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Is there a name for the opposite of a yak-shave? Some sort of deep, tortuous side quest that's necessary for getting to the main objective, but you DON'T want to do and want to give up on main project to avoid?
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For yak-shaving exercise, the digressions tend to get increasingly absurd. You start out updating sendmail, and end up looking for a serial cable <-> USB-C connector. But for these show stoppers it's the opposite, the blockers are ugly, artificial, and/or bureaucratic.
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The thing about yak-shaving is unwillingness to triage and do something good enough to cut off the digression and get back to the main track. A kind of OCD compulsion. They may claim to hate it, but they hate the kludgy compromise more.
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This "opposite" idea I'm talking about is where no kludgy compromise is available and the absurdity is not actually avoidable. Somebody offered "green card" as an example, and it's a good one. Having been through that... it's an absurd but unavoidable way to emigrate to the US.