slug: "latbs/glossary"
lang: en
title: "Glossary"
category: culture
pageCreated: "2023-10-01"
pageUpdated: "2025-04-16"
extends ../../../views/latbs/layout.pug
block content
p The English tongue has had to make some accommodations in the last five hundred years. These are some of the words you might expect to see scattered about the worlds of #[i Looking at the Big Sky].
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strong biogen
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i.phonetic(title="IPA: /ˈbaɪ̯.oʊ̯.d͡ʒən/") (#[strong by]·oh·jən)
dd A sapient person of biological, rather than technological, origin.
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strong centaur
dd A sapient person whose consciousness integrates both biological and technological aspects.
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strong #[+sc("GLBTI")]
dd The common twenty-first-century initialism for what our timeline would call the #[+sc("LGBT")] community. Stands for #[i gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual]#[+sn(1)]#[i , transvestite, intersexed, and intergendered]; you’ll occasionally see references to the “three #[+sc("T")]’s and two #[+sc("I")]’s” as the part of the acronym most likely to be shafted. Mostly encountered in a historical context, as previous taboos around sex and gender have long been busted.
+sn(1)
p #[i Transgendered] and #[i transsexual] are broadly synonymous and nobody really remembers why the two are listed separately, but God help you if you ever point that out.
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strong link
dd A direct brain–computer interface, practically omnipresent in 2338.
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strong neuréseau
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i.phonetic(title="IPA: /ˌnɜː.rɛ.ˈzoʊ̯/") (nur·ez·#[strong oh])
| , plural
strong neuréseaux
dd A non-sapient neural network — think Deep Blue or Chat#[+sc('GPT')]#[+sn(2)], rather than Hal or our own #[a.sapiens(href="/latbs/sejong") Sejong].
+sn(2)
p Remind me to change this to something more topical in 2028 when the computers overthrow us.
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strong Persephone
dd The tenth planet from the sun, known in our time as Eris.
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strong sapien
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i.phonetic(title="IPA: /ˈseɪ̯.piː.ən/") (#[strong say]·pee·ən)
dd A person; a being that is, as the name suggests, #[em sapient], cognisant of itself and its place in the world.
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strong synthien
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i.phonetic(title="IPA: /ˈsɪn.θiː.ən/") (#[strong sinth]·ee·ən)
dd A technogen using a robotic body to interact with the physical world.#[+sn(3)]
+sn(3)
p Shamelessly ripped off from the fourth #[i Matrix] film — sue me!
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strong technogen
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i.phonetic(title="IPA: /ˈtɛk.noʊ̯.d͡ʒən/") (#[strong tek]·noh·jən)
dd A sapient person of technological, rather than biological, origin. (#[i Artificial intelligence] is a terribly vague term, spanning everything from era-defining statesmen to chess-playing programmes, and many technogens feel it implies them to be less “real” than everyone else.)
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strong Yggdrasil
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i.phonetic(title="IPA: /ˈɪɡ.dɹ̠ə.sɪl/") (#[strong ig]·drə·sil)
dd Poetically, the solar system, or the people within it, or sapien civilisation as a whole — it can be a bit nebulous, but it all derives from the same notion of a “world-tree” of nine realms. (Which one of the ten planets gets shafted depends — usually you’ll see Pluto and Persephone lumped together; sometimes Neptune too, so that Selene gets to be its own thing.)
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strong Yggdrasilian
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i.phonetic(title="IPA: /ˌɪɡ.dɹ̠ə.ˈsɪ.liː.ən/") (ig·drə·#[strong sil]·ee·ən)
dd Interplanetary; encompassing every inhabited world in the solar system.
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strong žirec
| or
strong jirrit
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i.phonetic(title="IPA: /ˈd͡ʒɪ.ɹ̠ɪt/") (#[strong jih]·rit)
dd A derogatory term for a baseline human, or more generally, any kind of luddite. Derived from the Intermarine #[i(lang="art-x-interslavic") alžirec] “Algerian”, referring to the Algerian theocracy’s long-standing technophobia throughout the 21#[sup st] and 22#[sup nd] centuries.