• Zoonotic Virus

    A virus that passes from animals to humans. Examples include: SARS, Swine Flu, and COVID-19.

  • Visitor Pattern

    A pattern for traversing a tree of heterogeneous objects. Decoupling the algorithm for traversing the tree and the code operating on the objects leads to a much cleaner (and easily extensible) code.

  • Homeostasis

    A state of equilibrium for an organism that is the optimal condition.

  • COVID-19

    A corona virus that became a global pandemic. The number of cases has surpassed 2MM and over 500 thousand people have died (at time of writing).

  • Silurian Hypothesis

    Posits that there were previous civilizations on Earth before humans. Some scientists are conducting research to see if we could detect changes in things like atmospheric carbon, plastics, and nuclear fallout since it’s highly likely no other physical evidence would exist e.

  • Literate Programming

    Intertwines documentation and source code which emphasizes the need for code to not only be understood by the compiler, but also by future engineers trying to reason about your code.

  • R Value

    A rating for the ability of a virus to spread. R of 1 would indicate each infected person infects one person.

  • Decision Log

    A document that keeps track of critical decisions made by a team to raise awareness and provide a reference for future discussions that involve some form of ‘why did we decide to do x?

  • SPAC IPO

    A shell holding company goes public with the intention of raising money to merge with a private company—effectively making the private company public without having to go through the listing process.

  • Plutonomy

    In finance, the plutonomy is the small group of people that control most of the wealth.

  • Lean Startup

    A framework for starting companies that focuses on better understanding of customers and markets by building minimum viable products to validate assumptions.

  • Epistemology

    The understanding of knowledge and distinguishing between truth and beliefs.

  • Tacit Knowledge

    Knowledge that can not be transferred through words alone. For example, it won’t help someone learning to ride a bike to make them read an instruction manual and expect they can flawlessly ride a bike afterward.

  • Sigmoid Function

    A mathematical function that produces an ‘S’ shaped curve when plotted and is used to transform a number into a value between 0 and 1 (also -1 and 1).

  • Planck's Principle

    Scientific change doesn’t happen because because people change their mind, but because the next generation of scientists have different views.

  • Substituted Economics for Racism

    Thurgood Marshall made the comment that we have “substituted economics for race” in his dissent to the San Antonio Independent School District v.

  • Tyler Cowen

    Thoughtful economist from George Mason University, author, blogger, and podcast host.

  • Toska

    A russian word with many facets to it’s meaning that roughly translates to depression and longing, love-sickness, and unbearable feelings.

  • Structural Racism

    Racism that has been deliberately built into systems that govern and organize our lives including education, courts, laws, constitution, law enforcement, etc.

  • Pyrrhic Victory

    A victory that results in self-inflicted devastation equivalent to defeat.

  • Lindy Effect

    A theory that states, the future of an idea or technology is proportional to how old it currently is so that every additional period results in longer life expectency.

  • Hobson’s Choice

    An illusion of a choice between two inequivalent options. Hobson ran stable filled with many horses.