The funny thing is that these 'garbage characters' are actually numeric characters, but in Cuneiform (as mentioned in T193610). Perhaps the collision is due to improper handling of non-BMP characters in the collation module?
Madness string 84026
I don't know, my father is slipping away as his brain is turning to swiss cheese. Two siblings and myself, we're all pretty well fine with it. Our mother seems more affected, but not too much, not really. Dementia would be terrible for someone who was wonderful.