10: interregnum

Gavin Leech
January 31, 2026

Sadly I am grieving.

New words

Offtake (Anglo-Saxon v.): to remove
Offtake (petrochemical n.): the removal of oil
Offtake agreement (industrial policy n.): an advance market commitment
Offtake offtake (n.): an advance market commitment to buy oil
to nolife (Internet v.): to monomanaically focus on one thing for a period to the exclusion of your social life. e.g. “Can’t come out, I’m nolifing my midterm”.
chudling (Internet n.): Someone in danger of becoming a chud; someone whose chud behaviour reflects immaturity rather than inherent vice?
lowkirkenuinely (Internet adv.): from “lowkenuinely”, from “low-key genuinely”.
yolo run (AI n.): an AI training experiment which changes many variables at once and attempts to produce a new system in one run, choosing e.g. hyperparameters by intuition. Most big runs instead follow thousands of little warmup experiments and restarts. Not a sensible approach for mortals.
to roundtrip (finance v.): selling an asset while (agreeing to) buy it back later at a similar price. A way of inflating revenue and so growth. Worse, can be done with services…
anti-healing (pejorative n.): Loaded term for the attitude of self-acceptance among e.g. some disability activists. See also anti-recovery.
a talking stage (metonymic n.): a person you are chatting with on a dating app, before meeting them. “‘Failed’ talking stages happen when intense texting and idealizing someone doesn't lead to an in-person relationship”.
trvke: (Internet joke n.) a supposed piece of true, devastating, counter-narrative information.
friendslop (Internet n.): a cheap game designed for long co-op sessions with friends without stakes or focus
self-replicating capital (economics n.): a suggestive reframing of the criterion for and model of true AGI.
szn (Internet queen n.): season.
cloid (Internet pej. n.): clanker + foid. Horrible word for a human acting as subagent of an AI. I prefer “blanker”. See also echoborg.
to bittercoat (v.): to interpret a technique through the lens of the Bitter Lesson. Usually pejorative, with the implication that 1. the Lesson is true and 2. the technique is doomed because not following the Lesson. "Skip the 'Future Work' section. It's just performative bittercoating." "I know the team. They're good people. It's just that in the current capital market, you have to bittercoat your whitepaper before you have a chance to get funded."
to bullpost (Internet v.): to bullshit-post, to vaguepost, to be absurd and stupid as a marketing tactic.
frontier biology (marketing n.): to apply AI to (usually) biomedical problems.
glizzy (DC n.): hot dog. From the protuding tip supposedly looking like the extended magazine of a Glock.
yinzhan 引战 (Internet v.): to rage-bait; to shit-stirring; to conduct three-way trolling (making two people fight when you don't actually care about the matter).