Why are apostrophes -- or is it hyphens -- in some posts suddenly showing up as a scrambled mess ??

[eppur_se_muova]

I posted this to GD, but maybe it's more appropriate here.

Recently, I have seen a lot of posts containing a nonsense string of characters. At first I thought it always replaced apostrophes, but now it seems I am seeing it in places where dashes/hyphens seem to be intended.

Given that the Great Election Night Hack involved some strange chicanery with superscripts or something like that, I'm a little concerned that this might be something that adversely affects DU. It just suddenly started a few days ago, and I can't recall changing any of my settings or anything (I *could* be wrong about that, obviously, given how most software suffers from auto-upgrade-incontinence these days). Strangest of all, the string seems to have reproduced itself in triplicate in my original post, which strikes me as worrying.

Here's the thread from GD: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221067937