notable unborn widows

• exercise intolerance (medical n.): Collapsing after minor physical effort. Marker of severe heart disease or CFS. Might this be a less-heralded advantage of doing regular exercise: a canary in the mine?


• degan (n.): death-free vegan; vegan who will eat cultured meat. Coined here, no traction yet.


• degen (thieves' cant n.): sword


• capacity discipline (airline n.): Overbooking, downsizing, outsourcing, just-in-time arrivals. Using fewer planes to maintain prices, while enforcing this monopoly with state violence if necessary.


• plasmon (physics n.): the quantum of plasma oscillation; the as-if smallest unit of change in the free electron gas.


• exciton (condensed matter n.): Way of describing a paired electron/ electron hole as if they were a particle. First-ever unambigious sighting, the other day.
  


• goniometer (physics n.): Device for measuring or creating precise angles


• psychrometrics (engineering): the study of gas-vapor mixes. Air conditioning science.


• button man (Mob n.): enforcer; muscle.


• cryptobug (speculation n.): Person who thinks that decentralised digital currency will soon take over the world monetary system. (NB: we shouldn't let Bitcoin take over the word "crypto"; it has little to do with serious security work.)


• bariatrics (medical n.): specialism in treating obesity.


• to bitshame (internet v.): To mock for having no cryptocurrency (after talking about it a lot).


• authentocracy (n.): Rule by the merely authentic; the elevation of the ad hominem fallacy to a hard requirement on discourse. People are trying to tie this to Brexiteers (Gove's "people have had enough of experts" crap), but it is a deep human problem and can be seen all over the left too. Speaking as a working-class man.


• fertile octogenarian (legal n.): absurd limit case for common law inheritance: the rule against perpetuities means that common law tacitly has to endorse various implausible people. Because it is primitive, i.e. nonprobabilistic. See also unborn widow, precocious toddler.


• to characterize (maths v.): to uniquely describe. "Property P characterizes object X" means that X is the only thing with property P. See also singleton set.
• OTR; off-the-record messaging (crypto n. ): Actually secure algorithm; no storage, forward secrecy, deniable authentication.