Concept Log

Every day a concept defined

[conceptlog]

Falsy

In JavaScript, there are primitive value types: strings ("hello world"), numbers (23), booleans (false), null, or undefined. While only a boolean value can be fully true or false, the other types, when queried for truth or falsity, will evaluate to one or the other. A string, for example, evaluates to true; null evaluates to false. These "implied" boolean values cause the type to be what's called "truthy" or "falsy."

[conceptlog]

Cultural Revolution (China)

By the mid-1960s, Mao Zedong, Chairman of China's Communist party, had lost credibility within his administration as a result of the economic failure of his Great Leap Forward (1958-60). Sensing a lapse in ideological fervor and adoption of bourgeois values among his subordinates, Mao and his wife, Jiang Qing, shut down the schools and urged the nation's youth to revolt against the elderly and intellectual. By the early 1970s, over 1.5 million Chinese had died, and Mao had fallen ill. After a dispute over the rightful successor between Mao and Jiang, Deng Xiaoping ascended to the Chairmanship in 1977 and ran the country for the next twenty years.

Source: History.com

[conceptlog]

Poe's Law

This principle of Internet discourse states that without an explicit indication of sarcastic or parodic intent, an extreme opinion articulated ironically cannot be distinguished from an extreme opinion articulated in earnest. The law gets its name from Nathan Poe, who promulgated it in 2005 on a Creationist webforum. The principle is a consequence of the fact that online communication lacks the non-verbal expressiveness of offline communication, e.g. facial expression and tone of voice.

Source: Wikipedia

[conceptlog]

Sizzurp

A drink containing cough syrup and a mixer, typically Sprite or Mountain Dew. The cough syrup should be prescription and contain codeine and promethazine. Because of cough syrup's purple color, the drink is sometimes known as "purple drank." It can also be referred to as "lean" and "Tsikuni." Many American rappers and producer sing praise to the beverage on many songs. The drink originated in Houston, Texas.

Source: Girls Just Wanna Have Guns

[conceptlog]

Jobs-to-be-done

This is a big concept in Clayton Christensen's framework for thinking about the rise and fall of businesses in capitalism. It recasts the relationship between consumer and product into a relationship of employer and employee. The "job-to-be-done" when a consumer is "hiring" a product is the part of the consumer's life toward which that product could be put to use. For example, if you're shopping for a refrigerator, what you're really doing while strolling the aisles at Bed Bath & Beyond is appraising "job candidates" for the position "keeping my food cold," with the requirement of "looking nice in my kitchen." Thinking about the consumer-product relationship in this way helps understand how Christensen's more well-known concept of "disruptive innovation" works.

Source: Stratechery