Who is not considered a joke by many people on both sides of the aisle?
He seems to be considered highly reputable by many on both sides of the aisle as well. Certainly more reputable than an hacker news commenter making misleading insinuations as to why somebody might want to delete tweets, and overconfident, baseless proclamations of who is and is not considered a joke by the world at large.
If that's what you want to believe, but it's not true. He is not really respected by anyone except the people that he brought over from Think Progress. Not sure what's respectable about things he's said in the past or continues to say. He deletes them...because he knows they were dumb. One of his "expert" economic reports was that the US should simply print its way out of debt, raise the minimum wage to $100 and let the Fed figure it out...all of which are laughable to any actual economist, yes including left wing economists, because it would actually impoverish the poor even more. His platform is to rile people up, not actually convey real ideas or solutions. That is why he's a running meme on both sides of the aisle and his flippant regard for facts has more than carried over to Vox.
Basically: research, hypothesize, prototype, test, iterate, deliver. It's not new, but here we are with new terminology.
It is good because if you're a design firm you sometimes need an HBR-approved buzzword to get your client, the VP of Marketing, to let you do any kind of user research. But ultimately, like any business concept used primarily to sell in client work and justify it up the ladder, it will be replaced by "whatever the stakeholder wants" when push comes to shove.
Sorry, but you completely missed the mark on this one. Are you in UX or have you led design thinking sessions? It's successful because the product stops being something the designer created and starts being a product the whole team created. It gives everyone, no matter your role, a voice in the product and the creativity to build what you think the product should be.
If you are working for an established consultancy and selling for example a marketing project to a large incumbent I don't really think there is obvious place to sell you services using the term "startup".
Neil Postman has a lot to say on this topic, which he terms the "news of the day" throughout Amusing Ourselves to Death. For example:
"This idea — that there is a content called “the news of the day” — was entirely created by the telegraph (and since amplified by newer media), which made it possible to move decontextualized information over vast spaces at incredible speed. The news of the day is a figment of our technological imagination. It is quite, precisely, a media event. We attend to fragments of events from all over the world because we have multiple media whose forms are well suited to fragmented conversation."
“How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve? For most of us, news of the weather will sometimes have consequences; for investors, news of the stock market; perhaps an occasional story about crime will do it, if by chance it occurred near where you live or involved someone you know. But most of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action."
"You may get a sense of what this means by asking yourself another series of questions: What steps do you plan to take to reduce the conflict in the Middle East? Or the rates of inflation, crime and unemployment? What are your plans for preserving the environment or reducing the risk of nuclear war? What do you plan to do about NATO, OPEC, the CIA, affirmative action, and the monstrous treatment of the Baha’is in Iran? I shall take the liberty of answering for you: You plan to do nothing about them. You may, of course, cast a ballot for someone who claims to have some plans, as well as the power to act. But this you can do only once every two or four years by giving one hour of your time, hardly a satisfying means of expressing the broad range of opinions you hold. Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into—what else?—another piece of news. Thus, we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.”
To pick an example, as a kid I read Ender's Game Because it was SF and had a cool cover. Now, because of the odious nature of the author's personal politics, I don't read his books.
This is entirely his own fault, but if he was just another name on a book I would still be buying his novels.
In neither case is the person's tribal identity used against them for writing things that others don't like. Orson Scott Card holds a professorship. He just published a book this year. A large corporation made a mass market film out of his book, well after he had been writing things that others didn't like.
The controversy with the poet seems like a different issue, but even so -- Michael Derrick Hudson seems to be in exactly the same place before Sherman Alexie assumed he was a Chinese woman 3 years ago.
Maybe OSC isn't a good example of an author being destroyed, but it IS a good example of being unable to separate the person from their work.
If you really need examples of how a public identity can impact how your work is viewed, see every famous person who has been named in the #MeToo movement.
(Please don't attack me for that statement. I'm implying neither support nor opposition to #MeToo in this post. That's not the point.)
So in the case of Ender's Game, I first read it without any knowledge of who OSC was or what his views were. And I came away from reading it as being about the underdog, about how complicated power and morality can be, about trying to do the right thing. I thought it was a wonderfully complex story because almost every character sees themselves as trying to do the right thing, yet are seen as villains by others.
Then I read about OSC and think: Did I miss the point? Did he? How can the person who wrote this wonderful story not see that they are in turn bullying others? It complicates the whole relationship to the story.
Of course, you may argue that I'm the one who is mistaken. That's fine. But we have to at least agree that the more we know about the artist the more we think about their art differently, and vice versa.
There are numerous examples of kids bullied up to the point they committed suicide. Sometimes it starts at school or in the neighborhood and later moves online but there were also people victimized just by writing something the dominant pack found worth of being bullied for.
The colors are great, really comfortable contrast level, and the typeface is easy to read. Fairly tight information density, but low-density layouts are a common complaint with the target audience so I think it strikes a good balance. My compliments to the designer.
Mostly disappointment after hyping themselves up for a PC sequel to Diablo. I am not outraged, but just cynical:
From the article:
"it’s a fully fledged Diablo experience on mobile, which everybody will get to play, and hopefully, which will bring new heroes to Sanctuary as well as welcoming our community back into it and something we’re very excited about."
Blizzard has simplified their games to grow their customer base, such as the Cataclysm expansion to World of Warcraft. These simplifications have not been well received by the existing players. My reaction to Diablo Immortal is skepticism about how much crunch there will be. Diablo 3 was not terribly interesting for me after you got past the first few playthroughs, compared to Diablo 2 or more modern ARPGs like Path of Exile.
It's not really anger, it's disappointment; if Immortal turns out to be a great game, I'll happily buy it. The noises Blizzard are hearing from the fans are basically a reminder that they have lost customers when trying to get new ones.
They paid hundreds of dollars to go to an event that traditionally has had pc announcements. Then without warning the event was changed.
I already used the concert analogy but it’s good. If your rap music concert suddenly switches into techno the audience may be angry without being entitled edgelords. It’s about knowing your audience. And most importantly communicating it.
WRT your claim that Kavanaugh somehow will not contribute to the prohibition (or extreme restriction) of abortions:
- Kavanaugh was nominated after private meetings with a president who promised to put anti-abortion judges on the court.
- The president himself is not an expert on jurisprudence and selected Kavanaugh from a list of anti-abortion judges provided to him by the Federalist Society, which vets judges with respect to the likelihood of their restricting abortion access.
- There is a lot of wiggle room within the phrase "I would follow Roe v. Wade faithfully and fully", enough to permit a decision that would allow states to effectively outlaw abortion. He could technically not be lying in that specific statement, yet still prohibit or largely restrict access to abortions.
There is no good faith reason to believe that Kavanaugh's nomination is not a threat to abortion access in America.
You have shared two sources of broad, country-level data.
The study tracked localized effects on individuals.
These are not necessarily in contradiction! Though whatever you're inferring with your broad correlation (air pollution has no negative effect on intelligence? air pollution improves intelligence?) is much weaker than the study, which clearly has made attempts to isolate variables.
Nixon _reluctantly_ created the EPA as a response to one of the only periods of sustained popular environmentalism in American history.
I'm unsure why this gets bandied about as a feather in Nixon's cap. Just as a factual matter, as soon as he was politically safe from environmentalist pressure (post-1972), he retreated completely on environmental issues, vetoing the EPA's budget, ordering the EPA to spend less than was apportioned to the agency.
It's an example of the potential for citizen activism, and an example of Nixon's inclination to consolidate power in the executive branch. Certainly not an example of "the post-WWII modern Republican party at one time wanted to expand environmental protections beyond the minimum required to quell citizen activism."
"All politics is a fad. Your fad is going right now. Get what you can, and here's what I can get you." - Nixon, to the Sierra Club, 1970
I’ve been a few times and had a lot of fun.