful, if not absolutely crucial, for mëgämörphthësïs.

gluï coheres our theory, so Ÿ is a key enabler. Moreover... it's a safe place to store our gwörds and it's the best way we could think of to structure and share some really mega-sized and complicated constructs, in a way that might make sense.

That's our WHY?

And as for the intuitiveness of gluï, consider this quick logic test: Because you've now 'got' the basics of gluï... you've connected some dots, as it were... you'll find it easy to derive that wörds are very specifically "words" mïnted in the glictionarÿ. And if they aren't in the glictionarÿ they can't be wörds. And if they aren't wörds, they can't be gluï.

It's all connected!

Capish k ?
Esteemed reader...

As you've read to here, first let me thank you. I appreciate your focus and your attention and your time. I'm convinced after this mini gluï 101 it's going to be nigh impossible for you to forget or misinterpret what wörds are, going forward. wörds stand out from the many, many words out there in the world that are slowing everybody down and behind so many misunderstandings. wörds are fundamental to what we're doing here. And even though the rationale behind them might seem a little complicated... now you know. That's essentially what gluï - and this glictionarÿ - are all about.

If you ask me... long-form story-telling simply takes too much time, and attention spans aren't long enough for that these days anyway. Reaching this point in the preface is already quite a feat!

As closing context let me say this: Hashtäg and I embarked on this journey we call mëgämörphthësïs and for us, a very big change is happening, ready or not. All we can do is embrace it, or fight against it. We believe it's up to us to navigate towards the outcome we want in all of this, rather than simply muddling through and hoping for the best. Using this glictionarÿ to track where we've been and where we're going is absolutely key to our success. I trust that helps if ever you're asked... What's the glictionarÿ for?

h #   Dude...

You're diving way too deep, way too fast!

Which part of "Quick Question" don't you understand?

Yes, but that's why the heads up to begin with! It doesn't imply a quick answer. This is so time consuming! It's like thpëaking in slow motion...

You're going to have to get used to it. This is how things are going to go if I have to do all the typing.

OMW... it's excruciating i !

My apologies dear reader...

Let me wrap things up:

glictionarÿ is a tool... a navigation aid for mëgämörphthësïs and a container for our gluï.

Why'd we build it k ?

Because # has dwörk.

While we've been hard at work building this tool and have now started weaving mëgämörphthësïs together within it - part-time (and for the longest time!) - we began to wonder whether creative readers like you might want to join us and try your hand at inventing your own wörds too. It's actually a lot of fun!

So we decided to build a simple, straight-forward business model into Ÿ, to see whether it might help us with our mission financially... and here's the bottom line: The more crëdits you buy, the more wörds you mïnt, the sooner # might be able to set dwörk aside and focus his full attention on the top priority of our lives: our mëgämörphthësïs.

So...

I hope you'll join us. And I hope you'll find Ÿ useful and fun and informative and entertaining and educational and... ultimately... a worthwhile undertaking and investment of your time.

I also hope you'll mïnt lots and lots of wörds!

See you in there...

bye i !