Word Of The Day

Athleisure:

a style of clothing that is comfortable and suitable for doing sports, but also fashionable and attractive enough to wear for other activities:
The singer has her own athleisure brand of clothing. [Cambridge Dictionary]

Totally new to me. Noted in “Why Does Everyone Talk Like They’re In A Cult?,” Amanda Montell, Refinery29:

But New Age–speak can also be a red flag. In some contexts, nebulous terms like “alignment” and “awakening” serve as scammy marketing buzzwords that have no clear or specific meaning, but simply paint a portrait of the speaker as transcendently wise, like some kind of all-knowing wiseman or prophet (even if they themselves don’t quite know what they’re saying). In competitive workplace environments, for example, excessive New Age lingo — constant talk of “missional synergy” and “holistic idea-sharing” — can promote a culture of conformity, discouraging individualism and questioning, while obscuring the fact that behind all the gobbledygook, the company’s higher-ups might not have the most “holistic” intentions (a recent Bond University study found that one in five CEOs is a clinical psychopath). And on social media, where influencers are no longer selling just athleisure and eye cream, but also their very souls, dime-a-dozen Insta-gurus like @activationvibration offer free nuggets of spiritual-ese, hoping followers will get suckered into paying for their self-actualization courses or retreats in order to learn what the hell they’re actually talking about.

Perhaps a trifle Germanic?

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About Hue White

Former BBS operator; software engineer; cat lackey.

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