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notable wordwordword


  • dragon-king (n.): An extreme event among extreme events: roughly, an outlier of a Pareto distribution, even. An elaboration on Taleb's black swan metaphor for unforeseeable extreme events. Not sure if it adds much, since the black swan is distribution-independent and Taleb doesn't fixate on power laws iirc.

  • chef's arse (n.): Painful chafing of the buttocks against each other; attends exercise in hot environments.

  • groufie ( n.): group selfie, obvs. No less contemptible for the awkward swerve around "groupie".

  • detaliate (mangled v.): To explain. Seen in this Quora answer by a non-native English speaker (possibly Romanian). I want to appropriate it: to detaliate is to respond to casual comments with a fisking.

  • consing: (n.): To save on memory allocation by comparing new values to existing allocations and just storing a hash to the existing one if it's a hit. From Lisp's cons cells, a basic key-value data structure.

  • sadcore: ( n.): Slow indie. Journo term: avoided by anyone musical for obvious reasons.

  • key-signing party (n.): A meetup in person for secure exchange of cryptographic keys. Not to be confused with the other key party, but I hope someone has.

  • shitlib (Internet n.): Shit liberal - but clearly not as in "someone who is failing to live up to liberal ideals". Seems to be used by rightists for "advocate of political correctness", though of course leftists attack liberals for defending freedom of speech ("freeze peach").

  • ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


  • statecuck (Internet n.): A supporter of state intervention in something. I was never able to take "cuck" seriously as an insult, but I listen even less since learning it is pronounced "cook".

  • channish ( n. or adj.): the language of 4chan (8chan, etc.); or 2) the property of being fit only for 4chan. Characterised by exaggeration, cruelty, and crude compound neologisms. "Socdem shitlib" and "statecuck" are channish, obviously.

  • Wadsworth constant (n.): The first 30% of a Youtube video. The part of a video that can be skipped because it will contain "no worthwhile or interesting information".

  • Kegan levels ( n.): the ranked parts of a particular theory of consciousness. I usually disdain these things, since the data has been so poor and the theorising simultaneously fragile and unfalsifiable. But I find this one really interesting, not least for its falsifiability - e.g. "logical reasoning is a necessary condition of having stable feelings", "most people never reach this stage, and never before age 40".

  • shirt-tail relatives ( n.): Can't beat this Quora answer: "people related to me enough that someone in my family circle cares deeply about their lives, but not closely enough related to me that I have any idea what the relationship is, in a biological or legal sense."

  • annalist (pej. n.): An insult between historians: someone who merely records events uncritically. Comes from the official scribes of ancient Rome, who were indeed uncritical to the point of deceit.



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