grey literature (librarian n.): a subtractive genre: neither academic nor commercial nor amateur writing. NGO reports, government whitepapers, think tank bilge, treaties. Perfectly named. Whatever you think of the average quality of academia, I guarantee you this is worse. It is not clear how much of the world's decisions depend on it. hoʻoponopono (Hawaiian n.): "making RIGHT"; a particular conflict resolution ritual. Recently rehashed into a Standard New Age form of narcissistic self -forgiveness. Behold: we can now complain about the cultural appropriation of intangibles: “ When things are taken out of our cultures and applied in ways in which those outside the culture want to apply them, especially for profit, there is almost always a problem. ” frummer (Yiddish n.): a highly observant Jew. From פֿרום; pious. shadow welfare system (sociology n.): things that poor people do to get by outside of government benefits, e.g. food banks, not paying for the su
universal physics (science n.): finding a single law that crosses the scales of a phenomenon. Rare? paperwork pollution (econommics n.): great word for what bureaucracy does to a society; same kind of externality and maybe even worse in time terms. delusion box (AI safety n.): self-modification allowing the system to systematically ignore / confabulate inputs. weird machine (theoretical CS n.): a system which is Turing-complete when you wouldn't expect it / when no one intended it. e.g. Peano arithmetic, Magic the Gathering. to bugsplat (US military v.): to murder by use of a drone. screenshot-dunking (internet n.): to printscreen someone's online behaviour in order to mock them. In passing this spreads their message, of course. By analogy with the trial by ordeal of water . Twitter is of course a dunking machine by design. homoglyph (code n.): character which looks almost exactly the same as a character with a different Un