Emojis in the Unicode standard

The Unicode Consortium and the New York Department of Transportation have no particular reason to coordinate, and yet between 2015 and 2022 they added emojis and bike trips at so similar a rate (r = 0.960) that it starts to feel like policy. More little pictures to send; more little bikes to ride. The cost of self-expression and the cost of self-transportation, both quietly subsidized.

Both are the patient expansion of systems designed to make a previously limited thing feel limitless. Unicode grew from around 1,300 emojis in 2015 to over 3,700 by 2022 as the Consortium added professions, skin tones, flags, and the crucial 'melting face'; Citi Bike expanded from 10 million annual trips to around 37 million, with new stations added almost monthly as the program extended into the outer boroughs. They are both, in their way, infrastructure investments in the everyday: one for thumbs, one for feet, both asked to scale because the baseline had become inadequate.

More symbols, more miles, same city. Something keeps expanding what 'enough' means.