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Comment by Xophmeister | Hacker News Reader

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Xophmeister·

Looks like there's an errata, already :)

https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2025/01/a-sheepish-apolog...

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Some good advice at the end of that:

1) Don't state something as fact when you haven't researched it fully.

2) Remember that when you do state something because you believe it's fact, it could be based on incomplete information.

3) If you're not 100% sure about something, best introduce at least some element of doubt.

4) Don't trust everything you read just because somebody you trust presented it as fact.

I think this was overly self-critical - what would researching fully even mean? They can have however many sheep they want hidden within one-mile distance from Trafalgar square, no-one would expect the author to scour every possible location ensuring that there is no sheep hidden lol just to make a funny post 100% sure to be true

Guy knows his audience though. All of his posts are incredibly prone to bikeshedding. If our main journalists knew that their output was going to be subject to much detail-oriented scrutiny, we'd have the best-run country in the world.

Much of his bikeshedding is obviously self-deprecating humor to me. It’s simultaneously both genuine and ironic.

I think that people sometimes don’t (can’t?) quite ‘get’ that wry-but-also-sincere style that much of British humor exhibits.

It also says "But they might have been goats.".

> But you can't go in and have a look, they don't take walk-ins, only pre-booked groups and very occasional public events, the last of which was cancelled.

This has a very Douglas Adam’s feel.

Cunningham's Law in action which states that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.

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