Zerot

I think it is because short form texts like IMs/SMS/irc are more like spoken language than written language. And if somebody talks to you and ends a sentence with “period”, the meaning/feeling of the sentence changes.

I also remember something like it around that time. There were definitely a few YouTubers playing it against eachother. Iirc you could see all the other player viewpoints, but not your own.

The characters for Japan literally mean sun and origin. And has been in use since the 8th century. So the Mercator projection has nothing to do with that. The origin of “land of the rising sun” is because Japan is East of China and the sun rises in the east.