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tariqk's definitions

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
mugGet the NPCmug.

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 7, 2022
mugGet the 10,000 years agomug.

Xennial

A terrible word used by early Millenials (born circa early 1980s) to disassociate themselves from those other younger millenials and to tell their Boomer parents and Gen-Xer elder siblings that they aren't like those other young people, they're not cringe, or whatever it is young people use today, they remember what it was like when VCR was king and TVs were made out of cathode tubes and there was no Internet.

Fallen out of disuse when those so-called Xennials realized that it doesn't matter how not-cringe you are, they're still gonna kill you with wage theft, student debt, and all the other tools of generational class war at their disposal.
Unlike those other Millenials, I am a Xennial, and I know what it is like to live without smartphones glued to my face every day.

No one cares, Kathy, we're all getting murdered with student debt, just lift your picket sign higher and shout louder.
by tariqk December 5, 2021
mugGet the Xennialmug.

mathwashing

The act of using mathematical models, statistical analyses and data-centric approaches that are used to justify bullshit policies and terrible strategies. Mathwashing can occur in any stage of the analysis — it can be using the wrong kind of data, using the wrong kind of model, or even making the wrong kind of conclusions from the results provided. Whatever the cause, the results are the same — it uses the sanctity and the so-called objectivity of “math”, “data”, and “science” to justify policies and strategies with destructive, tragic and far-ranging effects.
Telling me that John McAfee said that Bitcoin's mathematics make financial bubbles impossible is mathwashing, George — the mathematical guarantees that the blockchain algorithm only guarantee that the whole damn thing works as a tamper-evident repository of data, not that fraud and asset bubbles are fundamentally impossible. Now, get your head out of your ass, and tell me how much of our life savings did you invest in the damn thing.
by tariqk December 12, 2018
mugGet the mathwashingmug.

Libleft

Political compass meme term for people who identify with the bottom left corner of the political compass (the "ibertarian-left”), who often proudly tell everyone within earshot that Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Gertrude Stein and Karl Marx are in “their” team, but often ignoring the fact that Mahatma Gandhi was an anti-Semitic proto-Hindutva fundamentalist with weird ideas about women who got killed by another proto-Hindutva fundamentalist for not being fundamentalist enough, Nelson Mandela barely lasted a Presidential term because he was too left for his (arguably, kleptocratic neoliberal) compatriots after being in jail for over 30 years, Gertrude Stein was a cryto-TERF, and no one's been able to effectively implement Karl Marx's ideas for the 140+ years since he died.

In short, political non-entities whose only argument for their “ideology” is that they don't have, by sheer coincidence, genocidal maniacs on their corner of the political compass, mostly because the bar is so low that it excludes coercive state action from their list of acceptable policies.

They have Kropotkin though. Kropotkin's cool.

But still not enough to base an entire political identity on.
Telling me to support your policy proposal “because I'm a libleft uwu” is a terrible idea, Stuart, saying that is the oatmeal of political statements, it just means that you're against coercive state action against anyone, not that you're against with exploitation or structural discrimination, or that your brain is grounded in, you know, actual material circumstances.
by tariqk December 5, 2021
mugGet the Libleftmug.

CIO

Chief Information Officer. If you read the industry publications, Chief Information Officers are at the vanguard of today's information-centric workplace. In practice, it's basically some poor schlub who's been given a fancier “IT Manager” hat, who's been given the responsibility to fix the dumpster fire that is your IT Systems, by giving “suggestions” that are roundly ignored by the Board while the CEO and CFO pilfer the coffers to buy hookers and blow, and to play the role of fall guy when the whole scam collapses.
You got promoted to CIO? Oh, you have my condolences.
by tariqk December 12, 2018
mugGet the CIOmug.

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
mugGet the pareto-mug.

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