In this week’s issue:

• Touch Grass: Etymology of Industries (wtf does that even mean?)

• It’s Giving: Buzzword Bingo Only

• Still Downloading: An Audiovisual Escapade With Web3 Baddie Alla Koretsky

• Bible: Words to Live By

• Bonus Palate Cleanser: Jenny Holzer’s Language as Art & Power

What to Expect from Babe (the unexpected, obvs)

Every Tuesday, at whatever time the data says is the best time, you’ll find Babe in your inbox. Each issue will look something like the one you’re reading now, only different. To keep things classy and somewhat organized, it will almost always include the following four elements. It will for sure serve.

In thinking about language a lot of the time, I recently realized that I wade around in at least four distinct lexicons.

There's snowboarding, where you:

• Send it (go all out on a feature or run)

• Get pitted (ride through deep powder)

• Shred the gnar (ride tricky terrain while riding yr heart out)

• Bonk (deliberately tap an object or feature, like a tree stump, with your snowboard)

• And so on

There's crypto (still learning this shit):

• I got rugged (someone stole my money)

• We're so early (despite being a decade in)

• HODL (hold on for dear life)

• WAGMI (we’re all gonna make it)

• And so on (this is supes cute)

There's corporate (the absolute worst—a one-two punch of confusing and douchey):

• Let's take this offline (please stop talking in this meeting)

• Circle back (I'm ignoring this now)

• Parallel-path (do two things at once)

• Four-blocker, EOD, role clarity matrix (um… what)

And there's creative writing MFA speak:

• The liminal space between memory and desire (I have no idea)

• Interrogate the text (read critically)

• Manic Pixie Dream Girl (female character who is bizarre/quirky; often used as a device to “teach” a male character a lesson, their only purpose being to help or save the males of the story)

What I find interesting and also love is that 1. Lexicons exist (the corporate one only for its incomparable levels of cringe) and 2. How quickly we adapt to linguistic ecosystems.

Like, three months ago I had no idea what "gm" meant in a crypto context. Now I use it to start my newsletter. After just a few seasons on a snowboard I was decoding convos with the bros without a second thought. Liminal is now one of my favorite words.

These sub-languages evolve organically to articulate the somatic experience of a space. When snowboarders talk about "getting pitted" in powder, they're using language to capture a physical sensation that's nearly impossible to describe in "standard" English. When crypto enthusiasts say "we're so early," they're conveying both temporal position and emotional excitement in three words. How fucking cool—language originating as a seed of sensation in the body before finding it’s way to mouth, to pen, to communal acceptance.

So really, these niche lexicons aren't just exclusionary—they're necessary evolutions of language to express experiences outside accepted discourse. They're language morphing in real-time to fill gaps where traditional vocabulary fails us. Yes, I’ve written research papers on ebonics before.

And if I’m thinking about the erasure of language occurring in broad strokes across America’s linguistic and textual landscape right now (which, I am), I’m simultaneously thinking: well, then we do as so many have done throughout history—shift the language as a means to subvert, resist, and persist. Amen.

This week, I was lucky enough to have a video call (where I actually recorded the sound) with Alla Koretsky, who's been shaking things up at the intersection of fashion and tech since before most of us knew what an NFT was. Coming from outside the typical tech founder mold, Alla entered web3 through the unexpected door of supply-chain transparency—proving there's no single "right path" into this space.

Experience the full interview here. Enjoy.

Note: I had to unexpectedly diy this last night at 11pm bc it was the only way to publish—the sound gets better after the intro, promise.

Let's end with Jenny Holzer, the pioneering conceptual artist whose text-based works offer the perfect antidote to corporate language and crypto jargon alike.

Since the 1970s, Holzer has been creating provocative text installations that cut through linguistic bullshit with razor-sharp precision. From her Truisms projected onto buildings to LED displays scrolling unsettling messages, she transforms language from a tool of obfuscation into a medium for confronting power.

Her famous truisms like "ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE" and "PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT" feel especially poignant in our current/ongoing moment of language manipulation across tech, crypto, corporate, and constitutional spheres.

In her 2023 exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, Holzer continued this tradition with new works examining how language shapes our digital realities. One piece displayed AI-generated "corporate commitments" that gradually devolved into nonsensical but eerily familiar corporate-speak—highlighting the emptiness behind so much of our professional jargon.

Holzer's career-long examination of how language can both reveal and conceal truth feels like the perfect artistic counterpoint to our exploration of specialized lexicons. Where crypto and corporate jargon often mystify to exclude, Holzer's work demystifies to include—using language as a tool for clarity rather than confusion.

Check out more of Jenny’s work here and maybe next time you're crafting that corporate email or decoding some crypto whitepaper, channel a bit of her unflinching directness. I’ll do the same.

PS: Subscribe now if you want in on this arithmetic. Miss the last issue? It’s right here.