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After googling around, as far as I can tell the word yak shaving come from a ren and stimpy cartoon episode from the early nineteens.

But how did it go from preparing for yaksmas to the current meaning?

Probably because some hacker started using it, according to the Jargon File[1] someone in the MIT AI Lab popularized it.

I don't think that's in AI-lab versions of the Jargon File.