fait accompli – French, literally “to do”/”to make” “accomplished”, in English: “feat accomplished”, “accomplished fact”–more idiomatically–“done deal”. Militarily, diplomatically, etc., a tactic of taking a surprising action in order to create a favorable position. See the negotiating/business side of this concept at: https://www.karrass.com/en/blog/negotiation-is-it-a-fait-accompli-translation-is-it-a-done-deal.
Flores Settlement Agreement – the conclusion of a legal case presently governing the handling of minors at US borders. 507 US 292 (1993) states, “…and where the conditions of governmental custody are decent and humane, such custody surely does not violate the Constitution.” Subsequently the government failed to adhere to the agreement. Judge Marsha S. Berzon of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on August 15, 2019 stated, “Assuring that children eat enough edible food, drink clean water, are housed in hygienic facilities with sanitary bathrooms, have soap and toothpaste, and are not sleep-deprived are without doubt essential to the children’s safety.” One of the primary sticking points is the agreement’s requirement that unaccompanied minors are sent to their closest relative in the US or a foster family within 20 days. This seeks to prevent the indefinite confinement of minors, their confinement with unrelated adults, and their unnecessary confinement when they had family in the US. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._Flores.
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems (1931) – simplistically, truth does not equal proof. Wikipedia: “The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure (i.e., an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of natural numbers. For any such consistent formal system, there will always be statements about natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that the system cannot demonstrate its own consistency.” 1: Math can’t prove all true mathematical statements. 2: Math cannot prove itself consistent. Mathematicians hoped this wasn’t the case until it the first theorem was proven in the specific example of the Paris-Harrington theorem in 1977.
Halting problem – given a computer program and an input, determine if the program will finish or run forever. Alan Turing proved in 1936 a general algorithm solving the halting problem is impossible.
“Wetiko is an Algonquin word for a cannibalistic spirit that is driven by greed, excess, and selfish consumption (in Ojibwa it is windigo, wintiko in Powhatan).” –https://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/seeing-wetiko-on-capitalism-mind-viruses-and-antidotes-for-a-world-in-transition/
Comparisons
Comparing 7 billion humans to the height of one 1.8 meter human, the loss of one human would mean the loss of 2.57e-10 of the 1.8 meter human’s height. A quarter of a nanometer dents the 4 nanometer cell wall of a 30 micrometer skin cell.
Fiction
Green goo – an existential threat consisting of a biological entity which outcompetes all other life for resources. The biological equivalent of grey goo.
Grey goo (gray goo) – an existential threat consisting of self-replicating nanotechnology which consumes all matter.
Oracle machine – a Turing device attached to a black box that can solve anything, including the halting problem. See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_machine.
Turing oracle – see oracle machine.
Warfare
ABCDE warfare:
Atomic – fission or fusion bombs, other technology releasing energy on scale with E = mc². Hypersonic glide vehicles and ICBMs are merely delivery systems, despite the fact that they go into space.
Biological – diseases, invasive species (e.g. canis familiaris–domesticated dogs–in the Galapagos islands or kudzu in the United States south), green goo, bacteria, viruses. I classify developing malicious DNA coding in this category, even though development would be on a supercomputer and a likely delivery is through hacking an adversary’s DNA printer–both thoroughly in the digital portion of warfare.
Chemical – agent orange, neurotoxins (though some straddle the line between biological vs chemical), basically anything you can mass-produce with element inputs.
Digital – hacking, logic bombs, zero-day exploits, worms, etc. Using an entity’s digital infrastructure against them. I classify grey goo in this category even though it’s arguably chemical (nanotechnology) because of the amount of computation involved and because you could potentially hack a three-dimensional printer to print grey goo.
Extraterrestrial – any mass aimed at the earth with sufficient momentum to survive reentry and cause damage on impact. Any object of sufficient size, like Pluto, requires very little speed if it’s on an intercept course with earth to do great damage. Any object of sufficient speed relative to earth (think an oncoming collision) requires little mass to do great damage; something the size of a bus hitting a city will wipe out the city. Objects approaching the speed of light on an intercept with earth are an existential threat. With sufficient fuel and gravity maneuvers, man can make any asteroid an issue. Such an endeavor need not be fast; you could push asteroid for years to get it into position. All rockets are weapons.
An alternative to this is the rods of god or kinetic bombardment. Put something heavy–tungsten or depleted uranium rods–into