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shtick lit
n. A writing genre in which the author undertakes an odd or stuntlike project with the intention of writing about the experience. Also: schtick lit, shtik lit.

Now, in his third book, he spends two years eating, exercising and researching his way to becoming "the healthiest man in the world."...

A.J. Jacobs remains the current heavyweight champion of shtick lit.
—Douglas Bell, "The king of shtick lit strikes again," The Globe and Mail, April 24, 2012

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tweet seats
n. A section in a theater set aside for people who want to tweet during a performance. Also: tweet seat, tweeting seating.

"Tweeting is so natural for theater," said Michael Yawney, an associate professor of theater at Florida International University. ...That's one of the reasons why the Palm Beach Opera began offering tweet seats in December for a performance of "Madama Butterfly" at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach.
—Johnny Diaz, "South Florida arts lovers can tweet from their theater seats," Florida Sun Sentinel, February 20, 2012
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diarrheaist
n. A person who shares too much online, particularly personal information. Also: diarrhea-ist.

Rock music's most prolific social media diarrheaist apparently failed at her last attempt to verify @CourtneyLoveUK.
—Maureen O'Connor, "Courtney Love Fails at Quest for Verified Twitter Account," Gawker, March 4, 2010
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success disaster
n. Massive problems created when a person or company is unable to handle an overwhelming success.

By the time Sandberg left Google, there were no more doubts about that company's ability to turn Web traffic into cash. The achievement was so emphatic that Sandberg and her colleagues used to worry about the other extreme, which they called "success disaster," a fairly common fate among tech start-ups.
—Kevin Conley, "Sheryl Sandberg: What She Saw at The Revolution," Vogue, May 1, 2010
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hackerazzi
n. A person who breaks into a celebrity's email account or computer. [Hacker + paparazzi]

With his head hung low, Jacksonville's so-called Kackerazzi admits he hacked into the email accounts of celebrities. Christopher Chaney faces up to 60 years in prison after pleading guilty to wiretapping and unauthorized access to a computer.
—Rich Jones, "Hate crimes claim," Morning News Recap (WOKV), March 27, 2012
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hashtag activism
n. Activism that uses a Twitter hashtag to promote a project or cause, particularly when it requires no other action from people.
hashtag activist n.

The advent of "hashtag activism" has been greeted with breathless claims about the birth of a new form of technology-based social movement. While such technologies can be extremely useful tools, they do not represent alternatives to the exhausting, age-old work of meeting people where they are, hearing their concerns, reaching common ground, building trust and convincing them that it is in their interests to act politically to change their circumstances.
—Eric Augenbraun, "Occupy Wall Street and the limits of spontaneous street protest," The Guardian, September 29, 2011
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pink slime
n. An industrial meat byproduct consisting of compressed low quality beef trimmings treated with ammonia gas and used as a filler for ground beef.

"Pink slime" will be off the menu this fall for schools in the National School Lunch Program that don't want byproducts containing what's known officially as "lean finely textured beef," the U.S. Department of Agriculture has decided....

Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University who wrote the book Safe Food, says the USDA is trying to manage a public relations problem, not a health concern: "pink slime may be safe, nutritious, and cheap, but it's yucky. It's kind of like pet food."
—Elizabeth Weise, "USDA: Schools can decide if 'pink slime' is used in lunches," USA Today, March 14, 2012

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expenditure cascade
n. A cascade of spending that results from consumption by the wealthy, which triggers emulative spending by the next lower class, which triggers spending by the class below that, and so on.

The United States has experienced a four decade long "expenditure cascade". An expenditure cascade occurs when the rapid income growth of top earners fuels additional spending by the lower earner wannabes. The cascade begins among top earners, which encourages the middle class to spend more which, in turn, encourages the lower class to spend more. Ultimately, these expenditure cascades reduce the amount that each family saves, as there is less money available to save due to extra spending on frivolous discretionary items. Expenditure cascades are triggered by consumption. The consumption of the wealthy triggers increased spending in the class directly below them and the chain continues down to the bottom.
—Jim Quinn, "Peacock Syndrome — America's Fatal Disease," Nolan Chart, July 24, 2011
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cisgender
adj. Identifying with one's physical gender. Also: cis-gender, cisgendered.

"We don't call being cisgender — which is when our bodies match up with our internal sense of gender — a personal choice. Both are about being who you are," she said.
—Lauren La Rose, "'Dancing' star Bono carries transgender flag," The Hamilton Spectator, September 21, 2011
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piem
n. A poem in which the length of each word corresponds to a digit in the decimal expansion of the mathematical constant pi. [Pi + poem.]

People have devised any number of methods to help them remember well more than ten digits. There is a form of poetry known as a piem, in which pi's digits are represented by the number of letters in each word. The best-known piem renders the first fifteen digits of pi as "How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy chapters involving quantum mechanics."
—Calvin Trillin, "Try to remember," The New Yorker, April 4, 2011
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vacationary
n. A person who performs short-term missionary work, particularly as part of a vacation. [Vacation + missionary]

His accusations, now pouring forth with considerable force, were directed at the naive "vacationaries" spending millions of dollars traveling to his country, creating a welfare economy that deprives people of the pride of their own accomplishments.
—Robert D. Lupton, Toxic Charity, HarperOne, October 11, 2011
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glass cliff
n. A senior job or important project, particularly one given to a woman, with a high risk of failure (cf. glass ceiling).

The Glass Cliff has been demonstrated in a number of fields, including FTSE 100 companies, British politics, law and policing, and the research suggests that precarious Glass Cliff positions may be particularly prevalent in male-dominated fields such as ship-ping, logistics and transport.

This may be because women in these industries are often isolated and lack the networks of their male colleagues.

One female executive described what happened to her: "I was placed on a project to manage that was the 'project from hell'. Was I set up for failure? I do not know."
—"Balancing on the edge of the Glass Cliff," Lloyd's List, September 21, 2006