August 13, 2023
The Dead Internet Theory is an online conspiracy theory that asserts that the Internet now consists almost entirely of bot activity and automatically generated content that is manipulated by algorithmic curation, marginalizing organic human activity.
These intelligent bots are assumed to have been made, in part, to help manipulate algorithms and boost search results in order to ultimately manipulate consumers. Further, proponents of the theory accuse government agencies of using bots to manipulate public perception. The date given for this ‘death’ is generally around 2016 or 2017.
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July 5, 2023
In machine learning, a stochastic [stuh-kas-tik] parrot is a large language model (LLM) that is good at generating convincing language, but does not actually understand the meaning of the language it is processing. The term was coined by computational linguistics professor Emily M. Bender in the 2021 artificial intelligence research paper ‘On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?’
Stochastic means ‘random and involving chance or probability.’ A stochastic parrot,’ according to Bender, is an entity ‘for haphazardly stitching together sequences of linguistic forms … according to probabilistic information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning.’ Less formally, the term refers to ‘large language models that are impressive in their ability to generate realistic-sounding language but ultimately do not truly understand the meaning of the language they are processing.’
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February 16, 2023
$100 hamburger is aviation slang for the excuse a general aviation pilot might use to fly. A $100 hamburger trip typically involves flying a short distance (less than two hours), eating at an airport restaurant, and then flying home. In Perth, Western Australia, a similar mentality resulted in the ‘Rotto Bun Run’. A group of pilots who had run out of hot cross buns on Good Friday decided to fly to the closest open bakery on Rottnest Island. The run is now an annual charity event.
$100′ originally referred to the approximate cost of renting or operating a light general aviation aircraft, such as a Cessna 172, for the time it took to fly round-trip to a nearby airport. However, increasing fuel prices have since caused an increase in hourly operating costs for most airplanes, and a Cessna 172 now costs US$95–$180 per Hobbs hour to rent, including fuel.
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February 3, 2023
The Hawking Index (HI) is a mock mathematical measure of how far people will read through a book before giving up. The index is named after physicist Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time,’ which was dubbed ‘the most unread book of all time.’ It was invented by American mathematician Jordan Ellenberg, who created it in a blog for the ‘Wall Street Journal’ in 2014.
Ellenberg relied on data from Kindle users for his model. ‘A Brief History of Time’ scored 6.6% on the HI, meaning Ellenberg estimated that only 6.6% of readers finished the book.
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October 19, 2022
Let’s Go Brandon is a political slogan and Internet meme, used as a substitute for the phrase ‘Fuck Joe Biden’ in reference to Joe Biden, the 46th president of the United States.
Chants of ‘Fuck Joe Biden’ began during sporting events in early September 2021. On October 2, 2021, during a televised interview of the Sparks 300 race winner Brandon Brown at Talladega Superspeedway, NBC Sports reporter Kelli Stavast incorrectly described the chant in the background as ‘Let’s Go Brandon,’ which sparked the meme. The slogan has become well known through use by Republican politicians and critics of Biden. The phrase quickly spread to popular culture.
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October 17, 2022
The Obama tan suit controversy refers to a live, televised press conference on August 28, 2014 where U.S. President Barack Obama announced he was increasing the military response against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria while wearing a tan suit. His suit choice sparked significant attention and led to media and social media criticism. The issue remained prominent in the media for several days with the issue being particularly widely discussed on talk shows.
A light-colored suit is considered casual summer wear and such attire was seen by conservative media outlet Fox News as inappropriate due to the gravitas of the subject matter. The controversy was seen in the context of the slow news season before the run-up to the 2014 election campaign. The suit received mixed reviews from a fashion perspective.
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September 6, 2022
A reply allpocalypse, also called an email storm, is a sudden spike of “reply all” messages on an email list. When members respond, often pleading for the cessation of messages, a chain reaction is triggered, generating traffic that can render the email servers inoperative.
Some email viruses also have the capacity to create email storms by sending copies of themselves to an infected user’s contacts, including distribution lists, infecting the contacts in turn.
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June 15, 2022
Three Wolf Moon is a T-shirt designed by artist Antonia Neshev featuring three wolves howling at the Moon. It gained popularity after attracting sarcastic reviews on Amazon.com attributing great power to it, such as making the wearer irresistible to women, striking fear into other males, and having magical healing abilities.
German scholar Melvin Haack considers it to be a notable example of a redneck joke. The reviews have been included in studies of such online sarcasm. The shirt has also been been described as parodic of the alpha male archetype.
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January 25, 2022
A hot mic is an error in which a microphone is switched on or remains on, especially without the speaker realizing, allowing unintended listeners to hear parts of conversations not intended for public consumption.
Such errors usually involve live broadcasting in radio or television, and sometimes material is recorded and played back via media outlets. Hot mic events can cause embarrassment for the person or organization involved, sometimes resulting in serious confrontations and employment termination.
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January 7, 2022
Birds Aren’t Real is a satirical conspiracy theory which posits that birds are actually drones operated by the U.S. government to spy on American citizens. In 2018, journalist Rachel Roberts described Birds Aren’t Real as ‘a joke that thousands of people are in on.’
The movement argues that all birds in the United States were exterminated by the government between 1959 and 1971 and replaced by drones (the specifics of these theories as reported in news articles are not always consistent, not unlike actual conspiracy theories). They claim that birds sit on power lines to recharge themselves, and that bird poop on cars is a tracking method.
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October 19, 2021
The Rhinoceros Party is a Canadian federal-level satirical political party founded by Canadian political figure and entertainer François ‘Yo’ Gourd and led by Sébastien Côrriveau.
It was a registered political party in Canada from the 1960s. Operating within the tradition of political satire, the Rhinoceros Party’s basic credo, their so-called primal promise, was ‘a promise to keep none of our promises.’ They then promised outlandishly impossible schemes designed to amuse and entertain the voting public.
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August 1, 2021
Grand Poobah is a satirical term derived from the name of the haughty character Pooh-Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘The Mikado’ (1885). In this comic opera, Pooh-Bah holds numerous exalted offices, including ‘First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chief Justice, Commander-in-Chief, Lord High Admiral … Archbishop … Lord Mayor’ and ‘Lord High Everything Else.’
The name has come to be used as a mocking title for someone self-important or locally high-ranking and who either exhibits an inflated self-regard or who has limited authority while taking impressive titles. American writer William Safire wrote that ‘everyone assumes [the name] Pooh-Bah merely comes from [W. S. Gilbert] combining the two negative exclamations Pooh! plus Bah!, typical put-downs from a typical bureaucrat.’
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