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Notepad Messed With Your Mind

Nostalgia Nerd | January 7, 2026



Head to https://squarespace.com/nostalgianerd to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code NOSTALGIANERD ~ Bush Hid the Facts is a problem with certain versions of Windows, which made text disappear, or turn into unreadable nonsense. It sparked outrage and concern because it seemed to have something to do with the then President, George W. Bush. Combined with the Microsoft Wingdings problem around the word Q33NY (if you know, you know) and things did not look good for Bill Gates.

See the website version of this video for links and references at https://www.nostalgianerd.com/bush-hid-the-facts/

*Apologies to Brad Silverberg, who I referred to as Brett 😳

⌚Timings⌚
00:00- 07:59 Bush Hid the Facts
07:59-08:40 SqSp
08:40-15:34 Bush Hid the Facts
15:34-21:47 Wingdings
21:47-22:20

🔗Video Links🔗
Fool me Once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl7FKfl3O2Y
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Errors and omissions excepted.

Some material in this video may be used under Fair Dealing / Fair Use. Where under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 (UK: Sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988), allowance is made for purposes including parody, quotation, criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, education and research. Fair Dealing / Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

Written by Nostalgia Nerd

Comments

This post currently has 28 comments.

  1. @mybrainlikesthings

    January 7, 2026 at 3:33 am

    Even in modern times, text encoding on Windows is a bit of a mystery between what the user means to do and how Windows is second-guessing them. For example, in 2025, using Windows 10 with Office 365, if you're using a PowerShell script to export data into a CSV file so that you can analyze it in Excel, then you need to take extra measures to force that the output gets encoded as ASCII. Otherwise the data gets encoded in UNICODE by default, and Excel can't properly parse the data from the CSV file.

  2. @Raven-Creations

    January 7, 2026 at 3:33 am

    That "less than one in a trillion" statement shows how someone can either not understand statistics, or deliberately misuse them. What he should have done is take any random order of glyphs and seen what the probability was of those glyphs being a recognisable three letter acronym. I think he'd find it much more likely that any random arrangement would make an acronym, simply because there are so many three letter acronyms. For instance, jumble them up, and CIA might match, jumble them again and NRA might match.

    That the current president makes Dubya seem like a genius takes some doing. The odds must surely be a trillion to one. Or it could be that the real power in America, people like Peter Thiel and the shady families behind the Heritage Foundation, like idiots who are easy to manipulate. The Heritage Foundation made their mark by backing Reagan, then presenting him with a list of 2000 policies of which 60% were implemented in his first year. Reagan was another low IQ puppet. Some conspiracy theories happen to be real. The Heritage Foundation likes to claim its funding comes from a wide variety of sources. What they don't tell you is that the wide variety of sources are themselves funded mostly by six of the wealthiest families and individuals in America, all of them extreme right wingers: the Coors family, Charles G Koch, the Uihleins, the Scaifes, Barre Seid, and the Bradley family.

  3. @forbiddenera

    January 7, 2026 at 3:33 am

    17:48 wait, WHAT?! "Sometime computer columnist Penn Jillette , like, Penn & Teller? Part of me isn't surprised (nerds) but part of me is, and part of me now wants to read those columns 😂 18:33 oh cool pause, read

  4. @alzeebum

    January 7, 2026 at 3:33 am

    Just a small correction. In Q33Y, "3" isn't a filing cabinet – it's a paper with writing on it, the official name is "page". The first five digits in wingdings are 0 – 5 and they are 0: a closed folder, 1: an open folder, 2: a page with a dog ear, 3: a page without a dog ear, 4: a page overlapping another page, and 5: (drumroll….) a filing cabinet.

    These were used as icons in text mode application GUIs for saving, opening, etc.

  5. @GrantSoundsGood

    January 7, 2026 at 3:33 am

    I'm sorry, man I love your videos but that annoying crt whine that keeps coming back. I have to leave the video for that. i hatteeeee thissssss please don't make me leave another one of your videos because of something small like this. Keep the great content up. Keep the whines down, please and thank you

  6. @kingjulien2375

    January 7, 2026 at 3:33 am

    everyone, except windows with Windows-1252, used utf, even today. it is Microsoft's fault that we always have to take care about this shit because they wanted to push their proprietary standard

  7. @WoodsPrecisionArms

    January 7, 2026 at 3:33 am

    Well when you got three buildings, 1 not even hit by a plane, come down in complete free fall collapse like a demolition – when they were designed specifically to take a air liner plane crash – when that’s the public is told – people are going to associate a lot to conspiracies

  8. @toddverbeek5113

    January 7, 2026 at 3:33 am

    I no longer use the phrase “conspiracy theory”; I call it a “conspiracy hoax”. This is because they rarely rise to level of a theory that that even could be factual. On the contrary, they routinely begin with deliberate falsehoods (e.g. “Q33N”): hoaxes which are then spread through conspiracy.

  9. @DefaultYoutubeHandle

    January 7, 2026 at 3:33 am

    I’ve learned to just keep everything utf-8 so it can be transferred to Linux and still work lmao. Otherwise you get weird EOL bs or wtv that makes ur files unusable. Or u can fix it with sed

  10. @MahkyVmedia1

    January 7, 2026 at 3:33 am

    I can't remember his name but some comedian has a bit about 911 how they set everything up and then said now for the clues, they brought in someone from Mad magazine to work with the us mint to make a fold in on the twenty to make it look like the twin towers burning hahahahaha

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