10,000 years ago

Describes a mythical age, where a plague didn't ravage the world, the Internet and news weren't full of nutters, no one was setting the planet on fire for stupid, ugly, JPEGs, and everything made sense (circa: before 2016).
Oh, yeah. I met him in a party 10,000 years ago. Oh, when exactly? Summer 2015, I think…
by tariqk March 07, 2022
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C-Suite Brain Damage

A condition that affects folks who become CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CSOs, and other kinds of C-Suite officers, where their skill levels in common, every day tasks (and sometimes their morality and empathy) become severely impaired, as the sudden rush of power, stress and sometimes crushing sense of responsibility (hahahahah, okay, just kidding, it's copious amounts of alcohol and drugs like cocaine) start damaging the parts of the brain involved in figuring out consequences and making estimates, because planning around consequences and making accurate estimates are for the little people and hoi polloi.
Yes, I know he's an ACCA-certified accountant, and you just saw him flub trying to figure out how much tip he was supposed to pay, but you gotta understand… he got promoted to CFO six months ago, and what you're seeing is C-Suite Brain Damage in action.
by tariqk December 11, 2018
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fermi

Figuring out something quickly by just using estimates to the closest power of ten, because sometimes you just want to know if the thing you're doing is worth or is gonna cost ten bucks, a hundred, or a cool grand.

Named after Fermi Estimation, a trick used by Enrico Fermi to wow his fellow nerds at parties by estimating shit without knowing 100% everything about the problem, sometimes without even writing shit down. You're not going to get exact numbers, but you're gonna get close enough.

Most notably, dude estimated the power of a fucking nuclear bomb by just dropping papers as the bomb went off and measuring how far the shockwave moved that shit — and he was only off by a bit.
Okay, so we don't know what the price of the stuff is — fuck it, just assume it's ten bucks, fermi it and we'll call the guy when he wakes up, we just need to know if this gonna make us big bucks or to just forget about it.
by tariqk July 13, 2022
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Real Soon Now™

A term used in software engineering to define a period of time before a promised feature or bugfix will be released. The period of time is usually, “Never.”
We'd like to thank all or users for their patience and forbearance during really difficult time, and we'd like to announce that all the feature requests and critical bugfixes will be released Real Soon Now™.
by tariqk December 05, 2021
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NPC

Originating from video games, it stands for non-player character. It has a double-edged meaning:

To the person using the term, they are advertising that they have a better sense of perspective and understanding to the world than other people in society.

To everyone listening to that person use that term unironically, they know that the person has a massive empathy deficit and is at best woefully emotionally under-developed, and at worst a raging sociopath.
“What about this dude, Josh Smith?”

“Yeah… I had a quick conversation with him for a few minutes, and he used ‘NPC’ unironically.”

“Oof, that's bad. Maybe he's young?”

“He also referred to women as ‘females’.”

“Oh, no. Okay, bin him. At the very least we'll save on the sexual harassment lawsuits.”
by tariqk November 28, 2022
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sophopause

A boundary that forms between what an expert or a genius has every right to say what they like because they are unquestionably an expert about the thing they are talking about, and what they have absolutely no right to comment on because they are so invariably full of shit about it.

Sophopauses may be bound in time — say, for example, after a traumatic or life changing event, after they've smoked a blunt or drank too much alcohol, or may be bound in (metaphorical) space — someone may be completely insightful about certain topics, only to be so fucking stupid in other things.

From the Greek sophía, and the Latin pausa, in the same tradition of English that mashes Greek and Latin words together, because everything is horrible and nothing makes sense.
Talking to Dr. Roberts about world politics, race, evolutionary psychology, Bitcoin, or social sciences, while he's drunk? That's a bad move, because you'll cross his sophopause at Mach 3. The man is a brilliant statistician, but hoo boy does he believe in the weirdest conspiracy theories.
by tariqk December 11, 2018
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pareto-

Roughly but not exactly.

Like, when you say pareto-80 you don't exactly mean 80 percent, you really mean, roughly four out of five. Pareto-20 means one out of five, and saying that a scheme will likely fail at pareto-5 means it'll go okay so long as we don't roll a natural 1.
So, like, 20 percent of respondents say that—

That's bullshit, you pulled that number out of your ass.

Pareto-20, man. You're right, it's... (checks notes) closer to 18 percent, but that's not much of a difference, is it?
by tariqk July 13, 2022
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