logoalt Hacker News

fluidcruftyesterday at 11:42 PM5 repliesview on HN

It's really not the right thing to be bikeshedding. The people calling the shots call themselves the Department of War. No need to die on hills that don't matter.


Replies

epistasistoday at 12:23 AM

It's actually a good thing to point out, because it shows that those people are out of control and exceeding their authority, and need to be reined in.

No need to die on the hill, but point out that there's a consistent pattern of lawless power-grabbing.

show 1 reply
Hnrobert42today at 2:10 AM

You're talking about an administration that barred the AP from pressed briefings because they didn't call it the Gulf of America. This is not a bikeshed.

throw0101ctoday at 2:08 AM

> It's really not the right thing to be bikeshedding. The people calling the shots call themselves the Department of War. No need to die on hills that don't matter.

From the first chapter of the book On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, an historian of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust:

> Do not obey in advance.

* https://timothysnyder.org/on-tyranny

* https://archive.org/details/on-tyranny-twenty-lessons-from-t...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Snyder

LastTraintoday at 2:51 AM

I wouldn’t call a brief comment on the matter dying on a hill fcs

show 1 reply
garciasnyesterday at 11:49 PM

TIL of Bikeshedding, or Parkinson’s Law of Triviality.

Defined as the tendency for teams to devote disproportionate time and energy to trivial, easy-to-understand issues while neglecting complex, high-stakes decisions. Originating from the example of arguing over a bike shed's color instead of a nuclear plant's design, it represents a wasteful focus on minor details.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

---

I deal with this day in and day out. Thank you for informing me of the word that describes the laughable nightmares I deal with on the regular.