amber - Tumblr blog

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Because I love a good Venn diagram (and because I've somehow neglected posting anything here for a bloody long time)...

Ikigai is like Quan in Jerry McGuire.

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Drowning in the noise.

It’s a postfact world.

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This post-normal post-truth post-fact world is not one I feel at all comfortable in. If that makes me an elitist (which I suppose what currently passes for logic would label me as), then so be it.

Fake news is warping the American mind, leading people to doubt the premise of reality:

Fake news, and the proliferation of raw opinion that passes for news, is creating confusion, punching holes in what is true, causing a kind of fun-house effect that leaves the reader doubting everything, including real news.

That has pushed up the political temperature and increased polarization. No longer burdened with wrestling with the possibility that they might be wrong, people on the right and the left have become more entrenched in their positions, experts say. In interviews, people said they felt more empowered, more attached to their own side and less inclined to listen to the other. Polarization is fun, like cheering a goal for the home team.

“There are an alarming number of people who tend to be credulous and form beliefs based on the latest thing they’ve read, but that’s not the wider problem,” said Michael Lynch, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut. “The wider problem is fake news has the effect of getting people not to believe real things.”

He described the thinking like this: “There’s no way for me to know what is objectively true, so we’ll stick to our guns and our own evidence. We’ll ignore the facts because nobody knows what’s really true anyway.”

News that is fake or only marginally real has lurked online — and in supermarket tabloids — for years, but never before has it played such a prominent role in an American election and its aftermath. Narrowly defined, “fake news” means a made-up story with an intention to deceive, often geared toward getting clicks. But the issue has become a political battering ram, with the left accusing the right of trafficking in disinformation, and the right accusing the left of tarring conservatives as a way to try to censor websites. In the process, the definition of fake news has blurred.

“Fake news is subjective,” Mr. Laughlin said. “It depends on who’s defining it. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

The culmination of this is the explicit rejection of reality, and facts. Or as Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes recently clarified on the Diane Rehm show, there’s no such thing as facts, anymore:

Well, I think it’s also an idea of an opinion. And that's—on one hand, I hear half the media saying that these are lies. But on the other half, there are many people that go, ‘No, it’s true.’ And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch, is that people that say facts are facts—they’re not really facts. Everybody has a way—it’s kind of like looking at ratings, or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth, or not truth. There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.

And so Mr. Trump’s tweet, amongst a certain crowd—a large part of the population—are truth. When he says that millions of people illegally voted, he has some—amongst him and his supporters, and people believe they have facts to back that up. Those that do not like Mr. Trump, they say that those are lies and that there are no facts to back it up.

If people believe the facts exist to back up empty claims – even when the facts never turn up, or counter evidence is offered – those same people believe the claims. It’s magical thinking.

So people hear Trump talking about millions voting illegally, without a shred of proof, but they believe there is proof and that the story is true.

Welcome to the postnormal.

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Hillary Rodham Clinton has more than earned, through her service to the country as first lady, as a senator from New York, and as secretary of state, the right to be taken seriously as a White House contender. She has flaws (some legitimately troubling, some exaggerated by her opponents), but she is among the most prepared candidates ever to seek the presidency. We are confident that she understands the role of the United States in the world; we have no doubt that she will apply herself assiduously to the problems confronting this country; and she has demonstrated an aptitude for analysis and hard work. Donald Trump, on the other hand, has no record of public service and no qualifications for public office. His affect is that of an infomercial huckster; he traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself. He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read. This judgment is not limited to the editors of The Atlantic. A large number—in fact, a number unparalleled since Goldwater’s 1964 campaign—of prominent policy makers and officeholders from the candidate’s own party have publicly renounced him. Trump disqualified himself from public service long before he declared his presidential candidacy. In one of the more sordid episodes in modern American politics, Trump made himself the face of the so-called birther movement, which had as its immediate goal the demonization of the country’s first African American president. Trump’s larger goal, it seemed, was to stoke fear among white Americans of dark-skinned foreigners. He succeeded wildly in this; the fear he has aroused has brought him one step away from the presidency. Our endorsement of Clinton, and rejection of Trump, is not a blanket dismissal of the many Trump supporters who are motivated by legitimate anxieties about their future and their place in the American economy. But Trump has seized on these anxieties and inflamed and racialized them, without proposing realistic policies to address them. In its founding statement, The Atlantic promised that it would be “the organ of no party or clique,” and our interest here is not to advance the prospects of the Democratic Party, nor to damage those of the Republican Party. If Hillary Clinton were facing Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or George W. Bush, or, for that matter, any of the leading candidates Trump vanquished in the Republican primaries, we would not have contemplated making this endorsement. We believe in American democracy, in which individuals from various parties of different ideological stripes can advance their ideas and compete for the affection of voters. But Trump is not a man of ideas. He is a demagogue, a xenophobe, a sexist, a know-nothing, and a liar. He is spectacularly unfit for office, and voters—the statesmen and thinkers of the ballot box—should act in defense of American democracy and elect his opponent.

‘The Atlantic’ Editors Endorse Hillary Clinton for President

Hear, hear.

(via stoweboyd)

Trying not to feel ill about all of this. Failing.

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What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night. No time to turn at Beauty's glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth can Enrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.

- William Henry Davies (1871 to 1940)

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I’m not trying to find out what the user wanted. I’m trying to figure out why they want it.

http://blog.invisionapp.com/dont-design-what-users-want/

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Part of the "Women in Leadership - Special Series". That tells you something right there.

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Great resource to point people to. This bit (taken from Wikipedia) is particularly useful: User Experience (UX) design "incorporates aspects of psychology, anthropology, sociology, computer science, graphic design, industrial design and cognitive science. " 

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"A screen records that Kit Kat bars were the subject of 164,462 recent posts on Twitter, Facebook and the like. Of these, 73% were positive. (Though it is hard to imagine why anyone would complain about chocolate. What’s not to like?)" -- interesting piece from The Economist on digital marketing these days. Has the "Big Data" bandwagon era begun?

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Delightful timelapse video from javinlau.tumblr.com (warning: not good if you suffer from vertigo!). Great job capturing urban Hong Kong from interesting vantage points. 

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I am often asked what UX means. I then give a slightly different answer depending on who I'm talking to (and what their assumed level of base knowledge is). I came across this great excerpt in a blog post from Teresa Neil on "Hiring Top UX Talent (seems it's not just HK that has difficulty finding "talent" then):

"UX isn’t graphic design and it isn’t web design and it isn’t (just) making wireframes. An experienced UX practitioner will guide you from research to product launch. They should be part of your strategy team, not brought in at the tail end of the design phase to tidy up the wireframes. 

If you are hiring a consultant, they should want to be part of your team through  launch (and afterwards too). UX isn’t about a hand-off, it is a cornerstone of your project’s success."

Exactly.

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“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Albert Einstein (quote found in a piece on the top 5 "Creativity Killers". #1 on the list? Role mis-match. Interesting...)

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"If you've been paying attention, you'll have seen a lot more discussions about gender, feminism and harassment lately."  Yes, yes I have, and I thought this one in particular was worth highlighting for it's "bigger picture" approach.

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Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.

- Peter Drucker

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Laughed at the Daily Dilbert strip my handy IFTTT recipe sent me via email today.  Do they know it is "Social Media Week"?  I think they well might...

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Tempus Fugit

And another year flies past...

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A scorchingly beautiful day to say goodbye. We miss you terribly Yai Yai. You loved us all being together under one roof... RIP xx