In 2022 on a whim I acquired the Arabic shit Shabaka Domain (غائط.شبكة). I had no particular plans for it, and all it ever did was to show a huge poop emoji front and center. But boy was it ever fun to see software and mail validators break.

Technically Arabic scripts are valid in domain names using Punycode. In reality though, having a LTR user part and At-sign, followed by the RTL domain, followed by the LTR dot, followed by the RTL TLD was too much to handle for many mail validators.

Kudos to Apple’s Mail.app, which had no issues. Neither when setting up the account, nor when using it.

But if it was such fun, why is the domain free right now?

I have never felt as if that domain ever really belonged to me, and have since let it expire. It is now free to grab and for you to have your fun with it.