>"we did data analysis with Python, NLTK and R. The stack is on EC2 running Django with memcached and varnish serving up json and the frontend uses jQuery, underscore and backbone to render it"
This sentence has actual data in it. The author, I think, is talking about people whose statements have almost no substance, so they fill them in with buzzwords.
Sure, but if a client asks what you're doing, and you suspect they're not clueful about the work, you'd tailor your reply to as close to plain English as possible. But when you're talking to experts you correctly use jargon to rapidly communicate actual information.
There's a big difference between the example you gave and "executive" speak. About 80% of the uses I see of "leverage" / "leveraged" / "leverages" are bullshit. Not just 'could be replaced by use / used / uses' bullshit, but 'if replaced becomes meaningless' bullshit. It's not that people do not understand business talk, it's that much of it is vacuous nonsense that carries no information once you've decoded it.
The underground grammarian has some stuff about this (http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/) (although I can't remember where) when he gives an example of a legal definition for a door. It's a long, technical definition, and it's hard to understand. It's the kind of thing that people often make fun of. But he points out the context (maybe legislation about fire exits?) and says that being exact is important, and in that case it's good that there's no ambiguity.
I've totally heard people rattling off jargon where it didn't add anything. It didn't remove anything (save perhaps understanding by some within earshot), it's pointless complexity, and I'm a person who thinks pointless complexity should be eliminated.
But that's exactly what the OP was complaining about in his charity example! and that's three acryonyms right there that you passed over without issue, and the other names are equally recondite (like 'Django' or 'varnish' tells you anything whatsoever about the projects?).
This sentence has actual data in it. The author, I think, is talking about people whose statements have almost no substance, so they fill them in with buzzwords.