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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

> Stopping Home Office Work’s Unproductive Problems (SHOW UP)

Someone should pass a bill banning these cutesy bill names. Do it like Canada and just number the damn things.

I wonder if the Supreme Court has ever used one of these dumb names when attempting to determine the "original intention" of a law. For example, it seems like the name of Florida's "Stop WOKE Act" demonstrates that the law's purpose is to suppress free speech rather than to "protect the children".

No, they should stay the way they are. The cutesy names always betray the real intent behind the legislation.

Canada makes it harder to see through the bullshit.

Sometimes. Other times the cutesy name is used to conceal the intent, like the PATRIOT act.

Mmm, but a signal is a signal, even if it's a duplicitous one.

That was the point I was trying to make-- whatever the name is, assume the intent is the opposite because it's political suicide to be on record decrying the ENDRACISM or CAREBEAR acts. It's statecraft, and obvious to anybody with a brain.

Naming everything "HB-4739-2B" would make the process more opaque, so only those directly involved have any clue what's going on.

There should have at least some oversight.

Remember the "Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act"

which actually:

"hampered the DEA's ability to seize suspicious shipments of opioids" within the context of the opioid epidemic"?

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensuring_Patient_Access_and_Ef...

This is some 1984 naming right here.

There's a very large part of me that thinks that people who got through the pandemic and still can't form an opinion of remote work more nuanced than the one this bill's name implies are telling on themselves.

The mere existence of a cutesy name for a bill forces people to refer to it in a way that is implicitly favorable to that bill. It forces people--especially the media--to keep repeating what is essentially a marketing slogan each time they discuss the bill, even when discussing it unfavorably.

Discussing bills using their numbers would be best, but here's an alternative in case Americans are too attached to cutesy bill names. How about having a law that allows the continuing use of cutesy names, but allows a bill's opponents to come up with a different official name for the bill within a reasonable time frame? The media would be encouraged to refer to the bill using both names, until it would ideally become customary to do so for every bill. This opposing name would provide a quick, easily-digestible counter-narrative for people who hear about the bill, especially for those who might not dig deeper to find out what the bill is about and what effects it might actually have.

For this bill in particular, the opposition could come up with something that spells "COMMUTING HELL", "BUTTS IN SEATS", "FEDERAL BRAIN DRAIN", or something similarly discouraging.

Ask the special interest groups that have infiltrated state and federal legislatures

https://publicintegrity.org/politics/state-politics/copy-pas...

They have numbers but they also have descriptive names, like "An Act to amend the Customs Act and the Preclearance Act, 2016" and "An Act to amend the Criminal Code (disclosure of information by jurors)"

What I like, the bill proposes both a solution to unproductivity (back to office), while also seeking to study the loss of productivity from remote work. A lot of "we're fixing it and then after the fact we'll tell you how expensive this was". Just overall seems mean spirited.

I wouldn't mind seeing the study be done thpugh. WFH is a difficult thing to measure. Would be a case of having to pay attention who is "paying" for that study to be done. Overall the great WFH experiment is interesting to say the least.

When a bill passes, its opponents should get to choose the name.

LOL they'd all get named like "stupid bill for jerks #17"

They are numbered, once they come up for a vote (if you click through to https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/SHOWU... , you'll see that there's a blank for the number—the filename suggests this is HR 139-1). But you can't stop people from referring to numbered things by their cutesy names.

It does look to be HR 139, although official text of that bill is not yet present: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/139/....

I can't stand these as well.

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