By announcing AI slop as their word of the year, Macquarie Dictionary has escaped being cancelled by all the primary teachers of Australia.  If they had chosen 6-7 it would have been a very different matter.

ZG: 7

While it is hugely topical at the moment, it could be here today and, we hope, gone tomorrow.

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This is the responsibility that digital platforms should bear for keeping their users safe and preventing online harms such as scams. 

ZG: 9

This is a big issue that affects us all.

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This is the blue from Bluetooth combined with the colloquialism snarf meaning ‘to eat greedily’. It is the theft of information from a device that uses Bluetooth technology.

ZG: 3

So many things we have to watch out for!

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Archeologists of the future, when they come to examine life on Earth in the Anthropocene, may also discover the products of technology which never break down.  Plastics will last forever. 

ZG: 4

Not a common term but a necessary one.

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Those of you who read naked running might be tempted to think that this is flying without instruments which would be interesting.  But no. Naked in this context means ‘without paraphernalia of any kind’, so naked flying is stepping onto a commercial airline with no baggage.

ZG: 4

While there is increased pressure to adopt this style of travel, most of us feel the need to cart a certain amount of our stuff with us.

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Once if a girl was labelled ‘weird’, that meant social ostracisation.  Now being weird has come to mean being highly individualistic, and authentic — that modern word of praise. 

ZG: 5

Playing with the idea of different styles of lit seems to be popular at the moment.

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Inflation is accompanied by a rise in the cost of living.  Friendflation is the rise in the cost of having friends and maintaining these friendships at regular social occasions which inevitably call for some expenditure.

ZG: 4

This is more a sociologist’s term for an observed trend. The people experiencing this may well discuss cossie livs but I doubt that they discuss friendflation.

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This is a visa introduced this year by China to attract STEM graduates to work in China.  It is seen as a step to attract more of the world’s best science and technology young talent to China in the race with the US.

ZG: 3

It will be interesting to see how this develops.

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If you have ever been confronted by a blank stare from a young person in response to something you have said, then you may have experienced the Gen-Z stare.  There are many explanations offered for this stare but the general opinion seems to be that it is the equivalent of D’uh! in non-verbal form.

ZG: 6

Intergenerational communication is often a puzzle.

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This has been a derogatory term in science fiction since the 1950s for a robot because they were seen as crude creations that made a clanking sound as they went on their way.

ZG: 5

We are very nervous of the AI revolution and robots are its main creature.

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We have had a long time to come up with various descriptions of writing that we think is less than the best.  Hackneyed, stale, prosaic.  So now we are beginning a similar assessment of the output from AI, whether it is text or images or a combination.

ZG: 8

We are sensitised at the moment to any nuance in our management of AI.

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Apparently about five years ago Trump was very much opposed to cancel culture and in favour of free speech.  But now he has discovered that free speech involves people saying derogatory things about HIM.

ZG: 4

I really don’t think this one will take off.

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Scambling (scam + gambling) is a broad term for any fraudulent online gambling.  Speculating on crypto currencies is described as a form of scambling.  The particular type of scambling that has become the scourge of remote Indigenous communities is one that they have called ding ding because of the sound of pokie machines used in the game.

ZG: 5

Not exactly a mainstream term but the effects of gambling in Indigenous communities is a major concern.

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This is the feeling of frustration experienced as a result of boredom with one’s work.  It is the opposite of burnout where you have been super stressed and worked harder than any mere mortal should.

ZG: 4

People like to play around with a word and create variations. Burnout is here to stay. I’m not sure that rustout will hang around for long.

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It sounds cute — a potato plant with a mop-top look— but the mop-top is created from stunted foliage in the plant caused by the potato mop-top virus (PMTV).  The tubers below the ground have stained rings or arcs in the vegetable flesh. 

ZG: 4

I’m sure in Tasmania the frequency of use is high.

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This is an accepted type of interview, usually conducted in an effort to lead a client to a solution, particularly in legal matters.  The whole conversation is empathetic and supportive, so that together the interviewer and the interviewee can reach a good solution. 

ZG: 3

A technical term which has briefly surfaced in the mainstream.

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Remigration has become a cause in the current context of migration into European countries, the Identitarian Movement was born in France in the 2000s.  It defends the rights of White Europeans to keep their culture and racial identities.

ZG: 4

This political buzzword in the UK has a minor resonance here.

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The wind turbines on poles that are proliferating around the country at the moment may be joined by airborne cousins producing airborne wind energy (AWE). 

ZG: 4

The fact that they may be in more remote places and less visible is of interest to some I am sure.

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Modelled on downsizing, townsizing is the conscious choice of small towns as a holiday destination rather than the bigger, expensive cities.  You can settle in, however briefly, to the quaint charm of the little town tucked away in some not usually travelled part of the world.

ZG: 6

Many of us are doing this without actually giving it a name, but, thoughtfully, the tourism industry has provided one.

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