Y’all are doubtless familiar with “Hanlon’s Razor”:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
A while back I wrote that this needs an update, and being a humble guy, I named it the “Severian Corollary”:
There’s a level of stupidity so profound, you actually hope it’s malice.
Severian, “Quick Take: The Severian Corollary”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-07-31.
September 3, 2022
QotD: The Severian Corollary to Hanlon’s Razor
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January 18, 2022
QotD: The role of fate in man’s affairs
P.G. Wodehouse, “Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest”, My Man Jeeves, 1919.
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June 25, 2021
QotD: Moore’s Law
Gordon Moore, quoted in “Happy Birthday: Moore’s Law at 40”, The Economist, 2005-03-26
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May 14, 2021
QotD: Gun safety
When you need them to be unloaded, they have a bullet in the chamber, ready to fire.
When you really need one to be loaded, they make that really sad “click” which tells you you need more ammo.
Chad Irby, posted to the comments at Wizbang, 2005-03-10. (original link had gone stale … updated with current archive link).
December 22, 2019
QotD: Impulses and regrets
Don’t wait until you have the time to really relax and enjoy it. That will be approximately three decades from now, and it’s highly possible you won’t be able to enjoy it. I will never forgive myself for passing up a chance to go to trapeze school in my late 20s. I figured I could always do it later, little suspecting that in my early thirties my lower back would decide to take up amateur dramatics. At least somebody got to perform.
Megan McArdle, “After 45 Birthdays, Here Are ’12 Rules for Life'”, Bloomberg View, 2018-01-30.
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June 17, 2019
QotD: Betteridge’s Law of Headlines
Ian Betteridge, “TechCrunch: Irresponsible journalism”, Techechnovia.co.uk, 2009-02-23. (Link goes to archived page at the Wayback Machine.)
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September 26, 2017
QotD: Maxims 1-10 of Maximally Effective Mercenaries
1. Pillage, then burn.
2. A Sergeant in motion outranks a Lieutenant who doesn’t know what’s going on.
3. An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody.
4. Close air support covereth a multitude of sins.
5. Close air support and friendly fire should be easier to tell apart.
6. If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
7. If the food is good enough, the grunts will stop complaining about the incoming fire.
8. Mockery and derision have their place. Usually, it’s on the far side of the airlock.
9. Never turn your back on an enemy.
10. Sometimes the only way out is through … through the hull.Howard Tayler, quoted by Rodney M. Bliss in “New Maxims Revealed For The First Time”, Rodney M. Bliss, 2015-12-18.
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April 14, 2014
QotD: Collard’s Law
Given enough funding and little accountability, any organisation tends to look like a shit copy of the public sector.
Lewis Collard, in a comment on ESR’s Google+ post, 2014-04-13
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December 8, 2011
The Law of Misguided Subsidies
T.J. Rogers explains the latest corollary to the well-known Law of Unintended Consequences (for examples of that law in operation, see your local, regional, or national government):
Wall Street understands how to make money, up-market or down. “Margin Call” may fuel Occupy movement ire, but in creating mortgage-backed securities, Wall Street did nothing other than facilitate home-financing access to the next tier of less-qualified home buyers, as demanded by every president since Bill Clinton. After that, the bankers did exactly what their shareholders wanted: bundle those risky loans into securities, sell them to lock in the profits, and dump the risk right back onto the federal government — where it belonged.
My purpose is not to debate the morality of mortgage-backed securities but to update the Law of Unintended Consequences with the corollary Law of Misguided Subsidies: Whenever Washington disrupts a market by dumping subsidies into it, Wall Street will find a way to pocket a majority of the money while the intended subsidy beneficiaries are harmed by the resulting market turmoil.
Rogers also explains why so many “special Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs)” are getting into the solar power business — not the manufacturing side, but the retail side. The profit margins are obscene. If the government hadn’t set up the market to work this way with their subsidies, the profit margins would be much lower.
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August 18, 2011
This is so true
By way of Cory Doctorow’s post at BoingBoing, the wonderfully accurate Muphry’s Law:
Muphry’s Law is the editorial application of the better-known Murphy’s Law. Muphry’s Law dictates that:
- if you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault in what you have written;
- if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book;
- the stronger the sentiment in (a) and (b), the greater the fault; and
- any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent.
Muphry’s Law also dictates that, if a mistake is as plain as the nose on your face, everyone can see it but you. Your readers will always notice errors in a title, in headings, in the first paragraph of anything, and in the top lines of a new page. These are the very places where authors, editors and proofreaders are most likely to make mistakes.
It always pays to allow for Muphry in anything you write, or anything you are checking.
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July 20, 2009
Mr Murphy checks in early
Y’know . . . I should have remembered that being careful isn’t always enough. There’s a new build of WordPress available, and I thought I should update to it.
But first, I cleverly backed up my files . . . I’ve been burned in the past by updates that stomp over things you wanted to keep.
Download and installed the update. Cool. Installed cleanly: great.
Except that it wiped out my style.css file. No biggie . . . I’ve got a fresh backup, so I can just . . . oh. Crap. The backup is incomplete and doesn’t include style.css.
Back to the drawing board. Tomorrow.
I’ll probably just do more damage if I try to reconstruct it tonight.
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